Fan Game - Dragon Ball Rise of a Hero

[djangoDarkblade]

Hey everyone,

I wanted to share a project I've been working on for the past 3 months. It's a Dragon Ball fan RPG made with RPG Maker VX Ace, covering the original story from Goku meeting Bulma all the way to the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai (chapters 1 to 194).

What it's about:
The goal is to let players live Goku's adventure; explore the world, train, fight, and collect the Dragon Balls. It's heavily inspired by the classic Dragon Ball games I grew up with:

• Legacy of Goku (GBA)
• Dragon Ball Advanced Adventure (GBA)
• Attack of the Saiyans (DS)
• Supa Saiyan Densetsu (SNES)

Current status:
I'm deep into sprite editing, map design, and combat system testing. Most of the arcs are already done but I'm not pleased with the result.
The first playable version should be ready by the end of this month (from the beginning to the 23rd tenkaichi budokai).

What I'm using:

• RPG Maker VX Ace
• Ripped & modified sprites from classic DB games
• Original anime music (for that nostalgic feel)

Screenshots :

What I'm looking for:
For now, just feedback on the visuals and combat feel. Once the first version is out, I'll be looking for testers.

This is a non-commercial fan project — just for fun and for the community.

If you're curious or have any questions, feel free to ask.
I'll be posting updates here as I go.

Thanks for reading !

 

[Giga Hertz]

So something from someone who's been around the block with this sort of project.

Your battle demo looks really good!

The assets look fairly well like they blend together, so that's a good effort on your behalf.

In terms of maps, that first one outside of Goku's house looks fine from that small area.

One thing to be careful of: you're trying to make your maps look more diverse by making use of more assets in the tileset. Which isn't a bad thing in itself, but it very quickly gets too busy.

Take Goku's house for example: in the anime and manga we see he lives very simply. But here you literally have everything including the kitchen sink. Goku lives in what is essentially a shack. Don't be afraid to make a small map that reflects that.

Same thing with the Tournament waiting room. Why is there a chest of drawers?

Also be careful about spamming houses to make a village. If you don't have the NPCs to back it up, it'll look very hollow. Think about how much more lively West City looks in LOG2 than in Buu's Fury - there are a heap of unusable buildings you can't enter and like 4 NPCs.

 

[djangoDarkblade]

So something from someone who's been around the block with this sort of project.

Your battle demo looks really good!

The assets look fairly well like they blend together, so that's a good effort on your behalf.

In terms of maps, that first one outside of Goku's house looks fine from that small area.

One thing to be careful of: you're trying to make your maps look more diverse by making use of more assets in the tileset. Which isn't a bad thing in itself, but it very quickly gets too busy.

Take Goku's house for example: in the anime and manga we see he lives very simply. But here you literally have everything including the kitchen sink. Goku lives in what is essentially a shack. Don't be afraid to make a small map that reflects that.

Same thing with the Tournament waiting room. Why is there a chest of drawers?

Also be careful about spamming houses to make a village. If you don't have the NPCs to back it up, it'll look very hollow. Think about how much more lively West City looks in LOG2 than in Buu's Fury - there are a heap of unusable buildings you can't enter and like 4 NPCs.

Hi, thanks for your answer. I just played your game and I really liked the mapping (Brown County, East District 49, and the WMAT) and the quest log. You also used the best version of RPG Maker. I wish I'd seen it sooner, it would have helped me a lot.

About Goku's house, I'm not really sure. My first version was really minimalist, but when doing some research I found this image from the Jaco the Galactic Patrolman manga. So I just started asking myself if there are plates and food in the house, there must be a kitchen somehow. Maybe it was a later addition from Toriyama, because in the anime and other games it looks different.

About the chest of drawers, that was because during the King Piccolo arc, Tambourine stole the tournament registry. So I figured there had to be a drawer where the registry is kept.

As for the NPCs, you're absolutely right; they take a lot of work, so I ended up coding a plugin to generate them. For now, the houses are locked, but maybe I’ll do something with them later. My game is still pretty straightforward at the moment because I’m not entirely sure which direction to take, or if I’ll have enough time to do everything I want. Right now, I’m torn between just covering the original Dragon Ball part with more quests, or going through the whole manga but keeping it fairly linear.

Here are some screenshots of my version of West City (heavily inspired by LOG):

 

[Giga Hertz]

Fair reasoning.

