SOME NEW (AND OLD) IDEAS FOR FUTURE EVENTS

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One thing that I really love about this place are the events, they really help you to be motivated to work on your game, collaborate with the community, or try new things! After checking the past events page, I've seen a few events that I would love see again in some way or another, here are a few ideas for new events:

- Bring back Befuddled Quest, in one way or another: I really love the idea behind this event, reminds me of the various Super RMN Bros. events of the past, but with something we all are more familiar with, RPG Maker, I don't know why Befuddled Quest events stopped, lack of interest? Nobody wants to take the lead and organize the event? Is harder to do it in VX Ace (the last engine used for the event) than in RPG Maker 2k3? But anyway, I would be interesting to do something like this again, even if we change the name to make it disconnected from the "Befuddled Quest" series, I know the quality can vary a lot between rooms but is fun to see what everyone contributes to the game

- Make a short game with an engine you've never used before: I feel like this was done once in the past? I can't remember, but basically, forget about RPG maker for a second, you see this engines list? How about trying one of them, especially if you've never heard or used it before, and try to make a short game with it? This could be a lot of fun and a perfect way to get out of your comfort zone for a while, but the quality of the games will probably be very poor, and some people could get frustrated with this, though I still think that it is worth a try

- The Battle Arena: This would be probably the hardest to do due to how RPG Maker works, but you know what is one of the things that is most common among all the RPGs? That's right, the battles, I was thinking of something like an arena, where you send your party to fight any of the boss battles designed by the community, the problem with this idea is how to organize everything, not only how to merge all the databases of every participant (afaik, you can't just copy and paste the sections of the database that you want) or how to add scripts or events mid-battle that make the battles a lot more engaging and interesting, but even if we could find a solution for this, what makes a boss battle fun is when it is perfectly balanced between challenging and fun, something really hard to do with a community event like this

Tell me what you think, and if you also have any other idea, feel free to share them!
We prefer that if you have ideas about events you PM them to one of us (myself, Illy or LockeZ would do) instead of making threads. We already had one thread made last year and it was a bit... eh.

We have a personal thread of where we put new and old ideas down for perusal and eventual use.

As for your ideas:
BEFUDDLE QUEST - That'd be up to kentona but honestly, after 7 runs at it (even if the last didn't get done) I think it's probably time for something else to take over it's spot. There's nothing stopping people from making collab projects. There's a chain game currently in the works that Frogge is running, for example. We just ask that you ask us about timing so that we can make sure people aren't overinundated with stuff happening all at the same time.

ENGINE MAK - Problem with this is that a lot of engines aren't free to use and take a ton of time to learn. This means longer times needed to even get the hang of an engine you're new to and too long an event time means that people tend to go "screw this, it's too long" and move on to other stuff instead. I'd prefer it be another Non-RM event which allows people to mess with engines they may have used before that aren't RPG Maker - it still allows them to try something a little different without throwing them into a whole new engine that they need to learn from scratch.

BATTLE ARENA - This would be really hard to implement, yeah.
author=Liberty
We prefer that if you have ideas about events you PM them to one of us (myself, Illy or LockeZ would do) instead of making threads. We already had one thread made last year and it was a bit... eh.

We have a personal thread of where we put new and old ideas down for perusal and eventual use.

I had no idea there was already thread for ideas, sorry! But where's this thread btw?

author=Liberty
BEFUDDLE QUEST - That'd be up to kentona but honestly, after 7 runs at it (even if the last didn't get done) I think it's probably time for something else to take over it's spot. There's nothing stopping people from making collab projects. There's a chain game currently in the works that Frogge is running, for example. We just ask that you ask us about timing so that we can make sure people aren't overinundated with stuff happening all at the same time.

Yup, I was actually thinking on someone else doing it, because afaik, nowadays Kentona doesn't have a lot of free time to gam mak, let alone set up an event like this, I would love to see who else volunteers tho, I would even do it myself, but I have to think about how to do it first (And is probably better to talk about this in PMs)

author=Liberty
ENGINE MAK - Problem with this is that a lot of engines aren't free to use and take a ton of time to learn. This means longer times needed to even get the hang of an engine you're new to and too long an event time means that people tend to go "screw this, it's too long" and move on to other stuff instead. I'd prefer it be another Non-RM event which allows people to mess with engines they may have used before that aren't RPG Maker - it still allows them to try something a little different without throwing them into a whole new engine that they need to learn from scratch.

Good point, that was something I was thinking on when I wrote that, events tend to be better when they aren't too long because you get more people to participate. The Non-RM event sounds fun tho and it is similar to the original idea! I wonder how was the participation of the last event? Was it a success? If it failed, then there's no reason to try it again
The thread in question is kept in the mod area. We add to it when people send in ideas via PM or chat or whatever.

