The untold rules of RPG Making?

[Trihan]

Sorry, I was kind of vague in what I meant, maybe?

I didn't mean you SHOULD change everything a player wants. What I mean is simply that as a dev, you don't want to treat your audience as "wanting to change your vision" just because they want something removed or changed. A complaint where a player says "remove this" or "change that" shouldn't be dismissed as a dev as the player "wanting to make a completely different game than I want to make, so I don't have to listen to the complaint".

I think it's better to be open to changing than not be. You don't have to change a thing. But, it's important to not go into any criticism under the assumption that your players want you to compromise your vision of the game, or even, want something entirely different than what you want.

I think the minute we start treating the players "as the enemy" and dismissing anything they have to say as "they don't know what they're talking about" or, worse, "they just want me to make a game that caters to just specifically them, rather than what I want to do", we get into really bad territory.

If you make a grilled cheese sammich and 1 out of 100 people say the sammich tasted bad or they didn't like it, you just parse the criticism. You take a look at it. Maybe you decide it's a "non issue" since the other 99 people didn't care. So, you change nothing. Perfectly acceptable response. But, the dev should always treat the criticism as valid, even if they don't agree with it.

Does that maybe make a little more sense? I didn't mean to be so vague.

It's not so much that I thought you weren't including that point in what you said, I was just adding it explicitly.

 

[Kissa]

Though, blanket statements like "don't use the RTP" kinda just tends to be gatekeep-y AF. And, yeah, we tend to have that conversation monthly around here so it hardly seems untold.

Indeed it sound this way. I thought it would create no problem because I am not giving any advice.

By "untold rules" what I understood is what someone noticed throught the years by the general public, in terms of direct speech or "feeling". Not exactly something I should agree with, but a "way of thinking" you notice that is roaming your engine and that doesn't depend on you to be there. So I felt "free" to leave the statement that way because I thought I couldn't be put together with this statement (for example, a "rule" into Dark Souls community is that Lv 120 is the lv to get more online activity, PVP... but all the time someone pissed appear complaining about this "idea" and giving reasons why this is a bad take. If someone asked me the untold rules of Dark Souls PVP I would say this one, doesn't matter my feelings towards it and I also wouldn't want to debate about it with the person who asked me like I am defending it).

I am also thinking more about people wanting to present their game to the general public, like throught Steam, we are always proud when we manage to get our games in such places (I still couldn't). And I have saw already a lot of harsh comments about people using standard assets that came with the engine (yeah, I am thinking more about "untold rules" by an end user that is not exaclty part of some RPG Maker community, but just wants to play something, and your RPG Maker game will work like any other game for him).

By the way... this is not the reason why I do not use the engine's visual identity for my project. I have chosen the style in which I wanted to work on before I have chosen my engine. In 2010 I played a game using a certain style and that made me want to make a game like this. And then I chose RPG Maker, since what I would do was a RPG anyways (and to this day I have not completed it... I guess a lot of people can relate to that).

 

[kirbwarrior]

Common newbie "mistakes"

I'm seeing a lot of spoken rules of RPG Maker and I really want to hit on this; The unspoken rules are ones you bring in, assumptions you've already made about how games "need" to be made. A large part of discussion I see is about undoing those hidden expectations people make. And it's not just us indie developers, even big companies don't realize they are making unspoken assumptions.

Communication is key, even with yourself.

 

[LittlePIGGY]

NEVER, do you hear? NEVER steal someone else's intellectual property. You are your own unique personality - create original content, not produce fanfiction.

Chekhov's Guns

A separate respect for extraordinary education.
For those less familiar with the definition, I will explain. Chekhov's gun is a term from Russian literary studies. The meaning of which boils down to the following - if a gun is hanging on the wall at the beginning of the play, at the end it must shoot.
Which in practice means exactly what the venerable quoted speaker said. If something doesn't work, it means it's unnecessary and just takes time away from you and the player, which is worse.

 

[ave36]

An addendum on the previous advice: if you absolutely want to have your own Final Fantasy, do it, but file the serial numbers off! It is obvious that you should never use ripped assets, but don't copy blatantly, either. Give your own spin to every concept. Invent alternative names for things: for example, don't have chocobos and moogles, have choco-chocos and mogways instead (it is an example, don't use these exact names either, they are mine).

