Sounds like a great idea.

What is the story behind this game, anyway?

Thanks.

I don't want to release too much info yet, but let's just say the story is about the nature of reason, meaning, and purpose in life and death.

I put down "A Lost Cause" and picked up the other game I'm working on. The only thing I'll say about that is that it is essentially a role playing game but not in the traditional RPG sense. It is more so an adventure game but not in the traditional adventure game sense.

I'm pretty happy with the idea and design progress but there are so many possibilites that it will be a 10th of what I would include were I had infinite time and a team of programmers (and maybe more system power).

Part of the fun IS deciding what to include realistically and how to sculpt that down, but man it gets frustrating when you think how much more you could include.

Nevertheless, I have focused on what to include, I'm happy with it, and it is just a matter of completing it.

I'm going to include a lot in my game. I took what I'd already created for the aborted "Tales Of Valasia" project (which was two fields, three towns, and eleven dungeons), reorganized it, moved some stuff around, added a third field... I wanted to add a fourth field, but decided against it (fields are such hard work).

It's now gonna be a game with three fields, eleven major dungeons, and about half as many smaller dungeons on the side. At least three towns. I'm adding more to what I'd already created to make it a bit more epic and bigger. It finally dawned on me to take a hint from Obright's game, "Shadow Of The Towers", wherein he made an epic-sized game world but then ran out of memory and wasn't able to include townspeople in the towns. By adding more to it, maybe I can run the memory usage up and then not have to include very many townspeople (if there's memory available, I feel compelled to include townspeople because... well, people live in towns).

There's gonna be a lot of gameplay features that'll probably be code-heavy. Some new features in addition to the ones already planned. I'm gonna be trying to pack a lot into it.

An interesting dichotomy between us.

It would be nice to see what you could do if you had more time to work on it, but I understand the time constraints. Just working on one game is a time consuming endeavor.

Looking forward to your next game.

Thanks, but its going to be awhile.

OK, I took the original list of the games that I had ideas for, took some off the list, consolidated others, etc.

I feel very good about this tentatively final list. I have 10 games that I would like to make for RPGM3. Two of those games would be for other people so they really wouldn't have universal applicability (i.e. of interest to the Mag per se). They are far on the back burner. The other one of those three I am in no rush to make, finish or get out there.

That leaves 7 games that I really want to make for RPGM3 and release at the Mag.

Four of these games are forms of adventure games and three of these games are RPGS.

I have completed significant work on two of the games, yet there is much to still be completed on these games. Unfortunately one is the longest of my four adventure games and while the other is the shortest of my RPGS, as an RPG, it is going to take a while to finish nonetheless.

So I am working on things it will just be awhile before I complete any games.

The only hope is for the two shortest adventure games which both should only take a couple weeks to finish (maybe less) but I won't even start those unless I'm in the right mood.

If I do get in the right mood for the shortest adventure game, it shouldn't take long and to be honest, I think it will be one of the more enjoyable games to play coming out of this studio but if I rush it, it or am not in the right mood to make it (unlike some of my other games) it will really be noticeable.

I had originally came up with an idea for a game or a feature in an overall bigger game and then I scrapped it, but then I thought about it more because I was playing a professional game and I said it would be great if this game had done this in these circumstances instead of this other thing and then I thought about it more and I said I could really make it work on RPGM3, but I don't want to get sidetracked from the other 2 games I am working on, but I know that it won't take me that long to develop a game to make use of this idea, but...well let me just end this sentence first because it is a bit run-on. OK, so my problem is not designing or building the game, but resisting putting in more things that...OK, let me just clear my thoughts.

I conceived of this idea to be something I would want to see in certain games. In other words, I wanted to make a simple game with this feature which I think would lend itself well as one of many features in several overall bigger games that I want to make. This would just be a small little adventure, but as I start to plan it, I begin to think that other features that I have planned for other games might be just as good or better in this game but I don't want to take on another big game so I am trying to be patient about not adding things to this game but unlike the usual developer problem, I plan on getting these thing out there in other games, so it is not a question of not getting to express ideas but rather deciding on how to reserve them for future games.

So many games so little time. I don't expect to complete anything soon but I expect to begin work again this week.

Here is where I am at these days with developing.

I recently have real world concerns that I need to take care of that have inhibited my time to develop.

But I simply couldn't wait anymore so I finally did what I needed to do to get my copy of RPGM2 to work and tried out several different games. I also tried out a few more RPGM3 games.

There are two things that motivate me to create for RPGM3. The need to express philosophical ideas somewhere and the desire to see if I can make something work on RPGM3 by programming/presenting it a certain way.

I still have an interest in both. But as of late, I am becoming less and less motivated to explore philosophical ideas and also to try to convey them to others. In a sense I am becoming content with the answers that I receive and I find a resistance to attempt to express my thoughts due to relative futility.

