What are the biggest mistakes begginers do?

[Kage]

Very valuable advice everyone, thank you. So to what @bgillisp said it's taking him approximately 2.5years to complete game from start to finish. That's what I was thinking it will take for my game @Andar also wrote amazing tip guide for newbie like me:
https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?threads/a-starting-point-for-new-users-v1-2.14727/
and roughly calculated how long it takes to make one hour of game experience etc. So how often do you work on your project?Do you work everyday or slowly chip away at it every so often? How do you balance work, gym, familly, side hustle and your game?

 

[bgillisp]

@Kage : Try 4.5 years, remember I haven't released it yet. It spent 2 years in alpha testing as I added the optional dungeons, balance tweaked things, added animations (I was using placeholders), made sure all skills and spells worked as intended, removing/replacing spells and skills that were poor or no one used, and editing plot flow near the end as a lot of that had to be redone.

In the end it will probably be 5 years. I planned on 3. But someone I know once said estimate how long it will take to make your game. Now double it. Now you might be closer to reality, depending on how conservative your estimate was.

As for your other question, I mainly work on it on Saturdays, M - F is for my other job. Sunday I take off of all and don't even open RPGMaker most Sundays. Sometimes I get schedules where I can get nice blocks of time on M - F to work on it, and other times I cannot, so it varies for those days big time depending on my semester schedule. For example, one term I was off by 9 am Wednesday and Friday, and 11 am on Thursday (I worked 7 am until those hours). So I had a huge block Wednesday - Saturday to work on the game. Other terms, Saturday is all I get.

 

[JazzGotBlues]

To add to the advice above, a lot of people think they can handle it and ignore said advice. Nope. Don't do it!!

I really like these comics by Yanfly. It's a good way to make your first game.

If you really want to get going on your game, keep it in the same universe somehow. That way it adds a little something to it in a way.

Build a game with what you have. If you don't have the battle system you want, then find something else. Don't get hung up on art or music.

It's just scary how much I can relate with the boy )_( But yes the comics are really helpfull! Thanks for bringing this up!

 

[Ameer]

Most Common Mistake is to sale your first game because first games are bad I am saying this by experience of my first RMXP Game
You should watch series of how to use engine made by Echo 607 and Driftwood Gaming and once you get familiar with engine .Practice it than you should watch SumrndmDde's Plugin Creation series and get familiar with plugin creation and that's all
Most annoying thing in amature Rpg Maker games are that they use some default assets ( Specially Tileset and Enemies )
Big no from me is Default menu because it then feels like a game made without Skills and Default Window Skin
If you are using 1.5.1 version of Rpg maker you should use Srd Supertool and Yanfly Engine Core Engine and if not then Yanfly engine Core is still like must have and when you are talking about Do and That's then why not to use Grid Free DooDads ( A bit of pun intended )
Tip is to practice engine as much as you can
You'll get a hang of switches in some weeks and you'll be able to create awesome things with it
You can get basic information about Variables from series of Driftwood gaming and Echo607 and then you can do whatever you want and then if you get stuck somewhere you may get tutorials about it on YouTube or on Forums here and if you don't you can ask about it here on Forums

 

[slimmmeiske2]

I feel like this is better suited in General Discussion, as developers using other engines can benifit from reading these comments too.

Moving to General Discussion

 

[MushroomCake28]

I pretty much have the same position as @Andar. Create a tutorial project than you can either publish or just put in the trash bin once you're done. I've done like 5 "tutorial" projects that I deleted, although 4 of them was mainly to learn to code in RPG Maker (went through XP, VX, VX Ace, and now MV).

Also, I highly suggest to learn a minimum of coding, since without it it will always limit your creativity. It might seem hard at the start, but after a harsh learning curve, it's pretty easy.

 

[Mrs_Allykat]

Even before that, just basic flow-charting can help. You don't have to get any fancy software for it, just a whiteboard, or a notebook will do. Just something so you can scratch out some if-then-else conditionals without having to actually code or event.

Spoiler

In the spoiler here you'll see a simple flowchart I did for a game where the player uses a button to hit a zombie. It's really simple, done with paint. You will often do stuff like this in your head, but in the case that you step away from a project - putting it on paper or in paint is a good idea. Also, Twine (from twinery.org) is a good free option. It also works for story branching

 

[Soryuju]

I’m one of the many who found RPG Maker while having a “dream game” in mind, and I struggled for a while with the common advice to start with other, smaller projects first. I’m not aiming to make a career out of game development, and I just had one specific thing I wanted to make before calling it quits. Trying to find the same passion and motivation to work on anything other than my big idea was a struggle, even though I knew it was the smarter path.

I eventually found a good compromise: I decided to start making smaller projects set in the same world as my main project, and use them as vehicles to flesh out my main game’s lore and characters. So I could create a short game about a single trial a great hero overcame in the past, or a lighthearted adventure starring some of the side characters from my main project.

This way, I’m able to create as many low-pressure practice projects as I need while still indirectly making progress on my passion project. I can test systems I plan to use later on, such as various exploration and combat mechanics, polish my balancing skills, and develop a richer game world that will come back to benefit me when I finally do feel ready to take on “the big one.”

Probably my most costly mistake thus far has been failing to properly account for the limits of enemy AI (even with AI plugins) when designing my combat. I lost two months of development on an idea trying to design a dynamic row-switching combat system. It worked beautifully for players, but the AI struggled to follow its rules properly. My mistake was that I was basically trying to twist Yanfly’s Row System plugin into something it was never really built to be. After spending many hours of development time trying to fix all the bugs, I only had two half-working enemies to show for it, and I realized that as a solo dev, I just didn’t have the capacity to take on the amount of bug testing and fixing that the system would ultimately require. So that was a pretty tough lesson, but I still learned a lot while designing that system, and I hope it will make my future combat design that much better/easier.

