SHADOWTEXT'S PROFILE

It would require about as much work as just making a new RPG Maker for it. And considering how inefficient RMXP is even on computers with decent specs, imagine how slow it would be on an emulator!

I suppose it would be possible to write some sort of program that just used the scripts and map files in a new engine designed specifically FOR the PSP. But see my first point about the amount of work it would take.

Yeah, I'm with WIP. There's room for both. There are thousands of people in the indie gaming community, and I've got no problem with some of them being innovators and others being people who take other people's innovations and do awesome things with them.

And I imagine 90% of people who are seriously part of the community (that is to say, not just people who are dabbling around and will forget about the whole thing in a month or so) fall somewhere between the two anyway.

Some of the best and most popular indie games are pretty old school--look at Cave Story, Alien Hominid and Every Extend. But there are also a lot of popular indie games that go for more innovative faire, like Geometry Wars, flOw, and Line Rider. You'll notice that all of the games I'm naming are the ones that get so popular and beloved that they got professional console versions released. That's not an accident.

RMN is a small but growing subset of the indie gaming community, but the same rules apply here as there--the fact that the RPG presence here is especially strong doesn't change the old school/new school thing.

author=Euphorian link=topic=573.msg7683#msg7683 date=1200610004
I have very little appreciation for the old school games personally. However, that could be because I've never even touched a SNES in my life, and don't have the attention span for games such as Earthbound.

Dude. That's just tragic. Do you have any idea how good Earthbound is? Or Terranigma?

If you're losing the storyline, you need to write an outline before trying to tell a story. And I mean like a pretty detailed outline--scene-by-scene, not chapter-by-chapter. A lot of people go into these things thinking that they don't need an outline because they can just "make it up as they go," but really a good outline's basically the only way to have a coherent storyline in anything. Improvisors just don't realize how many consistency mistakes they make without outlines, or how often they leave a character without any motivation or a scene that serves no purpose. Even pro writers and authors will tell you about the importance of a good outline. Jane Espenson talks about it quite a bit in her blog.

Outlines are also helpful when it comes time to trim down the fat from the story, since you can see all the scenes that don't progress the plot or aide characterization. Though keep in mind that what makes a good story isn't necessarily in line with what makes a good game. There are a lot of scenes in various games that don't help the story in any way at all, but make the game itself tons more fun than it would have been if it had been more concisely written. Those tend to be scenes that lead to fun gameplay segments, though, not plain ol' unnecessary storyline diversions.

But yeah. Storywise, short and sweet's the way to go. Gameplay-wise....that's not always true. There's a sweet spot to be hit in either case, but I'm not sure that they're entirely compatible sweet spots. You've got to have damn good gameplay to make someone want to put up with more than a few hours anyway, and without some serious scripting I don't see that happening in most RMXP games. It's not that it'd be that difficult to do, just that it isn't as likely as it ought to be.

I'd go with Subversion, especially if you've got a Linux box (for instance, any webhost is probably on Linux) available to either of you. Either way, you can set up your Windows machines with TortoiseSVN and everything's easy, once you follow the instructions on how to set up a Depository.

My own experiences with group projects suggests to me that the one thing you really need in any group project is a taskmaster. Someone who will stay on people and nag them and just generally be a total chore to be around. No one ever wants to do that in the projects I end up in, and I think that's a big part of why we never make any progress. The fact that I can't do it to myself is probably why I never make any progress on my own projects. There's no central organization....just a bunch of people who get distracted by shiny objects and start working on their own side projects.

It was great. When I went to see it last spring, I was coming off four or five HORRIBLE fantasy movies (I know Eragon was one of them. I don't remember what the ones before that were), and was almost losing faith in the genre, and Pan's Labyrinth restored all the faith I had lost. It was just excellent.