Learnings from PirateJam15

So, I did that pirate software game jam and made a side game for Asqueria. I experimented with a buncha things, And may bring a few things back. Also some lessons learned in general about game jamming, hmm. 

If you want to check out that side game- Well I broke the game jam version! - but the fixed version is here: https://darkscream.itch.io/asq-ds 

Anyway, on we go!

• Asq DS= Asqueria: Distilled Soul (the Pirate Jam 15 entry)
• Asq O= Asqueria: Origins of the Dream (this entry, Originally PJ14, continued updates)

Game Jam thoughts-

Some general game jam lessons/experiences from PJ15.

1. A working RPG Maker Game Jam formula?- - I think I've got a process down that I could reproduce, that defines the scope of the game. Y'know like, an opening, 1 Town map, X adventure maps, X boss maps and a closing.  I re-used the base Asqueria combat engine, but developed entirely new characters/classes/items within that number system.  I made mostly fresh sprites for the whole thing, a few pre-packed ones dropped in as one shot enemies but like 90% my own.  I think I could do all that again successfully and hopefully not break it on the last day again. Which leads us to..
   
2. -Don't do last day updates! I wrote a whole devlog about this on the other game I won't rehash here, but, Man does it feel bad I had a "finished" thing that worked, and I broke it by trying to make it prettier and not really testing it. But that does lead to my next one.
3. --Don't work alone? Maybe I will find a team next time. I actually talked to an artist from the LFG section for the jam, They seemed interested but then they ghosted the next day. So if they didn't like something I have no idea what it was. Still, I'd like to work with a team next time maybe? Would it be weird to just be like, "yo I need 4x 2D artists". 
4. ---De-salinate! Like I got so salty once I realized I broke my jam submission on the final update. I had to go "de-salinate" some of the posts I made, I was cranky AF. Trying to be better about not getting tilted but man, I'm my own worst critic and that prob won't ever change. Y'all don't need to see it, though. So if you're easily discouraged and self critical, That's a lesson for you too. You likely shouldn't self-flagellate, but if you have to, do it on your own.
5. ----Streaming/Vods!- Now that submissions are locked I've been doing play sessions on my stream and putting the VOD on youtube. I think even if I didn't submit a game I'd probably do this again, its been fun and the videos are easy to deal with since they're pretty much just stream vods and not heavily edited productions. 

Asqueria thoughts-

Here's some ideas i'm considering bringing back to the main game.

ATB battle system: I'm not totally sold on this yanfly ATB specifically but there is something to having a touch more real-time in combat. If I do more side battlers i'd probably use this again or maybe try a different one, may or may not bring it to the main game. AGI became way more valuable in this system, so would force some combat engine tweaks as a result.

Simplified skills/spells: So rather than have like "fire one 1 2 3" and then again for fire all, it just did "fire one/split dmg", "Fire+status/special effect", and "fire all dmg", for the spells, if that makes sense. It cut down on the skill entries and filesize, de cluttered the menus.  Of course its my intent Asq:DS was a smaller scope game, so i could actually finish it in 2wks, whereas Asq: Origins is in for the long haul. Still, maybe some ideas to bring back. TLDR the condensed skill system felt good in some ways.

Combined melee/ranged into physical, removed front/back row system: On the fence about this but it did feel like a lot of extra clutter for not a lot value in game depth. I might peel this out of Asq:O too, I might not. Not sure yet.

Spriting/Photoshoppery: Being forced to make a whole set of new sprites and stuff definitely levelled up the art skills, Next time I have to do that stuff, I can do it nicer and faster, so that's good. Generally I don't like using premade character/NPC sprites at all, I don't mind as much for battler-only assets but the on map sprites should always be fresh imo.

"Story choices": while limited in scope, I was able to "proof of concept" some of the story choice ideas in Asq:DS that Asq:O wants to do, Like changing a class and then proceeding the game. Although it was done right towards the end of the game, It maybe too many diverging paths to manage if done crazily - I had 4-5 ideas for each Asq:O acharacter, I could probably cut back to 2-3.

Lore expansion: It was nice to put the "continuity" to the test. Asq:DS happens WAY in the future, but there are little fragments of continuity that I feel worked out well (the names for the elements/magics, the world building, some of the divine/godly elements etc). Era 5 is a fun one to think about, where half the societies have decided to escape the world by figuring out magic-based space travel, and the other half have sort of just accepted that the evil forces win, the world is gonna end thus falling into various cults and stubborn luddite societies.

Slidey tiles: I got a chance to use "icey slidey" tiles and do that type of movement puzzle. It was alright, I'll probably use that again.

On the other hand here's some of the ones I probably won't bring back, and why.

Roguelike loot: I will definitely use this idea again in another project but wouldn't fit Asq:O, Where more power lays in the character than it does the equipment. In Asq:DS a lot of power comes from the gear and skill drops, Which you choose from 1 of 3 pools. I think there's something there for this type of "survivors-like" or "rogue-like" loot event coming back into the fold in the rpgmaker setting tho, its fun.

"Crafting" thru vendor item costs: As in, to buy item X, you need a couple of item Y, rather than just gold. This was a simple way of doing crafting, I'd probably use this mechanic again, but for "crafting" it should be a little more complex/have choices in the recipe itself, maybe even have skill levels etc which this system does not do. It was mostly a shopkeeper with a dialogue tree changing each level. I'll re-use the tech somewhere, but probably not as a crafting system, and probably not in Asq:O.

