Thanks for the encouragement Pagerron (and 1ce too). My goal is to make the game at a very playable length, like maybe for a late night or a weekend, but still a worthwhile experience. So hopefully you will get to play it.

OK, just for the record I am working on four games for RPGM3. Slow progress but I intend to update my progress more than I used to.

I think that sounds like a bit much to tackle at once.

Well in a way it is but it is only a small portion of the games that I actually want to make. Plus only two of those games are medium length (not even really long) whereas the other two are relatively short. Still I wish I had more time.

Yay! Glad to see that you're working on your games still Anonymous (Bo).
I look forward to checking out whatever you make next!

There are some similar things in Red Dead Redemption to a game that I wanted to make but not similar enough to make me not want to make the game. Rather it makes me want to get back into the gamemaking of my original idea but I am too busy playing games right now. Ugh.

Red Dead Redemption (RDD) continues to impress me and inspire me to get back into making the adventure type games that I want to make. The maps on RDD are unbelievable. Traditionally with RPGM3 I like making Towns and Dungeons but I usually avoid the Field editor. I've always thought that the Field editor was exceptional in RPGM3 but it still was more time consuming than my interest allowed. Now that I have become immersed in the Fields of RDD I have developed a greater appreciation for the potention of RPGM3's Field editor. And the game that I refer to in my previous post depends on good use of the Field editor. That is one of the reasons I have been hesitant to get into it. Now though when I need a break from RDD I will be reacquainting myself with the Field editor of RPGM3 and start to work on the necessary Field map(s) for this upcoming game. I already have the towns/dungeouns in mind and I just need to come up with a few storyline elements to tie it together. I predict a release date by the fall (note this 1ce for your topic that tracks our prediction and progress).

You mean this one.
viewtopic.php?f=79&t=8465
Ixzion has picked up the reigns for these topics now.

I'll still read your posts and be curious to the kind of progress you can make. Good luck!

Yesterday I double checked to see how many games I have been working on and as I expected it is two big games and two (theoretically) small games. I have promised the two small games to be out by the end of the year (gulp).

When I looked at the big ones I walk through them and boy was I discouraged with the first one. It is the first game I ever started making for RPGM3. As a matter of fact I started planning it on a weekend train ride to a wedding having just purchased the game earlier that day but not being able to actually try it until after we returned from the weekend away. I had only the instruction booklet to give me an idea of what was possible. In many ways this will always be my favorite game because it is deeply philosophical and deeply personally meaningful. However there is so much personal meaning that I know it will not lend to a broader audience in many respects. I have to choose between making this game as personal as I want and giving up conveying those philosophical ideas to the general public or going all out on the philosophy and making it accessible and interesting and giving up all the personal meaning.

Also there were a lot of design problems from not really understanding the best way to make the game from so earlier on in my familiarity with RPGM3. A lot of it has to be revamped or completely rebuilt. I still think it would be one of my most enjoyable games to play but so much work has to be put into it.

I guess the way that I am treating it is (appropriately) the way I think about my life which is to deconstruct it. So I make no predictions for this game (not even whether or not I will ever 'finish' it) except that it if it is ever playable it will not be so for a long time.

The second big game I am much more encouraged by. The design is much better and the ideas much more accessible. I also think this will be a very fun game for anyone to try. So I am back officially working on this game.

Therefore I am officially working on 3 games to be released here at the Mag, one big and two small. The only problem with one of the small ones is that I feel the premise is so much more rewarding than my other premises that it should be given more of a showcase but at the same time if I wanted to go all out on that it would not be a medium size game but another big one. I think I am going to try to just give it a small complete game that serves more as a basis to demonstrate it and if anything I will incoroporate it into other games or make it into a bigger game later.

The other small one I have said somewhere above is really straight forward. It is very intuitive with the software as desgined so it is just a matter of quickly building and laying out the game. I just need to be in the right mood to complete the details of the story.

