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[st33d]

I'm currently working on two RPGs that have no story whatsoever!!

 

(Not possible you say? Piss off and play the excellent classic Rogue)

[gimymblert]

i'm a huge fan of rpgs but still don't like most rpgmaker games because 90% of them rip sprites and music instead of being original. even very very good rpgmaker games like the way and exit fate rip graphics and music. it's like some type of culture there that it's okay to not do your own art and music.

Assets is always the most demanding and costly part of any game development. And rpg by tradition is pretty asset heavy. I also think that 'character development' gameplay is not very interesting on a short time, that and the over reliance on 'epic' keep them long. The longer the game, the more assets. It's like a vicious cycle. I have play plenty of good rpg maker game BUT craft is always missing someway, if it's not the story or the plot it's the writing. I have participate ton one once, i have done design and spriteset for the 4 main character, it took me 1 mounth full time in a game of 50+ unique character  , no wonder the game did not get anywhere.

Actually they had create a lot of way to circumvant this (except for music) using doll like system, but it only make them more samey! The other genre plot and story heavy, visual novel have better "personal" art but it came with much more static lay out and presentation ... and it defeat the gameplay appeal of rpg (exploration, "mise en scène", etc...)

It's a vicious cycle, i can't see indie going out of this without a serious revision of the format, even that may not be enough, they may have to create a new format, but it may end up considered a new genre.

[ragnor]

I wish there was one indie game dev who makes western rpgs for every 4-5 yet another rpg maker jrpg developer. I'm sick of seeing every new rpg is a jrpg.

If you look into indie rpgs you have two choices, either roguelikes or jrpg's. I don't like jrpgs. Roguelikes are fine but they don't have good deep stories i want in a rpg. In short i want to see some old school indie western rpgs, preferably short freeware ones being made. That would be a good change.

[Craig Stern]

Roguelikes are fine but they don't have good deep stories i want in a rpg. In short i want to see some old school indie western rpgs, preferably short freeware ones being made. That would be a good change.

Just to assuage my curiosity: how do you envision short, free, western-style RPGs having good deep stories? Are you thinking of the iceberg principle here--a Western RPG equivalent to a Hemingway short story?

[falsion]

Barkley Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden is the only good indie RPG I've played ever played. The biggest reason is because, unlike typical indie/hobbyist RPGs which fall into the trap of trying to imitate popular JRPGs (Final Fantasy, etc.), it instead took it one step further and became a self-aware parody of them.

By doing this, they avoided many of the shortfalls that plague these kinds of games while poking fun of them at the same time, which made it a really enjoyable game.

[SidM]

Sorry for changing the topic, but reading up to this point, I wonder what exactly are the salient points that define a western RPG?

[alspal]

Sorry for changing the topic, but reading up to this point, I wonder what exactly are the salient points that define a western RPG?

The only hope of getting a correct answer on this is to read Alex Kierkegaard's RPG articles.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

assets taking a lot of time isn't an excuse to use someone else's graphics; it took them a long time too. just because i understand why they do it doesn't make it excusable or their games any better.

that was one of the things i liked about the ohrrpgce community vs the rpgmaker community. both are rpg-making engines, but the ohrrpgce community largely made original graphics, whereas the rpgmaker community largely ripped graphics. consequently most of the best indie rpgs are ohrrpgce games (they just aren't widely known outside of that community).

as for western rpgs, for me the defining features of them are

1) open-worldness: being able to go anywhere in the world you like, with lots of optional areas, instead of a set path through the game

2) a morality/karma system and "good" and "evil" paths through the game or good and evil ways to get past any given obstacle

3) dialogue trees rather than pre-written dialogue

4) choosing a class at the start of the game and your stats and skills; building your own character from the ground up

5) more than one way to accomplish a goal; for instance, talking the final boss into killing himself, killing him in a direct fight, poisoning him, or other methods all working

basically most jrpgs are by square enix or clones of square / enix games, and most wrpgs are by bioware or clones of bioware games or clones of fallout

i don't however think wrpgs are any better than jrpgs, they just have a different style. they are more open and allow more "gameplay", but often that very openness restricts the types of stories they could tell, and most of the best stories in rpgs are in jrpgs -- games like persona 3 and 4, kartia, vanguard bandits, xenogears, digital devil saga, etc., have stories unequaled by any wrpg imo, with the sole exception of planescape torment. and planescape is a particularly linear wrpg.

[BlueSweatshirt]

The problem with most RPGs is that they follow the same exact formula Final Fantasy created.
RPG Maker is the result of this formula.

What we get from this formula are games we've basically played over and over and over again before. After beating one-three of these games people tend to just go 'ugh...'.

With that said, I think the RPG genre has a lot of untapped potential, that I hope indies will bring light to in the near future.(I'm playing my part as I post this. Literally. I'm working on it right now. The program I'm making it in is open and in the project. I don't know why it matters that I said that... End parenthesis.)

[gimymblert]

By the way there is much more hobby rpg than indie rpg (hence the rip off).

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i thought the point of a hobby was to do something yourself. i mean, if your hobby is gardening, it makes no sense to steal someone else's garden.

[Craig Stern]

The problem with most JRPGs is that they follow the same exact formula Final Fantasy created.

