RPG Maker Forums

So, I pose an interesting question/conundrum!

RPG Maker is, of course, a software Engine to assist with the creation of various types of games (specifically RPG's, but pretty much anything can be made with the use of scripts) and they (Enterbrain) pride themselves on the fact you can have fun doing it due to the simplistic nature of the Engine in general. It's practically point, click, create for full RTP projects.

But for those of us who are at least just a little serious about game making, at what point does it become a payless, thankless job?

I've been squatting on a book I wrote a few years ago, got pretty good reviews from the quasi-general public, and many people stated that it would make a good old school JRPG. I decided to scrap the half dozen unfinished projects I had started since my first RPG Maker program and start working on this one.

So far, I have 10 minutes (or so) of gameplay. Good, solid gameplay with excellent non-parallax mapping (maps still look fresh due to utilizing GIMP and the fact I can have 3 full tile templates filled with tiles of a variety of sizes).

Why?

Every time I decide to move forward with the game, I get caught up crafting resources for it. I've spent probably 40 hours or more in GIMP tailoring the sets to what I need and they still aren't perfect. It's difficult to take a non-VXA Styled set and make it look like it is VXA Styled (though I'm getting better at it abusing contrast, brightness, colorize tool, copy & paste, ect)

It is so bad I didn't even meet my first demo deadline (which is silly, but I game myself deadlines to actually prevent dilly-dallying)

My original intent was very minor edits, get a demo, test the water to see the game is something people would play, and then enlist help creating the customized graphic sets.

So how do you folks handle this issue?