From the Top

[Ksi]

I've seen a few new-comers to game development despair that they've no skills, no abilities in creating games, so I figured, well, it's not fair that they see a lot of the older, more experienced people spitting out bits of awesome without seeing where they came from.

This topic is to show off your first attempts (or at least, much older ones) at parts of game dev. It's a little embarrassing to remember, but sharing some of our older stuff should be both fun, funny and an interesting insight for those new developers out there who worry that they're 'not good enough' to jump into game development.

So, I'll start the ball rolling by posting up a few screenshots. I'll ask mods/admin about whether posting links to old demos are allowed or not (since some of us started in 2k/3 >.<; ) but for now just keep it to screenies, edits/graphics, art, music, writing and the like.

A yes, sunny days with all that rain. Key points - the RTP mixed with various tile rips. Also, that window/text combo.

A forest, complete with grass, Breath of Fire II trees and world map forest tiles as smaller trees. Also, a chest. Yay.

 

[Bastrophian]

I wish i had some of my old sprites from back in '09 ....they were REALLY bad... O.O

 

[Zalerinian]

*shudder* back in the dark ages, I made this.. I might finally get around to rewriting it this week or next!

 

[sai]

I ended up getting Ace in early 2013 (maybe late 2012, I don't remember exactly), and I was super gung-ho about fully illustrating my maps. But eh...

Here's my very first attempt at a parallax map, complete with crumply window and unfinished bust, haha. Looking back on it now, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.;;

Then I ended up deviating from top-view a bit. This is still pretty embarrassing mostly because the colors are very bland, and that bust portrait wasn't painted very well. This was from earlier this year. I ended up redoing this room about 6 months later, and it can be found here, if anyone was curious.

Too lazy to cut off the text, but here's an older animated battler my teammate and I collaborated on. Super messy with weird colors.;; I had some more terrible sprites before this one was made, but I can't seem to find them at this time, haha.

 

[Bastrophian]

I ended up getting Ace in early 2013 (maybe late 2012, I don't remember exactly), and I was super gung-ho about fully illustrating my maps. But eh...

Here's my very first attempt at a parallax map, complete with crumply window and unfinished bust, haha. Looking back on it now, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.;;

Then I ended up deviating from top-view a bit. This is still pretty embarrassing mostly because the colors are very bland, and that bust portrait wasn't painted very well. This was from earlier this year. I ended up redoing this room about 6 months later, and it can be found here, if anyone was curious.

Too lazy to cut off the text, but here's an older animated battler my teammate and I collaborated on. Super messy with weird colors.;; I had some more terrible sprites before this one was made, but I can't seem to find them at this time, haha.

I get that you are probably dissatisfied with your work in these projects....BUT DANG!! I love it !!!

 

[Dalph]

This is old crap.
I basically started using Rpg Maker on an italian website around 9 months ago...yes, believe it or not but I don't even have a full year of experience with the tool. This is me messing with the RTP materials and trying to create 2 silly short RTP games.
I also started with ACE! *is shot*. The screens are in italian and are 7 months old:

Spoiler

These screenshots are from JPO (my first game), ofc I will never reveal the full title because it's too stupid. It was the story of a young female thief who tries to steal the King's treasure but finds only a gold ring (with a Demon Lord imprisoned in it) in the treasure room. He accepts to help her in becoming rich and she accepts to free him from the Ring's Curse in return, they tease eachother for the whole game. The game doesn't exist anymore, ahahah.

This was supposed to be a sort of underground temple or something, I wanted the cave to be broken in pieces (since the world where the game took place was in pieces). There were supposed to be waterfalls flowing all around.


If you played Suikoden 2 then you'll remember the Cooking Contest Minigame, this was basically the same thing and ofc was supposed to be a minigame for this game.


A flashback.
The Demon Lord's attic, 100 years before the events of the game. The Demon Lord is basically trying to flirt with the witch using nonsense and bad puns.
 

Another flashback.
100 years ago the 3 legendary heroes in their quest to defeat the Demon Lord (before imprisoning him in the ring).
Generic Clichès FTW! And no, it's better if you don't know what the orange succubus is saying...
This games starts clichè but there was a plot-twist at the end.

Basically one of the 3 legendary heroes (the female seer in this last screenshot) is the real villain all the time, she manipulated everyone and tried to steal the Demon Lord's power in order to preserve her youth and beauty forever. She is still alive in the present and appears as a very old NPC, who helps the main character a lot in her quest. The ending is...well, it's better if I don't reveal it.
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This is when I started learning about events, It's basically a Libra skill done with eventing.
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This is from an old screen contest on that rm italian website, I wanted to use the RTP materials and I got 4th place at the end (out of 9). I don't know what is it, probably a tower-city or something, pls don't ask...ahahah.
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These are from Gunter! A sort of parody of The Army of Darkness, the game still exists but with a different name and ofc it's completely remade. The development is on hold because I'm learning scripting atm and I plan to create some unique systems for it.

