Design Roadblocks (and some solutions)

Hello. My online name is S1x. I normally slowly work on my own game projects in my free time, and normally I prioritize fun gameplay mechanics over narrative and story,  but my friend ArcanaXIX (the main writer for this game) asked me and some other online friends if we wanted to be on the team to make a mystery game. Supporting friends is one of my most powerful sources of motivation, so I said I'd take on the primary developer role and figure out how to make the team's vision real.

It came with several short moments of panic, as sometimes the difference between a request that's easily implementable in a few minutes and a request that requires big plugins / major source code edits is not very obvious.

Problem: The game we were brainstorming involved investigating scenes like a point and click adventure, while the engine I'm used to, RPG Maker MV, more commonly uses characters on maps that specifically only move tile by tile

Solution: Find and install a plugin that lets you move on smaller segments of tiles, also adding diagonal motion. Change the main actor into a cursor-like object (made on day 1, and lasted all the way through to the finished game!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F77WGgSGhHI

Problem: The game is not going to use the battle scene or any systems/stats that go along with it

Solution: Use a combination of a plugin that lets you manage menus and what does/doesn't appear on it, and finding the lines in the source code themselves that draw certain menu options and comment out those lines

Problem: If the background image was set as a picture, it would go over the actor and map events (like the back arrow). If it was set as a parallax, it would not scroll at the same speed the player scrolls

Solution: Find and install a plugin that adds its own layers system, accomplishing the perfect use case for a background that scrolls 1 to 1 with map scrolling

Problem: Scenes like the final deduction could take a while, and there should be some kinds of visual effects that helps the scene from feeling too stale

Solution: Use a parallel event that tints a picture pure red over X seconds, then repeat for green and blue (with wait commands to match each time). When combined with a certain style of background picture, it makes for a pretty effect to blankly stare at



Problem: It might not be super clear when the character represented by the full body pic is talking vs not talking

Solution: When the full body characters are not talking (and a character represented by a dialogue box face image is), tint them slightly darker. Tint it back to normal when they have a line. After that, copy and paste those 2 commands constantly


Problem: oh man the team sure can write. this is so many text boxes to add

Solution: Try not to look at the grand total of things yet to implement, just keep doing the next one, and the next one, and the next one. Listen to other music or do short bursts of gaming sessions during it, because the deadline at that point was not super tight. Remember that it's worth it for my friends


Problem: It is important to be able to look at your menu during parts of the final investigation so that you can access the full descriptions of items by selecting them in your collection

Solution: Open menu command before key moments, right? Or maybe a plugin that lets you call the menu during messages?

Double Problem: I discovered that common events which call text boxes (like every item does) only happen after the current event finishes, meaning that even if you do an Open Menu command in the middle, you won't get the text box until the page is done. And at that point, the whole first part of the final scene was happening in one ginormous event page.

Solution: Break the final scene event page into many, including isolated ones for each loop where you select evidence. Put the choice to open the menu at the end of the loop, and before the autorunning event page can do its next loop, the text box menu common event pops before it. When you select the correct evidence, add to a variable, and have the next event page run only when that variable goes 1 higher. This ended up splitting the final scene into 28 total event pages, but it functions!


Problem: I was worried that players would get stuck on certain points where they need to interact with specific objects while certain items were "equipped", and it wasn't used for anything necessary earlier, so swapping the active item might not be in their minds

Solution: "Short out" the arrow in the first room, directly telling players how to swap to the right tool if they don't have it. A bit meta, but I enjoy a bit of meta


Problem: When exporting the project, if "exclude unused assets" is checked, it will delete the layers folder for one of the plugins involved. If it is not checked, the game becomes 4 times as large

Solution: Paste the layers folder back in after export. I am really glad the exports don't obfuscate the audio and visuals


I surprised myself that I managed to solve so many of these issues in order to not compromise the vision of the rest of my team. Huge shoutout to those that made plugin files that addressed the exact concerns I ran into!