Again, trying to motivate myself with RPGM3

[Perversion]

I've been throwing around a few ideas for the past few weeks, one of which I referenced in Raithlol's topic in the Free Forum (astral projection....a common idea for a lot of my games, time travel and paradoxes, etc), but after watching Fight Club for the first time in over half a decade, I did an abrupt shift in my focus.

I'm not going to even talk about this idea too much, as most of what I've talked about recently in this forum has not even come close to fruition. I WILL say, though, that I'm going to attempt a bit of interactive social commentary, and at times (if the game is finished), it will ALMOST seem like a garbage game, in that parts are going to be made with the intent of being boring and tedious. I have a feeling, though, that if this is finished, the mass populace playing will not understand that the tedious, slow, and pretty damn boring parts are intentional.

Meh. We'll see what happens. I've "worked on" this for a few days now, but it's ramping up VERY slowly. Mostly, I'm doing what I did in the old days....just let RPGM run on the menu screen, and lay down and think about how I want to do this. I'm really going to try not to update this with any concrete info, because that would:

A) Give away the premise, which, to work effectively, needs to be kept under wraps.
B) Make me feel like an ass as usual when nothing gets finished.

[Ωbright]

I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, but if this is helping you work on a game, then I'm all for it. :p

[Perversion]

Ooops....replaced the word "thread" with "forum," and therein probably lie the confusion.


Yeah, I'm attempting to work on a game with a cynical, satirical (imagine THAT!!!) social-commentary bent. That's about all I'm gonna divulge at present.

[1ce]

This sounds very interesting. If you ever feel like it, tell us some more. Or at least let us know that progress is going smoothly.

[Wavelength]

I feel the same way, that I don't like to reveal a lot until I've got my game well into process. I wish I knew more about your game, though!

Good luck, my friend.

[Zeroth]

Nice to see you working on a game after so long. Don't be afraid to ask for some inspiration every now and then. Once I have my game in concrete, I'll probably be asking for some. :lol

[Perversion]

Thanks for the support, guys. If you've seen Fight Club, you might have a vague idea of what I hope to accomplish. Other than that, I'm gonna wait until I have more finished before I post any major details.

[Owl of Parliament]

RPG Maker 3 sucks, don't play it.

[Perversion]

But I bring out the best RPGM3 has to offer. :|

[Perversion]

Well, I had today off, and pretty much just spent it as a lazy day (browsed the Pav, began playing Fallout 3, watched a movie with my buddy), but I have tomorrow off as well, and do not go to work Thursday until 2 in the afternoon, so before then, I hope to have something done with this.


As of now, the tentative title is, The Game of (Modern) Life, as in, the board game where you go around the board in those little cars and cram all your kids into those little holes.


If everything I've been thinking about this actually winds up in the game, it really will resemble a garbage game to an extent, but in reality, that'll be the entire point.


Meh. We'll see what happens.

[Zeroth]

Well, keep us updated on it at least.

[Perversion]

Update is....in my last post, I mentioned having two days off in a row, and was hoping to work on the game. However, I ended up spending 16 hours (not straight through, but pretty much 2/3 of an entire day) cleaning and organizing my former craphole of a living area. It's now fairly pristine, aside from vacuuming. Pics in my MAPLE SYRUP thread in the Free Forum, resized courtesy (?) of Smurtle.


I really did not mind the lack of modern day graphics in RPGM3 in my aborted contest project (I neatly explained them away....I was using a coffin model to sit in for a PS3) or in ASA, but it might cause some problems with this one. There will need to be a bit of suspension of disbelief at coffins, pedestals, etc, standing in for TVs, computers, etc, unless I can retrofit these into an alternate version of modern life, or come up with a convincing reason why a high-end TV looks just like the royal coffin graphic. :|


A sort of side idea I'd been throwing around MIGHT find its way into this as well. I was/am going to TRY to make a sort of roguelike style game (yeah, yeah, it's only possible to do turn-based, so it's probably gonna be nothing even close to a roguelike) in terms of random dungeons and random items. Looks like the pseudo-random number generator will come into play again (a Perversion game with a PRNG....what a novel concept!!! :p).

