NEVERSILENT'S PROFILE

Heya, fellow nerds of the world. I'm not exactly new to RMN, but since I've barely been active here for the last year or so, I figured it would be best to re-introduce myself. Who knows, one or two of you might even remember me, if I'm lucky.

I would like to apologise to anyone who was hoping for or expecting feedback, testing, or any sort of productivity from me for their projects. I promise I didn't forget about you. To put it simple, a mix of feeling overwhelmed and of my personal interests shifting away from RPG Maker was the main reason for me to go quiet for so long. At least it seems like you all have been chugging along just fine. Good work, you all!

I can't promise I'll be super active again in the future for now, as I haven't touched RPG Maker for any work deserving the name in a long, long time. But I will try to at least not completely vanish from RMN like this again.

Other than that, yup, I'm still a huge nerd, I still live in Germany, and I still like to talk a lot. I mostly waste spend my time on RMN's Discord channel these days, so feel free to say hi there as well.

Thanks for having me back, and I hope we can be great friends! Again!

Heyo, fellow RMNers! I had been thinking about making this thread for a while now, and as today is the Random Act of Kindness Day, it's finally time to make it a reality.

As you may or may not know, I enjoy creating all kinds of complicated, crazy mechanics with events. Eventing is the one thing in RPG Maker I believe I'm really good at. In addition, I like designing minigames and puzzles as well.
Of course, working with eventing is not a secret skill, but something everybody can learn rather easily. However, it's not something everybody enjoys, or has the patience for. But I actually like coming up with ways to make complex things work purely with events. And I have a lot of experience with it: Among other things, I made a puzzle game where all the mechanics are purely event-based, worked on two battle systems that almost completely work through events, and designed puzzles for unity's game Luxaren Allure.

What does that have to do with you? Well, if these credentials convince you, and you happen to want a puzzle, minigame or some really complicated eventing for your game... then let me know, and I'll try to get it done for you. I can work in RPG Maker XP, 2003, and VX Ace (although if necessary I can design theoretical concepts for any maker)
And the best part? It's free! I don't want anything in return! (Okay, maybe mentioning me in the credits would be nice.)

I will reserve the right to refuse or abandon a job if it really doesn't work for me, although I'm usually pretty persistent.

So what are you waiting for? I want to work!


Edit:
Just for clarification: The purpose of this thread is to help you out if you are experiencing problems with puzzles or complicated eventing in your own game projects, or for me to create such things for you if you have an idea and struggle to implement it yourself.
However, I am currently not available for long-term cooperations or team projects. I'll happily help out here and there, but I just don't have enough free time to commit to full co-creatorship on a complete game.



Current tasks:
- Dragnfly: Various puzzles and mechanics
- watermark: Puzzles for 99


Finished tasks:
- MattMats: Soldiers.exe
- MattMats: Grain (slime puzzles)

You have this awesome game project sitting on your computer, waiting for you to finish it. You recently played this one game you really want to write a review for. Or there is that piece of music or art you've been working on to submit for an event or as a resource. But even before you can start to work on it again, you realise how overwhelming the amount of work still to be done is, how exhausting even thinking about this project is, how hard it is to concentrate on it right now.
So maybe just clear your head for a minute first, and play a little game you haven't touched in years, and for good reason. Perhaps visit some website to read a few forum posts in topics that normally don't interest you. Or just watch an at least remotely entertaining video for a while. Or two, or three, or five.
Because right now, anything sounds more appealing than working on that project you want to see finished so much.

Does this sound familiar to you? Then I regret to inform you that you, too, have fallen victim to the cruel phenomenon known as procrastination. I feel your pain.


But the times they are a-changing! Welcome to the Anti-Procrastination Initiative! The aim of this event is to provide a frame that encourages RMNers to take the opportunity to overcome their tendency to procrastinate. If you are one of us who struggle to stay focused on a task for a longer time, now is the time to start fighting back, and you can earn yourself a shiny achievement and some Makerscore in the process!




Here's how this is going to work:

Starting on Friday, June 10th, everyone who decides to join this event will have the chance to announce a certain goal (or multiple smaller goals) they want to achieve within the next week. I will write down this goal and the day you posted it. Once you have publicly announced what your goal is, you have exactly one week time to get it done - it doesn't matter on what day you post it, you always have until that same weekday one week later.
If you manage to complete your goal before that deadline, produce some evidence - such as a screenshot, a video, a snippet of text etc. - and post it in this thread. Doing so will count as one success on your part, and you can announce a new goal. The complete event is going to last for about 5-6 weeks. If you can achieve 4 successes within that time, you will be rewarded with the Anti-Procrastination Pro achievement, and you can proudly say that you have overcome your inner laziness.


The Rules:

- Be reasonable with your goals. Try to keep them realistic, so that you don't get overwhelmed by an impossible task. Small but manageable steps are the key to regular progress. But don't make them so tiny and easy that they require practically no effort on your part, either. The point of this event is to become better at combating procrastination, and an empty success on paper will not help you in that regard.

- Try to focus on game-making and RMN related goals for this event. Sure, if you want to use this event to encourage yourself to continue your half-written novel or academic thesis, I can't stop you. But the other participants, and the site as a whole, benefit more from this event if what we do here has some relevance for RMN. (Plus, it gives you a chance to build up some hype for the projects you're working on...)

- Do not despair if you can't make a goal in time. There should be enough time available throughout the full event to make up for missing one goal. Just announce a new one instead. And either way, this is not mainly about achievement hunting. Every little bit of work that you have been enouraged to finish by participating in this event is a positive development in itself. Keep that in mind and you should hopefully be able to use the pressure of deadlines to your advantage, instead of seeing them as discouraging.


