Well if you're 23 and still using RM something is wrong my friend.

Oh, better RPG's can be made in GM given the same effort?  Okay, then.  Because I like RPG's.

Machinarium has pretty sick graphics, but I don't find it to be fun at all.

Half the games you listed were of my own creation, rushed even... What're you trying to say? 
Though I guess I should be thankful to see those being brought up in conversation, giving them airtime.
And I have to agree with Nightblade, as the comparisons are sort of "Runescape VS World of Warcraft".

REAL-TIME STRATEGY GAMES ARE AWFUL, JUST LOOK AT WARCRAFT 1   ​

Right, but shitty rpgmaker games (and the people making them) are a big GW problem.

That's because this is GW, it used to be 100% RPGMaker.  Where do you think people are gonna post their crappy RM games?  NBA.com?  Crappy RM games are going to be posted on RPGMaker sites.

yeah man who would ever want to play legitimately good, well designed indie games on the iphone when we could be playing a generic jrpg made by someone who's not old enough to drive???

I'm a little confused why you think that a person has to be young to use RM and can't be young if they're using GM.

-Class systems are good, because I think most RPG'ers like to customize their characters (i.e. D&D, WoW, FF5, to a lesser extent FF1, Gogo in FF6, etc.).
-If you're using an RPG Maker, class systems are absurdly easy to implement if you're using the DBS.  If you're using a CBS, then you're going to have to use a lot of extra fork conditions.
-It's not a very good thing to force a player to be stuck with the classes he's chosen, and there's no programming limitations that would force you to.  With WoW, you can pay gold to respec, which essentially means to re-assign all of your skill points.  In FF5, whenever you want, you can switch jobs and start at the beginning of a new job while still retaining all of the talents you learned in the old one.
-I think equipment should be restricted according to class, or at least restricted according to weapon proficiency skills that you learn through your class's skill progression.
-The way that abilities are learned is its own topic, and there would likely be no consensus.  You can learn them at level-up, purchase them from a store (or from a Dojo, school, etc.), start-off with abilities that get stronger when you use them (i.e. you start-out knowing Fire, and the more times you cast it, the stronger it gets; so there's never a Fire2 or Fire3 spell to render it obsolete), gain abilities through quests, gain abilities via an Esper-like system (in FF6, you equip an esper, and gradually learn its spells when you win enough battles), and so on.

Also, do you think more time has been spent on the game, or dealing with this topic and individuals who somehow compromise the systematics of the game getting done efficiently?

Mostly people committing to program the next chapter, and then 4 months later they might say "Sorry, my internet's been shut off for 4 months," "Sorry, I forgot about Gaming World," "Sorry, I'm busy with classes now," etc..  It's uncanny how smoothly the first 85% of the game was made, and how problematic it became towards the end.  If there's ever a Chain Game 5, here's two things I would change about the organization...

a)  There would be a notepad that keeps track of who is alive, who is dead, who is aligned with which organization, who has secret motives, etc..  That way, you can review all of the facts in two minutes, instead of the 5 hours or however long it takes to play through the game.
b)  There needs to be some fail-safes against people dropping the ball.  For example, when someone completes their chapter, they should need to send the game to everybody (everyone ahead of them in line, the person running the project, the second in charge of running the project, etc.), and they should need to make some sort of status update in the forum to prove that they aren't dead, internet shut down, computer broke, etc..
c)  By sending the game to everyone ahead of you in line, it gives them the chance to play through each chapter as it happens and keep current with the progress of the game.  That way, when it's someone's turn to make the next chapter, they don't have to start from scratch and play through the whole game to get caught-up.

Note: initially, David was to be a detective, solving a murder mystery. Of course, instead, I didn't have enough time to do something longer and my chapter took a turn for the real, but you can try to use that idea if it helps.

That's good to know.  With a lot of these chapters, the twists make me wonder how the next chapter can possibly pick-up from here.  With the way your chapter ended... man, ending the game is gonna be tough for whoever does it.  Also...
Btw, can I edit this game in RM2K just fine?  I mean, I can open it, edit it, and play it in RM2K, but I'm just wondering if any complications arise when you edit and save an RM2K3 game in RM2K, and then post it for people to play in RM2K3 again.

Dear God, by chapter 10, I completely lost track of whose side everyone was on.  But then chapter 11 came along and proved that I could certainly be even more confused than I already was.  There's so many challenging puzzles in this game, and wrapping them all up in chapter 12 will be the most challenging puzzle of all.

I almost wanted to put an end to the curse myself, but there's no way I can explain the events I saw in the last two chapters.  Maybe if I re-read everything a few times and make some notes.