Breadcrumbs and tidbits are all I'm gonna give at this time. :)

[Perversion]

Meh. Turned on RPGM3 for a bit....worked on an event for a bit, and quit.


Because I anticipate there being MANY different facets to this, in order to not get overwhelmed, I think I'm just gonna try to work on one facet at a time until its completion. As there is no linearity per se, or plotline per se, it really does not matter the order in which I work on things. In S1, for example, because it was linear, and due to not knowing exactly how it was gonna turn out as I was working on it, I was forced to do things in a certain order. For ASA, I worked on one minigame at a time, and broke that up by the tedious process of typing in all those stories/poems.

This'll be kinda similar, as each facet will be a minigame of sorts, and there will be a LOT of typing (not much character dialogue, though). Difference is, I'm gonna have to write as I go instead of transcribing, as I did with ASA.


Meh....we'll see what happens. I'm gonna TRY to work on this in earnest next year, because I'm thinking of reigning in my manic tendencies, as that will allow me to focus my creative energies. Right now, it's hard to hold my interest or motivation in RPGM (or even playing any "real" game) for more than an hour. Valkyria Chronicles was a pleasant surprise, as I've actually gotten about 8 hours into it, which is further than I've gotten into any game this year so far. :|

[Perversion]

Spent last night getting back into Etrian Odyssey II on the DS, and then dozing off for 3 hours. Which is weird, because lately, RPGM3 is a sleep-inducer, in that I turn it on, try to think about what I'm gonna try to do, lay down on the couch to think, and end up drifting off.

But for both of the two nights before last, I invested a good deal of time into my game, mainly with atmosphere. I still suck horribly at making field maps, and luckily, this game will probably not even need one. Instead, I worked heavily on town/dungeon aesthetics and came pretty far in creating a convincing horror environment. Now I just need to do some work in wrapping some gameplay around it. I've got a good idea what I'm gonna do, so I think it'll be okay.

This is actually turning out better than expected, in that this game will allow me some freedom in creating a bunch of smaller game ideas that I would not be able to stretch out to full games without a bunch of filler.

So that's the update for now.

[Wavelength]

Which is weird, because lately, RPGM3 is a sleep-inducer, in that I turn it on, try to think about what I'm gonna try to do, lay down on the couch to think, and end up drifting off.

I've had the same problem sometimes. To get around that, I think about what I want to do long before I actually sit down, and decide WHAT I want to do the moment I sit down with RM3. Then, I can stay focused for an entire evening (if I want to) around making exactly what I set out to make, in the best way possible.

If I just turn the game on, shuffle around aimlessly, and randomly tweak events... well, I'm out like a light faster than you can say "Dear Brave Heart."

[Perversion]

FFFFFFFFFFFF



My roomate offered to help me swap out hard drives on my PS3 today (I tried by myself a few weeks ago, but ended up completely messing up the philips-head slots on the screws on the hard drive casing, and he had a tool to remove them), and I had done a backup in mid-January, and was anxious to get this finally done, so I swapped them out without realizing that I had never backed up the progress in RPGM3 that I'd made over the past week and a half. And with the amount of time and effort it took to physically remove the hard drive, screws, housing, etc, and then put them back in and format and reinstall all the backup data, there's no way in hell I'm gonna swap them out again just to avoid losing 6 hours of work, as I'm pretty sure I can come close to replicating what I had done.


Just kinda sucks, is all.


On the bright side, I replaced a 60 gig with a 250, and after the requisite hard drive space lost to system usage (it went down to 232 gigs), I apparently only have 149 gigs left, which I do not quite understand.

In any case, I'm going to try to work on RPGM tonight/tomorrow, so we'll see how it goes.

[Perversion]

I finally went into my file to see exactly how much I lost due to HDD swap. I'm at 1.5% DU, and I was at at least 3.5% (maybe more) before the swap. Most of it was aesthetics, not coding, which can pretty easily be replicated, now that I've fiddled around with using invisible events and then changing them to something else.


I've got two days off in a row here, so now is an ideal time to work on RPGM.