RED'S PROFILE

"Imagine a film critic who refused to watch any movie over 5 years old–no, scratch that. Imagine a film director who refused to adapt any material over 5 years old. The idea that nothing written 6-plus years ago could have anything to say is ludicrous, yet that’s the critical culture videogames have engendered. Modern games are worthy of our time, respect and analysis, while “classic” games are relegated to curio status; if they’re played at all, it’s with a “slumming it” mentality, like an adult binging on YA fantasy fiction. We assume that modern games have taken the best of precious generations while discarding what didn’t work, and that we are sitting atop the evolutionary apex of the medium. Games have never been better–except for next year.

Bullshit."

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Beginner's Intimidation and High Standards

author=kentona
We also have this: http://rpgmaker.net/code_of_conduct/

Points 7 and 8 are relevant.

I think it would definitely be a good idea to include the Code of Conduct or even just a link to those two points somewhere on the game submission page along with the Game and Review Submission Rules and What to do if your Game Submission is denied as these are regular thoughts/occurrences every community member has when submitting content of any kind. (Up until this point, I didn't know we even had a code of conduct.)

I think it'll go a long way to distill the irregular hostility that comes with new community members and if not it should be somewhere close by in order to remind them. I now know it's currently the bottom of every page of RMN under Policies. But right now I think it’s in a place everyone can easily miss.

Now I'm not saying this should be moved from the bottom of the page, but like the Submission Rules, the Code of Conduct should also be posted again, somewhere on this site so absolutely no one can miss it.

It's not an end all be all solution, but it might help.

Beginner's Intimidation and High Standards

author=Zeuzio
Are we doing a good job of integrating new members?


author=Julev
Here's an idea:

What if game submissions were separated into groups. Kind of like leagues. You have the beginner league, the intermediate league and the advanced league.


author=kentona
I don't think an official system needs to be put into place. (It would instill a false sense of trust in the "system", and when it fails -ie someone just ignores it and criticizes the game regardless, now the "system" is at fault for failing to provide those imaginary safeguards).

This is not the solution you are looking for. <---(He's right)


So the general consensus I’m getting here, from everyone, is that it’ll always remain up to the creators themselves to learn how to deal with constructive criticism.

So there’s absolutely no way we can stop someone or at least warn them? Give them some sort of idea of what to expect once they've uploaded their game to rpgmaker.net? ‘Cause I think that’s the real issue here, that anyone relatively new to the site and rpgmaker is absolutely blind-sided when they finally do receive, actual constructive criticism.

Like, I know there are game and review submission guidelines and an FAQ for game submissions that are denied. But right now, there doesn’t seem to be anything we can direct them to that would help them learn how to deal with constructive criticism or at least be made aware of it, before submitting their game to rpgmaker.net.

Do we have an article or a thread somewhere, just something so they won’t have to realize this on their own?

If not, can we make one? Like, I know it sounds absolutely ridiculous to anyone who has already come to accept this essential "fact of life". But for those who haven't, can we at least make something for them?

Beginner's Intimidation and High Standards

author=Lucidstillness
This is just a suggestion, but if developers were able to place a tag of 'beginner', 'intermediate' or 'expert' on to their game page, I think it would go a long way to solving this dilemma. A developer who is just starting and wants their game to be judged as a beginner game would have that option, just as a developer who is confident and experienced will be able to place their game up to the highest level of standards available. A five star beginner game would not be the equivalent of a five star expert game, but it would create a sense of positive reinforcement in a developer and, I think, only encourage their future improvement. This would also allow players to immediately know the quality of game they should expect, and if they want to avoid beginner and intermediate games entirely they would now have that option, even if the game has no reviews.

I think this would also help the reviewing and criticism process greatly, as such a system would require a concrete set of standards for each classification of game that was agreed upon by the community. For example, if a beginner game was basic and derivative, but used its resources well, featured good mapping and event work, avoided glitches and was fun to play, it would qualify as a great beginner game. Similarly, if a game featured custom graphics and scripting, excellent mapping, compelling gameplay and storyline, and an original score, it might just be the best the community can produce; a professional game (I know some professional games are bad, but it's just for the sake of the example). These standards would have to be hammered out, but in the end I think they would be a lot fairer and a lot more helpful to critics as guidelines.

