Full Games List
Featured Games
New Games
Reviews
Media
Images
Blogs
Game Updates
Images Feedback Summary
Game Design Highlights
Tutorials
Articles
Scripts
Utilities / Plugins
Resources
Engines
Engine Bulletins
What is Makerscore?
Past Events
Achievements
Misaos
Forums
Post History
Chat
New to RMN?
Full Store List
RMN Music Pack (free)
COMMUNITY HISTORY
Posts
Max McGee
View playlists
CloseThat's really it, I've never completed or produced anything playable in any RPG Maker I've touched. That's gotta be some kind of record.
I'm not impressed, indy and dudesoft can both say the same thing. :P
Cheap shot...drumroll....rim shot. Thank you, folks, I'm here all night.
RPGAdvocate...another person that I wasn't totally sure if he was a person or a highly sophistacated automaton.
Hahahahaha I remember you, Kindredz. You're three or for years older than I am in the community, but we knew (of) all the same people. I enjoyed reading your recollections, man, you should post more often.
There were disagreements on things like banning 'lame' members or about the privileges of donating money to the site, and I became disatisfied and left in a big fuss with the two other content admins, AnonymousGuy and Moriason.
In the mean time, at some point I also started a game development studio called Darkest Oblivion Productions with some really cool people from GW. Holbert was nice enough to host the website for me. We made a couple funny games, and we also did a few 'sponsored' games like BadLuck's excellent AraFell. The site eventually collapsed when I disappeared from gamemaking entirely and the webmaster Impeal took an admin job with GW.
This story is strangely FAMILIAR to me, Mr. Y.
Darken
3952
Could anyone explain the IG and Gaming World thing? Cause I feel like I missed an episode. :-\
Otokonoko
60
author=Darken link=topic=2342.msg69990#msg69990 date=1239219373
Could anyone explain the IG and Gaming World thing? Cause I feel like I missed an episode. :-\
By which you mean the incident that led to the creation of Ghostlight, right?
If so, read on.
About 3 years ago, late spring or early summer. Legion posted up a hype topic for the Iron Gaia II demo he had been working on at GW. A lot of fans of the series to that point flocked to the topic and began discussing the games. Eventually, detractors to the game in general came into the topic and began throwing posts around complaining about the choice of music (predominantly Coheed and Cambria), the unabashed and unapologetically "THIS IS A HYPE THREAD AREN'T YOU GETTING HYPED" feel of the topic in general, and eventually somebody posted a picture of a monitor displaying the IG2 title screen with "semen" (read: shampoo) on it.
Of course, the fans (myself included) took offense to this and tried to bring moderators into the mix... but oh wait, the moderators started participating in the flamefest too, leading to a LOT of angry posts.
Eventually, the topic was locked, me and Legion were both disgusted with how the moderation team handled the situation to the point where we left to form Ghostlight, and while a demo was eventually released on July 4, 2006, IG2 promptly collapsed under the weight of its own hype.
AznChipmunk
4613
author=Otokonoko link=topic=2342.msg69993#msg69993 date=1239220326
left to form Ghostlight
<-
Dark Gaia
3474
I started RMing in 2003 I think, with Rm2k3 being my first ever engine. I trawled around the internet and played all the greats of the day, The Way, Bloodrose's games, Legion Saga, Laxius Power, Tarion Star, Kinetic Cipher etc, but wasn't really part of any community yet, though I lurked on several.
I stumbled upon Kobra's Realm in 2004 - 2005, where I posted my first ever completed game Tales Of Worlds. It was on KR where I learned the ways of a forum and began to learn about the people who made the greats.
Eventually KR started to go downhill, so I started spreading out, posting my games on all of today's most active forums, but not being terribly active in any of them. Then I found RRR, and the place seemed friendly and welcoming, so I stayed there, and seeing as how I am now mod there, it is my main forum hangout.
Aside from that I'm moderatively active on RMN and still lurk several other sites.
I stumbled upon Kobra's Realm in 2004 - 2005, where I posted my first ever completed game Tales Of Worlds. It was on KR where I learned the ways of a forum and began to learn about the people who made the greats.