Water tiles errors...water tiles errors everywhere...sigh
 

I don't even know what the hell I wanted to do here...a ship with the RTP probably... D:
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I know what you're thinking, they aren't that bad at all, but I can assure that these are my first attempts at mapping with ACE. I basically practiced mapping for 2 months before creating these screenshots (I did only mapping and nothing else) and I played a lot of ACE games to understand how things work...and yet the more I look at them the more I can spot new mapping errors.
 
Now I can confirm that my mapping is improved a lot, mainly thanks to Liberty and her awesome tutorials.
I have a lot of old stuff to show but this is more than enough (I'm embarassed enough, ahah).

 

[Matseb2611]

Dalph, those screenshots are actually pretty good. The ship built out of RTP tiles is rather funny, but somehow it doesn't seem too weird. I think it's a great attempt. The tower city looks great too.

All right, I am going to totally embarrass myself here, but I often find it funny to take a trip down the memory lane in regard to my first experiences with RPG maker. I'll start with not-too-distant past and gradually go further backwards.

This here is a screenshot from Dreadmurk, one of my earlier games. You can probably see all the problems with this map. The wall breaks are all too blocky, and that background completely doesn't fit in with the art style of the game (it was just some random photo I've taken, haha).

^Mind you, this is the game that I still am somewhat proud of and don't mind to feature in my signature. But wait. We shall go further...

Ladies and gentlemen, my first game in Ace - Cracklesnap. A game that was made almost entirely out of RTP with the exception of one custom song and one script. But hey, this game was a reasonable thing to go for whilst I was learning the engine. That's what it was essentially. I didn't plan any story for it beforehand. I just made stuff up as I went along.

^The villain patiently waits whilst the heroes take a look around his lair.

Oh and this was my first attempt at editing together a battler from an existing one:

^That was my first game in Ace, back in 2012, but it wasn't my first experience with RPG maker. The first time I tried RPG maker was a trial of RPG maker XP back many years when XP was still considered as the newest and best maker, and I managed to make a few small games in it during the trial. Gladly I still have screenshots of those. In fact I still have the games themselves too, but they are way too bad to be seen by the public. Here's a screenshot from the very first one I made, Breakspine:

^Mapping is terrible. What's with all that empty space? And the dialogue is funny. I mean look at superlong word. Haha. Nobody talks like that in real life.

All those characters you see by the way are your party members, yes, including that big purple lizardman (who was one of my favourite characters ).

Now here's a bit of trivia. Despite how bad that game was, it served as an inspiration for my current project. The whole idea of dual point of view storytelling that Atonement (my current and possibly best project) has was first used back in my days of Breakspine. And now I've made a full circle, after all these years and all these projects, my first ever project brought something to the table. So never look badly on your past works. They were important steps that helped you to get where you are now. And if you are starting off with RPG maker for the first time, don't worry too much. Nobody is expected to get things perfectly the first time, or the second time, or the third. Your skills will be improving with each new project you made, so long as you challenge yourself and try something new every time.

 

[Dalph]

@Matseb2611:
Thank you, bro! They are decent tbh but I'm an unsatisfied idiot...for some weird reason I always think that there's something wrong in everything that I do. lmao your screenshots are the best, the 2nd one made me laugh so much...ahahah

It's obvious that he waits, he can do it without problems I think, with all these eyed monsters he can keep everything under control (heroes included). Just for curiosity what was that entrance over the coffin?
And I totally agree with you, our previous works are important steps that helped us to improve and to get where we are now. Well said.

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This is my first tile edit (it's also pretty old), I just recoloured the tiles and created a sort of bandit encampment on a mountain:

Spoiler

There are a lot of mapping errors I know, ahahah...but at that time I was proud of it. It was an accomplishment to be able to edit the tiles (even with small recolours).

 

[Matseb2611]

^Seriously man, that is really good. Yeah, it has a few minor mapping errors with the cliffs, but it's a really nice design overall. It takes ages to make maps like that.

Just for curiosity what was that entrance over the coffin?

That was supposed to be a window. Haha.

 

[bgillisp]

I wish I had my game I made when I was 12. It was....well, about what you expect a 12 year old to make. The only thing I remember was deciding that since the last game I played had one alternate world, I would one up it by having 2!

Yep, it ended up being about as bad as it sounds.