HOW DID YOUR FIRST GAME TURN OUT?

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LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
The topic about making your "dream game" was only one month ago, that wouldn't really even be necroposting if you posted in it now.

Here's the topic from September about people's first games. It got up to nine pages because we all love talking about ourselves so much.
My first game ever (incomplete) was a terrible remake of a Scott Adams text adventure. At the time I thought it was pretty hot stuff, but looking back, yeah, not so much. The big gimmick was that you could type LISTEN in certain rooms to get hints or even some backstory, but because I was such a novice with Inform, I got stuck on some issue (I think it had something to do with locks and keys?) and never finished it.

My first game (complete) was something I worked on to take a break from the above. It was supposed to be a simple, relatively realistic one-room game about making breakfast. But I couldn't figure out liquids in Inform, or how to make the cooking work, so it just got progressively grosser and zanier (like, you eat a whole bag of bread at one point, wrapper and all), until the whole thing collapsed into a goofy game about a kinda sorta monster. After finishing it, I thought about releasing it in that year's IF Comp, but ultimately decided not to. Honestly I think that I made the right choice, because I think the IF community at the time would not have looked kindly on a game where you eat junk off the floor.

EPILOGUE: I ended up remaking it for a game jam thing, and remade that for a different game jam a year later. You can get it here, in case you care.
You mean first completed game, or first game, period?

Because I have a few stories. The tale of someone who started off horrible at it, and then finally got good after a long long long time. :)


First game EVER.
I was 12. In RPGmaker 2000. It was horrible. It was about me and my friends teaming up to go across a bunch of tiny islands and become the kings of the world. And, oh my god...

First town was literally 2 houses. One for me, one for all my friends who had left town. Then you went across a bridge to a castle with a king sitting on a stool in the courtyard who threw you into a whirlpool for no reason to walk on minecart tracks and fight slimes, then........Yeah, no. Let's not go further here. XD I also had no idea how to do switches or stuff, so EVERYTHING was crappy and didn't work.

First serious attempt
The Last Mystic, in RPGmakerXP. ...While not full on shit, it was a cliche as hell, unbalanced mess. I didn't know how important planning out an MP and skill curve was, so...Let's just say a lot of things were broken. And it was horribly cliche. Hero is from a secret tribe of people in a hidden village that gets raided by the Evil Empire (TM)? Check! Saving a girl you just met five seconds ago from the chopping block? Check! Aloof elf? Check!

The only interesting thing came when I went back to redo a lot of it. I made the REASON for the evil empire's shenaginans actually not all that bad. Before they came to power, the world was in a constant state of war and suffering. Their main motivation was to stop that from happening again at all costs. That's...Actually not bad for 20 year old me.

First RELEASED game
Illusions of Loyalty, in VX Axe, available on this site! :D

I made it for a contest and...Ok, the original build was pretty flawed, as Liberty can attest to (she was a judge, and she kinda tore it apart and ragequit on it on video. >_>). But the core was great. Then, I went back over it a few times and improved the hell out of it (including fixing a lot of things Liberty had raged about). Now? Now I think it's fantastic, and many people have told me likewise.

It was a good starting point for me to actually get good at game making.


I've also had other projects, like one gigantic mega project with a friend that's permanently on hold, and a smaller one that I started for this site, but gave up on and if I ever DO go back to it, I'm starting from scratch with a new engine. I can't STAND RPGmaker XP anymore. The battle engine is awful as hell.
First game I attempted to make was a RPG Maker (PS1) game about psychic samurai. I called it *drumroll* ...


PSIMURAI


*dies at memory*

Anyway, it didn't get very far. Fast forward to the present, I have an unfinished Game Maker game on back burner, a top-down Zelda-style adventure game, planned to be no longer than 20-30 minutes playtime.

My first actual finished game (Where They Live) I just completed last month. It helped that I made it as part of a game jam, giving me a topic and deadline to work towards. Given that experience, my advice would be to start small and focused for your first game. Even a short experience is valuable, and the thrill of finishing it can jump start other projects.
I'm still new to making games, but I never finished my first game. I got distracted with other ideas. It was just an experiment that turned into a large hilarious parody.
I've been making demos and system tests for over a decade. I found an old CD of my first games and they're pretty shit. "Your first 10 games will suck" is actually true. I recommend practicing with demos. Don't focus on trying to finish a game, but to understand and test concepts. You'll have more fun that way too. Technically, LandTraveller will end up being my first completed game, although RPG20XX is my first "complete" project (game engines and toolkits are never complete).
BizarreMonkey
I'll never change. "Me" is better than your opinion, dummy!
1625
My first game was a necessary evil that I have thankfully grown out of.

That said JosephSeraph's avatar was in it so that's cool.

That's my first public game.

I been doing this shit since a lot of you were probably in daipers, I'm older than I look.

In fact, my stint with rpgmaker has been only the last third of my gam mak makeness.

I just make did with what I got. I always found a way.
author=WolfCoder
I recommend practicing with demos. Don't focus on trying to finish a game, but to understand and test concepts. You'll have more fun that way too.

Taking this advice to heart is a bad idea. You'll end up with a bunch of unfinished games that all have the same problems because nobody else ever played them and told you they are shit (except in the best case scenario a couple of your friends who won't have the guts to tell the truth).
Cap_H
DIGITAL IDENTITY CRISIS
6625
These demos should be short finished games.
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
author=SnowOwl
author=WolfCoder
I recommend practicing with demos. Don't focus on trying to finish a game, but to understand and test concepts. You'll have more fun that way too.
Taking this advice to heart is a bad idea. You'll end up with a bunch of unfinished games that all have the same problems because nobody else ever played them and told you they are shit (except in the best case scenario a couple of your friends who won't have the guts to tell the truth).


