BARRETTORBIX'S PROFILE

The idea of a game dev who doesn't play at least some games in their free time is really strange to me. It'd be like an author who never reads or a composer who never listens to music. Like everyone else has said, you have to allow yourself time to dev, play, and enjoy other unrelated activities.

There's another important thing to point out here, though. Even when you play games in your free time, I don't think it always needs to be to learn something about game design. That's fine, of course, and you're likely to learn from other games even when you're not trying to, but I don't think you should always play games with that specific goal in mind.

In my experience, the quickest way to kill my enjoyment of something is to turn it into an assignment. And when I play games thinking primarily about what I'll learn from it, that's what it becomes. It becomes something I have to get through rather than something I want to stop and enjoy. I don't want to play games just because I'll learn something about game design. I want to play games because it's an intrinsically fun thing to do, for its own sake. You have to give yourself some time to do things purely because you want to do them, and not for any other reason.

author=StormCrow
Is it okay to restrict Save Points to increase tension (a la the Ink Ribbons & Typewriters in Resident Evil, the Dark Souls' franchise's extremely frugal placement of checkpoints) or is "save anywhere, anytime" an absolute maxim of good game design? Is it okay to expect players to get through a medium-long section of gameplay (towards the end of the game if it matters), starting over at the beginning of that section if they get game over?

There's nothing inherently wrong with restricting how frequently the player can save, but you need to be very careful how you go about it. It's very easy to make it needlessly frustrating rather than difficult.

This might be a controversial opinion, but one big problem I have with Dark Souls, despite having played through it several times, is that I think the game would benefit from having save points before bosses. I know it's supposed to add to the tension, and they say that getting back to the boss is part of the challenge, but I never really felt that way. Let's be honest, how many people actually fight all the enemies leading up to the boss every time they die? I can't speak for everyone, but I always run past all the enemies once I've been through the area so I can get back to the part I actually want to do. Everything else just feels like an extended loading screen.

In the case of Dark Souls in particular, I feel like not having bonfires before bosses just makes the game more tedious rather than challenging. I wouldn't even mind if they made the bosses significantly harder, as long as I had the chance to immediately try them again. I'm not an incredibly patient person, but no matter how ridiculous a challenge is, I'll always have far more patience for it if I have the chance to immediately try it again. I still love Dark Souls, mind you! But personally (and maybe this is just me), I've always preferred harder, more condensed challenges as opposed to longer yet easier ones.

Thanks for the warm welcome, everyone! I've already received plenty of helpful and encouraging comments, and it's given me that extra push to get started. I'm looking forward to sharing my work and seeing what else the community has to offer!

Awesome! I've been getting into digital painting myself lately. I never thought to practice it with Bob Ross (I've never watched Bob Ross at all, actually). I'll have to give this a try.

EDIT: You probably don't need this, but I'll just drop it here for anyone interested. I found this great tutorial series for digital painting that happens to follow along with a Bob Ross episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FfVnEIkA3I&index=1&list=PLaGRTLvEbVzybijtYZRy4EoGrx6Bq_xOG

Hello everyone!

I've been vaguely aware of RM for a long time now, and even dabbled in it several years ago, but I never came close to finishing anything and was never really involved in the community.

However, I recently discovered a bunch of the RM Greats like Yume Nikki, To the Moon, and Ib, and I've been totally blown away by the creativity on display! I don't think I realized until recently just how much could be done with the program, and when I dealt with it in the past, I often felt discouraged, like I wasn't a "real" game designer if I couldn't do any coding. But these games have changed my perspective on that, and I've got the itch again. I'm considering getting back into game design, though I don't really expect it to be anything more than a hobby. In addition, I'm really excited to see what else this community has made that I've missed over the years!