Misconception

[Mindseeker]

I have been around RPG Maker community for a while now, despite this being a new account. I have been on other forums before this official one was founded. I haven't get to know people or comment much to their posts but I followed topics daily and watched what was happening around the community. 

I've been enthusiastic about game making, reading on game designing, ideas on mechanics, and much more I could find in this forums while I admired the resources that people around the community was making. I tried making games in other engines before RPG Maker eventually started to learn programming then I have met RPG Maker and the product was awesome. But I have spent and enjoyed more of my time in this forums, than I have spent in the product itself. I thought I was in one of the biggest "Game Making" communities I have seen.

I haven't been around this community for some time and got back and failed to recover my old account so I had to make a new one. I was trying to get into game making once more, though not with an RM project. Still as I thought this site was a "game making" community I came here... Only to be welcomed by getting my topic locked because I stated in the topic that I was making a non-RM project.

Yes it might be my fault not seeing a sticky topic, but if I were to get warned to search the forums first instead of getting we can't help you with a non-RM project it would have been more helpful.

Anyway I thought this was a "game making" community before, however it seems to be only a "RPG Maker" community after all.

 

[Archeia]

This is the Official RPG Maker site. That's why it's an "RPG Maker community." You can't expect us to provide you resources for a non-RM project when you aren't using our engine. (At least, the RPG Makers we officially support)

While we have general game design discussions, it all boils down that we all use RPG Maker.

 

[Andar]

No, this is Degica's official forum, and Degica is the company selling the RPG Makers outside Japan.


And I think it's quite understandable when the company paying for this website wants to limit the use to only those products they're selling - not only because they don't get money for supporting other product, but also because the users might get confused about which part of the support goes to which program (we already had a user imaging he could use RMXP-scripts in IGM, who knows what misconception we would get if there were still other programs added to this site).


And it's not exactly an "RPG Maker"-community - it's a "Degica Program" community - which means that you would also have been locked when asking support for older makers (RM2K3 or earlier) or console makers - but you do get support here for IG Maker and Manga Maker.


Edit: ninja'ed

 

[amerk]

I've always looked at RMW as more of a commercial site. I'm not saying that in a negative way, either; it's quite positive, because it means those who are trying to break into sales using RPG Maker finally have a community that will cater to them. Just look at the wonderful assets in the store that are sold dirt cheap and can be used (quite often) in conjunction with the RTP, or in some cases, instead of.

And in so doing, it makes sense for Degica to limit the scope to not only legal products, but also to the products they support.

That certainly doesn't mean that hobbyists aren't welcome, and you can easily see how well hobbyists and commercial developers get along. After all, what a hobbyist can learn can also help a commercial developer, and vice versa. And while I don't have any plans of going commercial, I still buy some of the packs in the store because they are cheap and of high quality and can make really decent non-commercial games.

However, it's also understandable for somebody new to come in and feel a bit overwhelmed or even slighted, especially if they aren't going commercial. In those cases, I suggest visiting other sites that cater more to the hobbyist nature. We have RMN (rpgmaker.net) and VXAN (rpgmakervxace.net), and those sites allow all uses of whatever maker (RM or not).

But don't be quick to dismiss RMW, either. I use all 3 sites regularly, and each one has something to offer, and the members and staff behind each site are some of the best people I've ever encountered for any community.

 

[Mindseeker]

I am not going to dismiss the site or anything, I am still going to be a user of this forums, there are great people and great resources here that I am used to seeing by now. I do agree what all of you said above, that is how this site should work. Still I thought I might as well point my opinion on the site here. 

 

[Tsukihime]

Anyway I thought this was a "game making" community before, however it seems to be only a "RPG Maker" community after all.

There are entire sections devoted to game theory and mechanics which are not exclusive to RM by any means.


If you're just looking for people to make resources for you, that's a different story, especially if it's non-RM.


If you were looking for engine support for non-supported engines, personally I don't really care, especially if you use the "tools and programs" board, but I guess mods would like to keep things organized overall.

 

[Zoltor]

If you post in the Game Development section, your threads probally wont get locked if talking about another engine, as they are not RPG Maker specific forums(I mentioned Byond a ton of times there, yet hadn't had a thread locked, and OMG I lost count of how many people have mentioned Unity, yet I have never seen even a warning given out, hell just last night we were talking about Java).

However the support part of the forums, is strictly Degica product based.

 

[Sharm]

Sometimes we'll get people making their own engine that would be in direct competition with RM and they come asking for help using the RTP in their engine. Since using the RTP outside the engine isn't allowed and since it's bad business to help a competitor take away customers it's best to shut down all requests like that, even ones that are only slightly similar. It's also how the rules are set up. I guess I could have been a little less inflexible in your situation, Mindseeker. I hope you understand why I acted the way I did though. People programming their own maker can still be great members of the forum, but it's important to be very clear where the lines are drawn in a situation like that.

 

[Nathanial]

It's very unrealistic to discourage people from using other engines or even pretend other community members don't use other engines.

Even some (but not all) of our resource packs have an alternative license for usage outside of RPG Maker.

As others have said, there's sub-forums here where general game development discussion is allowed. And RPG Maker doesn't even have to be factored in on that.

From a business stand point, these forums are clearly centered around the Maker series in general. Andar brought up some excellent points. 

It's not that you're not welcome here if you have projects in other engines.. Just certain sub-forums are a big no-no for discussion outside of the RPG Maker scope. One important one is our classifieds section.

Please don't take it personally or feel out of place.  

 

[Onomotopoeia]

Sometimes we'll get people making their own engine that would be in direct competition with RM and they come asking for help using the RTP in their engine. Since using the RTP outside the engine isn't allowed and since it's bad business to help a competitor take away customers it's best to shut down all requests like that, even ones that are only slightly similar. It's also how the rules are set up. I guess I could have been a little less inflexible in your situation, Mindseeker. I hope you understand why I acted the way I did though. People programming their own maker can still be great members of the forum, but it's important to be very clear where the lines are drawn in a situation like that.

This is good to know, because I also am one who is developing an alternative editor and engine, for my own purposes of making an RPG Maker (those words are generic enough they cannot be copyrightable, so it still applies to what I'm making). But in my case I understood from the get-go that some might be a little put off by me discussing these things in these forums; that's why I started a more development-centered blog on my work on the gamedev.net site.

 

[Umbral Mirage]

I agree with Nathan B, RPG maker will only get you so far, if it's renown as a games developer you seek it's a stepping stone, only games that have taken off made with RPG maker outside of the community are atmospheric games like Yume Nikki and a couple japanese visual novels that were at the very least borderline pornographic.

From a gameplay standpoint, it's lacking and in it's every iteration, an RPG Maker engine that has barely any outside the box support for it's own genre, and it has even less for different genres, even making action games well or even the best you can with it is still going to be a long shot when there's things like Game Maker that can do so much more. However RPGmaker is very good as a stepping stone to bridge the vidide between zero experience to working in game maker. I myself started alone and without anything outside of some cool ideas and a bit of expeirence with Microsoft word and MSpaint, now I'm the creative director of a 16 member indie company and have released five games all with at least a 7/10 rating.

That said, I'm only infamous where it matters, and that isn't here. Here I'm hazy and ominously spooky basically always.

So enough about me, I definitely think that as a stepping stone program, RPG maker and it's publishers should have a place for talk of next step up programs since for some rpgmaker and its communites are all they know. As evidenced by folks on this thread it seems you already have it cut out for you.