Yeah, I think turning these into short games that explore mechanics and the basics are a bit of a better idea, like Cap said.
Taking this advice to heart is a bad idea. You'll end up with a bunch of unfinished games that all have the same problems because nobody else ever played them and told you they are shit (except in the best case scenario a couple of your friends who won't have the guts to tell the truth).

These demos should be short finished games.

^

Still to this day I have a short implement -> feedback -> fix -> progress loop with high transparency for this reason. If you do that, you'll always know where your game is going.
author=LockeZ
The topic about making your "dream game" was only one month ago, that wouldn't really even be necroposting if you posted in it now.

Here's the topic from September about people's first games. It got up to nine pages because we all love talking about ourselves so much.

wow, this topic was started back in 2009.

but thanks for finding it! it saves me the effort of retyping my answer:


author=kentona
Yes, that's a Magus charset.

This game was originally called Hero's Realm but I decided to use that name for a later project. When I uploaded it here I quickly renamed it to Kentonia after the country it's set in.

It's standard fantasy fare, with shit happening all over the kingdom, an evil advisor controlling the king, and the basic plot of the Lord of Evil Demons of Evil being revived.

However, even then I loved making world maps:


http://rpgmaker.net/games/946/
BizarreMonkey
I'll never change. "Me" is better than your opinion, dummy!
1625
author=SnowOwl
author=WolfCoder
I recommend practicing with demos. Don't focus on trying to finish a game, but to understand and test concepts. You'll have more fun that way too.
Taking this advice to heart is a bad idea. You'll end up with a bunch of unfinished games that all have the same problems because nobody else ever played them and told you they are shit (except in the best case scenario a couple of your friends who won't have the guts to tell the truth).
Speaking of someone who did this, and then was perseverant enough to uphold said demos, it can work depending on who you are.

If you're a shining example of a rare breed of devokin like me you can easily adopt this strategy for every IP you make come out high in the completed turf of green.

However if you're the kind who doesn't seem to be able to hold an idea down long enough to make a 'full game' out of it, which in the RMworld is according to the IGMC rules a good length of full game time and means even if you fucked the pooch so unwittingly bad no doctors we're on call because you waste what might have been 8 times what you were doing at least doing something.

Not all games need to be bookended start to finish Epics, recent Triple A Titles like portal have proven that at least so long as you stay in the PC World where indie gaming is very accessible and affordable and since most of you myself included are still using RPG maker, I think it's pretty safe to assume that unless your ideas for a game are so infertile getting a demo out means you release something!

Along with several other benefits such as:
-Pre-release feedback.
-Some publicity before publicity.
-You can also then brag to have the gall to call someone out on your game thread because they didn't catch the memo they may not have even been around for but nonetheless it's "fun to do" says every firmware developer I've publicly despised since 2001.
If you ask I would say that Cave Adventure is my first RPG Maker game, but that's a lie, I don't have a first game because I have a lot of ideas and most of them never are finished (like a lot of shitty projects in rpg maker 2000)

I still work on projects for a day or two and then drop them, at least I'm learning a lot about the program and when I try to work in an important one (like my game for the IGMC) I try to seek a lot of feedback
@BizarreMonkey
I'm sorry but I can't understand what you're saying because... well it's english but somehow you seem to have messed up somewhere.
Also, do you ever make a post that isn't about plugging your games BM (I understood that at least)?
God I don't even know which game was my first ever attempt, before I started using Rpg maker Xp I was using the crummy and stupid rpg maker 3 on ps2, and made plenty o god awful games on it. But with using a real rpg maker (like vx,xp,etc) non of my actual games where finished, I quickly ditched them and lost interest. And to this day I still never finished an actual Rpg game. But making those pieces of garbage thought me a lot with the rpg makers (Except Rpg maker 3 on ps2 I spent hours trying to learn it and I still don't know how the damn thing works till this day)I am actually making a game and I mean my first big actual project one that I am dead set on finishing. Even if I have to loose sleep I will finish this project!

But as for other games, I released a half baked and terrible Mario game around 2013 it was god awful....I was going to actually fix it, and give a massive overhaul, but I got to lazy and just delete it.
BizarreMonkey
I'll never change. "Me" is better than your opinion, dummy!
1625
author=SnowOwl
@BizarreMonkey
I'm sorry but I can't understand what you're saying because... well it's english but somehow you seem to have messed up somewhere.
I was very tired. A demo is something you can spend an 8th of the time developing in comparison to a full game, and then once people like it, you move forward from there.
author=SnowOwl
Also, do you ever make a post that isn't to shamelessly plug your games.
No.

Okay yes, but said posts are... rare! :o
My very first game in any RPG Maker was about 7 years ago. I'm gonna make no bones about the fact that it was a nigh-unplayable piece of horse-shit and I'd much rather keep it buried in the depths of the internet.

My first SERIOUS game (the first Illuminated Badassery, o.c.) was at least... playable... but I still needed to learn how to map properly, so that was a huge issue at the time. That, and ye gods the visual clashing. I'm keeping that offline but at some point in the future I'm going to re-master it and IB2 so they're fit for public release.
TehGuy
Resident Nonexistence
1827
I tried to make pong in GameMaker 8.1

It totally went fine. By that, I mean oh god help those who play it