Good luck and happy not-procrastinating!



List of participants:
1. NeverSilent (5 Successes)
2. pianotm (4 Successes)
3. Liberty (4 Successes)
4. Frogge (2 Successes)
5. Dyhalto (4 Successes)
6. AubreyTheBard (1 Success)
7. Kylaila
8. Zephire98
9. TungerManU (4 Successes)
10. Ratty524
11. Cap_H (4 Successes)
12. Gredge109 (4 Successes)
13. Pizza (1 Success)
14. captainregal
15. LockeZ
16. JosephSeraph
17. LouisCyphre (2 Successes)
18. Corfaisus (4 Successes)
19. Zero3D
20. Seiromem (1 Success)
21. Illy (1 Success)
22. psy_wombats
23. charblar
24. mjshi (3 Successes)
25. zDS (6 Successes)
26. Mirak (1 Success)
27. MrChearlie
28. WolfCoder
29. Punkitt (1 Success)
30. Chilly (4 Successes)
31. Nirwanda
32. thesacredlobo (6 Successes)
33. Dudesoft
34. Irog (8 Successes)
35. FlyingJester (4 Successes)
36. outcry312 (4 Successes)
37. Marrend (4 Successes)
38. Adon237
39. OpticMagic
40. genxia
41. XoeisCool
42. Jackus
43. Gourd_Clae (4 Successes)
44. Beaker (6 Successes)
45. orochii
46. karins_soulkeeper
47. Luiishu535 (8 Successes)
48. kentona
49. GreatRedSpirit
50. Perihelion (1 Success)
51. alterego (6 Successes)
52. ahillreborn
53. Fruebis (4 Successes)
54. El_WaKa (4 Successes)
55. XBuster
56. Bobhostern
57. Zeebree
58. volke_locke (4 Successes)
59. MikuLeRoux
60. Arandomgamemaker
61. Healy (1 Success)
62. Preki
63. Faenon (1 Success)
64. TsunamiJurai (4 Successes)

Current goals:

June 10th - June 17th:


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A few games I played recently have lead me to start thinking more about a certain concept: Sacrificing something in a game in the hope of getting something better out of it. The idea of sacrifice can obviously be understood in many vastly different ways, some of which hardly have anything in common with each other. But what they have in common is that they give the player the feeling of having to give something up as a means of getting somewhere, ranging from a valuable resource to their main character's sanity. As I started listing some types of sacrifices that I could imagine or had actually seen implemented in games, it occurred to me that there are probably many more ways of using this concept for interesting game mechanics. So I'd like to hear what kinds of thoughts or ideas others have on the subject.

The most common and (theoretically) unspectacular type of sacrifice that occurs in games is probably the practice of giving up resources that exclusively exist for that purpose. Spending MP or items in order to aqcuire a certain benefit, like damage to an enemy or the restoration of another resource such as HP, is something we all know too well. Where it gets more interesting is when these resources serve another additional purpose or are vital rather than easily expendable, like in games where HP themselves also serve to fuel skills, or losing your MP can mean lower stats or even death as well.

Another type of sacrifice that usually requires some more planning and strategic thinking consists of gaining or building up some sort of advantage, and then being given the choice to give up this benefit in exchange for a different desirable effect. Examples are typically stackable buffs a character can acquire over time, but the player can also at any point decide to spend these buffs in order to unleash a powerful skill that gets stronger with every buff stacked so far. In this example, a theoretical long-term benefit is given up for a short-term advantage, but I'm sure there are many other ways to approach this as well.

The one type of sacrifice that I found to be especially rare, both because of their possibly great impact and their dramatic effect, is when actual characters are taken out of the picture in exchange for some kind of benefit. Obviously, mechanics based on this are usually associated with more evil figures, and often set in the context of demonic rituals and the like. For example in the game Spelunky, it is possible to offer the (dead or unconscious) bodies of other living beings, including friendly NPCs, to the goddess Kali by placing them on an altar. Doing this a few times will result in the player receiving an item.
Another even more morbid example can be found in the strategy game Battle for Middle Earth II. In this game, recruited units usually consist of small groups of the same type of warriors whose ranks are slowly filled up again to replace their fallen comrades as long as at least one of them remains. But the faction of Angmar can recruit a Warlock unit who is instead accompanied by a group of acolytes who serve as fuel: Every spell the warlock casts actually causes a certain number of the acolytes to die, which not only restricts the number of spells he can cast within a short time, but also gives enemies the option to quickly kill off the acolytes in order to block the warlock's spellcasting abilities.

In RPGs, mechanics like these aren't very common, although we do occasionally see the boss who sacrifices his little minions to damage the heroes or steal their remaining health. But I think there's probably still tons of ways to make use of this idea of "giving to receive." And they definitely can, but don't all have to be quite as dark as some of the ones described above. So what are your thoughts?

Well then. Are you in the mood for a little chat? Good. Now, let's just spice this thing up a bit more, alright?
Don't talk. Let the screenshots do the talking for you.


Rules:
- Instead of writing something, try to keep a somewhat realistic conversation going using only the dialogue from game screenshots. Whatever text is visible on the screenshots you post has to contribute to the conversation in some way. (Of course, the conversation can be funny or humorous.)
- You can post one or two screenshots per post. If you decide to post two, they do not have to be from the same game, but they can be.
- You are technically allowed to post screenshots from any game, but RPG Maker games are preferred.
- You are technically allowed to post screenshots from your own games. Try not to go overboard with this, though.
- The images you post must not be spoilerific! So don't post images of key scenes, screenshots that contain information that spoils a game's prequels, etc.
- And the most important rule: Have fun!


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