I have also become pretty confident that if something can be done on RPGM3 I can figure out how, but that if I really want to try to do something outrageous (which I don't presently want to) I should do it on RPGM2.

So while I still very much enjoy RPGM3, there isn't really any mystery left. In other words, I've learned the medium, now I need some content to express.

But everything I have ever wanted to express philopsophically is starting to become less interesting to me and every game idea that I want to see made doesn't seem like it will be very fun for others to play.

I still have a core of 2-5 games that I think I would enjoy creating, that would involve communicating philosphical ideas and that I think others would enjoy playing.

My plan is to continue to play a few more games for RPGM3 to see what has already been done. Once I complete them I think I'll have a good idea of what I am still interested in making and along the way, I can mark ideas that I no longer intend to make games about as cancelled or on indefinite reserve.

I'm having a hard time figuring out if I want to make games and then discard leftover ideas from my notebook or scratch out now the ideas that I don't want to make into a game and then use the rest to make games. But I am on it.

After some in depth PM discussions with Pagerron (thanks!), I have regained some focus (I've never lost interest) for where I want my games to be headed. I intend to reprioritize RPGM3 toward the top of my free time list of things to do.

OK, I have made a decision.

The next game that I will be focusing on is going to be my second survival horror game. I decided that I am really eagar to complete a game in the near future and that all my other ideas require either a significant amount of battle balance, coding, text, or poetic, spiritual and philosophical motivation.

The survial horror game I have in mind will be relatively short. Like "Who did this!" it will be ideal for a late weekend night. It will have some similarites to "Who did this!" but it will probably have more gameplay differences. It will definitely have one main gameplay feature not in my previous game, and it will have a different story (although there may be some common themes). I'm not sure about that yet, but in other words it will not be a sequel or prequel.

It will defintely expand on battling though. There will more weapons but as before battling will be easy with the right weapons so it will be more like traditional survival horror rather than RPG. It will still feature finding items within eerie desolate environments, and basic puzzle solving...

...with a twist.

I had a lot of gameplay ideas in mind for what I want in my next game which I am tentatively calling Survival Horror #2, (Who Did This!? being Survival Horror (#1)) but I was missing a crucial storyline element, a scenario idea essentially. After having a conversation with my girlfriend over lunch today regarding a different topic, something she said led to a scenario that just completely started to make sense in several ways. This really, really should help push production along. I am actually pretty excited about it.

Ok, I'm going to have to admit that I don't know where I am going next with RPGM3. I was originally going to make a survival horror game but there are some reasons that I really don't want to get into. Namely that for as much as like the general idea underlying it, I don't have the motivation or what I believe to be a substantial amount of creative ideas to make it...to do the original idea justice. So I may put it on hold. I am going to look into going back into making the game that I was originally planning all along, the one about reason, meaning, and purpose, but even then I might not get into so right now production is on hold but I will be thinking on a daily basis where I want to go with this and I will keep everyone informed more frequently with my plans. Sorry.

What I am thinking that I might do next is make a very short sequel to the survival horror game Curse from the original XBOX. I am currently playing that game (I'm not finished so don't post any spoilers here!) and so many times while playing it I am reminded of RPGM3 from the characters to the enemies to the environments, to the event layouts. Depending on how the game ends I think I may make this short sequel just for the hell of it as an exercise to see how it translates into the tools provided by RPGM3 and to dabble a little into the story. If anything it might get me back into making survival horror again as this game is getting me back into playing survival horror again. I think I am almost finished with it and once I see how it ends, I'll post whether or not it will be worth it for me to make a short sequel.

I decided that (at least for now) I will not be making a sequel to Curse. After I finished the original I made a small test dungeon with characters and enemies just to get a feel and as I said before I do think RPGM3 has the right tools to make the game (except it could use a little more Egyptian objects). Unfortunatelty, it made me miss the original a little bit in doing so (not that the original was especially great but I did enjoy it as typical survival horror fair). At any rate, I decided that it simply would not be worth the effort. I would be better off spending my time and energy working on something entirely original. But I am back into the idea of survival horror so we shall see.

I just began work on a new game. A relatively short RPG that takes place far into the future. What I like about making this game is that out of all my ideas, the production of this game is the most straight foward. In other words it works well with the software as set up instead of being script heavy or requiring tons of time consuming field maps. It is one of the two games I will release this year.

That's good. It seems the easiest ideas to release are those that are simpler and more custom fit to the software. In my RPG Maker 3 game, the whole thing is built with the software in mind which makes developing it much easier and better.

So far so good. I've been working on the game here and there and it is 10 times easier when you just go with the grain of the software instead of against it. Granted I won't do that for most games but here it is kind of fun.

My hope is to get this game done in a reasonable amount of time to build momentum for the more difficult games to make.

That sounds great Anonymous Bo!! Go for it man.

When you finish it, I hope I have the chance to play it.