ANARYU'S PROFILE

Sounds like fun, I'll definitely have a demo/release of my sci-fi platformer Gravity. :)

author=Max McGee link=topic=2367.msg47266#msg47266 date=1227738989
I have completed this. The battle that was giving me trouble was bypassable. Hurray.

While in terms of style, mood, and tone it is not at all my thing, SkyE is probably the most polished, professional, and original (in terms of assets) RPG Maker game I have ever played in my 8+ year "career" and certainly has the most unique battle system I've ever seen in any RPG Maker game. Full review to follow.

But in short, this game is a treasure! Anaryu, yaomei, I implore you: please release an open source version of this game! Your programming is so light years ahead of anything I've seen with RMVX before, it is criminal not to let your fellow game makers open up the hood and try and figure out just HOW you did it. I am speaking specifically of your battle system, which is by far the smoothest ABS I've ever seen in RM. Come on guys, you're giving the game away for free anyway, why not make it something players can learn from, as well as enjoy? I'm sure that the contribution of some futuristic tiles for RMVX, even just a handful, would be hugely appreciated.

Please?

EDIT: Reviewed.

Wow! That's an insanely positive review, thanks! :O

The music is 'kind' of original; any music contributed to us was done in a music editor called MusicShake, which includes some vocal tracks that can be manipulated and added (hence why they're so vague in their wording), we did all of the music not attributed to others in that editor. This is the first time we've had so many original music sources, though as you noticed immediately there was a J-POPy feel to it (which was intentional for the style we went with.)

It's kind of funny that in terms of actual complexity this system was much easier to do than two that I've done for RMXP projects (World Outside and Cast Aside), but as a lesson I learned from hima that proved 100% true in this project: originality and presentation are more impressive and important. :)

I don't post my stuff unencrypted by default, but I have yet to say no to anyone who asked for an unencrypted version of anything, I just add one caveat:

I don't support any scripts or systems you pull from the project! (Script support takes so much time and effort, and I build all my systems for my own person use.)

So if you or anyone wants to see the insides, here you go:

http://anamei.net/files/Skye.project.zip

I'm glad this project impressed; it was our first go at "Doing more with less." The tileset changes can be pulled from there too, due to some issues we didn't get to use the character sets and do actual map events, and instead fell-back on just waist-up art talking. :)

The difficulty I did as normal: I designed it so I could just BARELY beat it (many deaths) on the difficulty one down from the top (Hard in this case). I've heard a couple of people think that Normal might be a bit tough, so I'll look at knocking that down a bit perhaps.

It's worth noting that there are actually 3 seperate endings, one for each time you play through, and you won't have all the equipment in the game until you've gotten full bars on all of the "Stats" (not Halos).

Thanks for trying it out and I'm really glad to hear you liked it!

I started with RM95 and then 2K3 for a bit but never got farther than a week or two since I didn't know any online communities at the time.

Moved onto XP when a friend let me know it was released in English, finished a ton of games in that, then made a game in VX, and now making one in Game Maker (very awesome by the way).

I started and half finished re-creating some of the basic sprite-abilities I'm used to from XP/VX in C#/XNA and started a spacey kinda project with it, but found that I didn't really want to build my own engine all the way up, then build an editor, and THEN build the game.

I'm pretty new, but I'll chime in a bit.

Rei has repeatedly hit the nail on the head; feedback and attention is (as ugly as it sounds) what makes a developer/creator post their materials regularly.

Here's a few initiatives that might lead to some better brain storming, some are things I've seen and other things I've thought of:


Academies
Back on .org (taboo, I know, but hear me out!) there used to be "Academies" where people who had the time would write-up assignments and others would do small tasks (I was involved with the Game Academy and we'd write up assignments like make a small one-room puzzle, or write a fore-shadowing scene, write an emotional scene, etc) and then they'd get feedback about what they did.

These were particularly useful for new makers who wanted quality feedback without all the "omg that sucks you need to lern to map" and the "maybe i'll try this later looks good tho" type of responses that don't help much.


Feedback Teams
Another possible initiative is a feedback "team" where people who want to review or give feedback on games can sign up, then those groups keep track of new projects that are released and someone (or more than one?) takes that on to give feedback.

Regular rewards, a cool badge, points, whatever, would be a perk of being on the team to make people join and participate; a certain amount of experience or some other criteria would have to be used to keep new people from just jumping right into the team of course.


Team Events
Many times people don't know any pixels artists, or experienced RM developers, writers, scripters, whatever. A forum for recruitment might help, but many times projects don't see completion or advancement.

One thing I thought would be neat is monthly/bi-monthly events similar to the Academies idea where a larger assignment would be given to groups of people.

The kicker is that the groups would be put together by admins from a list of interested parties who submit themselves and their skill. So maybe PersonX says they'd love to work on a short project and they can make music. PersonZ knows how to make games in RPGMaker XP, and PersonB is a writer.

Who/how those teams would be formed would be something that needs a bit of work, but short projects like that where people who otherwise would likely be unable to find help or find a project they can trust in have a place to do something.

The issue is of course what about unreliable people that say they'll help and then don't? That's a harsh reality, and it might take some work to keep people interested through some rough starts where the "fluff" members don't deliver, but it should spread pretty quickly who is like that and they'll likely not be put on teams, etc.


Team Event Version 2
Another way to approach this is that experienced admin members who want to can "organize" a project idea and gather people from a list of people who said they wanted to work on something; this way with a solid, dependable leader who can ensure everyone is doing something the project is much more likely to see completion.

Again, I imagine that the admin member wouldn't do any actual project work to give the other people the actual experience, it's just a control.

The advantage of this is that you're not trying to mix/match people into teams with no idea if it's going to work out, and if things get really bad the lead can put it on hold and replace someone.

Again the projects should be small (at least at first) and focused more on the gaining of experience/showing off of their skills.


Personal Thoughts
The same problems plague every RM/gaming site I've been on so far, and that's lots of talk, little initiative, and even less actual action.

Many times "solutions" like "Put up this technology" or "Let's let them upload stuff" or "Let them add screenshots" or "Add a new forum for it" are what you see suggested and implemented.

If you already have a good enough infrastructure, these things are useless. You need to instead mature your community so that new members learn and grow so that they BECOME like the "awesome" members that admin the site. Most of those "admins" start off at the same 'newb' level, and usually it's because they DID STUFF that they got to where they are now.

To put it simply, the ultimate goal should be to make the people DO STUFF. Only through doing will they improve, feel part of the community, and start doing stuff really makes the place stand out.

The thing that really turned me around when I was making games was a really old contest on .org called Black Tuesday. I was working on my "Epic 80 hour game of destiny" that just kept going through revisions.

The contest popped up and I thought "Hey, a good way to show off!" so I joined it. Thanks to a stubborn nature we plowed through the project and FINISHED SOMETHING. My eyes were opened. I realized that my 80-hour epic was an 8000-hour waste of time at my current state. I couldn't do what I wanted with it, and I realized just HOW much work has to go into a simple 5-hour game! I instead concentrated on smaller projects, trying out new technologies, ideas, and expanding my experience and skills.

Without that little eye-opening I'm sure I'd have dropped the project, RPG Maker XP, and continued the endless cycle of -> -> -> -> .

Getting people to finish something so they can see just what it entails and how it feels to complete a game is probably the best way to get them really started.

Those are just my thoughts however.

Check out the video listed right under the download (YouTube), the screenshot will make more sense then.