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majutsukaiSo I was thinking about some stuff, and I felt like writing about it. I figured this was a fitting place for it; I've tried as hard as I could to make sure it wasn't another one of my boring technical rambles.
A lot of my friends will know-- and the rest will be unsurprised to find out-- that one of my minor hobbies is game-making. I'm no programmer; I learned Visual Basic in High School, but I was never able to make anything terribly complex or polished, and what understanding I had is now lost to the mists of time. I do, however, enjoy using pre-packaged game maker programs, like RPG Maker and Games Factory.
I've never styled myself as a serious game maker. I've never even styled myself as a particularly good game-maker. At best, my passion for video game music means I can make a pretty good soundtrack. The more important merits-- programming capabilities, graphic design skills, game balance perception, and general patience with the work-intensive process of game-making-- I ostensibly lack. Taylor and Michael will remember my RM2k3 project, Project Oracle, and Alpha will remember my untitled Maple RPG fan game-- both projects wound up on the scrap pile for the same reason; I just lost patience with myself, and my lack of ability to create a quality product.
Both games were wracked with balance problems; I never mastered the art of creating enemy stats, or creating a reasonable difficulty curve. Project Oracle had flat characters and an unimaginative plot. I was working with real people for characters; it was a self-insertion sort of game, where myself and my real life friends were the main characters. This made me too afraid to play with characterization and development, for fear of getting it wrong. The result was flat characters that did little more than react to events and cycle dialogue lines that had no purpose other than to move the plot forward.
The Maple RPG had pretty battle scenes, but that was only because I had access to graphics and sound assets ripped directly from Maple Story-- and for all its faults, Maple is not an ugly game. It fell flat when the battles ended and the player took control on the world screen; that's where I was forced to use RMXP's default graphics assets, making the game world look dull and unimaginative, and making NPC sprites fail to match with their canonical appearances.
I had an older project that I started right at the tail end of my elementary years-- actually, it was the summer before I started Junior High. It was based on a comic book project I'd started in my elementary years, featuring an anthropomorphic dog in a stereotypical "superhero" plot formula. I was using an RPG program called O.H.R.RPG.C.E. to make an RPG based off of it; the plot actually wound up catching my interest more than the comics ever did, and became my primary focus with the series canon after that point. That game was eventually lost in the Great Hard Drive Reformatting of '04, and I lament it to this day-- there were a lot of memories in that project, for as lame as it was. I eventually started reworking the plot of the game into a novelization in my later high school years-- but stopped and scrapped it, deciding to start over from scratch by replacing all the anthropomorphic animal characters with believable human characters. I started using RM2K3 to remake the old game with these alterations in mind (the result of which Taylor and the rest may remember me showing them, actually!), but again, the work-intensive process and overall lack of quality caused me to lose momentum.
The general point I'm getting at here is, I'm aware of my faults as a game-maker, and would never try to pretend that I measure up to the big names.
However, in my career as an amateur game maker, I've seen a lot of game projects made by other people in various mediums-- both in the fan game and original game worlds. And this has led me to notice a few things.
First, no matter how many game making programs are out there, and no matter how well-made, polished, and user-friendly these programs are... the majority of games made with them suck.
Second, even the least complex, polished, user-friendly game making programs have a select few truly quality, classic games, with enough polish to blow the mind.
The same is true of the ROM hacking community; no matter how well-made, in-depth, and readily-available the hacking utilities are, there will inevitably be ass-terrible hacks, and hacks that will take your breath away.
This has led me to draw a few conclusions.
First and foremost. Even though game making programs market themselves as a means through which people can make quality games with little effort, investment, or skill... this is not true. At all. All the program will do is provide a platform. The unimaginative and unskilled will still be unable to create quality games-- all that's changed is, they now have a medium through which to create bad games. The bad games may have pretty pre-made graphics, though.