 

[Kage]

All great tips. Makes me thing there's hope. I'll start with a small project, hoping that I can evolve it into something bigger. Right now it's all about learning experience and figuring out rpg maker

 

[Kes]

Lack of proof reading. I have seen so many potentially decent games become train wrecks because this was neglected. Bad grammar, poor spelling, appalling punctuation - none of these things endear a game to anyone. No, your awesome game play will not save it, nor your intelligent battle system. It just comes across as a piece of shoddy workmanship.

 

[Andar]

And the reason for the effect mentioned by @Kes is that most players take bad grammar and typos as a proof of incomplete testing and bad work ethics and then don't even play long enough to check the other parts of the game, no matter how awesome they might be, because they don't believe anyone can make an awesome game if that developer can't even use basic spell- and grammar checks available for free in most word processing programs...

 

[bgillisp]

Unfortunately @Kes and @Andar there is a reason that happens and you both forgot about it. There is no easy way that people know of to put all the text into a word processor, check it for errors, then port it back into the maker. The only solution I found was to copy/paste each and every line of text into word, and see what it marks. And even then, it will miss errors like this:

boat vs boar
solve vs sole
two vs too vs to

I say this as I've had those errors creep into my exams before, especially when I wrote it tired.

Plus word processors don't handle fantasy words or the unique spellings we use for them. I've gotten around it by telling it to add to the dictionary but not everyone knows how to do that.

And finally, even books have typos slip in. Harry Potter had some typos that were just caught in the first book...years later. You can put all the eyes in the world on a thing of text, but something will slip through. NASA messed up and 11 people signed off on a code which had an error...the shuttle launched into the ocean instead of space. So errors are unavaoidable in long games. FF7 probably has a typo still somewhere in that game. Zelda 2 has I am Error in that game (which was a mistake that slipped through).

While it is a good idea to try to avoid these, let's also not forget that even AAA games have typos which slip through. So just make sure we are not judging RPGMaker games by a standard we don't use for AAA games.

And if anyone has a solution to my comment on how to covert text to word from the game (or vice versa, not everyone wants to type it out in word first), please share it.

 

[Andar]

And if anyone has a solution to my comment on how to covert text to word from the game (or vice versa, not everyone wants to type it out in word first), please share it.

External text script or plugin - there is a reason why I consider this function to be one of the most vital ones to add to the RMs, and not only for easier translation...
Unfortunately it only works easily if you have it from the start, it's double work to add it after the game is already a few months in development.

 

[bgillisp]

Right, but WHICH SCRIPT? That needs to be a basic idea that needs to be given to people. I don't even know of which script for this, so it is definitely not common knowledge.

Without providing a solution I see this more as a providing criticism without offering a solution to fix the problem.

And sorry if I seem harsh here, but if we do really want this problem fixed well we need to be providing solutions to it. That will mean suggesting the script/plug-in as we see a need for it to people. Or maybe even adding it to the tutorial list for suggestions.

 

[Kes]

@bgillisp I don't want this to become a "How do I.." thread, but in fact it's easy to get the text in Ace - use Shaz's Extract Event contents script, (I think she might have ported it to MV as well) select the data file which just has the dialogues and convert it to an Excel spread sheet as per the instructions, turn on Spellchecker and track what's identified as spelling errors. Tell it to learn made up names and terms (like your goblin swear words) so that it doesn't stop on each instance. Not perfect, but a great help.

Of course, that doesn't solve bad punctuation or grammar. But at least it's a start.

 

[bgillisp]

@Kes : see that is what I was trying to get at. I think it would have been better if at the start we had said I'd suggest using this script for starters or something like that, as that provides a better solution to the problem.

Back on topic:
One more mistake I see beginners make: Making too big a world map. Many feel they HAVE to have a 256 x 256 world map to make it feel epic enough, then forget how long it takes the player to get anywhere on that map (or how often they will get lost on it). To give an example, my game's world map is 83 x 72 tiles. That's it. And it has 22 towns on it. But since you can only see 20 x 15 of it at once, it works out. I enclosed a video if you wish to see it in action:

Spoiler

And to put this in better perspective, someone counted the tiles on ff6's world map, and I thought I heard it was 127 x 127 tiles. May have to google it to check though.

Anyway, the point is, you don't need a huge map to make a good overland map.

 

[Andar]

Right, but WHICH SCRIPT?

SES External Text Script for RMVXA
Unfortunately none of the similiar plugins for MV have the same functionality, and I didn't have the time to write down the specification for the plugin I plan to commission to change that...

 

[CodeHunterEx]

Some of the biggest mistakes are not trying to learn all about the engine and what it can do before they start their projects.

Dreadshadow has made some good tutorial games:
VX Ace: https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?threads/free-tutorial-game-for-vx-ace-events.29370/
MV: https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/inde...ial-game-for-rpg-maker-mv.101319/#post-909310

You should get familiar with the program (no matter what program it is) befiore you get too involved in a large project.

As said multiple times, start small. Get familiar with how the engine works, what it can and can't do and then start making larger and more complex games.

 

[Lady-J]

I eventually found a good compromise: I decided to start making smaller projects set in the same world as my main project, and use them as vehicles to flesh out my main game’s lore and characters. So I could create a short game about a single trial a great hero overcame in the past, or a lighthearted adventure starring some of the side characters from my main project.

This is what im doing as well, it was avout the only way i could get motivated to make something small.

 

[MushroomCake28]

@Lady-J @Soryuju That's actually a great idea. I might start doing that.