Nefol: The Game Changer
Posted: 1-4-18
Gosh, it’s really been a while since I’ve posted an update for the Nefol game, and for that, I am sorry. We were actually making good progress with our game… then all the sudden, we were not. Once momentum is lost, it’s hard to get it back together, and then big updates with RPG Maker means having to make sure all of the countless plugins are also still compatible and running properly.
Changing the Game
I wanted to post today because something pretty big did happen yesterday. Syn and I sat down and discussed what our pain points were in developing Nefol, and why we’d just stopped.
We both agreed on one thing: RPG Maker is a great development tool, but only if you really want to make an RPG. The game we want to make… well, it isn’t really an RPG. It’s also not a visual novel. It’s more of a story-adventure game, somewhat in line with the old point and click games of yore.
Our Issues
So we are struggling to work with an engine and game development platform that just isn’t suited to what we are trying to make. Can we do it? Yes. Will we be happy with it…? Maybe. But it sure is taking a whole lot of time and tweaking just to do simple things.
Also, I wasn’t happy with the presentation of the videos I’ve created. Because RPG Maker is still very limited in the resolution size and to the tiny default sprites (unless you want to take a bunch of time to make new sprites), the game looked fine when you played it… not so fine when it was recorded.
Our Solution
So what did we do? Once we nailed down the fact that many of the issues we had stemmed back to our engine, we did a bunch of research. Seeing that yesterday was the last day of the Steam Sale, and many of the game making engines and tools are on Steam, we chose a new engine…
GameMaker Studio 2
And new art tools…
Spriter Pro
Yep. So, officially, I want to announce that we are shifting how we are making this game (which means we’re going to have to learn how to use the new software), and moving away from using RPG Maker for Nefol.
I think this will be a good change. It will give us a lot more flexibility to design the game and tell the story the way we want to.
Bear with us! Chances are, I’ll be writing a lot here about my new adventures working with this software.