Eventually KR started to go downhill, so I started spreading out, posting my games on all of today's most active forums, but not being terribly active in any of them. Then I found RRR, and the place seemed friendly and welcoming, so I stayed there, and seeing as how I am now mod there, it is my main forum hangout.
Aside from that I'm moderatively active on RMN and still lurk several other sites.
VideoWizard
2842
author=AznChipmunk link=topic=2342.msg70051#msg70051 date=1239236881author=Otokonoko link=topic=2342.msg69993#msg69993 date=1239220326
left to form Ghostlight
<-
Same here. Also, I started RMing with RPG Maker Gurus as well (1998!), then moved on to RMD, then to NeXus, then BACK to RMD, then the old RPG Maker.net. I then joined as a staff member at RMD for several years, IIRC, all the way to the end of the site in late 2005. Then I moved on to GW, where I only stayed until mid-2006 when the mentioned incident occurred. Then moved to Ghostlight, followed it to the ill-fated merger, then moved here (although I do follow some other sites). That's more moving than some people do in their life.
Heh... Never thought I'd see someone call Tarion Star a great. That game was so buggy it was virtually unplayable for me
ps I wanted to make games since I was 8. I'd have sketch pads and draw level concepts for platformers and didn't do anything normal kids did. Despite always wanting to make platformers I got involved with RPG Maker 95 and shortly after that RM2000 was released in English. I spent many years trying to make something worthwhile and maybe I still haven't managed to do so...
pps I thought Legion Saga was cool and learned most of my early tricks from it. I still respect that archaic old piece of work today
ps I wanted to make games since I was 8. I'd have sketch pads and draw level concepts for platformers and didn't do anything normal kids did. Despite always wanting to make platformers I got involved with RPG Maker 95 and shortly after that RM2000 was released in English. I spent many years trying to make something worthwhile and maybe I still haven't managed to do so...
pps I thought Legion Saga was cool and learned most of my early tricks from it. I still respect that archaic old piece of work today
On a cold rainy night some time in like, 2000, following a tip from a friend I downloaded RPG Maker from Don's site and became very excited that I could finally make my own RPG! I began making a RTP game with an original story and nothing to do with cloud strofe.
I don't remember when this was, but it must have been a year or more later. It was another rainy day, but it was afternoon. I was probably skipping elementary school as usual but it may have been a weekend! It was a cozy day and I was curled up at the computer with hot chocolate. Wanting to learn more about RPG Maker, I did an internet search and found GW and other chipset stores. I just read the tutorials and articles but never joined the forum. I also visited many small rpg maker sites and shrines, absorbing information so that I could create my ideal games... (that i would never finish or release)
Some time later I joined the forums at GW due to a mapping contest or to comment on Naufragar or something. My long journey to bitterness and disillusionment with the RPG Maker world around me had begun... but in the intervening time I experienced many wonderful gams and many beautiful people... thank you RPG Maker, thank you Don Miguel. It's been a wonderful ride. :-[
*kisses to everyone i have met along the way*
:-* this ones for you kamau :-*
I don't remember when this was, but it must have been a year or more later. It was another rainy day, but it was afternoon. I was probably skipping elementary school as usual but it may have been a weekend! It was a cozy day and I was curled up at the computer with hot chocolate. Wanting to learn more about RPG Maker, I did an internet search and found GW and other chipset stores. I just read the tutorials and articles but never joined the forum. I also visited many small rpg maker sites and shrines, absorbing information so that I could create my ideal games... (that i would never finish or release)
Some time later I joined the forums at GW due to a mapping contest or to comment on Naufragar or something. My long journey to bitterness and disillusionment with the RPG Maker world around me had begun... but in the intervening time I experienced many wonderful gams and many beautiful people... thank you RPG Maker, thank you Don Miguel. It's been a wonderful ride. :-[
*kisses to everyone i have met along the way*
:-* this ones for you kamau :-*
MayorAnime
282
I'll give just the RM Community History, and not the full 'How I Got Into Game Development History', since that is like writing another article. >_>
Before RPG Maker
Some time around 1997, aka back when Dance Remix's like Planet Soul and La Bouche were all the rave on the radio, and my hair stopped somewhere around the small of my back, I did an internet search one evening for 'Game Engine' (on Excite and Hotbot no less) and came up with something called 'Vecna's Extraordinary Roleplaying Game Engine'.
