A BEGINNERS WORRIES

Don't make your first project with the intent of releasing it. Make a simple game for yourself based on concepts you want to explore and things you want to try to make happen.

Like Ratty524 said, don't pursue scripting and/or advanced concepts until you have a feel for the program. You'd be surprised how much you can do without having to touch the script editor at all. Once you have event-based creation down pat, scripting will probably come more easily to you.

Engines are custom systems/script sets designed by other people that you can insert into your project and customize to your will. I'd ultimately recommend against this if you're going for originality, but would make for a nice reference.

Plugins are modifications to the program that allow you to do things you otherwise
would not be able to. Unless you really need to do something you're not able to by normal means, I'd advise against this too.

It's not too much to aim for if you're willing to put in the extra work.

I'm working on a game with completely custom graphics right now, and while it is a tremendous amount of work, I do find the exercise quite rewarding.

But anyway, as others have said, it's best to aim small for your first project to get a feel for the program. Try using the default database and graphics to make a short, 1 hour game. The shortness of the game will allow you to easily debug the project, and will teach you all of the basics of eventing.

If graphics design is your specialty, you should work on the graphics/animations first, and then learn the code during the off-hours.

Actually, aim big. Better to have a spectacular failure, and learn all the code you can through editing, than to have five mediocre games, because you were too worried about getting ahead of yourself. Even if your next game after that is more a pocket-sized game, it will be that much easier since you tried something ambitious.

I think it depends on how fast you can learn. If you think you can, or are able to learn and improve as you start working on the game, then good for you. If you realize that you need to go slow, then take it easy and start learning the materials again. :P

Aim for a big successful first project is fine, but when things start to go wrong, stop, take a break, and review what you did. ;)

author=LockeZ

author=bulmabriefs144
Actually, aim big. Better to have a spectacular failure, and learn all the code you can through editing, than to have five mediocre games, because you were too worried about getting ahead of yourself. Even if your next game after that is more a pocket-sized game, it will be that much easier since you tried something ambitious.

Strongly disagree. Cannot possibly convey how strongly I disagree. You have apparently never actually attempted to learn any skill. You don't start learning martial arts by fighting fifth degree black belts over and over until you can win. You do training first, you spar against fellow students. You learn simple techniques and you practice with them until you can use them effectively, and only then do you start combining them. You start with things at your level and work your way up. It's the same when learning to cook, to play the violin, to scrapbook, to draw, to be a photographer, to become a sniper, to teach, to read, to play football, and anything else. If enough people have actually attempted to learn something that someone's bothered to figure out the best way, oddly enough, the best way turns out to be starting with the basics and practicing and building your way up before attempting a fully advanced final product in pretty much every single case. Just because RPG Maker mastery isn't popular enough or old enough that psychologists and researchers have studied it in depth for hundreds of years doesn't make treating it any differently a valid idea. Until someone proves otherwise, I think it's safe to work on the assumption that it's not the universe's sole exception.

Yes, you do learn the skill properly, as you say. But if you're like "it's too hard for me" (let's say a custom menu or party change thing), none of your games will have it. It's better to try and fail, and get constructive criticism on what you just did wrong ("your knife script sucks, take it out") than to be afraid to try. Even getting beat up repeatedly by black belts, at some point, you'll need to step up to make the beatings stop and use the Forbidden Dragon tech. The important thing here is for the first try and for every try, give your best effort, and learn how to use all the functions, from Message to Change Battle Commands. If your second try is a step down, you now know what not to do, and the simple project is a breeze.

“Success teaches us nothing; only failure teaches.”
- Hyman G. Rickover

Every skill I've learned I've had to learn myself struggling through it, because my Attention Deficit made me tune out the easy explanation, so I had to fight through trial and error hell. How did I learn rpgmaker code? By having my first game fail. How did I learn C++ code? Well, I had the background when I was like 15, but I had DynRpg which was outside my range since I barely understand the namespaces. So I coded, and failed alot, and asked/begged for help from Kaze and dragonheartman and Cherry, to the point where they were disgusted with me. My C++ coding is now slightly above average (KazString, while a useful code, is nothing a decent coder couldn't do better, but it's better than anything I learned just from sitting through C++ classes) since I had only minor failures, while The New Earth being a colossal failure, my newest game has its own custom battle system, something I'd never have tried if my first game was a mediocre success.

Don't make your first project with the intent of releasing it. Make a simple game for yourself based on concepts you want to explore and things you want to try to make happen.

This is true, however. You should make an absolutely horrible first game, that's just a tutorial on how to do all kinds of complicated stuff (try a weather system, bank system, party change, etc). That way, you know how to do it, and you have no delusions of it being great. But you have the techniques.

^ Yes, that's about right.

I agree with bulmabriefs. Go big or go home. RMing = Martial Arts is a stupid analogy. Martial arts builds on fundamentals from previous levels, whereas RMing has independent fields like a bunch of olympic sports. Better to gain exposure to everything than to waffle along one tidbit at a time, spending most of your time doing shit you've already done (assuming you do a series of tiny games).

Go start up a big Suikoden-wannabe or Final Fantasy 6-wannabe game. Shove all the side-quest/minigame/forging/banking/farming/raising/eating shit you can think of into it. It'll probably turn into a spaghetti disaster and you'll have to abandon it, but in the process you'll have developed every skill involved in RMing and even your ideas will have undergone some upgrading by that point.
The next step, with some major experience under your belt, will be to restart with a much clearer vision and the skills to optimize your time usage.
Though I have to admit, this method works a lot better when you don't know Project 1's fate beforehand.

The problem is people never want to restart. They want to keep doing their first game until it's done and perfect. And it never is. So at best, six years later they release a 90 hour long game that's extremely bad because so many parts of it were made before they had any idea what they were doing.

Of course, this could be solved by not getting super attached to your first game. But, eh, if you tell people to put everything they can imagine into the game, they're probably going to try to create their perfect game that they've been imagining since they were eight years old. It's going to be very dear to their heart, and they're not going to ever be content with "it's not very good, but now you can make another." That seems to be what usually happens, anyway. I know that's what happened to me.

Yes, I completely agree with slashphoenix; it's good to have ambitions, and not content to be 'good enough', but at the same time everyone has to learn the basics. The only way you will have the ability to make your ambitions a reality is to do a large volume of work over an extended period of time.

That's not to say that your first project has to be a chore; my first project was a short little action game that, while not very good gameplay-wise, was a tremendous amount of fun to put together.

That Zen Pencils comic is also dead-on; everyone has a phase where they get frustrated because they aren't good enough, and at the time we don't realize that it's those phases that are the most important. Remember, the more frustrated you are, the closer you are to a breakthrough.