Well, if you decide to start working on the first game again, I say make it as personal as you can. That way it has more character as a game rather than feeling two dimensional as you take from it to make it accessible. Just a thought.

As far as the small one with more promise, you could always just make it as it is, a small game and then rework the entire thing, including the story, into a bigger title later on. Or make a sequel that blows the first away like with Arc the Lad I vs Arc the Lad II.

I have to agree with insult. I think that whenever I make a game, I make it the way I like it, and that quality will be noticeable to whomever is playing.

Thanks for both of your feedback. I'll keep it in mind.

As for the small game with more promise, the problem with making it small first to be followed by a larger sequel is that there are other unrelated big games I wanted to make once I finish the present big one so I was kind of hoping to get the promising small version out there and be done with it so that I can move on. I am open to doing a similar type bigger version at some point but we'll see how I feel once I have made the small game.

I have made the decision that the most important thing for me these days is completing some games so I have decided to make smaller versions even if I have to scale them down. I have other big games in mind so hopefully completeing some of these smaller ones will give me momentum (and practice) to make some of the bigger ones once I finish the present big one.

So yes I hope to release the easy small one in couple months, the promising small one by the end of the year and the big one by next summer but I am not making an official prediction on the release date of the big one, only the small ones.

There has been no progress as of late. I intend on working on RPGM3 this weekend if only a little to get back into the groove. I'll let you know on Monday what I have worked on.

I have worked on nothing. So maybe in the next couple days?

Nothing. I have been sort of pressed for time so I haven't had a chance to sit down and commit a few hours. I thought about maybe instead just thinking more about the stories here and there but I haven't been interested. I'm not worried because I still have the interest in general just not the time. We'll see.

Good news and bad news. The good news is that I worked on RPGM3 today. The bad news is that it was on the big game that I'm making and not one of the two small ones that I plan on releasing by the end of this year (yeah, about that...). Man I love that big game but it might take forever to finish.

I also test created a basic event layout to see if there was a way to make a sort of RTS home base like what you see in a Halo Wars skirmish map. I was very happy with it and whereas I would love to add that to the list of games I want to make, it would be on the lower side so it was really more an exercise in design imagination and analysis then any real work.

Last night I did some tests on setting up a system that I want to put into one of smaller games. Nothing major but I just wanted to get a feel for it. I have decided that as planned I am going to keep this game relatively easy to make and short to play with a script and moral akin to a short story. There is hope for it being released before 2011 but it is unlikely. The other two games for sure will not be done before then. So there goes at least one of my promises. Oh well.

Working on one of the smaller games. Good progress with the gamemaking, story a little slow but I expect it to pick up. I'm optimistic.

Did a little bit of work today figuring out how exactly I wanted to implement both built in and custom statuses in my game Action 2. I tested briefly to make sure it would work and it looks good. This game is still second in line to Action 1 but I think this gives me a lot more room to think about specifically how I want to control the event contents and layout.

I also figured out a direction that I would want to take Action 1. As I said in my other topic one of the potential cons is that the game seems to be larger in scope naturally then I will let myself make it and this just further reminds me of how frustrating it may be. Having said that I hope by keeping it simple on both myself and the player it will kind of get across basics of the idea that might be enjoyable without being overbearing.

So I am in really good shape now to continue planning both these games in my head but I don't really have the time to sit there and make it on the PS2 right now. The one good thing for Action 1 is that most of the difficult parts of the game will be controlling certain events and I think if I devote maybe two full days I can get them done. The rest would be just details. Action 2 will not be as difficult to track script wise in its main events but will require creating a lot more maps, items, etc. and that will take a while.

Came up with a few more things I would like to implement in Action 1. I said this before that one of the shortcomings about that game is that I insist on it being a relatively short game but I keep coming up with stuff that makes it seem like it should be much longer. Ugh. That is also the problem with Action 2 but trust me they wouldn't be good to combine with each other. Looks like both might just be a small sketch of the ideas and if I like them enough maybe down the road I'll try to expand on the general concepts.