V.E.R.G.E.
At the time, I was running several tabletop RPGs for my friends, and given my long history throughout High School of designing video games, I thought that this was pretty exciting, a game engine that did the work for you, freeing up your time and creativity to develop the stories and characters. Amazing concept! Yeah, this was my first foray into game engines.
After cracking open the 7z (or was it gzip) file that contained VERGE 1.0, I started to read the documentation and play through the demo files. I was astounded by the shear awesomeness of this new-fangled engine, bedazzled by the use of its digital music (ooohhhhh..MOD, s3m, and XM...pretty) and otherwise just enthralled by the idea of making a full-scale RPG.
So I started to gather some resources, make my own sprite set via Photoshop 4.0, and hammered out a demo of a game called Nexus Quest. The demo included the prologue and first chapter of the game, giving the player about three hours of gameplay (VERGE 1.0 had no battle engine, so the demo was pretty much walking around). I zipped up the demo, uploaded it, and got rave reviews. Then one of the VERGE community users tore the demo to shreds, Darken-style, calling it the most contrived piece of cr@p ever. In response, I did what any eighteen year old artist would do when his 'baby' was insulted, I threw a frigging fit.
At least I had the common sense to do it offline.
After I stopped having a massive sh!t-fit, I took the criticism, applied it to what I knew about video games anyway, and saw that this guy had some valid points. I e-mailed him and asked him for clarification on his points of criticism, and any suggestions he may have to improve the demo. Apparently, this guy has never had a person take criticism well before, because my rational response shocked the crap out of him. He give me more constructive feedback, which I went back and applied to the demo of Nexus Quest. A few weeks later, I uploaded the demo and got even more rave reviews. (Pro-tip: Lots of mazes doesn't work...)
I set about designing the rest of the game, putting everything down into a 3 subject notebook and working long hours into the night designing the game, making maps, and otherwise getting ready for the release of VERGE 2.0.
Then crap started to happen in the VERGE community, VERGE 2.0 came out with bad documentation, the community apparently split, reformed, split again, went to something called WinVERGE, and all sorts of other things. In other words, lots of stuff started to happen to the community that made the advancement of VERGE slow to a freaking crawl. About that time I entered my third year of college, started to get serious with my girlfriend, and formed a LARP company.
RPG making fell to the wayside (and I never did finish Nexus Quest).
RPG Maker 2000
Fast Forward three years. I'm out of college, working in the IT industry, still serious with the same girlfriend, and running a successful LARP company. Everything is great, but I miss game-making. The games I have made on the side, mainly little short platformers and shooters in Gamemaker or Pie-In-The-Sky, or modding levels with the Duke Nukem 3D engine, such as making Super Mario Nukem 3D. The problem is that it's just not the same. My heart is in RPGs.
One evening, I came across a link to Don Miguel's PRG Maker 2000 site. Having no clue as to what this is, but liking the name, I downloaded a demo game created in RPGMaker 2000, started playing it, and fell in love so fast it made my head spin. I don't even remember the demo I downloaded. All I remember is that I loved this new thing, this RPG Maker. I greedily began to download every conceivable resource I could find, and soon had an army of little png and bmp files that I could use to create my dream RPG.
Since I was a huge anime fan at the time, my LARP company's flagship LARP was Animania (an anime-genre LARP held at Project A-kon), I decided to make an RPG about some of the characters in the LARP series. Without as much of a plan as Nexus Quest, but with considerably more drive and inspiration, I started to design that RPG from the ground up, with high and holy expectations.
Enter Lost Legacy.
Without a design plan, the development of Lost Legacy became very slow. Suffice to say, I hit a lot of snags, approached this game as a 'masterpiece' from the beginning, and general shot myself in the foot several times. The RPGMaker 2000 version of Lost Legacy was horrible, and never saw release. However, it did get me into the RPGMaker Community, at least on the fringes.
