Been working on a game and struggling

[Victor Hate]

I am not sure where to go from here.

Honestly I’m not sure why I’m posting this but perhaps there is someone out there who is suffering the same issues that I have been dealing with during their own time developing the world of which their game is belongs.

RPG Maker VX Ace has allowed me to do something I have always wanted to do and that is to allow people to enjoy the story that you created within your imagination but man is it not easy at times.

Sure I have released a few joke games in the past they allowed me to test out to methods for bosses to do things and making new ways of making player think when it came to getting out of a dungeon but those are not the stories I want to have remembered. I want the one story I have been working on for 4 years to be the thing that they get to see but things always seem to get screwed up for me.

Not that I’m trying to seem like a drama queen but having whole computer crazy 3 times and then the drive you had all saved data get ruined by storm and a broken computer just makes it seem like a force of nature has been trying to keep me from finishing this game.
If not for me getting the things I need back from old emails I would have trashed it all but I pushed forward anyways only to now find myself in the same pickle again.
Computer has crashed and all that I am left with is the beginning of the game again.
Countless hours of work gone by the magic of a thunderstorm.

I spent over a year polishing the story of this game to ensure that it was going to be good and I have something special but in all honesty I don’t know what I should do.

Should I ask for help?

I have tried a team in past but they all ended up stealing from me or ended up wanting to take things in their own direction on how they saw things.

I do not like conflict in fact I’m a very nice person I just want to keep people calm and happy so when it comes to things like teams I get worried that things will just become a mess again.

I won’t lie perhaps I’m a bit selfish when it comes to my characters and story I feel like if I let people help me it will lose the passion and the heart that I want out into this game.

People will say “It’s just an RPG MAKER GAME it does not matter at the end of the day how it’s made.”

That is true the program makes things a bit more easy on us who like me are not that skilled at doing something with games but we put pride in our work when we know it’s good and we want it to be good.

I won’t lie the story of my game does at points get feeling somethings because it’s not all about “OH KILL BAD GUY!” No each character has a reason for why they do what they do and it makes you wonder could I have been driven to such a level like that?
I wanted to make something that would keep people interested and make them wanting more and when you finally reach the final boss you understood why he was doing all of this stuff but you have to fight him because if you fail to defeat him everyone you came to know in the game will be gone.

Uh...I just needed to rant I guess I’m not sure if I will even leave this up

I just get upset knowing that I have something something that’s different and has some kind of THING about it I know people would love but I lack the skill or the luck to get it finished.

 

[Archeia]

I feel your pain especially on losing years and years of work because your computer decided to give up on you or mother nature being mother nature. Also seriously, invest in a cloud service like Dropbox and backup your work.


However...

The thing is, once you work something with a team, there is only two ways that this can go.

If you have a team that is not getting paid, that is no longer just your project. It's everyone's project. You are asking a huge workload from people that would also cost them countless of hours. If they're underpaid, the same thing applies. Without passion from your fellow team mates, the game cannot be finished unless you can also do what they can do. There is this famous quote that gamedev is like being in a relationship, except you have two significant others: your game and your team.

If it is paid and they are purely on a commission basis level without any attachment for the project. It can work or it cannot work. Without any relationship with you and your project, they can easily drop when the workload becomes too much if they feel like the pay is not worth it or better opportunities arise.

I firmly believe that going solo dev is unhealthy and has a low chance of finishing projects. I personally prefer to work with a team but also keep myself open minded if they have suggestions about the project. It doesn't hurt to hear their opinions and explain to them what is it that you want out of this game. A lot of masterpiece works like Star Wars relied heavily on its staff to make an epic vs. just the dude himself (I forgot his name, don't really care). When he decided to shut down everyone from Star Wars it resulted to bad prequel/sequels. (Jar Jar)

 

[Wavelength]

I feel awful for you because - living in Florida - I too have frequently lost work to thunderstorms when the power outage caused my computer to shut down improperly and files in the project became corrupted. Usually this was just a day or two of work lost (as only a few files were corrupt, so I could copy the rest over), but once I lost two months of work and man did that hurt.

For now, you may be able to recover your project, but it will not be easy. It sounds like your hard drive crashed and is now unusable, right? I had this happen a few years ago - I could not boot the computer, could not start windows, etc. But with a lot of research, I found a way. It requires your computer's boot disk (call your computer's manufacturer if you can't find it) and an external drive (I think a zip drive will work but ideally you'd want an external HDD). Using the boot disk, you should be able to open a command prompt. From there, you can use what is called the "notepad trick" (google it - it's essentially a backdoor to your computer's file structure) to manually copy and paste files and folders from your corrupt drive to the external one. Depending on the state of your drive this could take anywhere from minutes to days to complete, but it's a lot better than losing your entire project, right?

From now on, make sure to back up your work to a zip drive (one-time purchase of $10, and can't be hacked, but if you're storing it in your house, it could be destroyed in a fire, taken in a burglary along with your computer, etc.), or to a cloud storage service (will never be destroyed or lost, but there's a tiny chance it could be hacked, and depending on your game's size it might require a monthly fee if it's too big for a free service).

Additionally, get a UPS (uninterruptible power source - essentially a battery backup) that also has surge protector capacities - you can find good ones for under $50 - and plug your computer's power cord into it. This has been a godsend for me, because not only does it protect my computer from power surges caused by storms, it also allows the computer to remain on through power outages caused by storms. For micro-outages (where your lights flicker or go off for just a second), it allows you to completely ignore the micro-outage. For sustained outages, the UPS will start beeping to let you know battery backup is active, and give you about ten minutes (depending on the model you buy) of additional power to save your files and safely shut your computer down before you run out of power. It will prevent SO much pain in the future.

 

[Marquise*]

*cybermental hugs* Hope you get a few external drives USB keys or stuff. :/ But cannot turn back time. I just understand.

 

[Saboera]

This is a week late for this piece of advice, but it's a lesson that everybody learns at some point. Make backups frequently.
I'm fairly sure we've all been there and lost large amount of work to X factor out of our control.
For my own projects I now back things up on a USB key and on google drive at least once a week or whenever I have major changes or milestones. If you are scared of getting hacked or have stuff stolen, consider zipping files into a password protected archive.

As far as getting a team together, I hear you, getting a team together that works for free is a massive pain. There's huge production and motivational benefits to working with a team however so in the end it's worth it if you can do it.

My only bit of advice here from my modding days would be to establish a plan upfront, setting boundaries and having people agree to them before teaming up with them. Try to be receptive to their pleas or stuff they want to add, but if it strays too far from the original plan, be firm but polite in the dismissal of their ideas. Have everyone, especially yourself, providing weekly updates on their share of the work. It will motivate everyone, otherwise it always degenerate into everyone slacking until nothing happens anymore. Don't let your teammates have the perception that they are the only ones working on the project. It's contagious, seriously, and the number one factor, I would say, that kills team projects.

Also being able to handle confrontations over behaviors/stuff is obviously a learned skill, but it's very useful in life and there's ways to handle things without being a D. If you want to lead a team, you have to learn how to do this. Never take things on a personal level and if it escalate and you feel too emotional, rather than saying something you regret, it's best to walk away a few minutes, do something else and come back clearheaded. If you can it's good to assess people personalities as well before handling issues as everyone reacts differently.

Hope things get better for you!

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

Been there a lot of times, one of the things I find that helps me is taking a break. Sometimes a small break from game development is what could give you that extra bit of push and idea when you return to it.