Once More, With Feeling

Do you think a different sprite while speaking would work?  I wanted to offer a bit of contrast from a default standing pose that subtley gestures they are speaking?  Moving ones feet while talking does look lame, just not sure what to put in place of it.  Arm gesture only?  One arm, both arms?  I think an opening and closing mouth would look excessively goofy...

Do you think they should turn back toward what ever they were looking at even if it triggers the next dialogue or action?  I think that fire event needs work, but fire events I'll try to use for camping, so later on, once the player knows what they are, wont need to be anywhere nearly as bad as a person taking a laxative for their verbal diahhrea...

The problem is that there are limitations.

And most games these days aren't going "I was hit with a fireball. I took 2 steps back. The pain was excruciating"

They do this

-play battle animation: Fireball
-flash sprite red
-display text: "AHHHHH"
-move sprite back. pause. move sprite back.
-display text: "OH MY GOD!"

Ta-da. More lively. Trying to capture emotion with characters that are so far fetched from your view of reality is difficult. Yes, there could be a little more animation but considering half our faces don't even come with emotion versions, it's not necessarily easy. Also keep in mind different games have different focuses. I can make an RPG but the game isn't focused on the story (what I'm making right now). On the other hand people make completely animated, no gameplay, "Shows" out of RPG maker and they have been very popular. Evidently, story and emotion are very important there.

Making the characters more lively is definitely something I have to keep in mind.  What I was really hoping to do is to try to make the conversations more interesting, or at least, provide what I thought would be a semi decent example for making conversations more interesting, during the heavy dialogue parts of the game.

Skippable is something I think should be an option because once dialogue has been read once, it gets really tedious to read again and again and again, and again, then after that, again, or if you die, you read it again, or if you liked the game, you have to read it again. 

A lot of emotion can be expressed through the music you choose for a scene.
Also, if you want the characters to be more expressive when speaking, why not use facesets?

Is there a decent mod to add facesets with that bubble chat mod thingy?  Im also not very artisticly gifted, so I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that I rely on the text and dialogue, and music, to convey emotion...

There are a ton of faceset scripts, and also a ton of facesets.
CCOA's UMS should be able to do what you want. For facesets, you can probably find all you need by just googling. Celianna has a faceset generator on rpgmakervx.net if you need specific edits, though I think you might have to sign up to see it.

Im trying a visual experiment on this project with cave walls.  I had a hard time trying to figure out how to make them look more interesting.   Instead of like a room, I came up with this goofy cracked wall style where the cave recesses all over the place.  Although the player wont be able to go in every crack, I put it there just to add some visual interest.  As a maze, it seems to make things more confusing than they really are.  And yes, unfortuantely it is one of the default cave tilesets that came with the game.  Im trying my best to figure out how to work with what I've got and take it to the max!

How does this look to you guys?  Look good?  Scrap it?  Need more / less decoration?  etc... 

I think it's a pretty nice technique. The bottom middle portion looks a little too straight in comparison to the top though. It might look better if it were just floor, unless you don't want that part of the cave accessible from there.

Anything with a floor will be accessable, as well as some other spots where the lack of presence of a floor doesnt necessarily mean you cant get there.  Basically cracks that are wider than others.  I should have also mentioned that I plan on doing caves with Lanterns, so beyond five or six tiles, you wont really be able to see the lack of detail, but you should be able to see far enough to spot treasure chests and indicate that you'll have to walk around and find your way to the chests, even if the maze itself is not that complex.  It is just supposed to look complex.



Of course, the real map is much larger, but shouldnt be that difficult to navigate, even with limited visibility.  Im mostly looking at about five or six tiles from the wall into the darkness, thats what I thought needed to be visually interesting instead of straight flat convex walls.



Think that is too much?

Seems like soemthing really hard to do, maybe put some sort of beeper that gets louder the closer you are to the right path?

A huge cavern where you only get to see a small radius around you sounds really frustrating. I'd take out the lantern, or implement a minimap or something.

Maybe I should make the Lantern Radius a little larger?

Make it a little larger and actually sliiiiightly transparent. Least that's what usually works for me.

Make it a little larger and actually sliiiiightly transparent. Least that's what usually works for me.

Before: 



After



Its a little larger, and very slightly transparent for the whole screen (opacity 230).  And, just so nobody panics, the edges of the actually fairly simple maze are visible within the radius of the faked light source.  And yes, the character is walking behind the climbable ladder.  That works correctly.