After seeing the way that the VERGE Community had problems, I resolved not to get involved in the RPGMaker Community until after Lost Legacy was completed. That is why I am virtually unknown, despite having been a developer since the year 2000.
RPG Maker 2003
Oddly enough, this happened in 2004...
Lost Legacy would never have been released if RPG Maker 2003 hadn't come out, and if a friend of mine hadn't convinced me to convert Lost Legacy from RM2K to RM2K3. There were just too many bugs, too many problems, and a total lack of a plan. With RPG Maker 2003, I had a chance to start over, and start over I did, actually applying my knowledge of game design amassed from almost two decades of game making.
But this is not about Lost Legacy, so you can read the full story on its development right here.
With RPGMaker 2003, I became more involved in the community as a whole, still not as deeply as I am today. But Dark Dominion, Gaming World, Gaming Ground Zero, and a few other sites had be as a registered member, where I would ask questions, download resources, and participate in conversations. Nothing ever lasted, though, I was too intent on finishing my game.
Around 2005, I started design of my second game, Threshold, as well as started Game Design School. For Threshold, I applied the principles of game design, including making a Game Design Document, from the very beginning. This would, in the end, result in a much tighter game being released in a much quicker fashion.
Lost Legacy and Threshold released
In 2007, Lost Legacy went Gold, and one year later, Threshold went Gold. Both games were released on my company's website. Only Lost Legacy was released into the community, on RRR's forums, were the fan-game-ness of it caused most of the members to LOL the game right off the boards. They also didn't approve of me distributing the game via CD (and charging for shipping).
Of course, this was before I was aware of stuff like megaupload, and hindsight being 20/20, I can agree with that criticism now. Being in my thirties by now, the negative criticism didn't get to me, but it also gave me a message that the RM Community didn't approve of my work, so I retreated for a while and worked on finishing Game Design School.
Amaranth Games
In late 2008, I got an email from someone from Amaranth Games, telling me that Lost Legacy was very popular there, and that people were stuck on some of the puzzles and needed help. Quite amazed, I went ahead and got back into the RM community on Amaranth, and started to follow support my game, patch it, and help develop a walkthrough for it. So, I guess you could say that Amaranth was my first REAL foray into the RM Community, and that was in the summer of 2008.
Real Men Network... >_>
One of the players of Lost Legacy emailed me one day and asked me why I don't promote my game more. Not really having a good answer, I agreed to start promoting my game at other sites. While doing so, I was also hunting for a community to join. RRR was suggested, and I politely declined. GW was suggested at the same time that RNM was suggested, so I flipped a coin and decided on RNM first. It was also the site that this player recommended, citing it as being the 'least elitest'.
That was three months ago. I added Lost Legacy, got involved in the forums, chatted some on IRC, and decided to write articles for the community.
And that's about the size of it...
Before RPG Maker
Some time around 1997, aka back when Dance Remix's like Planet Soul and La Bouche were all the rave on the radio, and my hair stopped somewhere around the small of my back, I did an internet search one evening for 'Game Engine' (on Excite and Hotbot no less) and came up with something called 'Vecna's Extraordinary Roleplaying Game Engine'.
V.E.R.G.E.
At the time, I was running several tabletop RPGs for my friends, and given my long history throughout High School of designing video games, I thought that this was pretty exciting, a game engine that did the work for you, freeing up your time and creativity to develop the stories and characters. Amazing concept! Yeah, this was my first foray into game engines.
After cracking open the 7z (or was it gzip) file that contained VERGE 1.0, I started to read the documentation and play through the demo files. I was astounded by the shear awesomeness of this new-fangled engine, bedazzled by the use of its digital music (ooohhhhh..MOD, s3m, and XM...pretty) and otherwise just enthralled by the idea of making a full-scale RPG.
