I am really sorry if this is the wrong form but this where I thought it would go
The point of this topic is so people can see whet I have noticed is wrong with most games.
1. Normally the only towns in the whole game are towns that are important but in real life that is not the case I know that it can be hard to make towns that have no major part in the game because it takes to long but the out come is worth it.
2. A lot of games I see are games the hero is some random kid but by the first chapter he is already charging into battles when it would be more real if he tried to run for the first part of the game
3. Most towns in games I played have lot more people or a lot less people that the amount of buildings should hold so it might help to have about the same amount of NPCs as building multiplied by 3 that includes stores and storekeepers
4. Another thing is that it may be cool to have guards walking around town but sometimes people forget to make a barracks or a place that would house the guards
5. The last thing is to remember that the world is supposed to be set up like it could be a real world and that sometimes it might take extra time time add these things but it makes your game more realistic
'_'
You'd figure this to be common sense kind of stuff, but...
yeah I know some of it is common stuff you should know but it took me some time to figure it out so this is mostly for newbies
It depends on what kind of game you're making :/ The game that won project of the season wasn't RPG based at all. No need for soldiers there.
yah, some of these all depend on the game
funny thing? The game I'm working on now not only has guards in every town you can actually help train them. In fact a lot of the stuff you mentioned are stuff i had in the back of my mind i want to be aware of when making towns.
the number of NPCs is slightly off, but a good point. If you have a bunch of NPCs in the shops, it means they aren't at home or at their own shops. That gives people an opportunity to explore empty buildings (and get loot). It also means you only need about half of 3/building.
I think every town has something worth visiting too, and recommend food = stats to represent that aspect. "Mayville has the best fried chicken" etc. Thus the towns might have nothing to do with the plot, but if you find that special something, you might not mind going back - I do a lot of traveling and road trips, and I like to think every place is special.
Yah that is a good point that towns not related to the plot should have some sort of special thing there like a minigame or special shops and other things
Do not put snowmen in lava
yah there is not much you can place in lava
Quote from: CodeMaster on November 21, 2010, 08:55:04 PM
Yah that is a good point that towns not related to the plot should have some sort of special thing there like a minigame or special shops and other things
Tales of the Drunken Paladin does this, and since you help the shop owner FREE ChICKEN, though it only heals like 3 hp and mp it's FREE FOR LIFE. That might be a interesting idea for non plot towns give each one a mini quest, that quest gives you something special, once you have your airship travel is incidental so having a bunch of towns all over the world with some little thing worth while would be interesting.
maybe the local alchamist's house expodes and you have his life after that you get free potions, a little better then normal but you can't sell them, still they are free.
Or maybe you save a cook like in DP and the food may only be a small heal, he doesn't tell you this though but if you start selling them around the world the shop gains prestige and when you return later theirs some other perk. etc
Quote from: CodeMaster on November 21, 2010, 10:06:23 PM
yah there is not much you can place in lava
A Vira suit ;)
yeah seen games where a you can get unlimited of a certain item in this town but it only heals 3 mp
PS: there is a edit button and you are not suppose to post twice in a row
Quote from: CodeMaster on November 21, 2010, 10:16:56 PM
yeah seen games where a you can get unlimited of a certain item in this town but it only heals 3 mp
PS: there is a edit button and you are not suppose to post twice in a row
for some reason i thought there was a reply between my 2 posts. My bad
Maybe there was but i got removed.
many small towns can have different back stories
and small side quests etc.
like they once believed that the may-ville only appears in may
and thus the name
also you can make stuff happen only if you visited that village
eg: if you visited may ville Jake joins your party
and in the end Jake turns out to be a traitor
if you didn't, then gary will be the traitor and so on..
Regional culture, where possible.
Say you have your starter town, and town in the distant north, and a town in a deep jungle.
Obviously these places look different environmentally, but many people will use the same NPC's for each place. When resources allow they might have them wearing parkas and such in colder regions or something like that.
But I think it would be a pleasant effect to go a step further. For instance: maybe the world population does not consist of only WHITE PEOPLE. And I don't mean just slapping slanty eyes on the denizens of asia land. Get creative. Make up some features of your own. For instance, in the illusion of Gaia there were a small, almost extinct race of people that could not come above ground, lest the sunlight destroy them. (A trait borrowed from vampires or, arguably, albinism, but interesting nonetheless). That was pretty neat.
Now extend it a bit further. Say you have your chinatown set up. Then...that's the only place you see chinese npc's? What? All of the world's chinese come from a single village? This is another little 'wrongness' I see crop up even in professional product. Why not make all of the towns on a given -continent- share a theme? Doesn't that make more sense?