Randomized Maps for replayability: Asq:O is meant to be a long game where you reach a satisfying conclusion -- While there are some things you can't see all in one playthru, and does have some "grind" -- It wasn't really meant to be a multi-play game in the way that Asq-DS is. Asq-DS has short levels, some randomness in puzzles and threats in those levels, and lots of randomness in your rewards.  So that part of the design probably can't come back to the main game, they're just too different. It is fun to use though, For a shorter game I think these ideas can work.

Web Version: It's highly limiting for what Asq:O wanted to be. I think it's great for a smaller scope game idea though. So probably I will do side games in web while bringing learnings/techniques back to Asq:O.  What's next? Asq:AB? Asq:Q? Asq:E?!  We'll have to wait and see.

Talk/Fight/Leave: A thing I did with a lot of NPCs on Asq:DS maps was offer a choice - talk, fight, leave.  Some NPCs were just wandering around, some were blocking important paths, or optional treasures etc. Fight obviously triggered a fight, you kill em, for resources or just for fun, it's a game after all. But Talk could just be a randomized phrase, it could be a puzzle/riddle, it could be asking for an item, it could even just trigger a random battle anyways because you bugged the wrong guy. And of course, leave, just leaves.  But it was interesting to let the player decide if they were just gonna murder-hobo their way through or actually engage, a bit BG3-inspired, at least as well as RPGmaker could do. 

A brainstorm: Not for Asq:O or DS but I think i'd like to expand this talk/fight/leave idea out more in a different game jam game perhaps. 

Better quest signposting- Asq:DS doesn't really do quests but if you did, you'd want more than just "talk" as a top level option. Also a way to imply/show at least some of the consequences of a choice- you may not know what would happen but you know if it's the "good guy" or "bad guy" option, or whatever.

Stat/Skill requirements- We could lean into that classic/tabletop RPG vibe and have different choices for different builds. EG a roguey character being able to steal -- or being able to choose how to Fight, for example guaranteeing a pre-emptive attack if spending a resource, Or risking getting flat footed if you fail a roll, etc.

Push/Shove- NPCs are annoying, a simple flag to be able to move thru them if you try really hard might do the job, but it might also be fun to just let the player punt the NPCs around.

NPC Corpses- Grim thought but.. It's easy enough to do a "damaged/downed" sprite in this engine. I mostly disappeared the NPCs that got downed. But maybe using the downed sprite and adding some blood effects or even "bugs" animated around it etc could get that old-school comedy-gore effect, for those that want to play the villain. There's also some asset packs/plugins meant to give that look but idk.

Common event structure- I did some mix of map events and common events to make the NPC dialogue trees. It's messy and crazy as game jam stuff often is. If I did it again, I'd probably want to common event more. I actually did build "camptalks" common events for all the party members again, but never got to filling them out so they just say "hey", just like the Asq:O ones. But I was closer to it, I had good tracking of what scene/gamestate the player was in, which means I could have had a nice little logic tree to check that and then make the character say the thing.

Overall i think the Talk/Fight/Leave and Roguelike randomized loot/maps are things I'd like to explore some more, Maybe do one very complicated map focusing on those ideas. 

Stuff I was going to try, but didn't, so maybe next time:

Event Chasers/Stealth- I wanted to try some stuff with like the yanfly event chaser and stealth plugins but the map/level that was going to use it, I had to cut for time (it was a middle piece that felt bloaty anyway). Still I'd like to do some stuff with this again maybe.

Diagonals/8dir movement- I saw an app that would take RM sprites and algorithmically would generate the extra 4 directions for diagonals from an already made base file. That looked really nice. Pricey though. And not sure how well 8dir movement plays with other RM plugins.

Reputation system- There's this ATT_Turan plugin I like, just a simple thing to hold a "Shadowheart liked that" type trigger and scoring system. I haven't had a game concept to use it yet. But for the Asqueria universe specifically, There's a lot of things that could work. And you could use it for personal approval or "faction" approval -- What about a map with a few factions that all change reactively depending on your approval ratings, and different actions force you down a certain path? This may go well with the "one really complicated map" idea.

Other genres? Turn based strategy, Action RPG, platformer..?...Card game?!- At some point its better to move out of RMMV into a different engine, but I'm curious to see how Asquerian concepts play out in other systems. Well, I know a tactics type game would work just fine, It already works as a tabletop RPG.  but I have *so much asqueria* to share. 

The many eras of Asqueria- I have a space era,  a pre-space modernish era, a gothic victorian era, a steampunk medieval era, a traditional medieval dark ages era, an elemental chaos stone ages era and a divine origins era. **7** eras of Asqueria with like maps and histories and everything, yet still with enough blank space between them to leave room for storytelling - it was originally meant as like a supplement for d20 or pathfinder or something like that so, I can draw on it for anything. But besides bringing lessons back to Asq:O and someday finishing that, I'm not sure what's next. I guess in 6months i'll see if I wanna do PJ16.

Well that was quite the ramble, but I find writing helps with learning, so by writing about the learning I reinforce it. Hopefully you enjoyed reading though.