[RM2K3] [RMXP] [RMMV] WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO MAKE AN RPG GAME BY YOURSELF?

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What is the best way to make an RPG game by yourself? RPG Maker is easy to use and requires no programming, so of course this of course is possible.
it really depends upon what you're planning.
When it comes to increasing the likelihood of completing a project, you really gotta figure out what your limits are and how to leverage them, and adjust your plans accordingly.

Not the strongest at asset-work? find an asset pack to use. Not much of a scripter? Find some good scripts to use that are offered in places, or possibly go entirely without them! Not much of a writer? Just make your game as story-lite as possible. Of course, there's always opportunities to grow your skills, but if you plan on going solo and want to get something out the door, you need to make sure you have as little work to hand yourself as possible.
Also, it helps to make your game relatively short and try to nip scope creep in the bud.

As for just making a game without concern for completing it?
Focus on honing your craft. Read the help files, figure out how everything works, make a plan, and set out to make that plan work with what you've learned. And as you continue, you will learn even more as the years go by.

But at the end of the day, remember that no dev is an island. You can always ask for help if you get stuck on anything, and there's always plenty of artists who would be willing to fulfil commissions for the right price. While getting good at skillful boolean searching can get you far, there's nothing quite like asking an expert.

If you're just trying to pick an engine for your first game, I'd say start with 2k3. The file sizes are relatively small, scripts are a non-issue, and it seems to have just the right amount of features and limitations to hone any beginner's skills.

I wish you the best of luck on your gammak!
I've been working with RMVX for over a decade, and when I started making games, I sucked. Period. Biggest piece of advice I have for making a large scale product is to do something with it every week, if not every day. The more you gammak, the better you'll get. Get 1% better every day, and by the end of a year you'll be more than 38x better at gammak than you were when you started. Doesn't matter if it's just booting up the project and staring at the database for 10 minutes. The more you find yourself thinking about your project throughout the day, the more ideas you'll generate and the more inspired you'll be to keep working, but inspiration isn't enough to complete a project. You've also gotta be willing to work on something even when it isn't fun and you don't want to. Just remember you can always go back and fix anything you've created, but the longer you go without doing something the more likely it is that you'll abandon a project.

When it comes to assets and scripts, there are tons of resources available and lots of support within the various communities if you aren't up to creating original assets. Reaching out for help is always a good idea if you're struggling with something. There are no stupid questions. At the same time, if you want to make original systems and assets, study existing resources. It's amazing how much you can learn just by taking a focused look at what others have done with the intent of learning how they did it. Ive never taken courses or tutorials on Ruby, but by studying other scripts I'm able to now make my own custom scenes, just through practice and effort.

And the biggest and most important thing is to just get started. You'll probably throw away 90% of the things you make in the first year when you look back and apply what you learned that year. But going through that first 90% is vital to the learning process to get to where you need to be.

That's just my perspective on large scale projects and gammak in general. For shorter games and event based games, there isn't much I can share. Regardless, hope this helps! Good luck with your gammak journey!
To make an RPG at all you just make one big world map in RPG Maker, add some random encounters and setup some final boss that triggers the ending, bam easy... but many people here aren't satisfied with making just that.

I think the more complex question and more complex answer really depends on how "good" (also subjective) of an RPG you want to make and what features/aspects you value the most. It's not so much that RPGs are hard to make but our expectation of what an RPG ought to be from both developers and players makes development a monstrous process.

RPG Maker isn't so much an engine but a "build an RPG" button essentially, sans the actual content. If you want the template and features to be more complex then you'll have to grab plugins that someone else made and hope what you want is in them or compatible. You could use a more fundamental engine to build the RPG template from scratch, with the development time added you gain more control. If you want your art/sound to standout or be good then you add even more time/money onto that multiplying it even further.

There is no "best way" because some people don't think it's worth making a game at all if it doesn't at least pass certain thresholds. Someone goes "I want my RPG to go full 3D" well there's a 3D plugin for RPGMaker but it's pretty basic and isn't the "best way" to make a 3D RPG, just like the "best way" to make a unique looking RPG probably doesn't involve using RTP even if that contributes to the "best way" of making the bare minimum of an RPG.
It would be helpful to create a to-do list in a Wordpad document, so you don't get overwhelmed by everything that needs to be done. This actually helps make my game-making process go by a lot better than ever before.

You can concentrate on one thing for the day, such as working on a sprite sheet, a parallax map, or a piece of original music if that's what you want to do. That's probably the best advice I could ever give you.
RPGs tend to be ambitious in scope. Time is the key thing. Plan out your narrative (even dungeon crawler heavy adventures tend to have some flavor text to go with them) plan your encounters (are they traditional turn based with a first person perspective like the Dragon Quest series? Are they real time third person and zelda-esque where you fight the enemies on the map?).

I'd recommend starting with a simpler concept. Treat your first build of a game like a tech demo. Keep it short starting off (think something that lasts up to around 2-5 hours, which can still translate to a lot of time.)

TLDR: Plan out stuff. Start off simple and tinker with the engine. See what you like. See what you don't. Decide from there.
Plan out your game! Let me say that again, PLAN OUT YOUR GAME!!! RPGs are typically very heavy on content and you really don't want to burn out or write yourself into a corner 250 hours into developement. Plan out what your story is going to be, who is your hero? What is he doing? What conflicts does he/she/ze face? Also plan out your gameplay, what enemies, mechanics, weapons do you want? Also make sure RPG Maker is right for your game. If you're making a staightforward Dragon Quest/FF style RPG then RM will fit like a glove for you. However if you're trying to make a game like Xenoblade Chronicles... I'd look elsewhere. Hope that helps a bit!
first accept that it's a VERY long journey and will take a lot of your time with very little reward.
https://rpgmaker.net/articles/802/

https://rpgmaker.net/articles/1141/

https://rpgmaker.net/articles/1145/

https://rpgmaker.net/articles/1413/

https://rpgmaker.net/articles/2619/

plus, use existing assets (esp. to start!). Whether it be RTP or asset packs or whatever


EDIT:

Remember the three-fold path to Gam Mak:

  • HAVE A CLEAR IDEA OF WHAT YOU ARE SETTING OUT TO MAKE.
  • HONE YOUR SKILLS AND BE CONFIDENT IN THE SKILLS YOU HAVE.
  • BE TENACIOUS IN YOUR EFFORTS.

The phases of game creation are BRAINSTORMING, FRAMING, DESIGN, PROTOTYPING, PRETTY, FEATURE, REFINEMENT. In that order!

Being organized is almost as good as being talented

Procrastination is an emotion regulation problem, not a time management problem.

Make frequent backups
I certainly agree with that last one. Ever since I suffered a crash, I make backups all the time.
Storing backups ain't that great compared to source control. More people should look into that because having to copy out your entire project to a spare harddrive or dropbox isn't that feasible compared to storing changes online to a git where every change is documented and you have multiple versions.
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