The No-RM event ended up with about 5 games, iirc. Not really a big event.
Cap_H
DIGITAL IDENTITY CRISIS
6625
Yes, there was a thread like this just a couple of weeks ago.
I guess it's not really useful to throw around ideas for events you don't want to run yourself.
Personally, I like your idea for an event, which would be about learning a new engine. I think there's one like this on itch and its definitely more fertile ground for actions like that.
The one no-rm event Libert ran got quite a few people interested initially and one good game out of it. I wouldn't be opposed to a sequel myself.

Also, I got some ideas for events myself and I share them here and there. The two ideas I might realize are a chain game and a collaborative mapping effort/school focused on new users.
The latter is an evolution of Maps Weekly, but I'm not sure yet whether I would prefer to make a big event out of it or just post a thread.
The former is quite old and I started it with my first burst of activity here. That said I just made a sign-ups thread and didn't ask anyone. It still would be a forum based event, but I would like to coordinate it with Liberty this time. It should be a smaller more realistically scoped than frogge's chain game for 5-8 participants.

Thanks for reminding me, I should send these two ideas in sometime soon.
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
In regards to bringing back Befuddle Quest, there was, at least, an attempt at this called Stupefaction Search. Unfortunately, that seemed to have fallen apart somewhere along the line. I wasn't personally involved in it, so I don't know the specifics there.
pianotm
The TM is for Totally Magical.
32347
Yeah, I would like another No-RM event. The more I dive into Unity, the more I learn for my main game I'm making.

Still, we don't have enough events that challenge us to make resources, and those do are often a bit too specific (looking at you, Kids Design the Darndest Thing. Don't get me wrong, we should absolutely have events like that, but we need more that are a bit more open to interpretation). We need more events like M. O. G. G. We do need another music event (and really, someone should wrap up Summoner of Sounds. The event was completed. The music is sitting there. It just needs to be cherry picked and packed.).
Cap_H
DIGITAL IDENTITY CRISIS
6625
Yeah, that's true. Maybe trying to contact Happy about it? He shouldn't be opposed.
I guess I would like to see another Release Something or two too or an anti-procrastination event. I plan on making resources but I don't need a specialized event for that. Some motivational event would be nice, tho.
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
I hate to say this, but, I think we need to forget about Happy wrapping up Summoner of Sounds, and putting together the RMN Music Pack 2. Saying that, I don't know who we could ask.
I'd like to see the return of an actual judged contest. I don't think we have had anything even judged since 2016, or when was the last time we had these sorts of judge commentary articles? https://rpgmaker.net/articles/551/ Or prizes beyond MS and a badge? Is the trouble finding people to host/judge these?

I kind of think back to events like like the ones nakster hosted years ago on gamingw that attracted new people to the community and encouraged people who hadn't released anything for a long time to come back. There were also some legit good games to come out of those contests, and while there's for sure some quality stuff coming from events in the past 3 years, it doesn't seem like it has an audience outside our community. For future events I think a good acid test for an event would be something like "would any random who posts on rpgmakerweb be motivated to sign up here to enter?", which definitely used to happen for some older contests and some of the collaborative events (people looking to network.) The events we're going through now just sort of feel like the same group of people making games for each other, especially considering that they run continuously and for long chunks of time (1 month+). Back in 2011/2012 that was considered a big commitment to be taking a break from "main" projects and I think discourages participation.
pianotm
The TM is for Totally Magical.
32347
The Twisted Fairy Tale event this past Halloween is a judged event. LockeZ, how's it going, by the way?
I think another issue is that itch as a platform literally lets people make events/online jams on their own. People outside this community are likely just doing itch related stuff (even though itch isn't really a community on its own). There's basically a game jam starting every week. RMN is kind of timing their events very sequentially based on the resident users, and require attention from the staff, sometimes having a gimmick/deadline that may only pertain to users here.

With that context in mind, assessing the growth and activity for an event is a little difficult.
Halloween is usually judged, though the 2017 one was reviving a project so judging was unnessecary. Caz, Starskipper and I (the Brits) judged halloween twice, for the 2013 one we did podcasts: https://rpgmaker.net/articles/946/

As for attracting newcomers to contests, could we have an additional winner? Best game from a new member (joined in the last year? Assuming of course that a newer member doesn't win outright). It might incentivise them to enter. I agree with the perception that the contests are usually entered by the same group of us every time.

