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Let's have a serious discussion about homebrew RPGMaker games.

I've been a member of the community for something like 10 years and have noticed that its single biggest adversary is eneral disinterest on the part of its members in other's games. To make even a second-rate game can take hundreds of hours and months to years of one's free time, and it's crushingly disappointing to see that nobody is interested in the majority of our homebrew games. Newer and younger members tend to be less discerning in what they are willing to play and will play anything, but that represents a relatively small body of people at any given time and at any community. A creator of a game who has put long hours in a computer chair into a homebrew game is rightly unsatisfied by only a few dozen or few hundred downloads and a handful of reviews. A small number of RPGMaker games and game creators are extremely popular, but a small circle of iconic creators is not enough to sustain a healthy community.

Why are people not playing the games? It's popular to blame this phenomenon on individual arrogance, and that our community would thrive if its members would simply put more effort into it. There are hundreds of members even at small communities like this one, and thousands of members at sites like Gaming World and RMXP.org. This doesn't factor the enormous number of lurkers that scour community sites for good (or bad) games. If our members would get off of their pomp kick and download something, we'd be a lot better off, right? Maybe, we would, but I don't think that is the proper solution. It doesn't solve the underlying problem.

I suggest that the problem lies in the fundamental standards of the community and in the goals of the projects themselves. Very few of our games are ever finished. On the other side, absolutely every 40-hour RPGMaker epic makes fundamental sacrifices in key areas in order to achieve completion. In both cases the result is a disappointing game experience that either leaves us wanting more or us quitting before it's through.

Our community has an unhealthy obsession with long cutscenes telling stories that nobody cares about (let's be honest) and obtrusively-decorated game maps filled with so much superfluous decoration (AKA Three-Tile-Rule) that the creator forgets about level design. Many maps are pretty but are no more sophisticated than basic corridor crawls. Man authors tout brilliant game design and give us broken technical demos with lots of numbers and long acronyms in their battle systems.

I propose that we as a community focus development on creating games with:
1. Compelling gameplay
2. Reasonable scope and
3. Unique Presentation

Compelling gameplay is something that is largely misunderstood in our community. Crunching numbers is not inherently fun unless the numbers are finely balanced and the rewards substantial. Many creators feel the core mechanics of RPGMaker are lacking (they are) and remedy this by stealing gameplay systems from Tales Of games. They create convoluted gameplay systems with ridiculous multi-syllabic names (Custom Toilet Aim System). Many diehard fans of RPGs insist that Dragon Quest games have the finest RPG gameplay around, and there's a reason for that -- Dragon Quest is light on features, but heavy on design. For a better discussion on game design, refer to Kentona's excellent series of articles called FUNdamentals of Game Design.

I generally find that games with a reasonable scope are non-existent in our community. Many of the top games, including my own, are just the first portion of what would otherwise be a sweeping adventure. Only a few long RPGMaker games are worth playing all the way through, and most of the incomplete games are pretty bad anyway (I hear they are supposed to pick up after chapter 1 but we'll never know!). Many of our most talented creators have never finished a game or even released anything (WIP), primarily because their projects are too ambitious or dependent on teamwork that doesn't come through. We are all trying to make Final Fantasy games, and we shouldn't be.

The most successful and interesting indie games on the internet tend to be titles like Desktop Tower Defense, Cave Story, and Lost Labyrinth (my personal favorite). These titles all have in common ba very specific objective and a scope that is reasonable for the creator to accomplish in a realistic timeframe. Cave Story, for example, is a very simple platformer with basic graphics that are intentionally a throwback but also an obvious development shortcut. A competent programmer or a skilled middleware user (for a game of that type Game Maker comes to mind) could develop a similar engine and have a working prototype out over a weekend. Similarly an experienced RPGMaker user could make prototype for a game like Lost Labyrinth in a day. While our community is spending countless hours trying to perfect maps assembled from resources stolen from Super Nintendo games, clever creators are spending much less time making games that are a lot more fun.

These games are more fun because the creator has time to focus on what actually makes a video game fun. Cave Story is not a very ambitious game technically and that gave the creator license to focus on brilliant level design and a very charming overall atmosphere. Kentona has done a similar thing with his game Hero's Realm -- he decided to focus exclusively on building a team of characters from standard RPG archetypes and putting them through a dungeon. Regardless of what you feel about his game, Kentona and his fans can rest assured that the project is a smashing success. It defined a narrow objective and achieved it. How many of the members of this community can say they have actually been successful in meeting their project goal? Enterprising homebrew developers set goals that they can accomplish. By doing this, they can release game experiences that are not only complete, but fully-fleshed. More importantly, if we as hobbyists are able to meet our goals, our persuits are much more emotionally fulfilling.

Unique presention is a goal that is actually easier to meet than we all think it is. Not everybody has an artist or can make their own art and has to rely on pre-existing assets, but that does not exclude them from having novel presentation. Sprite edits are a popular choice, because it makes an individual game's heroes look unique and is really easy to do. This is a great first step and in my opinion is a prerequisite for any homebrew RPG. Absolutely nobody wants to play a game where they have control over characters they are already familiar with. Custom graphics are always encouraged, and even if you are a mediocre artist, your second-rate graphics will probably look better than something you ripped off of another game. However, even a game full of original art does not address the basic issue that many RPGMaker games feel like RPGMaker games. If a game feels like an RPGMaker game, then it does not feel unique and will probably be inherently boring. This is the problem of presentation.

