What to avoid....?

So I'm knee-deep in making my first OHR RPG and I realize it's probably not going to be the greatest OHR game ever, though hopefully far from the worse ever, but I want to know what I should avoid or what I should do in order to make it a little less of a newbie game.

First, a little about the game I'm designing:

It's a science-fiction in a future urban dystopia. I opted not to do traditional fantasy because I think it's overdone.

For the most part I'm keeping it rather simple. One character does use various amounts of ammo for special weapon/abilities, but the ammo can easily be purchased or found. I've scripted a few cutscenes already, including an opening sequence.

I'm pre-planning everything, either writing it out in a notebook or in a word document before I even design anything in the editor.

Now one thing I'm a little concerned about is I'm having trouble thinking up clever puzzles so right now the game is mostly go from Point-A to Point-B with the occasional "locate key item/NPC to progress"


So basically, what are the tell-tale signs of a newbie game so I can avoid all/some of them in order to make my game that much better?

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Like a drifter I was born to walk alone. ~Whitesnake~

1984? Yeah right, man. That's a typo. Orwell is here now. He's livin' large. We have no names, man. No names. We are nameless!
~Cereal Killer, Hackers~

as far as level design goes, you need to decide beforehand what an appropriate setup for each area should be. you don't want all of your dungeons to be straight paths while occasionaly having to locate a key. if you want to create interesting puzzles, i can give you this advice: play some games! the legend of zelda is notorious for it's dungeons, obviously. think about how dungeons in LoZ are set up. we'll use the forest temple in ocarina of time as an example:

~the dungeon is essentially a giant abandoned mansion in the forest. the architecture is crumbling, and vines and trees overrun the halls. even though it's a mansion, you never forget that you are in a forest. ambience makes the player believe that this place could and should exist in this world.

~the layout feels like a house. there is an atrium where the elevator is located, and the rest of the dungeon branches and returns from there. the layout makes sense, given the context. on the contrary, the fire temple is almost maze-like because it's a massive cave, and not man-made.

~upon entering, the poe sisters (ghosts) appear and "steal" the flames from the torches, making the elevator disappear. you already know what you have to do, and it's just a matter of how.

~the forest temple has an abundance of different puzzles, from switch hitting, key finding, monster killing, even block puzzles. if you do something enough times, you'll get the hang of it, and the rest of the dungeon will be too easy. switching it up will keep a player thinking.

you'll want to make your dungeons and puzzles make sense in the context of their location. you have to keep in mind, though, that dungeons and puzzles are only one part of game development. battles and character development are important to almost every RPG. boring and/or unbalanced battles will make a player not want to finish a dungeon or puzzle, no matter how cool it may be.

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Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy... So here's some lunchmeat... Sandwich, maybe?

Avoid big empty rooms with little variety aesthetically or interactively. Avoid putting in dialog just for the sake of having the character talk when you couldn't actually think of something for him to say. Check and double check your your/you're/yore and there/they're/their.

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Remeber: God made you special and he loves you very much. Bye!

Making a dungeon's puzzles 'make sense' in the game world is a wonderful thing, but I don't think it is a necessity for an RPG, especially your first one. Most people seem to consider Final Fantasy III (VI in Japan) a good RPG, and yet most of its dungeons are just caves with little thought as to why they have puzzles (Phoenix Cave, Kefka's Tower, Floating Island, inside Zone Eater). Of the dungeons that do try to have a reason for existing, the player still doesn't care how much or little sense the layout makes (Owzer's House, Figaro Engine Room, Magitek Research Facility).

When I think of trying to make a game feel professional, the first thing I think of is grammar. One single spelling or grammar mistake is, to me, enough to make an entire game feel like a newbie creation. Imagine if you bought a game that included a demo for an upcoming RPG. Even though it's just a demo, if you found one single textual error, wouldn't it feel half-assed to you? Other sloppiness can be forgiven easily, because we know you're new to the engine and/or making games, but text has nothing to do with the engine, and everything to do with laziness.

The second thing that I'd say MUST be done to make a game playable is, you know, PLAYING it. If you don't play your game start to finish to make sure that there are no game-breaking errors, you'll look like quite a newbie when the errors are discovered by players. Once again, this has nothing to do with the engine and everything to do with laziness.

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I am Srime

On the other hand, Final Fantasy 7 is so filled with grammar mistakes that it's hilarious, and yet people don't remember them because of how good the gameplay is, so...

