Video Games - Week 2

A lot of work done, but not the kind of work that gives me very much to show off.

I've been learning more RPG Maker, and compiling info for my team mates to use, such as sprite sizes and such.  And this weekend a few of us had a big brainstorming session via Skype group chat and knocked out most of the plot.  That part was REALLY fun for me.  I've never collaborated on a story before, but myself and one other person in particular seemed to click really well and then exciting stuff happened.  "What if we did this?"  "Oh!  Hey!  What if we took that idea, and we did THIS with it?"  Yes yes yes!  That's cool!  Let's do that!  And then we can do this and this!"  "Oh!  Yes!  Good thinking!"  At one point she told me, "I'm super excited about this project, so if I start steamrolling you with my ideas, just tell me to slow down.  I don't want to be overbearing."  I was like, "Pfft!  Are you kidding?  I love you for being this excited!"

There's still the details to work on in the plot, like the actual dialogue and such.  And... you know... the actual levels, since right now our descriptions of them are stuff like, "It's a cave, and it's got lots of cliffs and ledges and stuff, and some places are really sandy and you slide down to a lower ledge, but some places you can climb up the cliff, so it's like shoots and ladders.  And in the end, you fight a sandworm."  Yeah, that might need some fleshing out.  But I think some of our artists have decided to start on the graphics for the main characters, and we're getting pretty close to actually starting in on the game.

At one point in the conversation I started quietly panicking.  I knew I was working on the programming, but no one else had really said anything about doing it with me, so I was starting to think I might be the only one.  And then one of our team mates starts in on all this outside-the-box stuff, "Can we fiddle with the battle mode so that you can move around and do things inside the battle,"  "Can we take it from a top-down view and make it a side-scroller,"  etc.  And I'm sitting there about to hyperventilate like, "askdjfalsdk Are you going to make me do that?  Are you going to make me figure that out?  I don't know! I'm still learning how to do things NORMALLY!  I don't think so?  But maybe?  If I say 'Maybe' are you going to make me do it?  Should I tell you 'No' just in case so I don't have to?"  But then things calmed down, and we settled on the idea that side scrolling was possible, because other people had done it with RPG Maker, but we would only have a short segment that way, almost like a mini game, and that was the only weird thing we would do.  And I can live with that, so I breathed a sigh of relief.  A big one.

We're planning on making a proof of concept game, a mini version of our game about ten minutes long that tests out the look and feel of the thing.  When we do that, I'll post it on here and you guys can play it.

That's about it, I guess.  Here, have a Wolfwood dialogue face that one of my teammates made.

<(Thanks for visiting the blog.  I'm gonna go find Needle-noggin now.)


Peace out.

Making Video Games?

I don't know, am I?  I'm not really sure.

There's a program out there called RPG Maker, which lets amateurs build their own video games.  (The newer editions of RPG Maker, you have to pay for, but there are old versions that are free.)  I was talking with some fellow Trigun fans online and mentioned that I had once thought about making a Trigun game on RPG Maker, but the amount of work it would take scared me away.  I was really surprised when several people said that sounded like an awesome idea and that they'd love to help work on something like that.  And the next thing I knew people were throwing ideas around and volunteering to help make the sprites, and it just kind of... happened.  And now there's about eight of us who are building a video game.

Honestly, I feel really weird about this.  Part of it is that I'm not much of a gamer.  I play once in a while when the whim strikes me, but I feel underqualified to be a part of the project.  Mostly, though, I have a strong fear that the initial novelty will wear off, and everyone will ditch the idea.  I don't know.  We'll have to see what happens.

My major job will be to work on "programming" the game inside RPG Maker.  I've downloaded it and started learning the ropes.  It's easy to use, but getting things to actually happen in the game requires coding them a certain way, and that's the tricky part.  It's giving me flashbacks of the computer programming class I took in high school, which is kind of a good thing, actually, because I liked that class.  While reading tutorials, I've been testing out what I'm learning by building a test game, which isn't really much of a game, but more like a place where the character runs around and random stuff happens for no very good reason.

But I did put together a mini game this afternoon using what I've learned so far.  You have to collect chickens for an old lady.  RPG Maker comes with freebie graphics to use, although you're encouraged to make your own.  I used those to make things easy, and then started throwing chickens around just to see if I could make a coherent game.  (And, yes, certain friends will note that my very first coherent game I made involves chickens.  Of course it does.)

I recorded myself playing the game, although the video quality stinks out loud, because I'm a noob at recording my screen, so sorry about that.  The video starts out in RPG Maker, and then I open the game in a new window.  You gotta give me a second, because I wasn't sure if I was recording or not. XD

So, yeah, that's what I've been up to.  I'll likely be updating my progress here on my blog.

That's it, I guess.  Peace out!