Fixed.

most of the best indie rpgs are ohrrpgce games (they just aren't widely known outside of that community).

*cough cough*

Ohrrpgce games, as I noted in the Wandering Hamster post, are generally kind of bad, but there are a few that might be worth playing, and you can always get a smidgen of good from any game.

Paul, have you been holding out on us, or what?

[Chromeleon]

In my experience, the tradition of western rpgs tends to be more about how character development influences the world and situation around them, whereas the tradition of jrpgs tends to be more about how the world and situation influences the character development.  (with a particular emphasis on the interpersonal relationships between those characters.)

[moi]

my main gripe with Jrpgs is the stupid combat system.
Also: stupid, unrealistic  characters and stories.
My maing gripe with WRPGS is:
-always the same medieval fantasy setting
-boring stories and characters.

[jwk5]

assets taking a lot of time isn't an excuse to use someone else's graphics; it took them a long time too. just because i understand why they do it doesn't make it excusable or their games any better.

Not to mention it makes other members afraid to create original resources for their games for fear that they will just get hijacked and reused in someone else's game.

As much as I actually like the RMXP program (I've been entertaining the thought of making an RPG with it) I don't like the notion that my characters and art could get frankensteined into someone else's god awful game. It feels like a total violation.

[Zaphos]

I thought the non-original art in commercial rpgmaker games was stuff that way created for general use?

If they copied your game's art assets, IANAL but I think that'd be a clear copyright violation and you should be able to get them to stop.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I thought the non-original art in commercial rpgmaker games was stuff that way created for general use?

If they copied your game's art assets, IANAL but I think that'd be a clear copyright violation and you should be able to get them to stop.

i'm talking primarily about earlier rpgmaker games. rpgmaker 95, not rpgmaker xp. back then they didn't include art, and everyone stole them from snes games and such. or ohrrpgce games.

[gimymblert]

i thought the point of a hobby was to do something yourself. i mean, if your hobby is gardening, it makes no sense to steal someone else's garden.

Yep but creating a game is not mak graphics/music, they may have interest in other things, playing with the system, the gameplay, convention, the stories, cracking the program, participate in a community, etc...

ART became an added tedious that does not add necessarily more. Once i did 15mn of rpg maker as a training before going to school, i was glad to met a large library to draw on for that. Never released but still a lot of fun and learning. I can draw, i can do crappy music, but sometimes i just want to mess with the "game" not the "art". I was not trying to be square enix or "pretentious creator" that does it for the sake of art (well not all the times ), i was just trying to learn, to do something i like or to experiment simple idea, or even to share a story concept (or a battle sys).

the problem with a game, is that there is so many competance at work, it became tedious to switch hat all the time (that's a problem i'm facing now, and  even if you don't do the art you double as a game designer and a manager).

Heck it's like saying when we use game maker that's not good go learn all the design pattern, all the obscure programming convention, assembly, chip specifics, the nuance between language BEFORE putting your code together, just to make a pong clone  . OK i slightly exaggerate here, but that's how i feel.

So far the rip concern mainstream commercial rpg or rpg that fall in the same rpg art convention that even people who do "original" art does. There is also a lot of character creator or tutorial to deconstruct those art and reconstruct their own. The deconstruction part work ONLY because everybody use the same style convention, even those who bother making something themselves. Obviously it's easy to came out with a completely different styles but no one does it, even Barkley shut up and jam use the very convention (16 bits tiled graphics with big head character and 4 frames for walking max) use everywhere despite a completely different universe. People try hard to put effort to do the same things  . There is no point at the beginning! I'm glad that some people actually take the time to do rip and do a database, analyse convention and break this database in reusable piece of lego for everybody to use. I have also play fabulous game with heavily rip graphics that push the "technology" or the way people assemble this art together to create mood. Art is also notorious for lagging especially in hobby/indie game dev, (just have a peek at indie brawl biggest problem) and the "rip art ocean" kept project decent enough despite looking all the same. By removing that, ripping allow people to concentrate and polish more other aspect (as crap they may end up) and to push these to differentiate themselves. Rip allow focus.

+ i'm all in favor on open source, i'm organizing myself to makgam and not only i plan to reuse assets from project to project but also release it for everybody to use it for their own project. Except i'll try to came up with a distinctive style.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i think videogames are two parts: video + game. if you're making a game but not making the video to go with it, you're only really making half of a videogame.

also i can't understand what most of your post says, because your grammar is so bizarre. i kind of imagine that you can understand / read english better than you can write it.

[undertech]

i thought the point of a hobby was to do something yourself. i mean, if your hobby is gardening, it makes no sense to steal someone else's garden.

They are doing something themselves. It's not stealing someone's garden, but seedlings from it to plant in their own. In the end they are still getting down in the dirt.
I would compare it more to the hobby of building plastic models. Here, everything is practically done for you. All you have to do is cut the parts out and glue it together. Some kits you don't even have to paint. Is it not considered a hobby if you don't mold your own pieces and blend your own paint colors?
As long as they recognize what they've created for what it is and not anything more than that, I don't see any issues with people using ripped graphics/music for their RPGs. If there are people who prefer that to your entirely self-made work, then that audience was a non-factor to begin with. No reason to rail against someone for filling a niche.