Furcadia - Star Story

[DarkDestroyer]

Hey everyone,

Over the past several years, I've been developing a storyline based off of the game, Furcadia. It involves my characters and my friends who also play the game as well. I've actually been doing some sample construction, but here is the issue I am facing. What engine should I essentially use? Especially making a game that involves furries.

Just to give you a bit of a background for those of you who haven't played Furcadia, its a MMORPG, with very limited options. It allows you to play as a furre, but rather just chat and roleplay to its fullest extent. You have several furres you can choose from: Feline, Canine, Rodent, Ursine, Lapine, Bovine, Equine, Musteline, Dragon and Bugge.


Here's the engines I was considering and its pros and cons:

RPG Maker VX
Pros - Characters are adorbale and battle system is rather favorable. (It favors the Furcadian atomsphere, if you catch my drift all.)
Cons - Resources can be rather scarce in terms of tilesets. Hate the way some of the maps look.


RPG Maker XP
Pros - Characters are adorbale and maps look really nice.
Cons - Doesnt have the look and feel as the other RPG Maker engines are. Music has a tendency to echo in the game.


RPG Maker 2000
Pros - Use of plentiful resources, including the charas project website and unlimited amount of tilesets.
Cons - Names can only be so many characters. (Some of my characters have rather long names.) Can't play mp3 music. (I heard this can be fixed with patches.) Doesn't essentially offer the cuteness and feel to what XP and VX have to offer.

Your thoughts?
If anyone would like to see screenshots of what I've done so far, let me know and I'll post them!

[cozziekuns]

Use VX.

No joke.

[DarkDestroyer]

Strange you mention that cozziekuns,

Something keeps pulling me more and more towards VX...

[Zylos]

Do you intend to use ripped graphics or originals?

If you're going solely with ripped stuff, I'd actually suggest XP myself.

[tSwitch]

XP's mapping system makes it easier to make complex maps without having to use advanced techniques.
XP's sprite system is easier to understand.
XP's database system seems easier to understand.

VX is newer.
VX has more impressive scripting support.

2k3 is vastly inferior to both.

[DarkDestroyer]

Zylos,
I really haven't decided whether or not to use "ripped" graphics yet. At the moment, I haven't used any ripped graphics so far. I defintely have a feeling I'm going to though... (I bet its wise to though, no?)

Also, I feel its necessary to post some images of what I've done so far:

RPG Maker VX


RPG Maker XP


Thanks alot of everyone, your comments are always welcome!

[Zylos]

Yeah, I'd say go with XP and rip the graphics (plus find a script for isometric support). It's either that or you make your own anthro sprites, which I imagine you'd rather not do given the difficulty.

[DarkDestroyer]

I hear ya Zylos, but I have no clue how I'm gonna go about taking the initial Furcadian sprites and importing them into RMXP. (If thats what you're suggesting ^^) What I was thinking of doing was modfiying the ears, tails and possibly even the heads for the charsets and then using them as the import. But then again, that does take alot of work. Thats why I considered using RPG maker 2000.

Here's some screenshots from Furcadia for those of you who never seen it before,







Essentially, I'm trying to capture the heart of Furcadia the best way I can, and the easiest way possible.

[Zylos]

http://www.videogamesprites.net/Furcadia/

[cozziekuns]

I'm guessing your not gonna try to make it isometric... But anyways, the XP version does look better as far as mapping is concerned. VX isn't really one for mapping.

[DarkDestroyer]

Zylos, what an awesome link!

I never seen this before, but it sure is cool. There's one problem though, its only good for scenery. And even then, I would have to make additional scenery. (The futuristic tiles I'm gonna be using in this game...)

It seems that everythings getting leaned towards XP, but I'll continue the discussion and see what happens!

Thanks everyone!

[Zylos]

Huh? Only scenery? But the link has all sorts of sprites and portraits as well as scenery.

[DarkDestroyer]

Oh no, I did see that it has the actual charcter sprites too, but unfortunately they're all the same in terms of coloring. Which means, I would have to recolor all the sprites. (Trust me Zylos, this gonna be one hell of a game. Wait until you see the storyline...)

Edit: But I really could see this game being isometric. I would have to find an appropriate engine to use though.

[Enkineferous]

Wow, Furcadia. I haven't been on there in about 2 years. I was the marketing director for D. E. Productions for a short time. I was also an Owsla back when they were called Owsla, and were few in number. Do you remember those? I was a big proponent for role playing in Furcadia, I remember holding an event there about it, and how things could be done differently to support the role players. This post brings back a lot of memories. I'd be interested to see where this goes. My alias there was Kinetic Sage. Perhaps we've even bumped into each other?

[DarkDestroyer]

Enkineferous,

We may have bumped into one another at one point in time, yes. I've been playing the game for a few years now and have met quite a number of people . I don't remember it every being called Owsla, unfortunately.

Just to give you a heads up, the game has a tendency to deal with a small amount of Furcadia's initial backstory, along with some changes as I felt were appropriate. The game also presents a newer and much more dangerous threat, that has never been presented before. This is essentially what makes the game in its entirety!

You'll just have to wait to see what happens! (As soon as I figure out what engine I'm using of course ^^)

[Enkineferous]

The Owsla, as they used to be called, were the OOC enforcers of Furcadia's rules and terms of service. The term Owsla was taken from a book called Watership Down so they had to change it to avoid legal problems. I think they're called Guardians now and you can apply for the position. Did you know Felorin and Talzhemir both worked on Ultima 6 together? That's how they met. In fact in the game, there's a character named Dr. Cats (or Kats, I forgot) who was loosely based on Felorin's personality (Wow, I don't even remember his real name anymore haha).

Anyhow, I think that sounds great. Talzhemir (I think I spelled that right, it's been a long time) did a good job creating the continuity for the game, and to see new elements added would be nice. I'm excited to see where this goes. I would definitely suggest using RPG Maker VX, as there are work-arounds for most of the shortcomings such as the limited tileset. With a few good scripts and some eventing experience, you can do a whole lot with this program. I highly recommend it. I've been working on something with VX myself that I'm having a lot of fun with. Keep posting updates, I'd like to follow this project.

~E

[DarkDestroyer]

Thanks a lot Enkineferous,

I'll defintely keep you posted on where this project goes. Sadly though, I keep hitting alot brick walls, such as, what engine to use, what resources to use for tilesets and what even defines a Furcadian! Essentially are the Furcadians in Furcadia - Star Story going to be anthro-human individuals, like our friend Zylos ^^ or is it going to be humans with anthro traits, like our favored cat fighter in the XP and VX series? Essentially, its a tough choice because it ultimately leads to what resources I'm going to need for the charsets, facesets and how the storyline is affected as well!