What is the best possible learning path for RPG Maker

[TheoAllen]

The above is good advice because you will never make your dream game right away, either because you lack the programming experience or RPG Maker might not be the best tool to realize your dream (or both reason will be true).

However, it's also (sort of) bad advice because your dream game is what is probably driving your passion to figure out how to make a game in the first place, it's what has inspired you to download RPG Maker and begin tinkering around with it. So to say "don't make your dream game right away" does kind of feel like everyone is telling you to "don't have fun just yet".

I think it is just preventing you from having regret.

If you make the game for yourself, it is all good. But when you have the audience, they get turned off easily with updates. You can have games with spaghetti eventing and system, but you might hate it and want to redo everything. Some might not like it as some people might like the previous build or so.

I dreamt to make a VXA battle system a decade ago, and I did, It took me a while to convince people to upgrade from v1.3 to v1.4 because they weren't convinced.

 

[Andar]

Many years ago I( wrote several tutorials that go to the basics that were hailed by many.
And despite being written for VXAce they are still good for MV and MZ, because they give general advice more than simple "how to click where".

You'll find the links in my signature - The "starting point" and "bughunting" are best done immediatly after the build-in tutorials of MV/MZ (Ace did not have such tutorials, which is why some references are no longer needed if you followed the official tutorials)

The script tutorial is only for Ace, although it might help some plugin programmers or if you plan to use the script command of the events a lot. Otherwise you better focus on general plugin use tutorials than that script use.

 

[HB_Games]

People learn things in different ways, so it's hard to tell what would work for you. But I can tell what I aim to do whenever I'm trying to learn something. Here's a summary:

1. Look for a good course or tutorial on the topic;
2. Make a very simple project using the knowledge acquired;
3. Analyse the project and get things I did right (to repeat) and things I did wrong (to study how to make them better);
4. Create a new project with the notes of the analysis in mind. Still simple project btw, but one step in the direction of where I want to be.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until I reach the goal.

Hope I could help. Good luck in your project!

 

[Indinera]

1. Have fun making games

 

[AquaEcho]

I probably would've joined the forums and asked for help earlier instead of taking days to figure it out eventually myself.

I also would've looked through all the plugin libraries earlier because I've found plugins months later for things I've struggled implementing on my own.

 

[TheAM-Dol]

Lots of great advice already and I haven't even read every post.

In short: your first game will suck. And your first game will make beginner mistakes. And you will do things that will waste time. And all of that is okay. Just make sure you're having fun along the way. People are learning best when they are having fun. So if the step-by-step guidance of a tutorial isn't exactly striking a fire of inspiration in you, just do it yourself and revel in every spectacular mistake you make along the way, because pros are serious, but newbies get to enjoy the humor of mistakes.

Also, by the way, you will continue to do things in unoptimal ways for likely the rest of your game dev career because that's just development: iteration.

 

[Indinera]

your first game will suck.

People still play my first game (that was released in 2001) to this day. It wasn't remotely close to perfect but it was complete and had strong positive points (great length, tons of secrets, a unique story etc). It also greatly helped propel my indie venture as well as a full series that it still active nowadays.
On another note, Kes' first game was a significant commercial success. It was also very well received by my community.

 

[RCXGaming]

People still play my first game (that was released in 2001) to this day. It wasn't remotely close to perfect but it was complete and had strong positive points (great length, tons of secrets, a unique story etc). It also helped propel my indie venture as well as a full series that it still active nowadays.
On another note, Kes' first game was a significant commercial success.

These are exceptions, not the rule. The grand majority of the time for anybody else, their first game will not be good.

 

[Indinera]

Exception, not the rule.

Well Amaranth's first game was a major success too - both her first freeware and her first commercial game (just like me, as it happens).
Blossomsoft's first game was a big hit.
Warfare Studios' Fated Souls (ex-Dark Souls) was a commercial success.
Pretty sure several others had a strong or at least significantly successful start, so it's definitely possible to have your first game not fail - maybe even an indication that you might have what it takes to be an indie game dev, as many of the people I mentioned have had a pretty good/decent career.

