#1157: Less Viable Options
This Comic's Cast:
As the comic comment notes, RPGs are notorious for pallet swaps of enemies, giving them increased stats just because they're a different color. Even Chrono Trigger, a game I love, did that, having monsters from drastically different era (like imps in 12,000 BC and 1000 AD) look the same aside from their color. That's a long span of years for nothing about their looks to change. Humans have changed enough (being taller, fatter) in just our short span of years that you can see it even going back and looking at pictures of us from the middle ages (or seeing short little suits of adult armor on display in museums).
Just something that irks me sometimes. Sure, from a design standpoint it makes sense to reuse so you don't have to spend three or four times the amount of time to make enemies, but it still feels oddly sloppy to me.
Just something that irks me sometimes. Sure, from a design standpoint it makes sense to reuse so you don't have to spend three or four times the amount of time to make enemies, but it still feels oddly sloppy to me.
Razmoudah
2015-01-02 23:27:56
As someone who has dabbled in software development I can personally tell you that it has almost nothing to do with the time it takes to create new creature designs. It actually has to do with the memory limitations on the older systems. By using a simple color reference code set they can have one actual picture for several different enemies with a database that doesn't just reference the stats but also the colors for when displaying the creature. This also serves a secondary purpose of allowing players to differentiate between enemies of differing abilities (after all, they could use even less storage memory by simply having every 'dog' type enemy use the exact same sprite set, without the color reference codes).
When evil spreads across the land, and darkness rises and the monsters roam. When the creatures of the night make beautiful music, and the things that go bump in the night go bump with greater enthusiasm. When the world is in peril and is in need of a hero...
These guys are, sadly, the best the world can hope for. These are the adventures of the heroes of CVRPG. They mean well, they try hard, and occasionally they do the impossible...
They actually do something heroic.
