Game Design Testing

Hello, I'm back and ready to talk about more game design! I noticed a whole lot more goes into this than I thought, and I already thought it would be complicated. Honestly, I am better at design than development; I am using RPG Maker MZ after all... Still, not just drawing, writing, and organizing, but getting things to actually fit or even show up has made me start over on the picture quite a lot. Illustrator is great for that, so I do all my lines there now, and color only after I think it's okay. I also do tests with the files provided by RPG Maker to get a starting point.

I'm still making a lot of adjustments, but by using placeholders it really gives an idea of how it will look without having to spend hours on each drawing. Using what RPG Maker has is an easy foundation for custom work. I'm learning more and more what I can change or even replace.

Visustella's plugins also have a big part in this. The menu picture gets reused in the status screen:

And the battle screen:

Of course, that means there's a lot of places this one image has to fit. Place holders help with that too.

This is where I found out you see a lot more of the image in some windows, so I should never crop the drawing before upload. I also learned that Visustella has on other plugins the ability to change just the battle picture, so I tested that by trying a different sized image:

I'm still not sure exactly how I want it to look, but between this and learning how to change icons, I think I maybe be able to alter tilesets to fit my game better (I'm not sure if I can do it to sprites, but I'll probably try). My art itself is still rather hastily done, but once I know exactly what I want, I can update it.  Remember, I'm still in the very early stage of making this game, and I'm doing a lot of learning as I go. I'm still learning what is possible, or how to make something possible. I'm still trying to write out the story and get it out of my head. I'm still designing characters and settings. I am also the only person working on this game. Progress is super slow, but I'm not giving up! Thanks so much for reading.