Page 186 - Pony RPG

6th Oct 2012, 6:00 AM
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Pony RPG
Average Rating: 5 (1 votes)
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Author Notes:

Newbiespud 6th Oct 2012, 6:00 AM edit delete
Newbiespud
Author: AkumaTh

Guest Author's Note:
"I remember the Ultima series being inspired by someone's own RP experiences, so I figured someone among the group would try to do the same with their game.

"And who better than Twilight's player? Of course someone has to test it out and considering how Dash's player is, I bet she would be level grinding before actually starting the game.

"Can't blame her, I tend to go into every battle opportunity I see in RPGs myself."

Notice: Now accepting guest comics! Submission rules and guidelines available here. Deadline: January 30th

45 Comments:

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darkwulf23 6th Oct 2012, 6:08 AM edit delete reply
darkwulf23
At least Rainbow enjoys level grinding. The rest of us consider it a chore.
Snowy 6th Oct 2012, 1:06 PM edit delete reply
Rainbow doesn't strike me as a grinder, AJ yes, Twilight Yes, Rainbow would not have the patience. Pinkie would just hack the game
AkumaTh 6th Oct 2012, 3:34 PM edit delete reply
She wants lots of action, I can see her hitting every enemy she can get across. Not to mention her first move in the game was to attack (Twilight).
Ponikon 6th Oct 2012, 4:19 PM edit delete reply
I, for one, doubt Pinkie would be able to hack the game. Find exploits, yes (where's the fun in that?), but hack it? No.
CJT 6th Oct 2012, 9:52 PM edit delete reply
Pinkie would totally take the Jester for laughs, and also totally make it meet the "lethal joke character" trope. Whether this would be through brilliance, reality-bending serendipity, or both is unclear.
Digo 7th Oct 2012, 10:42 AM edit delete reply
I'd wager they gotta be funny exploits too. Like graphical glitches.
Dave 5th Jun 2013, 1:12 PM edit delete reply
Like in the first gen Pokemon games?

Brock: "Can you believe some people choose fire as their starter?"
TrenWolfman 6th Oct 2012, 6:12 AM edit delete reply
Ohhhh, an AkumaTh fancomic! Didn't know he read FiD.

Anyone know where those sprites are from?
AkumaTh 6th Oct 2012, 6:37 AM edit delete reply
Yes, I am a fan. As for where the sprites came from, the Pony sprites I made myself with help. The Cockatrice was from a game.
TrenWolfman 6th Oct 2012, 10:21 AM edit delete reply
Awesome spritework then, in any case. Do you have them publicly available, or would you rather keep them for yourself for personal comic use only?
AkumaTh 6th Oct 2012, 10:31 AM edit delete reply
I have single poses as well as a pony base for the adults and kids (but not Big Mac size) on my Deviantart. No sheet of them though.
Guest 6th Oct 2012, 1:27 PM edit delete reply
you know i actuall AM working on a Pony RPG (in flash)
nekollx 6th Oct 2012, 2:33 PM edit delete reply
nekollx
damn system logged me out when i made the above post, yes I'm the one working on a Pony PG
GIGA-XISBASS 6th Oct 2012, 5:30 PM edit delete reply
Really? Cool.

Do you happen to have a DA or FA? If so let me know when you release then game or a demo of it. ^^ GIGA-XISBASS & DEVIOUS-DISCORD-RP on DA & GIGA-XISBASS on FA. ^^
nekollx 7th Oct 2012, 12:42 AM edit delete reply
nekollx
actually i do have a DA, under the same name, and some sample flash work here http://lurkerlordx.com/flash.php and a site about the game here https://sites.google.com/site/llxmlp/mlp-light-and-dark now if only i could get some help so i'm not working solo :P
GIGA-XISBASS 8th Oct 2012, 12:49 PM edit delete reply
Neat.

btw the flashwork website isn't showing me anything except a green background for some reason.

also watching you on DA now. ^^
nekollx 8th Oct 2012, 1:42 PM edit delete reply
nekollx
Some browser's don't like the JAvascript, try it in another
GIGA-XISBASS 14th Oct 2012, 12:14 PM edit delete reply
Ok then.
Oblivious 6th Oct 2012, 6:22 AM edit delete reply
Oblivious
Wow, this is is really good!