We already know that artistic talent is the first, best way to make your very special game feel unique. In the absence of an art staff, one solution lies with code. A great example is the custom systems in Legend of the Philosopher's Stone. Legend of the Philosopher's Stone is not really that interesting of a game by RPGMaker standards, but because it has its own menus and its own battle system, it feels like its own game and is automatically more fun. Key to the game's success is that the custom systems work, they are polished, and they are fairly inventive and pretty fun to manipulate. Legend of the Philospher's Stone is a massively popular game. Incidentally, it's special systems are the only reason. The game design and writing are competent, but so are those of every other RPGMaker game. I'm sure nearly any member of our community can make a game with core elements as interesting as Legend of the Philosopher's Stone. The game is special because it plays differently. We have more fun when we play it, because when we push buttons, the results are a little different.

However, you can still make a game feel unique without original graphics or lines of code. Kentona's Hero's Realm, for example, uses RPG Maker 2003 RTP graphics and sprite edits from Final Fantasy IV. It's a novel thought, and it works. The par for the course for RPG maker 200x is that the sprites are two tiles tile. Kentona's sprites are ingeniusly only one tile tall. The basic proportion of map objects to sprite is changed by the tiny square sprites, and it feels a little different than a typical RPG Maker game. Without coding custom systems or drawing his own art, Kentona was able to make his game feel a little different from most other RPG Maker games. It didn't take much work -- just a touch of creativity. Similar little innovations can make a world of difference in making your game successful.

Our community needs to approach game creation differently if it hopes to thrive. Most of us are making boring games that nobody wants to play. If we focus on the three basic elements of compelling gameplay, reasonable scope, and unique presentation, we will be more successful in accomplishing project goals and making games that are more fun to play. Specific and manageable objectives flavored with a solid foundation of good game design and a touch of creativity result in better games. Better games increase community participation. What does community participation lead to?

Well, leads to more people bothering to play, and maybe even enjoy, the homebrew game that you have devoted a very valuable piece of your life to.

Fox News: Mass Effect is Pornographic



I was surprised that nobody else has posted a topic about this, so I thought I would take the initiative. I'm sure we've all heard of this, but in case you haven't, I'll briefly summarize.

Sometime last week, the Fox News primetime news television show aired a story about the video game Mass Effect. Their panel of experts claimed that the videogame was an interactive pornography experience marketed towards young children. They referred to the XBox360 platform as the "Sex Box". They also claimed that the video game featured "full frontal digital nudity and sex", which, among several of their other claims, is completely factually incorrect. Videogame journalist Geoff Keighley was brought on with Fox's panel of "experts" to discuss the game, and upon asking the panel whether or not they had played the game, was laughed at and derisively called "darling" and eventually removed from the show. Fox guest commentator Cooper Lawrence cited studies at universities that had no actually taken place and in general showed a complete and total lack of journalistic integrity and education about the topic.

Kotaku offers a better summary and also covers EA's response here:

http://kotaku.com/348187/ea-calls-fox-out-on-insulting-mass-effect-inaccuracies


Having had the thrill of appearing live on Fox News to try and clear the waters over a vast video game misrepresentation, I have to say I feel for Geoff Keighley. In the first two minutes the anchor says that Mass Effect has full nudity and sex and a psychologist "expert" talks about how statistics show that games are played by young boys and that Mass Effect is all about objectifying women. Oh wait, you can play as a woman too, Keighley points out and the full-on nudity? About half a boob for 30 seconds of a 30 hour game.

Keighley totally took charge of the interview. How much, you ask? He goaded their expert, who seconds earlier was talking about sexism, to call him "darling." Nice, maybe ask him to bend over and pick up a pencil next darling.

Let me end by saying it's obvious that every one of the people who they had discussing it after the fact have not only never played Mass Effect, they probably heard about it five minutes before they were supposed to offer an opinion. Very shoddy. Though, at least they got his name right.


I'm really pissed off that a major broadcaster like Fox News can get away with sensationalist, imflammatory garbage like this. While I understand that Fox is not really a news program and is more of a news-related entertainment program, lying and misreporting like this is completely unacceptable. The station has refused to air an apology or even deliver private remorse to the publisher or the staff that created the game. Fox executives have dismissed EA's demands for an apology and I would not be surprised to see some sort of massive lawsuit come out of this (EA has been extremely graceful in only demanding apology and not suing for slander/defamation of character/etc already). It is one thing to air segments on things like GTA's Hot Coffee scene or Manhunt's outright and uncompromising brutality, which represent content that actually does exist and might rightly be considered trashy by some conservative standards. Calling Mass Effect pornographic or "an interactive cross between Debby Does Dallas and Luke Skywalker" is a disgrace to journalism.

Incidentally, Cooper Lawrence herself *has* apologized for misspeaking and being generally uninformed. This makes me even more upset with Fox, who is willing to stand by embarassing half-assed reporting without so much as an apology.

