AOLEORZ'S PROFILE

Kinda long post, sorry about that:

Nice to meet you all. I wouldn't call me a programmer or anything of the sort but I did enjoy trying to make games in the old Rm2k and to a lesser extent Rm2k3 when I was a kid, 15 years ago. And I decided to come back and attempt to finish what I couldn't do when I was little.

This is skippable if you don't feel reading a somewhat sappy story.

It was a funny thing, I tried to make my own board game with RPG elements (by making the rules, the designs of the characters, the story, the desings of the board and cards... all of them were, of course, pretty bad), then I was introduced to RPG Maker 2000. I of course had no idea what to do, I barely knew how to use computers back then, in fact I learned how to use computers thanks to RPG Maker 2000. Still, stuff like variables, switches and all that were a mystery to me and while I had ideas for a game it wasn't well beyond my capacity so after a couple of years of trying stuff I eventually gave up and moved on.

Some months ago I was recalling some games I played on RM2k and decided to look around just for kicks. Expectably, most of them have dissapeared for good from the internet. But still found out that after I left the RPG Making many great games were completed.

So... I though why not try to do a short game just to see how would I fare now, 15 years later with a bit more of knowledge and a bit of skills here and there. I did find about newer makers, so I tried to go for VX Ace first, but found out things had changed and evolved a lot. I couldn't get used to scripting and all that so I just went back to RM2k. This time I could quickly learn how to use variables, switches, forks and all that, make my own title screen for the game, edit the sounds, etc. I am aware all that are basics and something everybody has mastered... but given those thing were unthinkable to do when I was a kid it really felt good to me.

So I began making a new game, the initial intention was to make something small, simple and forgettable that you could finish in less than an hour, but as I kept figuring more and more things out I tried to aim for something a bit bigger. I could add some small touches here and there in the RPG Maker 2000: a pseudo-class system, an AP learning system, some switch based spells such as scan, steal, a blacksmith shop.

Though I eventually came to the issue that RM2K was pretty much a relic, everybody had moved on and could do games much more complete. There wasn't really anywhere to ask for help if something came up and sharing a game of a program that was unused would simply be overlooked. I started to kind of lose my motivation and considered trying to learn using VX Ace, though my issue was that I don't have the intention to make an awesome game, but just give my all with a small something.

However, with the announcement of the official release of RM2K3 on stream I kind of found a good option. It uses the old school, simple system I am familiar and a small community of users may actually appear. I mean, the announcement topic quickly got a lot of activity and all.

So here I am, nice to be part of this community!