“How about I choose Negi, then? I think I could sympathize for the poor kid.” Ranma went to work, and was surprised to see that the game filled out a profile for Negi. “It even has already made profiles for fictional people too, cool.”
A few quick changes, mostly to give him some needed equipment, and Ranma was done with him.
“OK, now what?”
Nabiki rubbed her chin as gave the computer a closer look. “Let me see the mouse. There must be ... oh here we go.” A couple clicks later, and Nabiki turned to look at Ranma. “Looks like we need to give the game a name. Any suggestions?”
Ranma looked a bit lost. “Oh, I don't know. ... How about naming it ‘Guys are not Perverts’?”
Nabiki slapped her forehead with her palm. “You do know that name is lame, right?”
Ranma looked down, sheepishly. “Yeah, I know. But, I never played this kind of game before, so I don’t know what they are usually called.”
“Lots of things, that usually relate to the game somehow. Do you have a story in mind, a goal, or motivations? A small game with a strong story is much more pleasurable then a complex game with no plot what so ever. Fighting, killing, and looting gets boring after awhile if you don’t have any motivation for doing it other than they were there.”
Ranma looked crestfallen, “No, I don’t have a story idea. I didn’t know I needed one.”
“It’s OK,” Nabiki said gently. “We can add that later. How about we call it ‘Quest for Booty’?”
Ranma raised an eyebrow. “Do you mean like pirate booty?”
“Sure, that too,” Nabiki smirked at Ranma.
After a moment’s silence, during which Nabiki entered the title and got the map editor running, Nabiki looked at Ranma again. “OK, shall we just make a small town to test stuff and make it bigger as we get more ideas? One town and one dungeon for now until we get a story plot going?”
Ranma shrugged. “Yeah, sure. Just to see how it all works? What do we need in a town?”
“Well,” Nabiki began another lecture, “a guild or inn where you can make new players and assemble your team. You would also need a shop or shops to buy and sell equipment or spells. Perhaps a bank, a temple or two, and random houses. The houses can be empty, they are just there so it looks more like a town. A few NPC people to interact with. We can even put the entrance to our test dungeon in one of the houses. Keeps it simple that way, for now. The dungeon doesn’t have to be very big, and it’ll let us see what a few of the monsters are like. Perhaps only 1 level, a mini boss, and getting the treasure can trigger an end game. We should also make sure we start with some money, so we can see what shopping is like.”
Ranma shrugged again. “Sounds good to me; you’re the expert here. Just make a town square in the center and stick the stuff around it for now. The dungeon can just be a hallway that leads into a room. Put some monsters there guarding a doorway into a second room. Stick the mini boss and treasure in that last room. Stick it in a house, and lets fire it up.”
It took some time for Nabiki to get it all organized. And then she had to find the proper events to trigger the dungeon and end game and other small details. Ranma was starting to get impatient, but Nabiki ignored his antics. Most of the time was spent figuring out fixes for the error messages. Finally, she got everything in and no error messages popped up when she hit the ‘make game’ button.
“Alright. Now, all we have to do is load the game and play it.” Nabiki smiled at Ranma, she was eager to try it out herself.
“About time!” Ranma was positively bouncing with giddiness.
With a press of the mouse button their world became suddenly black. When his vision returned, Ranma found himself in a smoky bar, sitting across from Nabiki.
“What the Hell? You alright, Nabiki? Is this a dream?”
Nabiki was still looking about stupidly. “How? ... What? ... If I knew this would happen, I’d have given myself a better outfit. Man, I should of let you give me bigger boobs after all! He he, let’s make that the first thing we change, OK?” Nabiki looked down at what she was wearing. Nabiki eyes opened wide and her cheeks colored into a blush. She gave a small eeping noise. “You forgot to give me pants, Saotome,” she accused.
“Sorry,” he blushed. Ranma looked down to see he was wearing brown robes, and nothing else underneath.
Nabiki sighed. “S’alright, the tunic is long enough to be a mini dress like what Cutey Honey wears. I can fix this the next time we edit the characters. This must be some kind of magic, do you think it will affect us in real life too?”
Ranma was busy looking around the tavern. “Where are the others?”
Nabiki paused for a moment. “We probably have to load them into the party explicitly. We can do that later when we actually have a real game fleshed out. Let’s look around, try the shops, fight a couple monsters, and quit.”
“Can we quit?” Ranma looked skeptical. “Is that safe?”
“As long as we hit save first, yes. We may have to come back here, though, to properly save and quit. Come on, let’s go.”
The two got up and left. A quick survey showed the town was tiny, only having the few buildings they had mapped out. Leaving the town brought them into a wooded wilderness, but that was boring as they hadn’t set up any random monster encounter rules. Town was easy to find again. They looked into the shops, and bought some cheap potions to try out the interface. After looking around a bit, visiting the shops, temple, and bank, and trying some stuff like depositing money in the bank, Nabiki lead them back to the Inn where the Adventurers Guild was located.
“Well, seems like a pretty normal, straightforward game. Though I never got to live one out. This is cool! Let’s go make a real kick ass game and play it. This is awesome!” Nabiki looked like she had won a lottery or something.
“Seemed pretty boring to me,” Ranma complained.
“You just wait, it’ll rock when it is done.” Nabiki walked to the bar and talked to the bartender. “Can I see the game menu ... Thanks ... Save please ... Quit.”
Their world once again darkened, and when their vision returned, they were once again in Nabiki’s room.
“Groovy! Let’s shut the computer for now and brainstorm up ideas for quests, tasks, monsters, and the main story. Got any ideas, Ranma?”
Ranma sadly shook his head. “None. I never played any of these games before, you know. Is there something I could look at?”
Nabiki looked around her bookshelf a little bit. “Here’s some manga set in a similar fantasy style, Tolkien’s The Hobbit, and some Dragonlance books. You’ll like the Dragonlance series, it is about, in essence, good versus evil, war among the gods, and protecting the weak from the monsters. The Hobbit is a children’s book, so don’t think it is something boring, cause it is quite fun. Why don’t you take a quick look, and we can talk some more tomorrow, OK?”
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(Posted Mon, 10 Dec 2007 01:45)
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