So I started to gather some resources, make my own sprite set via Photoshop 4.0, and hammered out a demo of a game called Nexus Quest. The demo included the prologue and first chapter of the game, giving the player about three hours of gameplay (VERGE 1.0 had no battle engine, so the demo was pretty much walking around). I zipped up the demo, uploaded it, and got rave reviews. Then one of the VERGE community users tore the demo to shreds, Darken-style, calling it the most contrived piece of cr@p ever. In response, I did what any eighteen year old artist would do when his 'baby' was insulted, I threw a frigging fit.
At least I had the common sense to do it offline.
After I stopped having a massive sh!t-fit, I took the criticism, applied it to what I knew about video games anyway, and saw that this guy had some valid points. I e-mailed him and asked him for clarification on his points of criticism, and any suggestions he may have to improve the demo. Apparently, this guy has never had a person take criticism well before, because my rational response shocked the crap out of him. He give me more constructive feedback, which I went back and applied to the demo of Nexus Quest. A few weeks later, I uploaded the demo and got even more rave reviews. (Pro-tip: Lots of mazes doesn't work...)
I set about designing the rest of the game, putting everything down into a 3 subject notebook and working long hours into the night designing the game, making maps, and otherwise getting ready for the release of VERGE 2.0.
Then crap started to happen in the VERGE community, VERGE 2.0 came out with bad documentation, the community apparently split, reformed, split again, went to something called WinVERGE, and all sorts of other things. In other words, lots of stuff started to happen to the community that made the advancement of VERGE slow to a freaking crawl. About that time I entered my third year of college, started to get serious with my girlfriend, and formed a LARP company.
RPG making fell to the wayside (and I never did finish Nexus Quest).
RPG Maker 2000
Fast Forward three years. I'm out of college, working in the IT industry, still serious with the same girlfriend, and running a successful LARP company. Everything is great, but I miss game-making. The games I have made on the side, mainly little short platformers and shooters in Gamemaker or Pie-In-The-Sky, or modding levels with the Duke Nukem 3D engine, such as making Super Mario Nukem 3D. The problem is that it's just not the same. My heart is in RPGs.
One evening, I came across a link to Don Miguel's PRG Maker 2000 site. Having no clue as to what this is, but liking the name, I downloaded a demo game created in RPGMaker 2000, started playing it, and fell in love so fast it made my head spin. I don't even remember the demo I downloaded. All I remember is that I loved this new thing, this RPG Maker. I greedily began to download every conceivable resource I could find, and soon had an army of little png and bmp files that I could use to create my dream RPG.
Since I was a huge anime fan at the time, my LARP company's flagship LARP was Animania (an anime-genre LARP held at Project A-kon), I decided to make an RPG about some of the characters in the LARP series. Without as much of a plan as Nexus Quest, but with considerably more drive and inspiration, I started to design that RPG from the ground up, with high and holy expectations.
Enter Lost Legacy.
Without a design plan, the development of Lost Legacy became very slow. Suffice to say, I hit a lot of snags, approached this game as a 'masterpiece' from the beginning, and general shot myself in the foot several times. The RPGMaker 2000 version of Lost Legacy was horrible, and never saw release. However, it did get me into the RPGMaker Community, at least on the fringes.
After seeing the way that the VERGE Community had problems, I resolved not to get involved in the RPGMaker Community until after Lost Legacy was completed. That is why I am virtually unknown, despite having been a developer since the year 2000.
RPG Maker 2003
Oddly enough, this happened in 2004...
Lost Legacy would never have been released if RPG Maker 2003 hadn't come out, and if a friend of mine hadn't convinced me to convert Lost Legacy from RM2K to RM2K3. There were just too many bugs, too many problems, and a total lack of a plan. With RPG Maker 2003, I had a chance to start over, and start over I did, actually applying my knowledge of game design amassed from almost two decades of game making.
But this is not about Lost Legacy, so you can read the full story on its development right here.
With RPGMaker 2003, I became more involved in the community as a whole, still not as deeply as I am today. But Dark Dominion, Gaming World, Gaming Ground Zero, and a few other sites had be as a registered member, where I would ask questions, download resources, and participate in conversations. Nothing ever lasted, though, I was too intent on finishing my game.