 

[TheAM-Dol]

That's great for you and all those people, but also completely undermines and misses the point.
Perhaps the first "true game" was, indeed a success. Props, good on ya, congratulation, wooo, you did it.
However, that's just not how learning works. The first time someone puts pencil to paper ever, I don't think anyone expects them to draw the Mona Lisa. My point, truthfully, isn't about whether or not your game will sell. Commercial Success does not equal the same as a high quality product. How many AAA games have launched just this year in busted states? Regardless, they still sell and sell well. How many great games are out there that fail to find commercial success, truthfully we will never know because they failed to reach critical acclaim and will be lost to time and amongst the select very few who discovered and played them. A high quality product does not equal commercial success and commercial success does not equal a high quality product.

The point stands, that the first game will suck. That's a truth because people don't just magically know how to do things. Learning is Study, Practice, Study, Practice, Study, Practice, Fluency. No one can skip straight to fluency, that's just not how our brains work.
Secondly, "first game" does not mean, "first game I published" or "first time I made a serious effort on". When I say first game, I literally mean the first thing that you built in the engine (whether you deployed it or not). Generally, when we are learning new tools we familiarize ourselves with the software and during that time we will likely produce rubbish because we are just exploring what the software does at a basic level. Those folks who have published a successful game likely still had a background is game development or computer science, or any other related field that had them prepared for the journey ahead in game development. So again, to those just starting out, your first game will suck.

I think we all get it, you have been successful with RPG Maker, congratulations. Geeze, when I am just trying to give some moral support it would be great if you wouldn't come in here with your typical, "well, I did it better than you." spiel to try to undermine the point I - and anyone else - is trying to make . We can't even make memes without you dropping by to remind us all that you were successful and all of us aren't. Again, we're proud of you buddy. Congratulations.

 

[Indinera]

The point stands, that the first game will suck.

Not always.

When I say first game, I literally mean the first thing that you built in the engine (whether you deployed it or not).

I know. I can't vouch for the other people but it was the case for Kes and myself (pretty sure also for Warfare, and probably Amaranth too). We exist.

We can't even make memes without you dropping by to remind us all that you were successful and all of us aren't. Again, we're proud of you buddy. Congratulations.

Sorry to exist. The world is a bit more varied and chaotic than you would like. It's worth reminding that every path exists, not just the beaten one. Actually, I encourage every dev out there NOT to take the beaten one.

 

[Popoto_milk]

I'm not super deep into RPG Maker yet, but what worked for me was doing the tutorial in MV, making a sandbox to experiment in (inspired by this) and making sure I fully understood how something worked before moving on (often through use of the aforementioned sandbox and google).


Also wanted to chime in on that discussion on page 1:
Working on your dream game right away is sort of dangerous because even if you completed it, it's over. If you went back later you'd still be retreading old ground. Maybe some people would find that fun, but I sure as heck wouldn't. Or at least not as much.

A good compromise is to simply do both. People's dream games are big and ambitious. That means there's a lot of planning and fleshing out to do. There's no reason why a person couldn't do pre-production stuff for their dream game while also learning more conventionally. It fills an interest gap in the learning process since starting out is often the most boring part of any skill. You even get the added benefit of looking at your idea later on, without bias.

 

[TheAM-Dol]

None of your points really address my points...

[edit, I need to take a break from the internet.]

...It's clear we'll have to agree to disagree here as I don't see someone who has been doing the same thing for 22 years having their thoughts or opinion swayed by an online denizen.

Best of luck with your games.

edit:
actually, seriously, I clearly need to step away and take a breath. I'm striking my response. I apologize about that.

 

[Indinera]

Best of luck with your games.

Thank you.

I appreciate the call for a calm and peaceful conversation

The best advice I can give based on my experience of several years is to go for a "passion" project.
I find "dream game" a bit vague to be honest (my first game was my dream game at the time, but once I got more experienced, it no longer was), but passion in my opinion should always be your main drive, as this is what will make you get up in the morning, launch RM and add some more stuff to your project - every day, or almost, until you reach the end.
So, and I hope it doesn't come across as a bit too cliché, make a game that you love playing. Size or scope doesn't really matter in my opinion, but a real genuine love for your craft does.

 

[ZombieKidzRule]

I am just going to reemphasize one point above. I thought I had made this before, but at my age, I can't remember and I am too lazy to go back to try and figure out if I really did or not.

Make the game that you want to play.

Now, there will be many instances, I am sure, where someone will legitimately give alternate advice to that. But as @Popoto_milk also indicated, there isn't any reason you can't do two things or more at once.

