What is the best possible learning path for RPG Maker

[TheoAllen]

The topic around "your first game will suck" is interesting.

The phrase, however, actually translated to "your first attempt will not be as good as the next and the future attempts". At least on the technical level. The phrase "it will suck" has an implication that you may not like the game, an embarrassment, and/or want to start over.

Some people like what they have achieved in the past despite their skill limitations and other things. Those people won't agree with the phrase. Despite the fact, they may have better skills now.

The first complete game I released in 2014 might be suck or not depending on how you look at it. It was also the game where I coded a battle system for the first time. And the game was a showcase of it. It was loved by relatively many people, and I could see it as a success.

In the eyes of common RM developers, it could be a technical achievement. Because they would never be able to make such a feat. In the eyes of common players, it could be just another RPG Maker game, worse probably, with cringy dialogues and boring battles.

In my eyes, however, the game has questionable scripting practices. A lot of inefficient designs. Yet, during its time, it was referenced and used by many people. How do you feel when your "embarrassment" was used by many people and they thanked you for it? Does it suck or succeed?

Actually, that was a rhetorical question. Don't answer that.

 

[FriendSized]

Make the game that you want to play.

This can't be overstated enough.

If you find yourself just playing your own game, even if you only opened it up to quickly test something, that's a very good sign. Because if you're having fun playing your own game, chances are someone else will have fun playing it too.

Of course that doesn't mean the game is good enough (yet), but if the basics are so fun that even the person who made it and knows literally every line of code (and duct tape) behind how it works is still having fun with it, then that's a great sign the game is well on its way to being fun for an audience.

 

[Traverse]

I'm probably going to get flamed for suggesting this, but if you are strictly just trying to learn how to use the engine and have no programming experience and never used it before, one of the more effective ways is probably to try and do a custom menu system (not necessarily a full party menu system with all sub-menus, but just one menu) purely with events. This will force you to become familiar with a whole bunch of event commands, including the two most important event commands - Variables and Conditional Branches - which are also some of the most important and basic programming concepts.

After that - try to make the same menu system without events, by modifying the default engine scripts that handle the party menu system (Scene_Menu or whatever submenu Scene it was and any Window_xxx classes it uses). If you can do that, you will have learned the basic syntax of Ruby/JS and know an important aspect about how the engine is structured under the hood.

From there, that knowledge will allow you to start investigating other parts of the engine like the battle system and you will have a decent base to try making scripts/plugins from scratch instead of directly modifying default engine code.

How fast it will take depends on your own learning speed and it probably will be frustrating, but what you learn from it is immediately useful, gives you a base to do a lot of other things and is likely to stick in your memory precisely because of how much blood and sweat you spent trying to figure out how to do it.

 

[Former_Sky]

I was lucky to have a friend that knew the system inside and out. So I would try and make something and consult them if I ever got stuck.

I went straight for my dream game, although I have also made enough games prior to avoid the pitfalls. Just don't give up.

 

[Tai_MT]

I'm always leery of the advice "make the game you want to play". I mean... you can... But what happens when what you like is something nobody else likes? Or even tolerates? Like say... you decide to make a game with actual illegal content, because "that's the game you want to play"?

But, that's on the extreme edge of things.

I prefer when people say, "make a fun game" instead of "make the game you want to play".

Just because I want to play a game where I bash my face against a rock for 37 hours straight, doesn't mean other people... or... anyone, really, will want to play that game. Which is part of the "understand your audience" section of game design.

You find this silly behavior quite a lot with people who are "professional gamers" or "the hardcore" who want games designed to be as difficult as possible for them. They want everything on Kaizo mode. Forgetting, of course, that "Kaizo Mode" isn't really fun for anyone who doesn't have masochistic tendencies. Which is like... less than 1% of gamers. So, your audience will be less than 1%, and then you'll have to figure out what is "acceptable difficulty" to such an audience, since even THAT runs on a spectrum. I mean, there are still people out there who defend the first time you get run over by a boulder in Dark Souls 1 as "fair". "Oh, you should've guessed that if you got halfway up the stairs, a boulder would roll down and hit you! The wall behind you is all broken and shattered! No, it doesn't matter that most of this dungeon is broken and shattered, too, and all of THOSE broken pieces were 100% meaningless. No, it doesn't matter that the last guy who got hit doesn't tell you about the danger, and that there's no boulder in this room with him either! ONLY THE ELITE AND BEST GAMERS WOULD BE ABLE TO INFER THE DANGER ABOUT TO BEFALL THEM!"

It... gets silly.