A suggestion for the next person who edits this game

jesus how did i miss this the first time around, this is the best idea anyone's ever come up with

I almost did.  A few years ago I got on Newgrounds and downloaded a bunch of RPG-styled hip hop songs to use on my game's soundtrack.  That was before I realized that the original, unpatched version of RM2K doesn't allow you to play MP3's, and I'm kind of married to unpatched RM2K.

btw hellion uses mostly graphics ripped/edited from Dragon quest so

Awww, ya got me.  What I did there was I assumed, which is my mistake.

I don't mind analogies as long as they actually say the same thing you're using them to explain, which most of the ones in this topic didn't.  Please share your food analogy.


edit: In fact I have one of my own:  most of the analogies in these threads were comparing apples to oranges.  Zing!

You keep saying these are all bad analogies.  Honestly, I thought most were pretty accurate, aside from the pie one.  Old food has an extra dimension of badness that old computer files don't.  If anything, a pie analogy should be comparing store-bought pie (not your original creation) to homemade pie (preferably by someone who isn't a super-great cook, because the whole discussion is irrelevant if you can have originality and good craftsmanship at the same time).  Any analogy that compares originality (that is of flawed quality) to something unoriginal of fine quality should be a good analogy (unless there's an extra dimension for why the logic would breakdown, i.e. 10-year-old pie has nothing to do with unoriginality, it's just dreadfully past its expiration date.  A pie that I've eaten numerous times in the last ten years would be more appropriate).

-Focus during the lecture and stay alert like your life depends on it.  I didn't learn to do that until my third year of college.
-Do everything right away, regardless of when the deadline is.  You might think "It'll probably take me an hour to do this homework, and they gave me until next Tuesday to do it, so I'll allot myself an hour on Monday night to work on it."  That's definitely the wrong attitude for numerous reasons: a) you might have dramatically underestimated how long it will take b) that gives you no extra days to ask the teacher or classmates about anything that confuses you c) you might have forgot what you heard in the lecture a week ago
-Don't think that college is leisure city.  You have to treat it like it's the challenge of your life, like you would boot camp, a professional fight, or something along those lines.  I don't know how you got the money to pay for college, but a lot of people get the money fairly effortlessly, whether it involves getting scholarships based on your high school gpa, signing a promissory note for some loans, or getting money from your parents.  It's easy to not see the significance of the money spent when it was so effortless to obtain.  But in actuality, it's dead serious.  If you drop out after 1, 2, or 3 years; and don't work in the meanwhile, then you'll have to reflect on how you could've had a stupid job and been up $60,000, instead of down $60,000.  I'd probably be correct to assume that you've never had anywhere near $60,000 in the bank, but for motivational purposes, at least take one second to imagine how good you'd feel about that, and remember you're giving that-up to try to successfully complete college.
-Study at least a little bit for every class, every day.  That helps a lot to prevent you from forgetting information, compared to studying in big chunks, one day a week.

It's not even that it's lazy: to me it's just indicative of the fact that the person a) has nothing substantial to offer and b) lacks the faculties to create a competent and compelling game in the first place.

I definitely disagree, there.  If a person has a story of substance to offer, and possesses the faculties to create a competent and compelling game, it may be that they just can't sprite.  Sprites really aren't "substance," that's really one of the least substantial aspects of an RPG.  I mean, good-looking sprites are important to me, but that's not the substance of the game.

Imo, an RPG has numerous aspects to it (the art, the story, the music, the gameplay), and an amateur RPG should at least be spectacular / innovative in one area or solid in every area.  The majority of amateur RPG's I've played fall short of my criteria, which is apparently much less strict than your criteria. 

i might catch some shit for that last thing

Hah, you called it.

...

Could someone post this now?

I hope the curse didn't kill Mirthless.  and RPG for that matter.

I'm quite curious as to how you would make an RPG "better" over a format that is specifically designed for the genre.

Well the fact is, RPG Maker is somewhat limited.  What I've been coming to learn is that quite a good many of its limitations can be overcome if you're very savvy.  (In RM2K for example) There's patches to overcome the "Enter Hero Name" command that doesn't work, to increase the limited amount of pictures you can show, to enable MP3's rather than just MIDI's, etc..  But even so, when using an actual programming language like java, there's absolutely no limitations.  For example, you aren't limited to 16-bit graphics.  You can do actual 3-D stuff, instead of artificial 2.5-D.  You can do object-oriented programming, which is awesome (I wish I could provide an example where this would be useful, the best I can think of is cloning events).  You can use databases instead of inefficient checking of hundreds of fork conditions.  You can perform any task with the minimum amount of code (which is hard to explain, but suffice to say that it's very inefficient to program certain features in an RPG Maker, and inefficiency causes unnecessary, albeit minor lag).  Also, the placement of events in RPG Makers is in accordance with a grid system, whereas in java or something you can place anything anywhere, between grid spaces or otherwise.  Obviously the list goes on, but that's what I could come up with on short notice.