This guy are sick.

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

Wait, are you guys being serious? There are actual grammar mistakes that aren't jokes in FF7? That blows my mind, it honestly does. I've never played it, and if this is true I have even less an inclination to do so now.

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I am Srime

I've only made 2 games with OHRRPGCE but I've written many more with QBasic. Having played a fair amount of OHRRPGCE games, here's my two cents:

Don't be overly ambitious. Focus on a creating a small finished game first and then adding content and features. Finishing a game will be a better learning experience and make people more interested in playing the product. As much as you may want to implement a custom battle, class, synthesis, or guild system, stick to simplicity until you've developed the game's core components. I might even be so radical as to claim that you should avoid plotscripting altogether until your second game. There's plenty of creative flexibility in the engine's core features.

Don't use to filler to artificially extend the game. For instance, if the game only takes an hour to finish, don't stretch it into three with excessive level grinding, backtracking, or fetch quests. This is especially true of battles. If your game is focused around winning battles, focus on making interesting and difficult battles rather than using a high encounter rate to add challenge. In my opinion battles should end very quickly but be highly lethal.

But most importantly, just make a playable finished game and you'll be head and shoulders above 95% of every other newbie "demo" with 15 minutes of content.

If these are the top suggestions for avoiding a newbie game then I'm pretty certain I'm in the clear. While not necessarily a spelling/grammar Nazi I am a passionate writer who prides myself in writing properly so I'm all good there. (Watch me leave some embarrassing typo somewhere in this post....)



Sorry, I have to slightly disagree with this. While I can understand your point, and yes, the designer should play through his game, I'm going to say that implementing playtesters is important for finding errors and bugs and I'm really surprised nobody mentioned this already. Do you not have others playtest your game before releasing it? Because I'm definitely going to have an extra set of eyes play over my game/demo before releasing it.

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Like a drifter I was born to walk alone. ~Whitesnake~

1984? Yeah right, man. That's a typo. Orwell is here now. He's livin' large. We have no names, man. No names. We are nameless!
~Cereal Killer, Hackers~

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

Almost every English translated RPG pre-1998 is rife with grammar mistakes.

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Super Walrus Land: Mouth Words Edition

To NinjaOverdrive:
Oh yes, if you can get someone besides yourself to playtest your game, that is 100 times better. But that's not always easy to pull off for some people, especially on their first game, unless you have personal friends who are willing to do it.

To Surlaw:
Maybe I was just too young then, but I can't remember any actual broken grammar or spelling in any of the Dragon Warrior games for the NES. They even took the time to "fix" plurals in the battle text (wordius plural would be wordii). I seem to remember a few mistakes in Final Fantasy I, but not in III. There may have been some awkward phrasing, but nothing like "This guy are sick".

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I am Srime

Currently I playtest the game every time I make a significant change, most of the time from start to the current end, then note any areas that need to be worked on and start the process over.

I think I am going to complete the first dungeon map, give it a few more thorough play throughs, make all necessary changes and then release an early version demo for people to play and hopef I can get some useful feedback from that.

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Like a drifter I was born to walk alone. ~Whitesnake~

1984? Yeah right, man. That's a typo. Orwell is here now. He's livin' large. We have no names, man. No names. We are nameless!
~Cereal Killer, Hackers~

FF7's english script was badly written in general. Some dialogue you couldn't understand the meaning of. This threw me off a lot as a kid.

DQ games for NES are the exception to the rule when it came to game scripts back then.

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<TheGiz> oh hai doggy, oh no that's the straw that broke tjhe came baclsb

On a similar note: I got an NES emulator on my Droid and got Dragon Warrior to play while away from the comforts of home. I haven't noticed any bad grammar or spelling in it.

I don't remember much about FF7 'cause I just wasn't into FF games back then, and I actually own FF7, 9, and 10. I'm still not a big FF fan which is weird 'cause RPGs are my favorite genre.

Legend of Legia was my favorite PS RPG, and it's been so long since I played it that I can't remember if the writing was terrible or not. If you haven't played it you definitely should!

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Like a drifter I was born to walk alone. ~Whitesnake~

1984? Yeah right, man. That's a typo. Orwell is here now. He's livin' large. We have no names, man. No names. We are nameless!
~Cereal Killer, Hackers~