Make assets that are similar but distinct from what your game is based on. If you can't draw, use neural network aids. For example, here I'll post an image of a mogway from my game Legend of Terra Firma. It looks pretty similar to a moogle, but not similar enough to be considered the same IP.

Also keep in mind that game mechanics are not IP and cannot be copyrighted. So feel free to borrow mechanics from your favourite games, if you can code it, or at least frankencode it.

 

[Soul_Narrative_Games]

I'm seeing a lot of spoken rules of RPG Maker and I really want to hit on this; The unspoken rules are ones you bring in, assumptions you've already made about how games "need" to be made. A large part of discussion I see is about undoing those hidden expectations people make. And it's not just us indie developers, even big companies don't realize they are making unspoken assumptions.

Communication is key, even with yourself.

Me: What do you mean, "I can't stay up until 3 'o clock in the morning?"
Myself: You have work in the morning.
I: I'm hungry, can we order a large pizza?
Me and Myself: No.

 

[LionessPaladin]

Idk if this has already been said but...

CREATE A BACKUP DIRECTORY FOR YOUR PROJECTS!

Create copy files of your game/project to fall back on if anything should go wrong
This is something that can be said with just about any software/scripts with a garbage update or the chance of it crashing or corrupting your files

I still remember the pain of my first big project being trashed with no backup files
sad times but lessons learned

 

[freakytapir]

You know, the same as with a lot of things, it's up to personal taste, but ...

Prototype, Test, Iterate

Or to put it differently: Fail faster.
Don't code and event everything and then start playtesting, don't add all of your wanted plug ins at once. One by one. See if everything still works. Add another one.

Make a Minimal working thing.
You want to tinker with the combat system, or balance? Don't start with making 50 skills and 20 classes.
One Test Class (that will not make it into the game probably), and some basic skills. Some basic enemies. Tune that until that works. Iterate.
Don't make the first dungeon in great detail, then playstest it. No, "Greybox" it. Make a barebones version, and see if that works before putting more time in it than necessary.
Same with towns. Don't go through a lot of effort tarting it up before you even know if you'll even use it in the final product.

Placeholder art, placeholder portraits, placeholder anythings are fine during development. So is RTP when you're developping. Don't go storming off for fancy custom graphics when you don't even know if you'll even use it in the end.

Keep a design document. Doesn't have to be fancy, but a central place where you keep your design deciscions.

Write out your conversations and cutscenes out in an outside text editor. It's way easier to see if a conversation or sequence of events makes sense if you're not staring at the event editor in the meanwhile.

Also keep in mind that game mechanics are not IP and cannot be copyrighted.

Tell that to Wizards of the Coast and Hasbbro who are trying their darn best to do just that.

 

[xabileug]

#1 rule : Nobody cares about your game. They care more about theirs. So just keep making it the way you want it.
#2 rule: dont lost hope if nobody cares about it or play with it. It's your first game, keep practicing. If you made a game, your first game to make profit, you are in the wrong place! It takes alot to make this hobby generate income
#3 its better to play other peoples work and class jrpg to get you to the right direction. Sometimes you can get ideas or collab opportunity. Learn from them.
#4 rpg making is rarely a one man team. If it ends ups you're all by yourself, prepare to learn all the skills - musician, artist, designer, coder, beta tester, promoter, grammar checker, story writer. You can always hire or exchange skills though

 

[Tai_MT]

#1 rule : Nobody cares about your game. They care more about theirs. So just keep making it the way you want it.

I would like to point out that I am the exception. I do care about other people's games and how they design them. I am, primarily, a game player who dabbles in design for purposes of storytelling and system creation.

But, nobody cares that I care, and most would rather I not care about their game.

 

[TheoAllen]

But, nobody cares that I care, and most would rather I not care about their game.

I find this intriguing. From what I've seen so far, you were pretty busy in the game design forum, not specific to someone's project. Unless it is either that is what you call "care", or you did it but in private, or I simply missed it.