The strength of RPG Maker isn't its efficiency or its unlimited options.  It's the dramatic improvement in how easy it is to make the game, especially the visual aspects.  You can make a better game without RPG Maker (in the technical and gameplay departments, not story-wise), though it might take several more years.  Despite all of this, I'd rather use an RPG Maker than java.

But none of this is very relevant.  What's relevant is just the fact that it's yet another analogy that's been brought-up in this debate.  "Why use pre-existing graphics that someone else toiled to create, when you can do it the harder, but more personal way and create your own graphics from scratch," was meant to be analogous to "Why make a game with an RPG Maker that somebody else toiled to create, so that RPG-making would be easier for you, when you can do it the harder, but more personal way and program the game from scratch."  It's a fair analogy, but a little extreme.  I mean, the default argument would be "If you shun using borrowed graphics, then your games better not use the DBS, or the DMS, or borrowed music, or a rehashed plot, or anything else that's unoriginal / borrowed / default."  To say "Why not just use a real programming language" is the much more extreme version of that argument.

Lackeos you are pretty much a grade-A dickhead because if you really think the hand-drawn graphics here are "awful junk" and would be below a game using ripped graphics and music then  you are an idiot.
You make me sad. How could you ever feel this way? How does it begin to make sense? No please, explain to me how this broken and idiotic logic manifests itself in your dim and shoddy neurons and how it comes off to you like a good idea or good thing to say? You really think that somebody taking the time and energy to create graphics, even if they suck, deserves no merit and would actually make you want to play a game LESS than if they had all the generic MAC & BLUE and CHRONO TRIGGER ooooh SEIKEN DENSETSU 3 RIPS NYCE?? Do you see how you are at best an idiot and at worst a feverishly horrible person?

Because making a bad product is bad.  If Publix, Wal-Mart, etc. sold brand name milk, and some local market sold milk they produced themselves, that had cow hair in the bottles and was perhaps a little sour, I'd buy Publix milk.  If a band did a good cover of a song, or sampled somebody else's music and it sounded good, I'd listen to that far sooner than I'd listen to original music that was bad.  If you have a good movie remake like Ocean's Eleven, I'd sooner watch that than an awful movie.  If one movie has an originally composed soundtrack, and another movie has a soundtrack composed of pre-existing songs, does it make a difference?  I mean, there's movies like Conan The Barbarian and Edward Scissorhands that have awesome original soundtracks, and there's movies like Garden State that have awesome unoriginal soundtracks.  You ask how I can be this way, but this is actually the default condition, to favor quality.

Based on the graphics, I'd sooner play http://rmrk.net/index.php/topic,33309.0.html than http://rmrk.net/index.php/topic,34403.0.html.  One is obviously ripped graphics, one is obviously original graphics.  I choose option A.

By the way, nice large collection of insults.  I guess there's really no rules here.

When I was a kid playing with RPGMaker for the PSX I made an awful stick figure in my game and I felt so much better about him than any of the built in characters I made.  It's sad to think that people would frown upon someone GIVING A SHIT.

Yeah, I've drawn a stick figure in iDraw.  Suppose I made a game with web resources and another game with stick figures.  If this thread was never created and we never had these disagreements, there's no way you'd like the stick figure game more than the web resources game.  The stick figure game would be the game graphics equivalent of The Blair Witch Project.

But to link this back into topic, everyone who uses RTP or rips because they say they cant sprite, is just making sure they will NEVER be good at spriting as long as they do that. If you start making games with bad graphics, you will pick up little tricks and by the time you finish you will be a better spriter, no matter how bad you were when you started. Anyone who says they haven't got the talent to make a chipset/charset is just saying that because they haven't got the talent to make an rtp-standard chipset/charset. It doesn't matter how bad something is if it is what you want, no matter how bad you think it is. I'm sure everyone, no matter how talented, sees their own work as something sub-standard to what they 'saw in their heads'. Just keep going and you'll get better, and people will appreciate the fact you took the time to put effort into your work.