This brings to mind a game called Kindred Saga. It's an old game made with RPG Maker 2000, a game-maker that's nearly a decade old now, and lacked the graphical quality and event flexibility of a lot of modern-day game-makers. And yet, even in spite of the limitations of the platform it was made on, Kindred Saga still blows me away whenever I play it. The one who made it basically ignored the pre-made battle system RM2K offered, instead using in-game events to make a custom battle system, and one with such complexity and polish that I am still impressed with it, to this day. The general level of quality throughout the game is one seldom seen in amateur game projects.
Compare that to a crappy fan game made in RPG Maker XP, using FF7 midis and pre-packaged sprites and sounds, and... well, you see my point.
Basically, no matter how advanced the platforms are, they will never create a viable substitute for creativity, skill, and patience. This has been proven to me time and time again, in every conceivable medium.
If you want to see some examples of this at work, look up these:
Kindred Saga (RPG Maker 2000, original RPG)
Cave Story (unknown platform, original action/adventure sidescroller)
Mushroom Kingdom Fusion (Game Maker 7, Mario fan game)
Mega Man Returns (Game Maker 7, Mega Man fan game)
Rosenkreuz Stilette (unknown platform, doujin Mega Man clone)
MegaMari (unknown platform, Mega Man clone, Touhou doujin fan game)
Extra Mario Bros. (NES, Super Mario Bros. ROM hack)
The Legend of Zelda: Seeds of Time (SNES, Super Mario World ROM hack, Zelda fan game)
Brutal Mario (SNES, Super Mario World ROM hack)
The Legend of Zelda: Parallel Worlds (SNES, Zelda: A Link to the Past ROM hack)
Super Metroid Redesign (SNES, Super Metroid ROM hack)
Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes (SNES, Chrono Trigger ROM hack)
Chrono Trigger: Prophet's Guile (SNES, Chrono Trigger ROM hack) (sub-project of the above)
Any of a million ROM hack projects created by the PK Hack team at Starmen.net (NES, SNES, Earthbound/Earthbound Zero ROM hacks)
And if you REALLY want to go old school... look up the Chrono Wars series on the old ZZT game platform. (ZZT, original action/adventure ASCII-based shooter). The story of that game served as part of the inspiration for my Time Travel Theory 101 story project-- if you like time travel-based mindfuck plots, you'll like this. Sadly, it was never completed.
A lot of my friends will know-- and the rest will be unsurprised to find out-- that one of my minor hobbies is game-making. I'm no programmer; I learned Visual Basic in High School, but I was never able to make anything terribly complex or polished, and what understanding I had is now lost to the mists of time. I do, however, enjoy using pre-packaged game maker programs, like RPG Maker and Games Factory.
I've never styled myself as a serious game maker. I've never even styled myself as a particularly good game-maker. At best, my passion for video game music means I can make a pretty good soundtrack. The more important merits-- programming capabilities, graphic design skills, game balance perception, and general patience with the work-intensive process of game-making-- I ostensibly lack. Taylor and Michael will remember my RM2k3 project, Project Oracle, and Alpha will remember my untitled Maple RPG fan game-- both projects wound up on the scrap pile for the same reason; I just lost patience with myself, and my lack of ability to create a quality product.
Both games were wracked with balance problems; I never mastered the art of creating enemy stats, or creating a reasonable difficulty curve. Project Oracle had flat characters and an unimaginative plot. I was working with real people for characters; it was a self-insertion sort of game, where myself and my real life friends were the main characters. This made me too afraid to play with characterization and development, for fear of getting it wrong. The result was flat characters that did little more than react to events and cycle dialogue lines that had no purpose other than to move the plot forward.
The Maple RPG had pretty battle scenes, but that was only because I had access to graphics and sound assets ripped directly from Maple Story-- and for all its faults, Maple is not an ugly game. It fell flat when the battles ended and the player took control on the world screen; that's where I was forced to use RMXP's default graphics assets, making the game world look dull and unimaginative, and making NPC sprites fail to match with their canonical appearances.