There is an online petition for anyone interested: http://www.petitiononline.com/foxnews9/ These sorts of petitions don't always really achieve anything, but it's worth five minutes of your time if you care!

So, what do you guys think?

I wrote some more music.

I arranged a theme from an upcoming indie game over the last day or two. It's really pretty and you guys should check it out. Get it at my website:

http://www.brandonabley.com

Direct link for lazy people:

http://www.brandonabley.com/Music/Theme-from-Ara-Fell_Album-Version.mp3

If you guys feel generous you should comment at my website. It warms my heart <3

Dragoon Legends Official Soundtrack Part 1: Complete; DOWNLOAD NOW

Please download the Dragoon Legends Official Soundtrack Part 1:

Note -- I've updated the soundtrack as of midnight 12/07. The fixes I had *thought* to have added were mysteriously not appended! If you downloaded this on 12/06, please download again and replace your old files if you want an up-to-date version.

http://www.rpgmaker.net/~brandonabley/Dragoon%20Legends%20Official%20Soundtrack%20Part%201%2012_06_2007.zip

So there is this game coming out soon that I was on the team for called Dragoon Legends. It's a completely custom job with a brand-new game engine built inside of Multimedia Fusion, new graphics, and new music. It looks pretty cool! It's been in development for a long time and Part 1 would have been released a year ago if I hadn't taken so long to edit text and write the soundtrack. I wrote the soundtrack for the game, which took me much longer than I think it really should have. Anyway Part 1 of it is done!

Here are some really, really old screenshots from the game (I did not make the graphics or the game):





These are from sometime in early 2006, and the game looks a bit better now. Unfortunately these are the most recent screens I have.

Anyway, the music is strictly Classical and written for orchestra. I took strong influences from French Impressionism, so if you're familiar with Parisian music circa 1900 you'd know what I was going for. This is about half an hour or so of music. It's all in mp3 format, packed inside of a zip file for easy downloading. Let me know what you think!

Royalty-Free RTP Alternative Project

This was an idea that came up in IRC years ago. Basically, everyone decided that once RM.net was launched, it would be awesome if there were an RM.net officially-sponsored package of royalty-free resources that homebrew developers could use in their games. Basically, an alternative to the RTP. All of the artists and musicians in the channel (myself included) decided that this was a wonderful idea and that we should get to it as soon as the site launched!

However, you'll notice that there is not even a resources section for this site! I don't blame WIP and Holb for that oversight because the section would probably be empty anyway.

There have been various individual efforts for this sort of thing around the community. Notably, Inquisitor made a set of absolutely supurb tiles and sprites for RMXP and they are generally considered the new REFMAP (ironically, the creator of REFMAP was the artist hired to do the excellent much-reviled RMXP RTP). There was a concerted effort to write a new soundtrack for RM2k at Gaming World several few years ago too, and that was generally pretty popular.

Now that RMVX is on the way, I have got to thinking about how cool it would be to have community members join together to make a resources package for the upcoming homebrew tool.

So I'm wondering:

Is anybody interested in having this sort of resource available? Or would the resources be seen as "too common" like the RTP and work contrary to their original aim?

If you *are* interested in this type of resource, what would you like to see? Perhaps assets for popular settings other than high fantasy? Settings that come to mind are: far future, dark fantasy, present day, Victorian period, ancient far-eastern, etc. Would you like more RPG-styled music or would you like to see less conventional music? More techno? Rock? Eastern Folk? Maybe the RTP music should be recorded with high-quality synthesizers and rendered as compressed audio instead of as MIDI? Do you want new sound effects? Outdoor environments, traffic noise, machinery hum, laser guns, ballistic weaponry, cars, street chatter?

And most importantly . . .

Would anyone want to help?

This site sucks

Whenever I try to report a poster, I'm told that my session has timed out. I think that maybe the report function is not working?

Please fix!

Help me find my lost PSP

I have been writing some music!

I have been writing some music lately! You guys should listen to it and let me know what you think.

Rapture, written September 11, 2007. Get it at: http://www.brandonabley.com.

This song written specifically with a small chamber ensemble in mind, in this case two violins, a cello, and a harp. The second violin is playing double stops almost the entire time, in case you were wondering. This song could easily be converted into a string quartet, with the lower second violin harmony being played on viola, I guess, but I doubt it will ever be performed anyway so who cares!

Direct link: http://www.brandonabley.com/Music/Dragoon%20Legends/Rapture_Album.mp3

Happy Birthday, Michael Jackson!

Michael Jackson's birthday is today, August 29, 2007. He is now 49 years old!

We should take this opportunity to discuss the disenfranchised King of Pop. Is anyone here at rpgmaker.net a fan? I know I certainly am -- but as far as I see it, Jackson's career ended once he stopped being black and stopped doing music with jazz composer Quincy Jones.

My favorite Michael Jackson tune is definitely P.Y.T., second to Billy Jean. What is your favorite Jackson tune -- that is, if you like him at all?

And yes, I am 100% serious that I actually DO like Michael Jackson a lot.
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