[Jihgfed Pumpkinhead]

     I can't draw, I can't compose music, and I haven't even the vaguest idea what possible use a "bitwise left-shift" could ever have (i.e. programming's not my forté). I'm also (almost) the only person working on my game. So, as game designer's go, I'm rather strapped for resources. Not a complaint, just stating the grim facts because you need to know them to understand the main point of my post. I'm rather proud of my shabbiness, actually; I think I wear it well.
     Alright, alright, the point: the point is, I need to be Efficient, Efficient, Efficient. With three capital 'E's. Thing is, I still want my game to be enjoyable; so I'd like people's opinions on what is and is not dispensable. The other thing is that I'd like to be able to release my game to the Public Domain in good conscience; so no copyrighted material. I'd even prefer to stay away from stuff under the GPL and such if that's at all possible, though I suppose it's not.
     Anyway, here's some things on the chopping block right now:

1. Sound, sound of any sort. Sound can add a hell of a lot to a game's mood, I know, but I can't compose it myself, I don't know anywhere to get it, and I wouldn't know what to do with it even if those first two didn't apply. Sound effects are, I imagine, considerably more difficult to implement (implement, not acquire) than background music, what with timing and all. What I might consider, if it's really all that important, is simply looping some old jazz (game's set in the '20s) throughout the game. Anyone know anything about audio copyright laws?

2. Graphics. Man, I suck at drawing. I really, really, really, really cannot draw. Just trust me. What I can do, however, is copy/paste. Government agencies almost always release everything they've archived into the PD, so I mostly dig around the ARS website for aerial photographs with grass, dirt, etc., and just cut out little 24x24 squares. Similarly architectural sites serve for inside shots. Sounds lame, I know, but the results have been impressive so far. So, the background's fair to middling; sprites, though, will be butt, butt-ugly.

3. Animation. Yeah, right. Same difficulties expressed in graphics, but compounded ten times over. I may have a little "rolling die" animation, but that's it.

4. Other little amenities. Includes all sorts of things often found in professional-looking products, without being too excessively important. For example, an icon for the executable, an in-game help feature, and so forth.

     Right; well, that's what I wouldn't have if I were making this game entirely for myself. However, I'm not making it entirely for myself, and I'd very much like it if it could be widely enjoyed. So, if you all post that you wouldn't even consider playing a game without perfect little specially-tailored little sprites, well, I'll make sure that I have them. Basically, what I'm asking is, what's your assessment on the cost:benefit ration on all the above? What is and what isn't worth the bother?
     By the way, if you're now thinking that my game's going to be a piece of crap, let me at least say that what I can do is make the most of limited resources. So this is sort of right up my alley. Also, I categorically would not release a game that I wouldn't enjoy playing myself. If this means abandoning the project at some point, so be it.

[Terry]

Well, from what I've read about your project, I doubt it's going to be 'a piece of crap' :)

I wouldn't aim to exculde any of the features you've mentained at all. Especially Music and sound effects, and anyway, you can probably get somebody to help you with that much if you wanted.

Personally, I'd leave all those features you're talking about till the very end. (My games are usually saturated with placeholder graphics right until the last few days!) This isn't something you'll have to worry about for a while :)
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[Jihgfed Pumpkinhead]

     Thanks for the encouragement, Blink. But I'm not worried about what people will think when they read about the game; I'm worried about what they'll think when they see it. Heh heh. But that's quite enough of that. Actually, there's been far too much of that already.
     What I really wanted to ask you (why do I always end up so far off topic) is if you know anything about the samurai-bunny character you use for your avatar. I remember him from Ninja Turtles, I'll admit, but what really interests me is the allusions I've heard to a "real" samurai-bunny in Japanese folklore. I'm always fascinated, for whatever reason, by mythical/folk anthropomorphic creatures. Question extends to everyone, of course; any information would be nice.
     You think the music and sound would be the greatest loss, though? Interesting.

[Nodtveidt]

Music is cornerstone to the emotional deliverance of the game. A sad, moving piece heightens the despair and sadness of a death scene, and the driving rhythm of a hard rock piece energizes a huge battle scene. Watch the Aeris death scene in FF7 or the Alys death scene in Phantasy Star 4 with the sound muted...you'll notice a HUGE drop in emotional content. Pictures and words only go so far...music speaks directly to your emotions and a powerful piece of music can alter your emotional state to its will. In addition...the absence of music can heighten the suspense and intrique of what should be a scary or suspenseful scene of a game. From a technical standpoint, however...if you use the no music option, make sure your sound effects are of the highest quality because without music, every little imperfection in the sample's quality is going to be heard. When you've got music playing, it's far harder to hear these imperfections because your mind is locked on the music and the sound effects take a backseat. But without that musical forefront, the sound effects become the forefront, so make sure they're top notch or your game will suffer.