As for attracting new member generally, what exactly do we offer them? What would make them choose RMN over say RMW?
author=Fomar0153
As for attracting new member generally, what exactly do we offer them? What would make them choose RMN over say RMW?


better events



I'm really excited about the battle arena, to be honest. Or otherwise a dungeon crawling-heavy chain game. What would need to be done so it's consistent, is to set up hard rules before the actual gammaking begins. Once the game's come up with a basic setup and basic limits / numbers / etc. it sets the scope for the collaborators to participate. Of course, nothing stops someone from completely messing up the scope but that will be deliberate and not necessarily a bad thing (isn't that the fun thing about chain games?)

this is by far the event i'm most excited about.

I also had my own event idea which was having every participant make a whole game out of the same base project (or the same few base projects)
For example, a base project with a town, a protagonist and a very short intro. Every participant decides how to build the game from there, resulting in an interesrting contrast between every participant's way of thinking and line of work~
I'd be happy to do more judged events but I also am wary of always being a judge because I feel it's better to switch judges up from time to time and a lot of the time it can be hard to get other people to do something like that within a set time.

That said, I'm happy to judge you all wanting in the near future. >:D
It's not like I have the IGMC to judge in anymore... :<

A limitation game event might be a good idea too. Also, there's an RS coming up next month, so get your old projects at the ready.
Cap_H
DIGITAL IDENTITY CRISIS
6625
I think IGMC is the one to blame. You can't offer a good enough reward. Participants of IGMC get feedback, attention and a chance to win a bag of money. I guess RMN could host a smaller judged event with some symbolic rewards. Judges shouldn't be so hard to find. We need to give people something to enter the event for. I think original art and music would be the best value.
I was worried at first of making a "useless" thread and that I should've talked with someone of the staff from the beginning, but now I think I'm glad that I made it, it opened the discussion about how and why RMN should make events.

In my humble opinion, I think I prefer that the ratio of "with judges" and "without judges" should be around 1:2 or 1:3, this is mostly because I tend to take judged events more seriously, in the others you just can kinda create whatever the hell you want, but with judges, you usually aim to make something really good and you put all your heart into it, this can be both fun and rewarding, but it also can get very stressful, I think one or two events like these every year would be enough (Assuming each one takes between 2 weeks and one month)

Oh yeah, this is probably obvious, but having multiple judges (and also organizers, especially for the less "serious" events) can be helpful in case one of them decides to drop out for some reason, that way we can avoid having any unfinished events ever again. I think that's worse than an unpopular event with very few entries because at least the few participants had a fun time with their little group.

author=JosephSeraph
I also had my own event idea which was having every participant make a whole game out of the same base project (or the same few base projects)
For example, a base project with a town, a protagonist and a very short intro. Every participant decides how to build the game from there, resulting in an interesrting contrast between every participant's way of thinking and line of work~


First, the Battle Arena *could* work, but it needs to be very well organized, and I think that the more rules you add, then the less participants will join, but now that I think about it, when I thought about it for the first time, I imagined it like befuddled quest, where everyone makes one map and the organizer puts them all together in a single game, but probably taking the chain game approach would be better in this case, you just pass the project to the next guy in line, that way it could work, though we still have to set which scripts are allowed, how much we can mess with the characters and their skills, etc. We should give it a shot someday in the future though, because, we will never know unless we try it and if it fails? That's alright, we learn from our mistakes and move on

Second, I like that idea of everyone working with the same bases! I was just thinking of that other thread where everyone was talking about when and how is acceptable to use sample maps and the RTP, I think we can use that for an event? "Working with the basics" or something like that, although I fear that the resulting games will be too similar unless we allow small edits to the maps and databases, or we could ditch the RTP and start with a custom base too, and see where everyone takes their games, it also has the problem of games being a bit too similar, but it would be fun to see the style of gam mak of everyone
pianotm
The TM is for Totally Magical.
32347
Cap_H
I think IGMC is the one to blame. You can't offer a good enough reward. Participants of IGMC get feedback, attention and a chance to win a bag of money. I guess RMN could host a smaller judged event with some symbolic rewards. Judges shouldn't be so hard to find. We need to give people something to enter the event for. I think original art and music would be the best value.

Well, IGMC is run by a corporation who gets the money for contests by putting all their stuff on sale on Humble Bundle.

Also, Liberty, the No-RM event had 12 games, which is a fairly decent turnout for an event of that sort. If the issue is people learning a new system, there's nothing wrong with making it a six week event.
An extended no-rm would appeal to me, I've been having fun with html5 or I might decide to commit enough time to unity to actually get somewhere.

As for a limitation event, it depends what the limitations are, the Ace Lite event was fun. Though another route for example not being allowed to use an rpg staple e.g. levelling as progression might be interesting.

If you need people willing to judge I don't mind taking turns.

Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
5354
author=Cap_H
We need to give people something to enter the event for.


We do, it's called "MakerScore" and "achievement badges." Also, ideally, "the event is fun."
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