If there was a Chao RPG...

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Which system would you prefer?

A few characters with a ton of customization
18
90%
Lots of characters with little/no customization
2
10%
 
Total votes: 20

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Alicia Jewel
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If there was a Chao RPG...

Post by Alicia Jewel »

I've been mentally tossing around an idea for a Chao RPG made in RPG Maker, but I've hit a snag with how to handle leveling up, abilities, etc. My initial idea was this: Instead of getting experience points, leveling up, and learning new skills that way, defeating enemies yields Chaos Drives that increase a Chao's stats, and finding and bonding with animals allows them to learn skills based on what animal it is. Basically, raising Chao in an RPG form.

However, besides the massive amount of coding, spriting, etc. that will have to be done, I've run into a potential problem with this system. The basic plot of my (hypothetical) game is that all of the Sonic heroes have been captured by aliens, so it's up to their Chao to find the Chaos Emeralds and stop the aliens from taking over the world. I wanted all of the playable characters to be the Chao of the captured heroes, but... that leaves me with 10+ characters to deal with. Having a complex character customization system wouldn't work with that many characters because it'd result in the player choosing four main Chao to raise and leaving six on the bench, which feels like a huge waste (heck, I'm still trying to fully work out how I'm going to deal with a bunch of playable characters).

If I do end up making this game, what system would you guys rather see? The first system would sacrifice unique characters for Chao Garden-esque customization and would require a ton of work to get done, but the second would allow me to write a bunch of different characters with different personalities, have character growth, etc. (which, as a writer, I am a sucker for) and would be a lot easier to code.
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Re: If there was a Chao RPG...

Post by chaoadventures »

I considered making a Chao RPG too for a while and I landed in the same position.

If I ever got around to making it (Or getting RPG Maker), I would have done focused on characters, but made the main playable Chao either customizable or have given the player a choice between a Hero, Neutral, and Dark Chao.

Then again, I wouldn't have had very many characters to begin with.
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Re: If there was a Chao RPG...

Post by Rinku »

I voted for a ton of customization. This is entirely opinionated but I'f I were to play a chao fan game, and I see the avatar of the customized chao throughout the game, I would really hope I can customize the chao to my liking. Why play as a sonic chao when I could play as a cool personal chao of my own that would look different then anyone else's.

With that aside, I don't know how much this decision will impact the game so I guess take my opinion with a grain of salt.
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Re: If there was a Chao RPG...

Post by Mamkute »

I agree largely with Rinku.

While having good characters and writing is exciting, when it comes to mechanics, something comparable to the level of customization in the chao garden feels necessary to get the feel of what has most attracted me, and probably others, to chao.
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Jeffery Mewtamer
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Re: If there was a Chao RPG...

Post by Jeffery Mewtamer »

I've thrown around the idea of writing a text-based RPG using code from Micro Chao Garden as the character Engine, but never really got pass the brain storming phase on account of having no idea how to translate Chao stats into battle mechanics(be nice if someone had at least managed to reverse engineer the damage formula for the Chao Karate) and the daunting task of programming the world in straight C++.

That said, some concepts are suited to a character-driven story. A Chao RPG isn't such a concept, at least not unless you want to be extremely ambitious. Customization is arguably the main point of Chao, and while I don't think it impossible to have both customization and character-driven story, marrying the two is something even masters of the trade seldom pull-off.

I don't know what kind of support RPG Maker has for external code, but I'm willing to share what I've done in my own efforts at writing a clone engine for the Chao.

Some other ideas I had that you're welcome to use as inspiration:

I had chosen medieval fantasy as my setting with Chao as the main sentient life form(i.e. no humans, no anthros) ruled over a pair of physical gods who maintained the balance between Light and Dark: Hikari(An Angel Chao), Goddess of Light, and Yami(A Devil Chao), God of Darkness. The story begun with Yami betraying his sister(Hikari and Yami being twins) and Hikari summoning an unhatched Chao to her sanctum , giving the newborn her Blessing and sending him on a quest to collect five Medallions whose power would be enough to bring her Brother to his senses and restore balance while she was pre-occupied with Keeping Yami's power in check. The medallions corrsponded to the five visible Chao Stats, are each protected by a Guardian who embodies that stat, and grant their holder an S-rank in that stat, though only Chaos Chao can use more than one Medallion. I had thought of limiting the player's party to 5(one to wield each medallion) and had toyed with the idea of the Hero Ascending to Godhood as a Chaos Chao and becoming the God of Balance at the final Battle.

Had also thought of including barriers that could only be passed if a party member had a high enough value in a specific stat(such as needing a high enough swim stat in order to enter a pipe leading into a water dungeon because you have to swim against the current of water pouring out of the pipe.
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Alicia Jewel
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Re: If there was a Chao RPG...

Post by Alicia Jewel »

@chaoadventures: I really like that idea! I'd have to work out the exact details story-wise, but that's a really good compromise between customization and characters.

@Rinku and Mamkute: I totally understand that sentiment. The sheer amount of customization is what has drawn a lot of people (including myself) to Chao, and that's the big reason I was so torn: a game that lacked that customization wouldn't really feel like a Chao game. It seems that most of you agree with that, too.

As to how it will impact the game... well, if it ever does get made, it means there will have to be a looooot of work done to make it come to life. I'll have to find or come up with a bunch of custom coding to make it all work (and I'm a gigantic n00b at coding), and I'll need a ton of sprites. There are 135 unique second evolutions, so I'll need at least that many sprites to make the character(s) fully customizable evolution-wise. I've got maybe 9 or 10 full evolution sprites so far. And since I can't art for beans, I'll have to either find more sprites online or get someone else to make them.