I am doing the whole sandbox and testing project thing so I can learn and experiment. Heck, I have at least a half dozen projects by now just to keep things sorted. I started several projects just to recreate tutorial series when I first started.

I now have I guess what would be called a sandbox project where I do most of my work.

I am actively learning to make the type of game that I want to play at the same time.

Now, I could see a bunch of reasons why someone might also want to try to make something less ambitious to actually complete a game, whether they try to release it commercially or not.

But I think that always continuing to work on that passion project or game that you would want to play is an awesome way to stay interested, motivated, and to have fun.

I would just offer the gentle reminder that most people here on this forum are most likely doing this as a hobby. So I think that many folks tend to default to answers related to hobbiest users.

Now, if this was a forum where the vast majority of users where commercial developers and the hobbiest was the outlier, then I think I would expect to see different types of advice and responses because I think the perspectives would be different.

tl:dr

General advice for the hobbiest user of RM, actively work on making a game that you would want to play while using sandbox or trash projects to learn, experiment, and grow.

Happy game making and Power to the Hobbiest Devs!

 

[Tai_MT]

Not always.

Depends on who you ask and what their standards are. Also depends on how you measure "not sucking". If your measure of "game does not suck" is simply "people thought it was good", then you could distribute your game to an audience of one (your mother, for example), have them praise it, and then claim 100% of your players loved your game.

The way you define "success" and the way others do is likely to be different.

The rules and standards by which you're going to judge a product by need to be set before you can claim anything one way or another.

I know. I can't vouch for the other people but it was the case for Kes and myself (pretty sure also for Warfare, and probably Amaranth too). We exist.

Exceptions simply don't disprove rules. I hate to harp on this, but it's true. Judging by the vast majority of posts on here of the way people even think about the systems they've implemented and the fact that so few have even mitigated the "flaws" with any of the systems they proport to enjoy or want to implement...

I'm more inclined to believe that "the vast majority of people won't design a very good game".

While I haven't played the games of those who are "successful" on these forums, if their games are "good", I'm inclined to believe they're part of an exceptionally small crowd who likely "got lucky", rather than had any true talent or skill at the craft. At least, until I was able to observe otherwise.

It may even be that their definition of "success" and "good game" is different than mine. Or, I have higher standards.

After all, really terrible crap becomes popular all the time. The series "Twilight", for example, is riddled with language and writing issues that make it clear the author never had anything beyond an 8th grade reading comprehension level... yet... wildly popular. Enough to make a series of really bad movies... that were also wildly popular despite how bad they were.

The point is, that people shouldn't "count on" their first games being good, and if they do get praise for them, they probably shouldn't "grow a big head" over it. Because, there are lucky idiots out there too. And when one becomes arrogant over whatever they consider "success", it's difficult to tell who got there by being a lucky idiot and who got there through actual skill, drive, and talent.

Sorry to exist. The world is a bit more varied and chaotic than you would like. It's worth reminding that every path exists, not just the beaten one. Actually, I encourage every dev out there NOT to take the beaten one.

It was a critique on the way they perceive your posts to be. I don't know your posts, so I can't vouch one way or other. Namely, they view you as constantly engaging in "one-up-manship". Whether that's true or not, I have no idea (they seem to be rather upset that you brag about being the exception to the rule and using that status to ruin the fun of others as well as to give advice that would probably only be helpful to a very small minority of people, rather than almost everyone).

What I do have is this one post of yours where you're missing the points entirely, almost comically so. Which, typically speaks to dev traits that wouldn't be very flattering and would probably not typically result in "a good game".

As for encouraging everyone not to take the beaten path. I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it sounds like great and uplifting advice. On the other hand, when it contacts reality, it's really patronizing and little more than a "hopeful platitude" that you'd see a clout chasers post to TikTok, Instagram, or even Facebook.

The beaten path exists for a reason. If you do not know why it exists and the value in that beaten path, then you will fail when you try to forge your own path. Likewise, some people just lack the talent and intelligence to do anything beyond what is on the beaten path. They lack the ability to even do "the beaten path" very well. Not everyone can be a successful game dev. Not everyone can even make a good game. Not everyone is going to write a good game story, or have amazing mechanics. Some people can do little more than imitate the successful and not even do that very well. Some people can see the universe in a grain of sand and transcribe it perfectly in video game format. There are all kinds.