I like your West City for sure though! Keep up the good work!

 

[djangoDarkblade]

Thanks

Fair reasoning.

I like your West City for sure though! Keep up the good work!

Thanks a lot! Really glad you like West City. Your feedback and ideas definitely help keeping the motivation up, I appreciate it!

 

[Giga Hertz]

Thanks

Thanks a lot! Really glad you like West City. Your feedback and ideas definitely help keeping the motivation up, I appreciate it!

No problem. Totally get where you're coming from (exactly, in fact). I started my project in VX Ace (I think I got to the end of the first tournament) and then completely rebuilt it in MV and again when MZ came out (that was at least a little easier as the engine was pretty similar). So definitely understand how much of a slog this is.

Give me a yell if you need to bounce ideas or tips or something

 

[Kid Goku]

I would try to give the overworld sprites more cartoony eyes!
You could do like 3 eye styles (2 male and one female)
And copy them onto all sprites!

 

[djangoDarkblade]

I would try to give the overworld sprites more cartoony eyes!
You could do like 3 eye styles (2 male and one female)
And copy them onto all sprites!

Thanks for the suggestion! That's a cool idea, but I've got around 150 overworld sprites and the eye positions are all over the place, so it might be tricky to pull off consistently. Still, I appreciate the input!

 

[djangoDarkblade]

Hi everyone, I hope you're all doing well. Here are a few updates:

I've finally finished the game, and now I'm working on fixing minor bugs and updating some sprites (cars, enemies, etc.). I'm not completely happy with how it turned out, there were a lot of things I saw in GigaHertz's game that I wanted to include, like a dragon radar, a world map, and additional quests, but my time limit was three months, and I'm too short on time to implement them properly. That said, the final fight between Goku and Piccolo turned out fantastic; I added some special combos for Goku, and they look great. Here are a few images:

Right now, I'm replaying the game from the beginning to make sure everything works as intended. After that, I'll work on the credits page and the ending credits. I'm also looking for people to help test the game.

Once that's done, my goal is to make the game as accessible as possible by publishing it on Itch.io (if you know of any other platforms or websites, I'd love to hear about them), translating it into French, Spanish, and Portuguese, and porting it to mobile (I've learned that this might be possible with VX Ace). If you have any ideas on how I could add end of game content without breaking anything, I'm all ears. I already have a full quest system in place, but I haven't integrated it because it would simply take too much time.

 

[Giga Hertz]

Looks good! But why do you have a development time limit?

 

[djangoDarkblade]

Hi Giga, I started this as a learning project. I learned from game developers on YouTube that you should set a fixed deadline for your project and stick to it, otherwise, you can end up working on it for years without ever releasing it, because it never feels perfect. Now, there are other small games I want to try, like an action RPG, an RTS, a visual novel, or card games, and I'm not sure I can trust myself to work on multiple things at once. That said, if this game gets a decent number of players; at least five I can easily see myself continuing with it and even reaching the Dragon Ball GT arcs over the next two to three years because I have so much fun doing it.

 

[Giga Hertz]

Yeah that's fair. I released arc by arc to try to gage interest, figure out what I was doing, and at least produce something that had a clear start and finish.

There's a few other projects I'd like to work on myself, I have a family now so really can't commit to any other projects, so I'm glad I finished mine.

 

[djangoDarkblade]

DRAGON BALL: Rise of a Hero - Now Available!

After 3 months of work, my Dragon Ball fan game is finally released!

Download on IndieDB: https://www.indiedb.com/games/dragon-ball-rise-of-a-hero/downloads/dragon-ball-rpg-rise-of-a-hero

About the Game:
A turn-based RPG made with RPG Maker VX Ace following the classic Dragon Ball saga. Train, fight, and rise as Earth's greatest defender from the mountains of Paozu to the battle against Piccolo.

Features:

• Turn-based combat with Ki attacks and blocking
• Sprite graphics from Attack of the Saiyans, Legacy of Goku 2, and Advance Adventure
• Original story following the Dragon Ball timeline
• Music by Shunsuke Kikuchi

This is a non-commercial fan tribute. All rights go to Bird Studios, Shueisha, and Akira Toriyama.

Special thanks to:
Giga Hertz and Yoshi from this forum for their support.

Hope you enjoy the game! Feedback is welcome.