BLIND'S PROFILE

Depending on your criteria and personal standards, it can be a very taxing process to "convert" old RPGMaker games to become fit for commercial publication. You have to be willing to make sacrifices, cut losses, realize your "vision" may never come to full fruition unless you have unlimited time, money, and mental energy.

I'm not against the idea on principle, though. We've had many talented artists and developers in our community over the years, and they deserve to be elevated beyond a freeware content creator if they're willing to put in the effort!

author=JS
it used to be really toxic though, gammak had to be exclusively a "labor of love" and that means you were obliged to deposit unpaid, unrewarded hours into projects until you inevitably had no proper condition to work on them (or understandably had no way to really devote to them as your life'd be too taken by work, maintaining relationships and other adult issues that most of us back then -- children to at most freshly grown adults -- had no idea about.)

This, 100%. For almost a decade, our community similarly labored under the perception that RPGMaker games were more about hobbyist creative vision, insider "praise" and boundless artistic merit rather than the practicality of actually completing a viable finished game. This standard was very pervasive and lead to a lot of developer burnout, IMO.

BadLuck gave me a lot of advice in his experience remastering Ara Fell, and I'm surprised no one's interviewed him about that process much yet - because I think there's a lot to learn from it. (I think LWG could easily convert Villnoire, if he wanted to, for example. XD It's that good!)

In terms of updating old content with new assets, it's not always as easy as it sounds. If you used FF6/Chrono Trigger rips or whatever, you have to stylize your new material to "fit" the map layouts or animations of the past. Often times, to my surprise, it's easier to just remake the content from scratch.



But yeah, depending on the scope of your project, I recommend keeping at least a part-time job to help balance your lifestyle, or potentially fund the costs associated with your game. Everyone dreams of being the next success story to quit their day job and work entirely on game-dev, but that isn't always realistic or healthy. And it's few and far-between. Pixel artists, programmers, and composers tend to make more income than actual game developers (at least up until the release date), so that's likely an inhibition for many people here as well.

But with that being said - if you love your project, go for it! Enjoy it! Not many people are bold enough to undertake stepping out of hobbyist realm, so if you've made the decision, you're already halfway there. It can be daunting while you're actually immersed in the process, but the joy of the experience usually outweighs the bad. Everything is a learning experience.

CrossCode is one of the biggest success stories that comes to mind. If I'm correct, it came from the developers behind Velsabor; one of the most revered RPGMaker 2003 games a decade ago back on GW/Early RMN years.

author=Dyhalto
Those are mountains in the background right? xD They're awfully high up if not.

Nah, clouds. XD

If you remember the freeware demo...I made a few changes with the prologue's setting. The village (and surrounding area) will exist on more of a mountainous cliff-side, rather than a generic forest as it was before. It helps a bit with the world-building, but also gives me the opportunity to show off some pretty nice pixel art panoramas and backgrounds.

XD Aw!! I logged into RMN totally not expecting to see this. Please never stop being awesome, LBR! ♥


Speaking of which, I actually put together a "fake" SNES Box art for BR a while ago! I intended to use it in the upcoming Kickstarter for the commercial version, but I decided it was probably too cheesy haha. It's not as great as yours, though. ;P

Trying out some different poses for the dialogue portraits.

Rockin' the classic refmap I see. Nice mapping!