So, what do you guys think? Good idea, bad idea?


I agree, I said something similar on the first page. There really does need to be something in place that'll give some sort of indication.

Man's Best Friend

Just reporting a bug.


I tried moving the cannon down twice, now I can't seem to move at all. :X

Love the game guys~<3

Beginner's Intimidation and High Standards

author=Zeuzio
I realize that there are standards on this website, as there should be. I'm not saying that we should pamper novice creators, but rather we should try and point them in the right direction and show them what they're doing wrong in a civil way. After all, we should be trying to expand this community as well as expand the demographic of RPG Makers.

So, is it hard to be a new RPG Maker user when there are such high standards in place already?

Are we doing a good job of integrating new members?

If not, then how will that affect the RPG Making community--particularly RMN--in the future?

What are your thoughts?

Well, most likely, the community as a whole will collapse in on itself
or as Shinan described, discourage future users from game making completely.
Which I think is a terrible idea! I want to play Shinan's rpgmaker game! Even if it's bad!

It’s usually regarded as “common sense” amongst veteran makers to hold off sharing any of your early attempts in rpgmaker, until you’re somewhat familiar with the maker itself, but I think that’s a load of bull. Because the genuine appeal of rpgmaker has always been, to create your own rpg with relative ease.

I think there should be a system in place, something as simple as labeling your game as “RTP”, I dunno, just something that will help players differentiate, or indicate games made by veteran makers, from those less experienced with the maker. Because even early attempts in rpgmaker still have their charm and should be recognized for their accomplishments.

I love playing RTP games, they're usually poorly executed but more often than not have interesting ideas. It's wrong to compare these games to those that are more experienced with the maker.

Games that nobody remember?

Here are a couple of other games I came across in that old issue of gamefan.
Again, I’ve never played these and all I have to go by are the screenshots;
it’s really strange to finally see these games in motion.

Invalid YouTube URLhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=2OQvCwYa8I8
Team Innocent looks like an animated survival horror game released for the pc-fx.
(2D sprites on prerender backgrounds).
Unfortunately (…fortunately?) other than this intro movie...
Invalid YouTube URLhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=3rBIZ355dcI
...and this promo that shows off a bit of game play, there doesn’t seem to be any
playthroughs of it on youtube.

I'm gonna post a bit of the preview from the magazine


The story here is a deep one… The saga unravels as professor Chrono Enhancer creates three perfect children using biotechnology; He is soon found out (dabbling in bio technology is illegal) and arrested by the GCOP. The three little girls are adopted by the GCOP and trained as a special task force team… Team Innocent. You come in when the girls (now obviously grown up) are on a routine mission, which coincidentally leads them back to where they were created. Up to this point the girls believe their father to be dead, but as the story unravels they discover that he is indeed alive. This leads us (after 20 or so hours of beautiful action role playing) to the imminent confrontation between the lead character in the game, Saki, and her father/creator. Crushed that she cannot reproduce, love, or lead a normal life, she is overcome by her anger and… you can guess the rest.

Games like this will never be made, or come out, here in the land of the big license, and that makes them all the more appealing to me. I don’t understand a word of Japanese but somehow I knew exactly what I was doing (the adventure is very visual) and thoroughly enjoyed this entire game. Now I hear that a sequel is in the works. I will be waiting… patiently. E.Storm.


Hahahahahaha...ahh. Poor guy, :'(


Skeleton Krew, along with Batman and Robin, Xmen 2 and Beyond Oasis, were some
of the last few games to come out for the sega genesis. Again, I never got to
play this only because I could never find a copy of it at BlockBuster.
Which is a shame because growing up I was huge fan of multi-directional shooters.
...Yea, DeadNation was terrible.


Even though it was available, I never picked up Desert Demolition.
I wish I had now simply because due to licensing you’ll probably never see
this game released on any other system ever again and I absolutely love,
well animated, faithful, licenses video games.

They even play a drum roll at 1:36, just like in Whoa, Be-Gone!


