(this post was written in July/August, which means some three months ago. I still haven’t worked much on the project. I’m mostly posting to show I’m still alive)
…it doesn’t mean I don’t still have fun coming up with new ones.
Although I can’t help but feel I’m getting old and so should know better than to come up with all those projects that I don’t intend to ever finish.
Back to 2003/2004, when I first got in my head that I would one day make a video game, at the time I had a friend in school (he’s my game development partner if there ever was one, lol) who was quite the SNES JRPG fanatic (Final Fantasy, Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, Zelda, Breath of Fire; you know, the classics). Me, on the other hand, while I liked RPGs I hadn’t played many from the SNES days.
This is going to be a bit of a reminiscent, geeky post, so feel free to ignore it.
Of the two I was the more technically inclined (first dabs at programming in Delphi in 2000, about 3 months after I got my first computer, by 2005 me and said friend were both finishing the IT course in high school, so we both had the basics of Pascal, C and Visual Basic by then)
By 2003/2004 we both decided to make a RPG, since we didn’t have enough knowledge to start from scratch, or even to use a game engine, we decided to use RPG Maker, after all, despite me being more technically inclined, our real interest was building a world and telling a story, not being acclaimed for being technological innovators. So we grabbed a copy of RPG maker (at the time, a fan translated 2k3), we later changed to RPG Maker XP when it came out.
Needless to say, that project never moved forward as me and that guy tend to have some nice ideas, some great ideas even (hell, the intro for this RPG included our heroes fishing in a river of lava, of course they were just dreaming, but hey! awesome!), we tend to go off track really quickly, example?
That said intro moved quickly from in-game 8 bit awesomeness to a FMV intro (3D obviously, I was giving my first steps at 3D modelling by then), we also had some trouble organizing the planning (e.g. I had to come up with dungeon designs out of my ass; we had the ending planned but not at least the first ‘quest’ so we could work on a demo-ish version of the whole thing)
The same thing happened in the next two projects (I’ve talked about the two of them in this site before), good start point, then chaos, then end of project…
Deep down, I think that the biggest problem was that we were two amateur, aspiring game writers trying to work together. (he always ready to jump on clichés and ‘cool’ stuff, me with a more subdued approach, although you can’t really avoid using clichés)
That was quite a tangent, no?
The point is, I’m planning to go back to basics and try to make a game with RPG Maker, since I know fully well I won’t make the resources (graphics, music, etc.) myself I want it at least to have a decent story and some lore.
Since, as usual, this is mostly for me to have something to direct my (low) creativity at, don’t expect much posting about it.
The envisioned thing would be a…how to explain, Uncharted Waters (exploration of an unknown watery world) meets Fallout (lore + somewhat fantasy post apocalyptic).
If I ever finish even just the first map, I’ll post here.
Now, how to use RPG Maker’s fantasy sprites, graphics (and other resources) to make a game that doesn’t really fit that genre.
Even if I never finish the game, I’ll write it, that much I’m sure.