Basically, if I go for the fully customizable route, the game will have a much longer development period (again, assuming it ever gets made).

@Jeffery Mewtamer: You ninja'd me! I'm not at all familiar with Micro Chao Garden, myself, and all I have are some basic ideas on how to translate the stats into battle mechanics based on Chao Karate--I have yet to crunch the numbers. Honestly, I think that with chaoadventures' suggestion, it might be possible to have both customization and a character-driven story. Like I mentioned above, though, it will be very difficult and require a lot of time.

RPG Maker uses its own scripting engine for coding, so I'm not sure how much external coding it will actually support.

I really dig your setting! It's a good combination of Chao aesthetics and RPG mechanics. I also really like your overworld stat idea--I've been trying to think of ways to use something similar so stats have out-of-battle uses like they should.

Maybe I should just stick to writing...
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Jeffery Mewtamer
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Re: If there was a Chao RPG...

Post by Jeffery Mewtamer »

^Micro Chao Garden is my own attempt at recreating Chao, and I call it Micro as it's just a text-based terminal program that makes the TCG look fancy. I've made a few public releases here along with releasing my source, but it never got much attention and I have done anything significant in perhaps a year or more. Did manage to implement the visible stats, Chao Breeds, evolution, Chaos drives, stat increases from small animals, breeding, and a few other small bits, but a lot of it is little more than flavor text at the end of the day(I don't know the first thing about coding GUIs or displaying graphics) and instead of things working on the passage of time, they work based on the number of user actions.

Yeah, one inherent problem with making video games is that most genres are straight up unsuited to a solo developer. Sure, a programmer with enough knowledge could make something of the complexity of Tetris and cobble together suitable graphics in MS Paint, but even with something like RPG Maker handling the nitty gritty of core programming and displaying graphics, you almost need a dedicated programmer for handling game-specific coding, an accomplished pixel artists to do the graphics, and a decent writer to handle the story, and a dedicated composer if you want to include original BGM. And most professionally developed games have entire teams for each of those aspects. Not saying it's impossible for someone to make a professional quality game single handedly, but most people are lucky to have the skills needed in one of those areas.

I suspect that, if you really wanted to make such a game, you'd probably be better off teaming with an artist and a programmer already well-verse in RPG Maker's scripting language.

And Yeah, spriting every possible Chao Evolution by hand sounds like an absolute nightmare(which I suspect might be part of why the official TCG lacks evolution as anything other than flavor text, and even in the Adventure games, I'm pretty sure everything except the base infant and base adult models is some parametric transformation applied on the fly). Hell, even using Fusion's Editor and taking screenshots, editing out the background, and feeding the results through some kind of cartoon filter sounds tedious.
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Re: If there was a Chao RPG...

Post by chaoadventures »

Alicia Jewel wrote:I really like that idea! I'd have to work out the exact details story-wise, but that's a really good compromise between customization and characters.
I also can't code, which is one of the reasons I thought about ways to minimize effort towards customization.
I experimented with VX Ace Lite for a while, and the way events (specifically "Switches and Variables") worked made it look like some sort of customization
could be done without messing with the game's actual code.

My biggest block was really how far I could I could go aesthetically, since I can draw,
RPG Maker's sprite size limits don't work with hand drawings though, because I can't scale them down that far, and I'm not that good at actual spriting.
Jeffery Mewtamer wrote:I don't know what kind of support RPG Maker has for external code, but I'm willing to share what I've done in my own efforts at writing a clone engine for the Chao.
With work RPG Maker's code can go pretty far. Pokemon Essentials is literally a bunch of code for people to use to make a Pokemon fan game.
80% of it doesn't even use the tools RPG Maker gives you. It even has it's own editor for the new additions.
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Alicia Jewel
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Re: If there was a Chao RPG...

Post by Alicia Jewel »

@Jeffery Mewtamer: Yeah, I never planned to go at this alone, but aside from figuring out how to work the systems, my second-biggest problem is finding people interested in this project and willing to help me.

I'm not even sure of the cartoon filter you proposed would accomplish what I want. I mean, it could work for character portraits... theoretically. That's something I'll have to experiment with down the road.

@chaoadventures: I've been praying that the switches and variables can get most of the work done, but I don't have high hopes for that. The other ideal situation would be that there's already pre-made code posted online that can help me, but odds are, I'm gonna have to get something coded for me.

Also, I can't believe I forgot about Pokemon Essentials. I didn't realize just how much outside coding the system used.
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Re: If there was a Chao RPG...

Post by .:Constella:. »

Alicia Jewel wrote:@Jeffery Mewtamer: Yeah, I never planned to go at this alone, but aside from figuring out how to work the systems, my second-biggest problem is finding people interested in this project and willing to help me.

I'm not even sure of the cartoon filter you proposed would accomplish what I want. I mean, it could work for character portraits... theoretically. That's something I'll have to experiment with down the road.

@chaoadventures: I've been praying that the switches and variables can get most of the work done, but I don't have high hopes for that. The other ideal situation would be that there's already pre-made code posted online that can help me, but odds are, I'm gonna have to get something coded for me.

Also, I can't believe I forgot about Pokemon Essentials. I didn't realize just how much outside coding the system used.
Hey man, I have some experience with spriting and I'm totally down to help you if you need it ^^
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Re: If there was a Chao RPG...

Post by Starry Finita »

I voted for lots of characters and little customization. It was the least picked option!! :darkangry:
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Re: If there was a Chao RPG...

Post by chaoadventures »

That's cool and all, but why? Just wondering.
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