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Matt's Super Exclusive Portable Game-making tips!I want to share all my very best tips about making portable video games with my fellow forum members. Some are obvious... some are not.. and some you could have never guessed; but all of them will make your game better one day, and most of them won't cost you anything now!
* Take care when creating your key art!
You need three layers, principally: BG, Title, and Characters. "Characters" is flexible.. probably the heroes.. could be a tree or something. But it's really simple: keep the layers, the more the better. The three main elements are absolutely required for console store pages, but you will also appreciate later having characters drawn for promotional purposes: decorating web sites, putting in press kits... even printing stickers!
If the key art assemblage is sketched all at once, you might have people in layers with their bottoms cut off. That's how some artists work... but it is good if you ask them to finish up those characters while it's fresh on their mind. If we don't get layers, when porting, we will have to reconstruct them.
* Render your audio absurdly high quality and save the wavs!
Our porting tech can swap in higher-quality audio than RPG Maker (and most engines) can handle. We've taken advantage of this in all the ports we've done so far, to one extent or another, but it's required devs to plumb through their archives. Consoles like to output at 48000hz, and most can even output 24bit or 32bit, but what's most important is that we can use lossless audio formats to bloat your game and make it sound great! So even though you have to crunch, crush, and otherwise munge your audio to get it into your engines... save the original renders! You can put the high quality ones on Bandcamp, too!
One more thing you might not have thought of... you will forget how to render your audio, because your plugins and settings will bitrot. So do it on day one and you won't have to regret it later!
One more thing you REALLY haven't thought of... any plugins using an LFO will never render twice the same (they are on oscillators independent of the render t=0), so the exact version you fell in love with won't ever be exactly reproducible.
* Keep your assets tidy!
There's no time like the present. You will get mixed up later, you know it. And if you are getting mixed up, imagine what happens when you hand it off to someone else to port it! And then they'll be asking you questions about it... and now you're on the spot to answer... so many weird duplicate files which may or may not have minor variations. Which are getting used? Who can even remember? Yeah, deleting something may break something. Breaking can be fixed. Confusion is forever. It only gets worse as you get older...
* Your text won't show up the way you expect unless it's a sprite font!
RPG Maker is using the system's text renderers, which means user preferences (and other random stuff they may not have chosen and have no control over, including even forced software updates) cause your text to look different on everyone else's system. It's not just cosmetic... things will get misplaced and wrap wrongly.
That also means that any pieces of art in the game you hand-render using your system's text renderer or even staged screenshots from your RPG Maker exports won't match on most people's systems. This is especially pernicious if you have "cleartype" enabled on your system. That's tuned (or should be tuned...) for your specific LCD panel. It's definitionally inappropriate for any other application. Screenshots of that spread like the plague. They will get scaled up, jpegged, and splatted all over the web, getting more and more smeared every time, and eventually getting memorialized in a wiki or book somewhere in an unflattering form. Don't do it!
You can insulate yourself from all of this by using a spritefont plugin or a software TTF renderer plugin. You're highly advised to do this...
* Don't save too often!
Saving is slow on consoles and we're limited in how much we can do it (no game is allowed to wear out the storage medium). Save points are obviously okay, and even saving every time you go in and out of a room is pretty okay. Just don't save every step, please.
* Go to a black screen for a few frames before loading anything!
LOADING is slow on consoles, too! I mean, the disk in general is a big problem. Something that's instant-load on your workstation will create visible hiccups on consoles. So try to only load assets while screens are fully faded-out. And make sure you hold for 1-3 frames at least in the faded-out state so the loading doesn't hitch while unfaded frames are still being shown. Otherwise you'll have a 3% visible mostly black frame for a quarter of a second. It just looks bad.
* Try not to copy/paste too much scripting!
It's really a maintenance hazard. In your main production pass you can keep it all in your head perhaps, but it will evaporate immediately afterwards. In RPG Maker you don't have many options for user-defined functions but Common Events... but I really suggest you try to use them like functions. Anything you have to do over and over is a liability the moment there's a reason for you to do it over and over AGAIN, differently.
* Be ready for alternate button prompts!
Why not go ahead and set up alternatives for different console gamepads? It'll make sure you're ready for it. Plan for success! This may mean you have to insert button glyphs into a TTF.. but you took my advice and used a spritefont, right?
* Document the provisioning of your asset pack stuff before you forget!
Most of you are doing a great job with this, but a reminder never hurts. We've got to get everyone credited!
Well, that's all for now. I'll be back with an update when I hit something else that makes me groan. Feel free to hit my up with questions on matters like this any time. I love porting games!
-- Electric Airship Matthew
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Puella Magi UniteYeah I'm still here! The overall canvas size should be larger, such that one instance of the sprite should only take up the left 1/12 of the screen
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Anyone else hyped for Isle of Reveries?Here, check this Trailer out!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-HajWcAMPc -
Puella Magi Uniteyes as long as its in the corner like I described you can use this for a stationary event just fine. Wow I love the pink one especially
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Puella Magi Uniteyeah just set that as the selected sprite and select 'stepping animation' and 'walking animation' to off in the event. if its a player character you might have to make it repeat
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ArchipelagoIt sounds super cool, maybe I'll look into some post-release patches for my games with archipelago
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Puella Magi Uniteto get your desired result, you'd want the sprite to be in the upper left corner of a 288*384 image
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ArchipelagoThat list should be bigger tbh. I feel like people just don't know about it or how to use it! Was it relatively simple to set up?
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Puella Magi UniteI honestly don't know you could try doing something like @Master-of-Magi