Space Griffon VF-9 (formerly known as Hamlet) looks like a sci-fi first person
shooter for the Playstation with really cheesy voice acting synced up to
animated character ‘facesets’,
honestly, I have no idea what this game is but
I love it already!

Apparently, 94’ was also the year of the multimedia video game crash with
the Sega Genesis, 32X, Sega Saturn, being released, along with the Atari Jaguar,
PC-FX, 3DO, Playstation and the SNES being on the market.

As a whole it was interesting, because I think this is where we saw the most change: It seemed as though the medium itself was struggling to cross that threshold between controlling a character that travels along a two-dimensional plane, to controlling a series of full-animated clips, "virtual reality" and then finally, fully crossing over into the world of three dimensional gaming.

The RPG Music Challenge - Phase 1 Results!

My vote goes to entry number 4, because I've yet to play a game where I’ve witnessed a terrible truth at the center of the earth.

Games that nobody remember?

I found these in a really old issue of gamefan, which I got for my birthday
many many years ago. I never got a chance to play these...



Brain Dead 13 was featured on Splatter a show that specialized
in covering the animation industry which was shortly cancelled. Outside of the magazines
screenshots, this was the only time I ever got to see this game in motion.
it's another FMV-based game.



Everyone remembers Tempo for the 32X, I just don't remember
it ever being this fluid.



...Namco made a Mortal Kombat Clone?!?



FMV based games were such a short lived genre,
with all the audio clipping, pausing and limiting controls, It's hard to imagine
that at one point games like Battle Heat PC-FX were believed to be the future of the industry.
...Ohmygod, they actually say it, they actually say Turrrnadddoohhh-aaattaacck!



...What's Alundra doing on the sega genesis?!?

Best Game Openings: RPG Version

These aren't the greatest, but they definitely stick out in my mind.


To this day, those first 10 seconds still amaze me; what the hell's he looking at?!


Fast forward to 0:30 for the 8-bit fight scene. I want to see someone do something
like this in rpgmaker: No text, No over-the-top battle animations, just a pure,
genuine fight scene.


Usually RPGs begin with the cosmos and a wall of text that nobody cares enough to read.
So when I finally stumbled across "Wanderers from Ys" for the SNES, I immediately
thought how unusual it was for an RPG to open in such an earnest and down-to-earth sort of way.

"This journey is aimless."

Your favourite PSX Games?

author=Yellow Magic
- Bust-A-Groove 2 <-- please play this

The interesting thing about music games, like Parappa the Rapper and Bust-A-Groove 2 is that nowadays, unless the emulation is absolutely perfect, the game is almost immediately unplayable: I remember trying to play Parappa one time over Connectix Video Game Station - an early emulator made for PowerPC Macs and then later Windows PC that was eventually bought out by sony themselves after a court order- and you just couldn't do it, you cannot play Parappa on this thing.

Visually, the game played perfectly, but there was something else going on, something off screen that made it go out sync. Like in order to play the game right, you'd have to completely ignore the audio and visual cues the games provides you in order to win. The same thing happens during Bust-A-Groove 2; if there's absolutely any kind of slow down during the game, everything would go completely out of sync; it's an absolute nightmare for old music based video games.

Throwing in a couple more.

-Medal of Honor
-Thrasher: Skate and Destroy
-Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo

Also, including a link to an excellent write up on a couple games from a company we never played.

Love-de-lic

"...After having participated in the creation of some of the most respected titles for the Super Nintendo, namely Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG as a field designer, Kenichi Nishi felt the desire to find new paths that could lead him to fully realize his creative power. For this reason he invited many of his best friends and most promising co-workers from the Squaresoft group, creators such as Taro Kudo, Akira Ueda and Yoshiro Kimura. Together, a group of nine elements worked for over two years in a highly personal project: Moon RPG Remix Adventure was released in 1997 for the Playstation."

"...Dissimilar to the average RPG, Moon renounces battle sections and leveling up systems focusing, instead, on the intricate bonds we establish in our life and the rewarding love that results from them. The game’s unsettling cover art presents the simple outline of a mysterious character and, below, the words "Fake <-> Real" it seems as though the game was preordained, from the very beginning, to become the whimsical relic it is today."