I had an older project that I started right at the tail end of my elementary years-- actually, it was the summer before I started Junior High. It was based on a comic book project I'd started in my elementary years, featuring an anthropomorphic dog in a stereotypical "superhero" plot formula. I was using an RPG program called O.H.R.RPG.C.E. to make an RPG based off of it; the plot actually wound up catching my interest more than the comics ever did, and became my primary focus with the series canon after that point. That game was eventually lost in the Great Hard Drive Reformatting of '04, and I lament it to this day-- there were a lot of memories in that project, for as lame as it was. I eventually started reworking the plot of the game into a novelization in my later high school years-- but stopped and scrapped it, deciding to start over from scratch by replacing all the anthropomorphic animal characters with believable human characters. I started using RM2K3 to remake the old game with these alterations in mind (the result of which Taylor and the rest may remember me showing them, actually!), but again, the work-intensive process and overall lack of quality caused me to lose momentum.
The general point I'm getting at here is, I'm aware of my faults as a game-maker, and would never try to pretend that I measure up to the big names.
However, in my career as an amateur game maker, I've seen a lot of game projects made by other people in various mediums-- both in the fan game and original game worlds. And this has led me to notice a few things.
First, no matter how many game making programs are out there, and no matter how well-made, polished, and user-friendly these programs are... the majority of games made with them suck.
Second, even the least complex, polished, user-friendly game making programs have a select few truly quality, classic games, with enough polish to blow the mind.
The same is true of the ROM hacking community; no matter how well-made, in-depth, and readily-available the hacking utilities are, there will inevitably be ass-terrible hacks, and hacks that will take your breath away.
This has led me to draw a few conclusions.
First and foremost. Even though game making programs market themselves as a means through which people can make quality games with little effort, investment, or skill... this is not true. At all. All the program will do is provide a platform. The unimaginative and unskilled will still be unable to create quality games-- all that's changed is, they now have a medium through which to create bad games. The bad games may have pretty pre-made graphics, though.
This brings to mind a game called Kindred Saga. It's an old game made with RPG Maker 2000, a game-maker that's nearly a decade old now, and lacked the graphical quality and event flexibility of a lot of modern-day game-makers. And yet, even in spite of the limitations of the platform it was made on, Kindred Saga still blows me away whenever I play it. The one who made it basically ignored the pre-made battle system RM2K offered, instead using in-game events to make a custom battle system, and one with such complexity and polish that I am still impressed with it, to this day. The general level of quality throughout the game is one seldom seen in amateur game projects.
Compare that to a crappy fan game made in RPG Maker XP, using FF7 midis and pre-packaged sprites and sounds, and... well, you see my point.
Basically, no matter how advanced the platforms are, they will never create a viable substitute for creativity, skill, and patience. This has been proven to me time and time again, in every conceivable medium.
If you want to see some examples of this at work, look up these:
Kindred Saga (RPG Maker 2000, original RPG)
Cave Story (unknown platform, original action/adventure sidescroller)
Mushroom Kingdom Fusion (Game Maker 7, Mario fan game)
Mega Man Returns (Game Maker 7, Mega Man fan game)
Rosenkreuz Stilette (unknown platform, doujin Mega Man clone)
MegaMari (unknown platform, Mega Man clone, Touhou doujin fan game)
Extra Mario Bros. (NES, Super Mario Bros. ROM hack)
The Legend of Zelda: Seeds of Time (SNES, Super Mario World ROM hack, Zelda fan game)
Brutal Mario (SNES, Super Mario World ROM hack)
The Legend of Zelda: Parallel Worlds (SNES, Zelda: A Link to the Past ROM hack)
Super Metroid Redesign (SNES, Super Metroid ROM hack)
Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes (SNES, Chrono Trigger ROM hack)
Chrono Trigger: Prophet's Guile (SNES, Chrono Trigger ROM hack) (sub-project of the above)
Any of a million ROM hack projects created by the PK Hack team at Starmen.net (NES, SNES, Earthbound/Earthbound Zero ROM hacks)
And if you REALLY want to go old school... look up the Chrono Wars series on the old ZZT game platform. (ZZT, original action/adventure ASCII-based shooter). The story of that game served as part of the inspiration for my Time Travel Theory 101 story project-- if you like time travel-based mindfuck plots, you'll like this. Sadly, it was never completed.