It's my belief that music is really the most powerful element of any game. I recently proved this concept to myself with the revision of my text adventure, "I". I added a music engine to the game which works like any other RPG...dungeon music, combat music, boss music, victory music, etc. It REALLY heightens the experience and suddenly this once-cliched adventure becomes an interesting quest.

And one final point...the frequency of soundtracks. Here's a little tip: your most powerful tracks should be heard only rarely, or only once in the game. This includes themes like special boss tracks (ones different from "normal" boss tracks), unique area music, etc. (if anyone remembers the old WOS I produced, they'd remember there were cases where there were unique boss themes in some of the more secretive areas). Using this technique can actually boost replay value...people will play through the game again just to feel the emotional content of that specific scene. If these rare tracks were to be played more often, they'd lose importance. So that's one more thing to take into consideration.

Hope all of this helps somebody :)

-nek

[Terry]

I agree completly, Nek :) I think that's what made the middle final fantasies such great games - the awesome score.

As for my Avatar, Jihgfed Pumpkinhead, it's nothing to do with ninja turtles (at least I don't think so - unless there was a funky crossover that I wasn't aware of :)). He's Usagi Yojimbo, the main character from Stan Sakai's comic. The picture is from the awesome Commodore 64 game 'Samurai Warrior - The battles of Usagi Yojimbo', which I tried to clone last year.

(BTW, I'm thinking of getting the Phantasy Star game for my GameBoy advance - it's on sale, so do you think it's worth it? I could just save up and get Golden Sun instead... Decisions, Decisions... (and this question is to anybody who's reading it :))
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[Nephilim]

I feel your pain, man.

One thing you could do is not cut out those things entirely, but use them sparingly. Take shortcuts so that you get the most benefit without having to do a full-blown production cycle on them.

For instance, one thing that "Tomb Raider" did effectively was only have theme music in specific places. Most of the time, the only sound effects were the literal ones - feet crunching on gravel, gunshots, wolf growls, etc. - but every once in a while, when you enter a particularly interesting room, it would play an ethereal sound bite that really added a lot of atmosphere, partly because there wasn't a soundtrack throughout. It really worked well. If you can't make music yourself, you could contract someone to make you a handful of emotive sound bites which you can sprinkle into your game. (Or perhaps you can find some appropriate MIDI's or WAV's in the public domain for that.) That would be much more affordable and manageable than trying to score your entire game.

A similar concept on the graphics side would be to use iconic, abstract graphics rather than literal graphics. What will make your game look like crap is to try to make it look somewhat realistic and obviously fail, whereas if you don't attempt that, clearly making the objects abstract in nature, you can get away with a lot more. Now, it does take some artistic skill to design good icons, too, but at least it frees you from having to render things realistically, getting proportions right, making everything look seamless and organic, etc..

Another trick if you're not so good at art is to cannibalize sprites from other games and change them enough to make them legally your own. Basically, use them as reference templates. For instance, grab a walk cycle from some other game, destroy all the detail by changing it into an abstract template for a character, and then go back in and add the details of your own characters. That way, you get the proportions and the animation timing (which can be the hardest part) for free, and you can focus on the differentiators of your characters. (This is a great way to improve your skill, too.)

Finally, let me encourage you about your artistic abilities. Everyone has an artist in them - they just have to spend the time to bring it out. Being able to render an image, whether it is in pixels or pencil lead, is a skill, not a talent. It can be learned by anyone. If you practice and study, you will get better, and I suspect you can quickly get to the point where you can make respectable sprites if you set your mind to it and don't get discouraged.

Hope this helps!

[Rainer Deyke]

If it's a free game, I can put up with a lot. If you look at the other games on RPGDX, you will find that many of them have simplistic graphics and little or no sound. But there are a couple of things that I won't tolerate:

1. Bad gameplay. If I have to do tedious things to advance the game, I probably won't bother. Don't force me to fight pointless battles to increase my experience. Don't make me run through the same area over and over again. If I have to sell loot, make it painless and quick.

2. Ugly graphics. I have no problem with iconic or simplistic graphics, but if it looks like Quake, it's gone. Most ugliness comes from a misguided effort to be "realistic".

3. Crappy music that I can't turn off. By "crappy" I mean music that doesn't appeal to me personally, which includes 90% of the game music I've heard. I tend to play games with my own music CD in the drive. If you include music, give me some way to turn it off.

