On Wed, 31 May 2000, Pablo Vasques Bravo-Villalba wrote:
> > I really hate it when in RPGs pictures are loaded whenever you talk to
> > someone. First disadvantage is that the music is interrupted, second is
> > that the spinning up of the drive will take time, independent of how
> > little data is loaded.
>
> Well, you can keep the drive spinning beforewards.
> Most Japanese games do this.
They don't do that on Japanese machines. They simply overwrite #FD9F which
some machines need to spin down the drive.
> > These kind of graphics are cool, and I would like to see them in an engine,
> > just not for every character.
>
> It could be an option: if you have 256Kbytes, you
> have character portraits; if not, you don't have.
Yes, that's a good option.
> > Personally, I think that invisible enemies are not a good idea. I didn't
> > really like that in DS6. And even in DS6, enemies can become visible,
> > either after you flee from them or after using an item. Also, the enemies
> > in caves and villages were always visible.
>
> Well, could it be a designer's option?
Ofcourse it should be. The issue was that an engine that only supports
invisible enemies would be simpler to make. But I wouldn't like such an
engine is.
Actually, you can create invisible enemies easily in an engine that doesn't
support it directly: use sprites that are all transparant pixels!
> I personally
> don't like RPGs with visible enemies. I think characters
> shouldn't be able to normally avoid battles, unless there's
> some item which allows them to do it.
Boss monsters make sure that players will want to fight some enemies to
gain experience. And fighting should be fun, so players don't really want
to avoid monsters. But when you've already killed dozens of a certain kind
of monster, it is nice if you can avoid them.
> I always enjoyed "random" battles,
> like those in Dragon Quest, Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy,
> Phantasy Star.
I don't like the random battle system in FF7. If you come back to an area
that you first visited early in the game, all the same monsters are still
there. It is odd that enemies that are much too weak will still try to
attack the characters. There should be a kind of rule "if enemy_level <
player_level - 10 then no_battle".
Dragon Slayer 6 solved this by clearing all monsters in an area once the
storyline there was finished.
> Of course, I won't try to change your
> opinions, but let me explain: if you are allowed to use
> control skills to avoid (or chase) a battle encounter,
> this shifts the game's focus.
You are right about this: avoiding enemies on the map is an "action type"
skill, which is different from what you usually do when playing RPGs.
Bye,
Maarten
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