 

[ATT_Turan]

#1 rule : Nobody cares about your game. They care more about theirs. So just keep making it the way you want it.

I don't think this comes across very well.

If you're talking specifically about this forum, then yes, we're all here primarily because we have our own projects we care about, and you shouldn't really expect to get a lot of followers caring about yours.

But most people want to make a video game because they want other people to play it. That means, sure, you make it the way you want it, but you had darned well better consider what other people like and try to get potential players to care about your game, or you're doing a lot of work for absolutely nothing when no one plays the end product.

If it ends ups you're all by yourself, prepare to learn all the skills - musician, artist, designer, coder, beta tester, promoter, grammar checker, story writer.

I also don't think this is great advice. There are a ton of free materials of all kinds you can use - between the code base that comes with RPG Maker, the RTP assets, the art and music and plugins you can find on these forums...there's plenty you can use to make a variety of games.

And, of course, there are various asset packs and paid plugins you can get that are way cheaper than hiring a person. There's absolutely no reason that everything has to be custom-made for your game.

 

[Norintha]

Less a rule and more a useful suggestion. When making your own tilesets, pink out the unused squares in a fluorescent color hue. Also, a fully pinked out sheet to check for stray tiles left over from converting away from stock/test assets.

 

[Tai_MT]

I find this intriguing. From what I've seen so far, you were pretty busy in the game design forum, not specific to someone's project. Unless it is either that is what you call "care", or you did it but in private, or I simply missed it.

If you mean "lately" (within the last few years, where my post history has basically tapered off to maybe a couple times a week, provided it's not an actual conversation I'm having), then you'd probably never see it.

I don't typically post in the "I'm advertising that I have a game, plz review" portions of the forums (Okay, I've never posted there), so it'd be easy to conclude that "I don't care about people's games".

I spend most of my time in the "Game Mechanics Design" and "General Discussion" sections of the forums because it's where people tend to ask questions about Game Design or Player Psychology. Which, generally means, these are people often reaching out for help or feedback on whatever it is they're doing.

The problem is simply that over the years, people have shifted from asking, "I want do thing, how I do thing and make fun?" into "What are your guys general opinions on this vague concept I'm shopping around?". So, there's not a lot of space to actually "show I care about your personal game" as I'm basically just answering over and over "This is what generally works and why" or "I personally like this for X, Y, and Z".

The other problem is that I've simply "muted" a lot of what I actually think on the forums and refrain from offering much criticism at all. Because, even when I'm not offering criticism and just making an observation, somehow people will find means to turn it into an argument or a fight. It's honestly just easier to not share my opinions to avoid dealing with fights.

I've picked up a few games here or there that are RPG Maker and "given them a try". A few are pretty good, a vast majority are "par for the course", and several have some major issues.

I just don't "overtly care" about people's projects because people tend to just wish I didn't have opinions. I mean, one need only look through the topics on "how to deal with criticism" to see how many users would rather start a fight with me using semantics than take the advice of "You really shouldn't take criticism personally, though you should learn how to parse it" seriously. With the amount of users who can't handle, "Maybe your critics have a point" on these forums, I feel no need to comment on people's games what-so-ever.

But, I do care that they do well. I do care that people complete their projects. And I am impressed by anyone who can and has released a game. After all, I might sit down and play it at some point while seeking ideas, fun, or just to pass the time. I care that I have a good time.

 

[sulvstoney]

I don't know if it's been said, but my #1 unspoken rule for any project, including RPG Maker: finish it.

That ties into other rules, like don't make projects that are nearly impossible for you to complete in a reasonable time frame with the resources you have at hand (which usually just includes you and your free time); don't start new projects because you hit a snag with a previous project or you thought up a great new idea; don't fall prey to scope creep. It's very important that you develop the skill of finishing what you start, that you understand the hard realities of bringing any project to life, and that you know what goes in to the process of bringing the project to a close.

Likewise, by finishing what you start, you develop self-discipline, allowing you to better rely on yourself to make your dreams come true in future endeavors.

It's not the only rule, but for me, it's the one that stands out the most as not being very much talked about, and yet it's such a nasty killer of long-term success and motivation.