What to do?

[Anne Noise]

Okay, so I said this in my introduction post, but I don't have any idea what I'm doing making games. I have a bunch of weird programming knowledge, I can learn applicable bits of specific languages well, and I worked in graphic and web design for seven years, but that was... five or six years ago.

I am addicted to gaming, and want to do... it.

A few years ago I redesigned Ragnarok Online's class system into a new expanded third class system, in a notebook, while on the phones for an insurance company's call center. For shits and giggles.

I'm also a writer - supposedly of the creative type - but I am too big of a spaz to write anything narrative longer than a scene, or a character description, or a plot point. It's as though I need... some kind of user-controlled interaction between the scenes to flesh out the gameplay...

So who can help me figure out what that can help mean in the context of this community. Is that way too much to ask?

ETA: Oh, and I played around with RPG Maker 95, I think. And the PSX one. Those were both fun but kind of... limited.

 

[Daxis]

Game making is all about hard work. Creativity gets the ball rolling, but you gotta be the one to push it. I know what I'm talking about, trust me, I'm the guy that's creative that never does the work.
You need to be able to get ready to do lots of hard work that will seem quite repetitive. Try to get some willpower to do this; writing stuff is a pretty big thing if you're doing a classic JRPG like most of the people here, although it's not too much like prose; mostly, it's dialogue anyways.
What I do know that if you complete NaNoWriMo(national novel writing month), you have the willpower to make a game. Wiki/google it.
Basically, try to get lots of ideas and incentives to help you start working. Check out tutorials after tutorials, but nothing's better than trying it out on rpg maker yourself, and then getting some critique.
Get an idea, start rolling with it and get some exp, scrap it and then that in the real project :P, get better in general.

Oh yeah, the rm95 and psx were damn limited... my fav is XP, since the VX mapping and graphics are atrocious.

 

[mawk]

thankfully, XP and VX's Ruby-based scripting gets rid of a lot of the limitations. it's still not a very strong program, and you have to know the language (and understand how the game's default scripts handle things) but it's better than nothing.

and while it's true that VX's mapping is a poor man's version of the mapping you'd find in earlier editions of RPG Maker, the interface incidentally makes it brilliant for panomapping -- that is, leaving the map layers largely blank, and making a custom panorama to sit in as the area's background instead. it's not the most straightforward way to do things, but it gives you a lot more freedom than any tile-based method. file size might become a problem, though, depending on just how many maps you have (and whether or not you use a silly format like .bmp).

my big advice would be to be audacious. be crazy and artistic. don't worry about the "jrpg comfort zone," because most people worth noting in the rm community relish the thought of something that doesn't conform to the same formulas as the other twenty million games out there. it's not a must-have, and you shouldn't go out of your way to break molds just for the sake of breaking them, but definitely take the creative process as far as you want.

and in more practical terms, starting to learn some basic spriting would be really helpful at various points. the same goes for RGSS (XP and VX's in-house programming, written in Ruby, which runs the games they make.) both of these are just handy if you need a minor edit for a sprite/script; you can identify the problem and fix it without needing to wait on someone else.

 

[Anne Noise]

my big advice would be to be audacious. be crazy and artistic. don't worry about the "jrpg comfort zone," because most people worth noting in the rm community relish the thought of something that doesn't conform to the same formulas as the other twenty million games out there. it's not a must-have, and you shouldn't go out of your way to break molds just for the sake of breaking them, but definitely take the creative process as far as you want.

I don't have enough energy to fully respond to this, but I assure you, I am prepared to leave the JRPG comfort zone behind. I love JRPG's but the stuff I have in my mind doesn't share much with JRPG's other than... menu-based combat? A world map? Haha, I dunno.

Plenty to think about from this thread, thanks.

 

[Venetia]

If you're excited about breaking molds and learning an engine from the ground up, try MMF2. It's incredibly user-friendly, hugely well-documented, and capable of things FAR SUPERIOR to any of the enterbrain RM* series. You can literally make ANYTHING in it, from an RPG to an adventure game, to a platformer, and everything inbetween.

If you're looking to work with a number of confines for an INCREDIBLY easy game-making experience, and don't care about versatility or any of that, then RMXP may be a good tool for you. RMVX is the newer RPG Maker but its silly image constraints and restrictions turn a lot of people off.

If you're very good with code like you say, a lot of people love the hell out of GameMaker. They just came out with GameMaker 8, so it would be a good time to check it out. There's a board for it here. Like MMF2 it's very versatile, but it's not as user-friendly.

If you're interested in making a P+C Adventure Game, try out the Wintermute Engine. It's not as versatile but it's perfectly suited for making any variety of P+C Adventure.