How to Make an RPG: Cutscenes and Gameplay

Hello!

A quick update on the book I'm writing about how make a FF6-like JPRG. It's going well, if not as fast as I'd initially hoped. I'm still working on the demo game at the end of the first part of the book "Exploration".

The demo, following the grand tradition of JRPGs, starts with a small cutscene which is now totally finished (but will be polished in the editing stages). I've had some initial art back and it looks great, hopefully I'll be getting more this week. I'm holding off sharing any images until the art's in there.

I'm now working on the actual game-play of the demo, setting up some triggers and scripts. (and noting down various changes I want to make to the codebase and writing I have so far). I'll probably hold off posting again until the demo is complete and I can share some images / video.

Edit: Nothing scuppers a good project like moving to a new city and taking on some new work! I finished the cutscene before I left. I've got pretty much all the art now and I've just finishing making up the tilesets. But I don't think I'm going to get any free time until this weekend, to actually put it all together. I've also spent some time musing over the combat chapter.

RPG Cutscenes

I'm at the end of the first part of my book "How to Make an RPG". Each part ends with a small game. This first game makes use of a little cutscene and it introduces a nice framework to make authoring cutscenes, a little easier than hard coding them. There's not that much to the game but I've got it storyboarded out, it's just a matter to implementing it / writing it up.

Because this is a "real" game now, I've using some nice fonts. As the text fades in the sound of rain also fades in and after these captions it's going to show a map. Hopefully by this time next week I'll have the art for the first map too, so that will be cool.

Back to the book

After some traveling around last week, I've now got sometime to get to the book. I'm not going to waste it!

I've also started looking around more intensely for 2d pixel artists. The first part of the book ends with a small game and I want nice art for it. Currently I'm using http://www.pixeljoint.com to compile a list of people who might be able to do it. If there are any other similar websites then I'd love to hear about them! I've also written a first art brief, so I'll start contacting people later today I think and hopefully get the ball rolling soon.