[Jihgfed Pumpkinhead]

     Alright, thanks, guys. Here's what I'm thinking so far:
     As for graphics, I'll do the first run-through as simplistically as possible, and then with each "iteration" (do I feel like a programmer, or what?) of the game's development, I'll update them. This way, the fact that I can't draw right now shouldn't slow down my production, and because the graphics are all "evolving" at the same rate, and because they're all growing naturally from a very simple form, I should avoid the problems of going "too realistic", and one piece being too markedly superior to another.
     As for everyone having an inner artist, I think I used to, but I might have killed him. At any rate, I at least stuffed him into some dark dungeon somewhere and haven't fed him for quite some time. Ah, well, let's hope he recovers.
     No animation for a while, yet, if ever. It's nice, I know, but I think non-essential too.
     Sound's a little more complex. Like I said, sound effects I don't consider very important; I imagine they're much more difficult, too; and frankly, they can get a little repetitive.
     A score, however, would be nice. Alright, I'm a convert. I, too, remember a lot of games where the sound track made a great difference in my enjoyment. I'm pretty much decided, then, on assembling a lot of old, popular music from the '20s. Personally, I'm more of a late '60s/early '90s guy myself, so if anyone's musical interests extend into the area of '20s music, I'd greatly appreciate any recommendations, even something so basic as a helpful link.
     Oh, and thanks for the info, Blink. I'm pretty sure that I first saw the funky bunny in a Ninja Turtles cartoon (unfortunately, I was raised on the TV show and only afterwards found the comics; but in my defence, I'm just a poor young'un without much sense, not that that's much of a defence, though). Turns out I'm half-right about one thing, though: Usagi Yojimbo does have an historical basis, but unfortunately he's only based on a boring, normal-human-type samurai. Oh, well.
     The game's completely free, so, as Deyke points out, I guess that gives me a little licence not to be perfect. Just a little, though.
     Thanks for all the advice.

[entivore]

Well, I dunno about sound much myself, but I do know that in directx playing sound effects is pretty trivial. I dunno what language/libraries you are using. I don't bother with timing or whatever. I just have a function called PlaySound which turned out to be an overloaded version of another PlaySound function windows api has or whatnot. Hehe. Well anyway, I just play the sound when the trigger hits and don't worry about it.

As far as art... I'm obviously a crappy artist. Anyone who has seen anything of mine (with the possible exception of the kind of stuff in my avatar) will realize that in an instant. Still I manage when I sit down and try long enough. Sooner or later when I keep changing stuff that looks wrong, I'll end up with something that looks right. Then once I have that, I can cut, paste, and use it as a base for my next thing. Nifty.

I 90% agree with what was said about the importance of music. In a game that is completely focused on gameplay, music isn't needed. But most rpgs also have plot, and plot needs music to supplement it.
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*Only in darkness can one truely shine*

[grenideer]

[Nodtveidt]

Sound effects are totally critical to game development. They DO heavily boost the quality of a game...if done properly. Stupid-ass sound effects (like the ones in Lunar Silver Star Story) make a game cheap and irritating. Try making a game without sound effects...and your game is boring. And actually...entivore...music is critical to almost any game if you get down to it...even some very simple ones. I made a game of Memory which has a musical soundtrack to it, and it makes the game much more fun (I also gave it sound effects :))

-nek

[entivore]

I've played plenty of games without music that were hellah r0x0r.
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*Only in darkness can one truely shine*

[Nodtveidt]

Fine...prove me wrong, who cares. That seems to be on everyone's agenda nowadays.

-nek

[Nephilim]

[Jihgfed Pumpkinhead]

     Okay, it seems most of you guys thinks sound's more important than graphics. Okay by me. I'll see what I can do towards including killer sound in my game. Found a couple of appropriate MIDIs so far; usually, I hate MIDIs with a passion, but these are actually very nice.
     Incidentally, on the subject of the standard graphics vs. gameplay, I have a theory, based on what little I've seen. For people who like some level of balance between the two (as opposed to those who prefer the graphically superior games quite regardless of gameplay), I believe these people's "standard" is based on the level of graphics which was current when they first got "into" game playing. I really got into RPGs with Final Fantasy 3 and such, so I feel that anything with poorer graphics than that suffers for it. From what I've seen, the old folks out there care less about graphics than gameplay, whereas the young'uns demand games that are as graphically excellent as the other average mainstream games.
     Yes, yes, I know, "correlation does not equal causality". Hmph. Anyway, it's just a theory. Think it's so obvious that it was pointless to state it? Well, maybe.