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.
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.

use a default basic RPG TEMPLATE and have a 14 year old's English class story as a plot

Actually, if the story is kiddy like that, I don't mind graphics being stickfigure-like.

thecatamites, you do realise Lackeos is also talking of RPGMaker resources presented on Japanese resource websites, right? Which are distributed for others to use for no cost. Is using those resources just as worse as using ripped resources?

I understand where you're coming from; if every game were made with custom resources, you'd get a much more varied scene. On the other hand, like Lackeos, I am none too fond of stickfigure-esque graphics in a game that wants to be serious. (I'm a lot less picky on games that are explicitly meant to be kiddy, or very light-hearted in nature)

In the end, those who cannot draw graphics of the level they'd like immediately (I believe anyone can make great things if they work at it) are more prone to grab existing resources because they are readily available, and you don't first spend one or two years honing your spritearts in order to appeal to a select group of people. In the end, as someone else said, being an independant developer means you don't really need to appeal to an audience.

In much the same way as others would make the conscious decision to create a game with offputting custom graphics solely for the sake of feeling more satisfied about that, others are satisfied enough with completing a visually appealing (YMMV) game composed of ripped or readily available resources which is also faster to appeal to a broader range of the gamemaking community. The former obviously has some legal implications, but the latter method has none of that and has been employed quite a number of times to build acceptable games with.

Being patronising towards others who disagree with you, or even going so far as to look down on them is a very sad way to argue your point of view. Was the intent of this thread to discuss an issue honestly, or propagandise your beliefs and bash anyone who disagreed?

On the whole "Anyone who doesn't make custom graphics is too lazy/stupid/unable to create their own." comment... There's also another option of "someone who just doesn't give a flying fuck about custom graphics." Honestly, whenever I see custom graphics, battle systems, or menu systems, it actually PUTS ME OFF from playing that game, mainly custom graphics as most that I've seen are overly-bright, colorful eyesores. I'm not saying ALL games, but if the main programming focus of your game is "Check it out, you can use items in a system that would run smoother had I just stayed with the basics!", then what the hell are you using RPG Maker for?

Though I am curious, where did this "RTP is horrible no matter what, and it shows that you're just some lazy, stupid 9 year old for using it" bullshit start? Have there honestly not been enough games that use RTP good to justify using it?

Personally, I don't really care where graphics come from as long as they're used well.  The stigma of ripped/default graphics is simply that if the creator is slacking in the graphics department, he is most-likely slacking in other departments, as well.  It's a giant red flag for anyone who hasn't been following a project for any length of time.

Though I am curious, where did this "RTP is horrible no matter what, and it shows that you're just some lazy, stupid 9 year old for using it" bullshit start? Have there honestly not been enough games that use RTP good to justify using it?

Bingo.

Using RPGMaker shows you're too lazy to use anything else to make more interesting games and therefor your game should just be avoided anyway

while you lament the effort(or lack of) into making a game on something that terrible

Someone isn't very handy with RPG Maker, I take it.

Handy enough to know anything that looks half interesting in rpgmaker would be better on something else

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

By using something more flexible ?

You misunderstand.  What are the specific improvements?

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.

Though I understand your sentiments, Lackeos, the majority of what you've outlined deal with simple preferences rather than actual improvements over RM2k/3, which uses a specific format that works more than adequately with homebrew RPG creations.

I'm from the camp that if your game needs __________, but you aren't going to make an effort to learn to do ________ yourself, then you have an obligation to what you create to get it done by someone who knows what they are doing.

Agreed, good sir.  I believe such a quote is sig-worthy.

SOMEBODY STOLE MY TREE SOMEBODY STOLE MY TREE SOMEBODY STOLE MY TREE SOMEBODY STOLE MY TREE SOMEBODY STOLE MY TREE SOMEBODY STOLE MY TREE SOMEBODY STOLE MY TREE SOMEBODY STOLE MY TREE

You're aware that it is possible to edit ripped material to fit their own needs, right? It is done quite often, actually.

As far as using ripped media, It isn't an ideal solution for anyone involved; it is only done to circumvent a limitation. If done poorly; will make the game look like a crappy scrap book. If done properly, can make the game look great; ripped or not. To some, it can even be a means to an end : IE - making a game using rips well to get one's name some exposure.