Great job Akuma; quite the pleasant surprise before going into work.
darkwulf23 6th Oct 2012, 6:28 AM edit delete reply
darkwulf23
Silly Dash. How can you accurately judge the difficulty and level appropriateness of the game if you are just going to overpower everything.
Katarani 6th Oct 2012, 6:37 AM edit delete reply
In some games, no amount of grinding will save you. The Shin Megami Tensei games come to mind.
Raxon 6th Oct 2012, 6:46 AM edit delete reply
Raxon
And yet, grind you must.
Zeeth 6th Oct 2012, 7:29 AM edit delete reply
Meanwhile in Xenosaga, grinding can't save you, so they level your unused characters a bit when the storyline advances. I know which series I prefer.
Malroth 6th Oct 2012, 8:45 AM edit delete reply
I dunno, two Hours of Shion taking on the mech combat simulator in the Prologue and she can oneshot absolutely anything with "Spell-Ray" at least in the first game anyway.
Digo 7th Oct 2012, 10:43 AM edit delete reply
Oh hey, fancy seeing you again. :)
Karilyn 6th Oct 2012, 7:48 AM edit delete reply
Karilyn
Most RPGs nowadays it's hard to actually AVOID enough enemies to make it difficult, unless you deliberately run from half the things you encounter.
deeman45 6th Oct 2012, 7:48 AM edit delete reply
"Well, duh. If I can't overpower everything the difficulty and level appropriateness aren't correct. And you're supposed to be the brainy one!"
gindranis 6th Oct 2012, 8:41 AM edit delete reply
I would really love to play this game.
CJT 6th Oct 2012, 10:02 PM edit delete reply
There are quite a few pony platformers out there already. It wouldn't surprise me to find an RPG or two out there as well, by now.

The catch: Making a platformer that's actually good (rather than mediocre) is difficult. Making a CRPG that's even _mediocre_ is hard. Making one that's _good_ is almost unheard-of. It's like trying to plan out a level-1-to-level-20 pen-and-paper RPG campaign that's fun and engaging, _without_ a group of creative players to interact with during this process.

It can be done, but it'd take a skilled DM and a skilled fic writer working together over a long period, in addition to skilled sprite artist and a competent coder. The engine is actually the easy part (there are plenty of existing ones you can use, if it comes down to it).

It took me quite a while (and a couple of attempts of my own) to realize exactly how much creative work goes into designing a good game.
Lyntermas 6th Oct 2012, 8:43 AM edit delete reply
Lyntermas
Who is this AkumaTh? *Googles it* ...Oh, I've got some archive-binging to do.

Alt-script time!
TS: Rainbow Dash, I wanted you to playtest this to make sure that players would feel the quest levels are appropriate. How can you do that if you just breeze through everything?
RD: Twilight, you said that this game would be based on our adventures, right?
TS: Yeah?
RD: And the first quest is facing Nightmare Moon?
TS: Well, I wanted to set her up as a recurring villain and...
RD: And have her wipe the floor with whatever level 1 scrub faces her. Not this time. I'm going to beat her, and there's nothing you can do to stop me.
TS: What? But I haven't prepared for that to happen. I mean, how many players are going to overlevel just so they can beat an unbeatable boss?
RD: Clearly you haven't played enough MMOs.
AkumaTh 6th Oct 2012, 10:32 AM edit delete reply
I recommend using the Abridged to cut down your reading time. Especially since the older ones are not as good looking as my more recent stuff.
HMorris73 6th Oct 2012, 11:55 AM edit delete reply
It's an easy fix Twilight. If the player wins a Hopeless Boss Fight all you have to do is either pull a The Battle Didn't Count or punish them with a Non-Standard Game Over.
arkey 6th Oct 2012, 12:10 PM edit delete reply
Sir permission to play game sir.
Seanpony Renaud 6th Oct 2012, 1:05 PM edit delete reply
The world is going to be in real trouble if Hasbro realizes that releasing a pony game, especially one that didn't suck would be like printing money and waiting for it arrive in your pocket.
Newbiespud 6th Oct 2012, 2:19 PM edit delete reply
Newbiespud
That's not quite true, because making games that don't suck is a significant investment of time and money, not to mention a pretty big risk with software development being the crapshoot that it is. The financial payout is potentially very high with all the disposable income their periphery demographic has, but that's only if a game gets made, it doesn't suck, and they didn't sink an exorbitant amount of money into the project. And the project didn't explode.

Who would they go to for this? Activision's High Moon Studios made the recent Transformers games, but that was a pitch they made to Hasbro, not the other way around. I don't think Hasbro's gonna take the time to go shopping for an outside studio to make an AAA MLP game. If any pro-grade game gets made, it's because a professional group goes to Hasbro of their own initiative, makes a really good pitch, and the time is right for such a game to be made.

And, of course, it's all about retail. The Transformers games, being action/adventure shooters, fit right in on the GameStop shelves on launch day selling for $60 to the average gamer. Ignoring My Little Pony's periphery demographic for a second, that's not quite going to fly for little kids and their parents (unless the parents happen to be gamers and/or bronies, but that's outside the target). Ideally, they'd be looking to sell this in major department stores, in the electronics section along with all the other heavily licensed games on the most prominent displays. Those games still sell at retail for quite a bit of money, but the presentation is much different there.

