PHANTOMLIMB'S PROFILE

I plug in my headphones, put on relevant music, and go for a walk. Whether it's around the neighborhood, or around my house in circles. I generally conceive the "feel" of everything I need, that way.

I also enjoy planning the basic structure of the plot on word, where each "area", or dungeon, or character would be a paragraph of bullet-points, and I'd go along retconning this, changing that, making it up.

I recall fooling around with 2k3 circa 2007. I was 11/12 then.

Basically, RPG Maker has been christ in earthly form for me. I was always the kid who had a shitty computer that could not run a thing. I remember trying to run the $99.99 newly released, newly bought TES: Oblivion over 10 fps and FAILING. I envied all of my friends who had all the flashy stuff, but then after finding RPG Maker, I don't think I've ever felt that envy since.

I'm so stoked to see how far you've come, LusterMX.

Haha, I'm fairly certain I remember the day you rolled up your youtube account. I remember the first few Lunar Wish videos.

"I hope I can be as popular as you lot, someday". I think you outdid us all, dude.

Three, four years ago? Those were the days; with Zachfoss, Luishu, Hunter, etc. I've long deleted my account, (and adopted a new username, though I doubt you'd remember my old user anyways) but it's awesome to see how you've kept at it. Truly inspiring stuff. Few ever actually complete a project they've started.

Needless to say, t-minus 2 minutes until my download is complete. I'm sure I won't be disappointed.

I wasn't entirely sure where to post this, so here goes.

I used to be into the RPG Maker scene somewhere around 2008-10, youtube channel, projects and everything. Somewhere along the line, the community (in my eyes) dried up, so I took a hiatus. I've not touched it for years, turning to other outlets like music, etc, not really paying much attention to the RPG Maker community apart from dropping in every so often to see if there's anything new that rivals 'The Way' (i'm still looking). But, after picking up FF7 on Steam not a week ago, I'm filled with an inescapable desire to return to where I left off.

However, I feel stuck before a few caveats, and so all these creative thoughts are left bottled and unexpressed inside my head.

Back then, things like character and story were second fiddle to elements such as gameplay, so these are newfound woes. Immersion in the plot is integral for me now, and I feel this is incredibly difficult to pull off, on RPG Maker. Timing and dialogue is one thing, but I'm having trouble giving life to motionless 32 x 32 sprites.

I've experimented with editing charsets to create nodding, "sad", and shrugging animations, but I'm no visual artist, so it's alot of work for something not exactly immediately rewarding, and the results are often too sketchy for my finicky self.

So I'm curious; what is the most effective way of communicating emotion and immersive storytelling in an RPG Maker project? How would I go about getting around this frustrating caveat? Are there words of wisdom I can follow, or some state of mind I should enter? What are some good examples of community games here that convey emotion and immersive storytelling effectively? Are there visual artists in the community happy to fulfill requests related to editing charsets? Am I just being too pensive?

I think this is alot to ask, but I'd appreciate any sort of response.