Around 2005, I started design of my second game, Threshold, as well as started Game Design School. For Threshold, I applied the principles of game design, including making a Game Design Document, from the very beginning. This would, in the end, result in a much tighter game being released in a much quicker fashion.
Lost Legacy and Threshold released
In 2007, Lost Legacy went Gold, and one year later, Threshold went Gold. Both games were released on my company's website. Only Lost Legacy was released into the community, on RRR's forums, were the fan-game-ness of it caused most of the members to LOL the game right off the boards. They also didn't approve of me distributing the game via CD (and charging for shipping).
Of course, this was before I was aware of stuff like megaupload, and hindsight being 20/20, I can agree with that criticism now. Being in my thirties by now, the negative criticism didn't get to me, but it also gave me a message that the RM Community didn't approve of my work, so I retreated for a while and worked on finishing Game Design School.
Amaranth Games
In late 2008, I got an email from someone from Amaranth Games, telling me that Lost Legacy was very popular there, and that people were stuck on some of the puzzles and needed help. Quite amazed, I went ahead and got back into the RM community on Amaranth, and started to follow support my game, patch it, and help develop a walkthrough for it. So, I guess you could say that Amaranth was my first REAL foray into the RM Community, and that was in the summer of 2008.
Real Men Network... >_>
One of the players of Lost Legacy emailed me one day and asked me why I don't promote my game more. Not really having a good answer, I agreed to start promoting my game at other sites. While doing so, I was also hunting for a community to join. RRR was suggested, and I politely declined. GW was suggested at the same time that RNM was suggested, so I flipped a coin and decided on RNM first. It was also the site that this player recommended, citing it as being the 'least elitest'.
That was three months ago. I added Lost Legacy, got involved in the forums, chatted some on IRC, and decided to write articles for the community.
And that's about the size of it...
Interesting read MayorAnime. (I'd love for my games to be popular outside of my immediate bubble :-[).
Your story is not unlike mine, except I dabbled in RTS-modding (mostly C&C: Red Alert) and not FPS-modding. And I started with QBASIC, not VERGE.
Your story is not unlike mine, except I dabbled in RTS-modding (mostly C&C: Red Alert) and not FPS-modding. And I started with QBASIC, not VERGE.
MayorAnime
282
author=kentona link=topic=2342.msg70154#msg70154 date=1239308237
Interesting read MayorAnime. (I'd love for my games to be popular outside of my immediate bubble :-[).
Your story is not unlike mine, except I dabbled in RTS-modding (mostly C&C: Red Alert) and not FPS-modding. And I started with QBASIC, not VERGE.
Well if I was to go into my WHOLE story, which starts about age 8, I'd be slapping down the ol' Commodore 64 stuff.
Maybe I'll just link my wiki-article when it's done. :D
Thanks though, Kentona! ;)
AznChipmunk
4613
author=Magi link=topic=2342.msg70102#msg70102 date=1239270235
ps I wanted to make games since I was 8.
i started making gams when I was 8. got into rpgmaker at 9.
Neophyte
155
I still play Power Trip sometimes. No really, that world map song and Tashbaan(sp) theme still get stuck in my head. I even joined the PT blog thing. It was the number 2 game on rpg2knet so it was cool!
You can't get better than two party members being palette swaps of Crono.
Poor Veter. =(
You can't get better than two party members being palette swaps of Crono.
Poor Veter. =(
Kindredz
7
author=Jude link=topic=2342.msg70160#msg70160 date=1239313235
I posted on Don Miguel's board a long time ago.
Jude...Jude...
I...think I remember a Jude...
author=GreatRedSpirit link=topic=2342.msg70199#msg70199 date=1239328575
Vampire's Kiss or something like that. One of the first tactical CBS demos I believe
True.
Kindredz
7
Vampire's Kiss, yeah...that confirms it...
OMGHAI!
Yep, I definately remember you. We chat on AIM a lot, back then...you were a very, very, very smart kid...
OMGHAI!
Yep, I definately remember you. We chat on AIM a lot, back then...you were a very, very, very smart kid...