Honestly, I think the better advice is just "start the design process on a game you want to play, then tailor that experience to reach a wider audience than just yourself." Especially since passion fades, and you won't get an audience to boost your passion for your project again if they aren't interested in your project.

The question ultimately needs to be asked:

What do you hope to get out of designing this particular game?
1. Fame?
2. Fortune?
3. Adoration?
4. A Legacy?
5. A career?
6. A business?

No matter what you pick here, other than "personal pleasure from playing my own game", you're going to have to sacrifice some of your vision and some of your "the game I want to play" in order to reach a wider audience to get out of game design what you want to get out of game design.

Or, the better question to ask anyone who says "make the game you want to play" is this:

"Would you rather have a game that you love, but everyone flames into oblivion and nobody else likes, or a game that compromises your vision but is absolutely loved by everyone who touches it and is showered in accolaides?"

Sometimes, you get to have both. But, it's kinda rare. Even that, that really only tends to happen if "the game you want to play" is one the rest of the world wants to play as well, and that's what we typically call "Catching Lightning in a Bottle". It's rare, even in the indie dev space.

 

[Bernkastelwitch]

Have to disagree on that particular take on wanting to "Only make what others want to make". You can make what you want to make and what others want to make. My game is a bit inspired by Suikoden and despite it being dead minus the remaster coming this year, I have influences from it in my game alongside other stuff. There's people who want more Suikoden-likes to exist even if it isn't 100%. To some people, they don't like that simply because that means A lot of playable characters or whatnot or they never played Suikoden.

And honestly the "Only make what others want to make" would mean we'd never get stuff like Killer7, No More Heroes, Drakengard/Nier, Metal Gear, Touhou, Undertale, Cave Story, etc etc. Stuff that would be rejected by most other publishers but the devs in the latter three examples stayed indie or in the former examples put their foot down even if they had to compromise a little bit on certain other aspects.

Like yeah. Some people would go overboard with stuff like certain creative decisions or difficulty but it's better to see what sticks than not even try. What would be better? To be generic and forgotten but safe or try to do it your way and see what works or what doesn't?

Alas I may be getting slightly off topic here.

But on the other part, I really don't like the phrase of "Your first game will suck" mostly because some people who hear that don't even put effort into anything and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. It's better to at least try than not even bother. Kind of what I am doing. Yes, there's stuff I ain't fully experienced in with RPG Maker but I am putting my hardest in it because I'd rather push myself and get what I want to see even if it isn't the best instead of going "Oh, my first game is gonna suck. I shouldn't bother". It's better to say to tamper your expectation on your first game, not just "It'll be a terrible game, don't even put effort" or something like that.

For me personally I got a good path because I have genuine friends who are into RPG Maker and they give me critiques on my strengths and weaknesses. They also point out people I can commission. So it does help to have some friends who can help you and give you advice. it is always an important lesson.

 

[Indinera]

Very wise words

 

[Tai_MT]

@Bernkastelwitch

I'm not really advocating for either extreme on either case. I'm not sure why so many people in the world don't understand "moderation". They just see, "you belong on the other end of this debate". Like, guys... the glass isn't just empty or just full. There are degrees to which the glass can have liquid in it.

That is to say:

Telling people "make a game you want to make" is just as silly of advice as "make a game others want you to make".

There's a middle ground that makes a lot more sense. Namely, you start with something you want to see, then you gradually tailor that to the audience you want to reach. This involves compromising some of your vision, almost all the time. It's rare you don't have to compromise your vision to reach an audience.

I am no more saying, "Just copy what the popular games do" than I am "just do whatever you want". I don't buy into either extreme, because both extremes are silly.

As for the phrase:

"The first game you make is going to suck", it's basically used to tell players exactly what you want. Except, you know, it's shorthand. Shorthand for "you're going to make mistakes, it's not going to be that great, you need to keep trying, keeping pushing forward".

If a person is easily discouraged by "your first attempt is probably not going to be good", then that's a personal issue. As in, they lack confidence to make anything or do anything, AS IT IS. They're already self-defeatest. What will happen if they don't encounter that is the moment they get their first bit of criticism, they'll go, "I knew it, I suck, I quit".

If a phrase like, "Your first game is going to suck", makes a person not care about quality... I'd be hard pressed to believe that not telling them that will make them care about quality either. After all, if they quit upon hearing that, they're already demonstrating they don't belong in "the public space". They couldn't handle criticism that wasn't even aimed at them. They heard that, took it immediately to heart that they'd never be able to be a rock star with a sold out show on their first attempt and went "It's not worth the effort, if I can't do that on the first try".

Toxic behavior toward oneself.