Funny Thought:What Has RPG Maker/Game Making overall taught you about yourself?

[ConflictedX3]

Its safe to say at this point everyone here's more or less gotten into a hobby (game design) thats either led to their career choice or has opened their eyes to how much goes into making a game, but WHAT exactly stands out for you, there must be something you've learned while working on project games that assisted you to do or avoid something in real life.

Personally for me, messing around with Rm2k3 and Rmxp chipsets/tilesets, i have learned that i will never.....EVER go into interior design, people talk about how much money is in that business i just role my eyes, it takes me 20 mins to an hour just to make a generic inn because i dont wanna over use furniture/plants and the colors are clashing left and right, the hell would i do with some newly weds home??

That and variables, i never got the concept before in highschool, had an inkling but never saw the big picture, and now that i take college algebra and go home and look at script i realize its all the same stuff and really simple to comprehend (when X does Y then Y does Z, if Z's not capable for whatever reason then Y does F as the alternative, i think i worded that right)

So what about everyone else?

[GrimTrigger]

I've been trying to create a game which allows for a lot of player choice and varying outcomes based on those choices. As a gamer, I've always thought "gee, why doesn't the game creator do this, that, and the third, and make the game better?" Now I realize how much extra work it takes to have a storyline that adapts to player choice. This has really given me a boost in terms of mentally envisioning complex situations, multitasking, and logical reasoning.

RMXP also has taught me is how much I value "authenticity." The more dialogue I'm forced to write, the more I realize I connect to "real" human emotion and behavior, as opposed to the often dramatic/poetic stuff you normally see in RPGs. Without sounding too much like a hipster, I am rapidly losing my ability to tolerate dialogue in games that seems to perfectly planned out and "artsy." I'm much more drawn to characters that speak plainly, swear, get confused and make mistakes.

Another thing I've learned about myself is that I'm terrible at creating original characters from scratch. All characters in my game, UTFBF, are based of of people I know. I didn't even realize it until I sat down to write up my game bio. What really learned is that even on a subconscious level, I project my life into whatever I'm doing....be it art, game making, etc.


I've also learned my creativity is heavily affected by my choice in music. I've done my best mapping listening to Porcupine Tree and Dream Theater. I've done much better dialogue writing and eventing listening to folk metal. Overall, I need something external to get the creativity flowing.

[winkio]

Game development has taught me that I like actions much more than results.  I always ended up designing puzzles, battle systems, and moving graphics with a much lower focus on environments, plot details, and character stats.

[KK20]

I haven't done any real programming until I took a class my Junior year. I worked with RPG Maker 2k3 my Freshman year, mainly playing around with the system and understanding how events worked. I found that working with events helped me understand programming concepts (Conditional branches are just If/Else statements, etc.). I was easily the fastest and most knowledgeable person in there (one of two students with 5.0 on AP Test, highest grade in class both semesters). Programming was something I always wanted to learn mainly because my games would never come to life without it. Game design has been a dream of mine since the age of 5.

I also found that programming my Advance Wars engine has helped me understand math. I recall getting a C and B in Pre-Calculus and ended up dropping out of Calculus BC my Senior year. When I retook Calculus in college (when I started my project), I found it so much easier, receiving A's both semesters.

RPG Maker has taught me math and programming--perhaps in a way my high school teachers never could.

[GrimTrigger]

Game development has taught me that I like actions much more than results.  I always ended up designing puzzles, battle systems, and moving graphics with a much lower focus on environments, plot details, and character stats.

I know exactly what you mean. I feel like I'm having more fun building a game than I ever will playing it. I hope that doesn't mean my game is boring.

[Landith]

For me it has taught me to set goals. Basically I'll set smaller goals for myself to complete within a reasonable time frame, taking into account anything that could go wrong, and I'll normally have all those smaller goals done. If I set a bigger goal for myself I basically set myself up to fail because I won't think about what all needs to be done to accomplish that goal and run into more problems. I figured this out more or less after my 5th failed game xD Planning is key.

