Vote Milkshake Devlog

With all of the news of RPG Maker U2U coming out recently, my brother and I have been very inspired to make games. While we've been working on our longer project Linkship Competition, we were more in the mood for making a game quickly without a lot of intense game mechanics, art, programming, etc. to take a break and make a lot of quick progress. That's how our games used to be when we were hobbyist kids who didn't really know much about game design. So we took a day to work on a couple of mini-projects for fun without any intention of actually posting playable versions online or anything. We called this "Vote Milkshake".

Vote Smoothie: Context

So the reasoning behind the name of this project is that back in 2016, we made collaborative projects in RPG Maker MV called Vote Smoothie. We were drinking smoothies and deciding what we wanted to do for the day. We usually like to come up with a list of ideas for creative projects to do and this one came out of that time. We made two games at the same time. The requirements were that we would include a random sound clip we made, have our characters take turns "making the game", and that each "turn" would end with a dialogue choice. The next person would decide which way to take the story and start developing from there.

During this time, we made one that was more of a visual novel where it was like a pop-up book with little characters on Popsicle sticks and Pigger is telling a story to the other orphans.

The other one was an underground explorer game where Topaz is mining and searching for treasures. This one had a unique sepia tone, zoom, and interface elements.

Vote Milkshake: Process

We've tried many times since then to recreate this experience with new projects, but every time it just didn't feel as fun as this one. And we didn't want to just continue those games, but wanted something fresh usually. Each time we tried to do this, we had a lot of requirements and restrictions that we added, which maybe over-complicated them. But with Vote Milkshake, I think we did recreate that feeling finally but in MZ. We kept it simple with the same basic requirements, worked fast, and didn't do a lot of planning. I started by setting up a basic project file and GitHub for collaborating, but that was it! Then we duplicated it so we'd have the same starter project for both.

I started with Squidwik's game, which was the "Nun Version". Because we work fast with these projects, we don't draw our own art. We use existing premade sprites and tilesets, and assets we designed with our characters in character generator software like Looseleaf. The biggest challenge was finding premade tilesets honestly, because most are paid nowadays. Back in the RPG Maker 2003 days, those were free and all over the internet!

But I found a tileset that was pretty good by hou-uoh. I was able to design a little outdoor area pretty nicely. I just had to adjust their tileset a bit to work with RPG Maker specifically. A lot of their aspects were paid/not included, so I used the free assets that were available for this.

Because we were creating all of the dialogue straight in RPG Maker, old style, without the assistance of Ink, I really wanted to make writing dialogue as seamless as possible. I used Hakuen Studio's Message Common Events plugin to create common events before and after messages so I could show a picture file and erase it for the dialogue box. Because I wanted it to automate per character, I set up a string variable for the character's name that I set before a dialogue box, and then this common event runs automatically before and after dialogue boxes to show a smooth transition of the message boxes and faces, depending on the character. This way, it shows the character's face graphic automatically and their name is set up automatically in the name box. I really wanted this to be automated upfront so I could develop even faster!

Then I designed the dialogue boxes and choices images. I wanted them to be themed together, so I made use of some of the pieces of hou-uoh's tileset to design the borders of these so they would thematically work together. I added some gradients and other aspects too.

Because I was working on the visuals more, I also used the fountain portion of the tileset and set up event pages to cycle through and animate the water. This was a fun little feature I added to make the scene feel more alive.

I also played around with Moghunter's Weather effects plugin to make the scene feel more alive. I was going to use RPG Maker's built-in rain weather effects, but there wasn't enough customization. So I used this one to add a more custom rain, and then had even more fun with star effects, butterflies, and more!

Because the choices are a big moment, I wanted to make that stand out a lot in terms of visuals. So I added the weather effects, but also added a picture at the top that indicates that it's a big decision. And I used Aerosys' Gab Windows plugin to add a little pop-up that reminds the player of what the choice is that they're making.

I also wanted the sound files to stand out more, so I added a speaker emoji and different text color for when the character is talking.

And that was everything I did during my first turn for Squidwik! Like I said, I didn't draw the sprite or tile assets, and I also didn't bother finding royalty free music because this is a very hobby project that I'm not planning to post as a playable game online. So here's a clip of the whole scene so far (some copyright music is included again because it's just for fun, so please support the original creators):

While I was developing that project, my brother was developing the "Jungle Version". Once he finished his part, it was Pubby's turn to create the next scene. I started by adding the transitioning parts from his existing maps to the new areas I was going to design. So I made some basic story parts. Then, I designed the swamp area. Finding tilesets again was a challenge, so I combined a few together to make what I needed (by hypnobius and noelru).

Because I was struggling to find free tilesets, I used mostly RTP ones for the interior of the house. I was trying really to make the shapes more interesting, since I always struggle with making backgrounds look interesting and not too flat/boring. So I added a bit more depth to it. 

I spent a lot of the time for this one with finding tilesets, making multiple maps, and adding more story parts. I also updated some aspects to make the dialogue a bit more streamlined with events like the previous game. I didn't add nearly as many effects though since this turn was a lot shorter. Because the textbox style was very close to being just a faceset in the standard RPG Maker way, I updated them to be actual facesets instead of individual image files so it'd be easier for us to add those straight into the text boxes with less additional showing of pictures.

This involved me having to edit the rmmz_windows.js file to add the additional padding. It took me awhile to figure that out, but it was really the only way I could figure out while having word wrap enabled in VisuStella's Message Core plugin.

So this one had a bit less extra features compared to the previous one with the parts I worked on, but here's a clip of the scenes I put together (and again, has copyrighted music and tilesets/sprites that I didn't draw):

It was fun playing around with effects and experimenting when I didn't have to worry about complex game mechanics or drawing my own art assets on this project. So this really helped me expand and have fun with more of the fundamental and basic features of RPG Maker. It's a very different way than I've been using MZ for the most part in recent years, but it's fun to hop in and do this kind of hobby project every once in awhile where it's nothing serious and no intentions to commercialize it in any way. I'm hoping we can come back to this project again to continue working on it when we want to make a game but aren't worried about the polish and presentability of it quite as much. Overall, this was a really fun Saturday project!