It seems to me that a person can still practice their spriting skills while releasing games without original graphics.  I agree that most RPG makers (unless they never work solo) should practice their spriting skills, and not resign to being permanently poor spriters.  But if a programmer is practicing his/her spriting on the side, it doesn't mean he/she needs to release games with his/her unrefined spriting graphics in the mean time, or shouldn't be allowed to release games with unoriginal graphics in the mean time.

I think the problem really isn't too much with rips or whatever. The problem is the RM community is known for not doing much and wait for their resources to come to them. They've taken from the same pool of resources for way too many years (seriously you still go to charas project and use bobthetaco rips for the 2k3 users), and scripts from other users to make their games. It's become so bad that we can all point out exactly where each resource came from. It's like having bag full of candy. It's nice at first to have all of these resources here, but you're not ever going to get new candy if you keep searching in that bag, and all of your games will taste the same.

You feel that people keep using candy from the bag and don't bother contributing any new candy, and you think that's bad, and I basically agree.  However, what's the novelty of contributing new candy to the bag, if other people can't use it?  You know, like if I make or edit a charset / chipset, and it doesn't suck, I want other people to feel free to use it also.  The thing is, if we have this new movement of "nobody is allowed to use other peoples' resources," then people would feel like they shouldn't use my contribution.  Then what's the novelty of contributing the new candy?  I think it'd be ideal if people both borrowed and contributed.

I'd rather make a game that nobody played that I can call a product of myself. Isn't the whole point of being an independent developer the fact that you don't have to worry about pleasing an audience?

Apparently we each define our own point of being an independent developer.  For me, the point is to try my best to please an audience, however limited I might be at it.

Lackeos you are pretty much a grade-A dickhead because if you really think the hand-drawn graphics here are "awful junk" and would be below a game using ripped graphics and music then  you are an idiot.

They are pretty awful.  They look worse than pretty much any game I've paid to play since the Super Nintendo came out.  Using somebody elses' graphics in all likelihood results in graphics superior to the likes of FF4, on par with FF6.  Essentially, some of the hand drawn graphics that have been posted would result in a game that people outside this forum wouldn't want to play, and a lot of web resources could be used to make games that people outside this forum would want to play.  Holding everything to be equal, I would sooner play a game whose graphics were downloaded from an RPG Maker resource site than I would play a game with ugly custom graphics.

If you know you're using awful junk in your game, you can't be defensive when people call you out on it being bad--you made that decision to leave it in there.

Thing is, a lot of these custom graphics ARE awful junk.  Using somewhat similar-looking web-downloaded graphics from different artists doesn't look nearly as much like awful junk as some of the custom graphics that have been posted in this thread.

I agree on the hatred of RTP.  Use of RTP, DBS, and DMS, are just like poor mapping, bad game design, etc., they reek of being a beginner.  But web resources were put there to be used, look as good as they can look with the 16-bit limitations, don't come default with the game, and there is no given web resource that's used in a ton of games.

Personally, I give no extra respect to games for using custom graphics.  All I care about is how the graphics look, not who made them.

This is exactly the same as composing your own game music vs downloading music from the web (can't call that a bad analogy).  Downloading music from the web is perfectly fine (and in most cases ideal, imo), most game makers can't compose their own music without it being awful and making the game awful.

(The point I'm going to be arguing here is that using rip edits and someone elses' sprites are okay.  I still don't like RTP, and don't especially like straight charset rips.)

a)  Most RPG Makers are RPG Makers, not artists.  Even though spriting is related to RPG Making, drawing in 16-bit is really not the reason that we do what we do.
b)  If you draw worse than the web resources you can download, then using custom creations just makes the game look worse than using somebody elses' creations.
c)  Anything that isn't ugly or RTP should be perfectly satisfactory.  I agree that it would look bad in professional games (despite the fact that there are a plethora of professional games that use characters from other games, like Super Smash Bros etc.), the fact is that with professional games, people with artistic talent are paid to draw original graphics.  I might learn to draw in 16-bit if I could pay rent doing it.

But really, I don't think it has a bearing on how good a game is.  Especially if we're talking charsets and music, because you can have a good looking game using just web resources for those.  As far as chipsets go, I generally do have to edit web resources, mix-and-match, or draw my own; because chipsets are often lacking a lot of the details that you want to be in your map.

Huh? Like adding interest rates and contests for spending with them?

It makes me wonder how many features his RPG banks have.  Interest, overdraft fees, money market, checking and savings, ATM, debit...

So you picked an arbitrary integer and used it as a baseline criteria for impressive rm2k coding based solely on the fact that it equaled the sum of two other arbitrary integers?

I have much to learn from you, rm2k coding guru.

Well as far as picking arbitrary numbers, if you're gonna do it, you might as well do it in style, right?