Also I learned a lot through eventing. There isn't 1 single way of doing things. There are tons of workarounds and I need to explore those options instead of just doing it one way because that way might be better than this way, etc...

Mapping taught me a lot as well, something needs to be aesthetically pleasing to not only you but others as well. It taught me to show my work for others to judge. Don't worry what others think but use that judgement to better yourself.

Lastly I learned about what a bitch it was to worry about gameplay as well as storyline at the same time. A game can look nice with all the flashy stuff but there really isn't a storyline and you're just kinda going around murdering monsters for no apparent reason, more than likely that game is going to suck. Storyline progression is hard to think about too. Anyone can think of a beginning and ending but what about what happens in between?! You really have to think about how that will play a part when creating your game. If you don't you will be stuck with tons of maps you don't know what to do with, or really cool puzzle ideas and no idea where they should be implemented. What I do is create a base map of something like a cave then think of that cave's origin, how it plays a part in the storyline, any puzzles I might want to incorporate into it before I even think about it's basic design. That way I'll already know how it should play out and I'll just have to make it accordingly. 

[ConflictedX3]

i can totally get with the pre-planning and mapping thing, i remember in my rm2k3 days i thought i was big willie, i had one of the most faithful FF7 limit break tuts on gamingw.net but ask me to make a 20x20 forest map and you would get alot of green crap, a tree in the corner surrounded by the exact same bush and then a rain weather effect cuz lord knows i loved my rain weather effects.

but now, i'm not saying i'm great but i'd say my mapping is a 3/5 on overall, which is cool for me even though these days it feels like every maker is 4/5 on average, but what i like is the WAY i go about mapping now --> it taught me to look at my surroundings when i'm outside, i'll really just look around and get ideas.

for example i was on campus and i was thinking of how to make my town more lively without spamming npcs, so i just stood outside and looked: trees were rustling through the wind, a bird flew by me while another one chirped every 4 seconds and that little bit made me say BOOM! wildlife, where there's trees there will be squirrels, where there's a bird flying around in my town there should be a bird chirp BGS/FX that goes off every few seconds ALONG with the BGM, a butterfly here & there by bushes, animated tree charsets instead of stagnant ones, a @#$ing Bunny Rabbit every once in a blue moon, signs of existence!

it really makes me appreciate life and those little interactions, when you can stop & take in everything every once in awhile, even in the name of "game research" its a beautiful thing to enjoy life

Sidenote: One thing i haven't learned from however: items, i hate them, i hate sitting there and thinking of a million synonyms to the word "potion" & "ether" so my game doesn't seem like such a FF clone or coming up with a plethora of slick weapon names and getting writers block on sword 9 with a stack of gun names i haven't started on yet, i feel bad for the people who have that job in game industries.

[R.A.V.S.O]

This is an interesting one... you see it did taught me stuff I can relate to my career but not social stuffs, well maybe some but not eye-opening ones that make you have sudden changes of heart.

well if you're still interested here goes:

simplify "simplify" : there are many fancy top notch scripts out there for nifty and handy small edits you can do in an rpg maker, there is a 40-50% chance you can event this and compress it.

think outside the box: the tilesets look square-ish, your ideas don't have to.

hope for the best but prepare for the worst: scripts are handy, but it is foolhardy to always expect them to work how you want them right off the bat, always take your time to examine it, tinker values, and possibly save the author of such script writing back for script solutions with a PM.

Still a better love story than twilight? : <=== PROTIP: remember to make your story less sucky THAN twilight! if you got common sense then you shouldn't worry about this.

Stick to the plan! : Very few ideas work right off the bat, always take time to work things according to plans

X. X everywhere! : variables in XP and C# are life savers in complex ideas.

some of these might sound irrelevant to some but... hey it's what XP's taught me.
same goes for real life situations.