They could go with a downloadable approach, like an app store game, but that probably wouldn't be the kind of not-sucking game that bronies would be looking for.

So no, it wouldn't be like printing money and waiting for it to arrive in your pocket. Hasbro already gets that from their other licenses.
Guest 6th Oct 2012, 8:27 PM edit delete reply
I love you for this post.
DoubleCross 7th Oct 2012, 3:39 AM edit delete reply
Much of this could also expand to television shows and development on content in general.

Big corporations have money. This is a given thing that people understand. At the same time they want to make money. This is also a given thing that people understand. And yet nobody really gets it in their head that why they might want to get money is because content production loses a lot of money and costs a lot of time.

And of course, magically perfect design does not happen in a flash, either. There is no one perfect creator of content. (There cannot even be anything nearly close to this as long as the industry is dominated by old white straight dudes.) We cannot have such a thing as somebody who is totally morally and politically aware, especially since those things vary by area. And so ideas are taken on by multiple people who hack away at the core concept and criticise and criticise until something is found that they believe works. This hacking away at ideas also takes a lot of time and money. Creating assets takes a lot of time and money. Creating in general takes a lot of time and money, and this is not even the whole production, and this does not even include test audiences. It's still brewing in a tiny bubble compared to the massive, diverse world of opinion out there.

If you watch movie credits you'll probably switch off after the cast names go by. You might know the director or producer, particularly if they're already a big name. You probably have the constitution to stay and look at, see, lead animators and assistants for key-frame animation, but how much longer do you stay? Do you look at the huge list of names for technical R and D? Do you look at the accountants? Do you think about the legal team in all of this? (And again, majority of these people are all still from the same set of people. Don't forget this point. Remember this point as often and as actively as you can.)

Production of content at a professional quality and scale is a massive undertaking. This is why ZUN is the impossible god-tier creator, for example.

The mind looks at small independent projects, looks back at professional projects, and doesn't get where any of it goes. It seems like you can just pull an idea out of a hat and then find some fun random people and everything will be okay. Well, actually, the people working on independent projects are people who are making sure they can dedicate every second of their time, effort and creativity to it. They are people who, for the project to work, need to be on-task every millisecond. If they fall out at any moment, the project can fall out too. Oh, and they're also not perfect. Let me state this again: there is no one perfect creator of content.

(You might point out the references to 'old white straight dudes' and note that Lauren doesn't complete the phrase. Think of it as a verbal Venn diagram rather than a specific indicator of somebody falling into the centre. There's still a dominance of guys to girls, this is true, but there's also a dominance of white to POC and Lauren falls into the dominant group there. Issues, oppressions and privileges intersect.)

So if you keep thinking it's totally possible to just have a magic idea and then never have to work with it and it'll end up on the shelf alright in a couple of weeks, really, stop it. You have a lot of thinking to do and very little time to do it.
Seanpony Renaud 8th Oct 2012, 9:07 AM edit delete reply
I still think that calling up say Nintendo and saying "Hey, you see that game you have "Animal Crossing" Can you make that with ponies? Or Maxis we see you have a game called Sim City and the Sims. . .Do you think you could replace the people with ponies?

I'm a 30 something. I remember when game companies would simply reskin something they did well as a new product and Marvel vs Capcom is proof that reskins can meet the originals and get something quality out of it.
DracoS 6th Oct 2012, 5:18 PM edit delete reply
I'm not even playtesting and I found a bug: Twilight's eyes change color when she walks (panel 3).
AkumaTh 6th Oct 2012, 8:26 PM edit delete reply
Dang it, I forgot to change the eye color when making that pose. Didn't catch that.
Digo 7th Oct 2012, 10:47 AM edit delete reply
Now I feel like editing a Secret of Mana game with ponies.
RD is so funny here because she reminds me of... well me when I play Final Fantasy games.
Azureink 8th Oct 2012, 9:34 PM edit delete reply
Azureink
Secret of Mana is in my "top 10 games of all time" list.
Nightwill 12th Mar 2015, 12:47 PM edit delete reply
Secret of Mana is one of my fav games. The idea of a pony game like that..that is an incredible concept. It would so work. Well...though no flying for Peg.
Natahana 22nd Nov 2018, 12:39 AM edit delete reply
Thank you for sharing this exciting resource with me and the world. Wish you always luck.
iq ball
Natahana 22nd Nov 2018, 12:39 AM edit delete reply
Thank you for sharing this exciting resource with me and the world. Wish you always luck.
iq ball
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