At long last, episode 15 has arrived! This time, Despain and Reynard talk about game endings. What makes a good ending to your story—and what makes a bad one? And what’s the best way to end with satisfying gameplay? There’s some spoilers for older games, but Despain manages to stop himself from spoiling Bioshock Infinite.
This week’s Play or Flay looks at SnowOwl’s Skinwalker. Read more
Today’s topic is one that is important for all sorts of game design: difficulty. There’s lots of ways to make your game difficult, but unfortunately most of those ways are shortcuts that don’t lead to appealing gameplay.
Lots of game developers will feel the need to make their game more difficult, so they add all sorts of “features” that only end up making the game more frustrating. “But the player is dying more often,” they say, “it’s a challenge.” Well, kind sir—is it really a challenge? Or is your gameplay just hard for no real reason?
Today we’re going to look at the difference between challenge and frustration, and how to add to your game’s difficulty curve while avoiding making your players feel bad about it. Read more
Hey y’all. Just felt like it might be necessary to clear up some things about me, RPG Maker, and the future of this website.
Couple days ago, I was banned from the official RPG Maker Web forums. It seems that I’ve questioned staff decisions one too many times. :)
So what does that mean for your favorite tutorial website? Not much is going to change.
The forums took a lot of my time, and now that time is free to write up more articles and tutorials, and to make more video content. RPG Maker is still my hobby, and I enjoy sharing it and writing about it. In truth, spending a lot of time on RPG Maker forums was taking time away from actually using RPG Maker. The situation is a blessing in disguise.
The podcast will not end. This week’s episode was delayed because of these events, but we should be back on schedule next week. Sorry for the wait.
I will continue to write articles for the Official RPG Maker Web blog. I have a good relationship with the people there, even if we disagree on decisions about the forums. In truth, I’ve always been more comfortable producing content than dealing with forum politics. Now I’m free to do that.
You won’t see me posting on the official forums, but Final Boss Blues will still be the best website for quality articles and tutorials about RPG Maker, game design and pixel art.
I have some cool stuff planned, so stay updated. Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter so you don’t miss any new content—especially now that our content might not be posted on the official forums. As always, you can contact me through either of those sites, via email, or by leaving a comment on this website—I’m not going anywhere.
Let me know what you want to see from Final Boss Blues in the future. It will be fun.
And as always, happy game making.
Learn how to create an event where the player must input a password. The event makes use of the ‘Name Input Processing’ command.
Episode fourteen is here, with another guest host! Despain and ReynardFrost are joined by Solomon to talk about a much-requested subject, character development. What do your characters want? What are their goals? And how do those desires and goals change over the course of the game’s story? Read more
Episode thirteen is here, with another guest host! Despain and ReynardFrost are joined by Chaos Avian to talk about dungeons. Our Play or Flay segment has a unique twist, as we look at our guest host’s own project topic and give him a chance to defend himself. Read more
Learn how to use battle events to create a skill where the player can steal items from enemies. This tutorial is an introduction to battle events and random variables.
With episode twelve, Despain and ReynardFrost are joined by Sevith to talk about battle systems! And roguelikes. Read more
Learn how to create a simple pit that will cause the player to fall to the floor below. This tutorial explains how to use coordinate variables and region IDs in RPG Maker VX Ace.