I encourage devs to find their limits, attempt to push those limits, and to know when to give up or know when something is utterly beyond them. Sometimes, the ability to know "when to quit" is a valuable one. It's as valuable as knowing when to keep pushing on and learning more.

 

[Ms Littlefish]

It's important to make something you like. "Suck" can definitely be a strong word. I'm completely willing to state that my earliest music in fact...does not suck... (it's what I have to compare, being primarily an asset maker) but I've definitely gotten better too. It's common to have wanted to do something a little differently...which certainly does not automatically equate to "suck." If you ever feel like something is not as good as it used to feel...you probably grew. Doesn't mean it sucks.

Point being, no matter the level one starts at, growth is usually a goal. Your first ventures can still be good, but you'll likely aim higher as time goes on. Pretty normal.

Maybe the more positive light to frame this...is to make something you can really feel the momentum for the process with, use an idea you genuinely like, work on a healthy perspective about early work, up the ante as soon as you feel comfortable, oh...and do plenty of tests in a dummy project. Ambition is good, but smaller goals are usually part of larger goals to keep one motivated and on a target.

 

[Tai_MT]

@Ms Littlefish

I'm not sure how people currently use the context of "your first game will suck", but when I first started here on the forums, the understanding of that phrase was similar to what your understanding of it seems to be.

Namely... your first forays into the program aren't going to be as good as those who have been working in the industry for years. There are things you need to learn. There are failures you need to accumulate to get better. You are not going to be instantly good at a thing, and people who claim they are, typically are either liars or they're an exception to the rule. Are there prodigies? Yes. Are they common? Thankfully, no.

I have, personally, always taken the phrase as a rallying cry. A means to be able to accept criticism, feedback, and just things not working as they should.

My first game, is going to suck. Doesn't matter that I've got all these cool features planned in here. Doesn't matter that I've been working on a demo for like 10 years off and on. What I portray on here isn't going to be the same as how people perceived it to be. Likewise, it's also not the same as what I can actually execute as a dev.

I can tell everyone, all day long, that you will only win combat in my game by mastering the "gimmicks" and "learning the lessons", but that's not true. It's entirely possible to win some combats (maybe even most) without learning a thing. Or, even accidently "skipping" the lesson I was trying to teach. It's entirely possible to "over level" in some instances and break the combat that way. It's not a perfect system. It's flawed in a lot of ways. But, my stated goal makes it sound grand, and like I'm competent and know WTF I'm doing at all times.

The reality is...

I don't.

But, just accepting the fact that "my first game will suck" has allowed me to view all criticism and complaint about aspects of my game as "useful information". It's a phrase that has allowed me to learn and grow and accept my own shortcomings. It's allowed me to just give up on things that I will never be able to get working. It's allowed me to rework vast chunks of my game to "be better" than when they were first implemented. Because, none of it is set in stone.

My first game will suck. It's just about limiting how bad it will suck. It's just about learning from all the ways it does suck or will suck. It's about learning some humility. It's about setting reasonable expectations.

Or, at least, that's how I've always taken the phrase.

 

[Blackfield]

I'd suggest you to make a first, small game (concentrate yourself on < 5 hours). Your learning curve is very steep in the beginning. If you start a too large project, you will get lost in redoing stuff, adding features you didn't know you needed / or were available.

Also it boosts peoples confidence in you. Many never finish their first project and are reluctant in helping you, if they know that it's probably for nothing anyways.

What me also helped was playing other RPG Maker games and checking them out in the RPG Maker to see, how they did things.

Most important however is that you have FUN and never to it for others or to get any form of appreciation. That might come, but it can happen that your game will never be played by more than 10 people. Then when you look back, you at least need to be able to tell yourself that it was still worth it, because you achieved something amazing and had lots of fun while doing it.

Everything else has been said by others before

 

[Ms Littlefish]

@Tai_MT I typically use it that way as well. I'm considered a very positive person but I use a lot of what I'd call "goblin" speak. I say things like trash, garbage, dumpster, etc all the time...probably swear excessively. Some people still don't like it (definitely not a goal of mine) but in the tone of my voice and mannerisms most people know I'm not like THAT.

To me being positive has everything to do with how you accept failure and setbacks, how you treat yourself, and others. That it's OK to feel what you actually feel and that perfection is actually pretty toxic because everyone can grow. Less about the actual word choices.