The Theory & Struggle of Devotion

[SalmonWine]

RPG Maker MV is a beautiful creation, it has brought together a massive community of people all across the globe. People with different idealogies, life styles, social classes, etc. All of them, based around the central idea of creating games.

I've started to feel such intense frustration with myself. This is a community that I love dearly, ive made a lot of friends as a direct result of this website. Ever since I was four years old and given a Nintendo 64 with Ocarina of Time on christmas, I have wanted to make games and make so many stories for people to experience.

I cannot bring myself to do it, and I have no clue why.

Silence was a story I had begun to formulate in my head in the 6th grade when I would sit with way too much spare time in my computer classes. I started to write scripts, think of characters and how they would work, and t took my a whole 4 years to finally begin making it a reality.

I spent 8 months working on it, having to completely restart it at the three month mark. Now, when I open it, i feel almost sick and barely even want to look at it. I start to read through the dialogue I've written, and it feels so wrong and odd. I'll rewrite again and again and again and again and again and I just can't be happy with my own work.

Every turn I make mistakes and things feel wrong and every time I tried to work more on Silence, I felt like I would never be able to tell the story I wanted to. About a month and a half ago, I just stopped. I had to put it on hold.

Very soon after, I began new project. Looking through the community I had come to learn that this is something good to do, just start something new and take a break. I figured that, maybe, it'd be better to stop trying to tell a story I've wanted to tell and make a game that I want to play.

That just lead to two more projects I almost had a complete aversion to touching after working on for only a fraction of the time. I hated it more because it had the vanilla look and it felt like it wasn't good enough to even waste brain power on.

At this point, I don't what to do, where to turn. The worst part is thinking that. maybe, I just shouldn't be a developer. That thought is truly heartbreaking.

I have begun to theorize about development itself. I truly hope that it's this way for a lot of people, because that means there is hope for me. Maybe development is just hating your work until you finally make something that you don't despise, but then I worry about the stress behind it and just how wholesome that would be. Sometimes I think that, maybe, all the hard effort I'll put into a game will just go ignored, or even be scoffed at for being a bad game.

This isn't a goodbye, otherwise it would be in that forum, I just needed a place to put own my thoughts and have input from a community I love. Who knows, maybe it could be the push I'll need.

 

[Dad3353]

Have you thought about taking up the violin..? No..? Obtain a few pieces by Paganini to start off with, then move up to stuff a bit more modern, after a few weeks, in the wake of Prokofiev.
Sounds familiar..? No..? That's what you're trying to do in Gaming, but using a violin analogy. One doesn't progress fast by running, but by firstly learning to crawl, then (staggeringly...) walk, then trot or jog. Running before one can walk is a recipe for taking a tumble, and maybe doing long-lasting damage.
Set your sights lower; much lower. Get a simple Game done. Then another, and another. Incorporate, progressively, some (that was 'some', not 'all'...) of the notions and elements that you want to see in your masterpiece. Find out how they work, what limitations they may have, how to manipulate the components needed, and their inter-action with other pieces. Take your time. Breath. When things get a bit 'stuck', go out for a stroll, put it away for a day or two, sleep on the problem, ask for advice or help here...
If you're not enjoying it, don't do it. There are, however, methods for easing oneself into a Developer's chair, without destroying that all-important spark of creation. I don't know your age, but I doubt that you're that far 'behind the curve'; not many world-wide successes are made by one person, alone, fresh from college, so don't try to emulate their attributes; do the best you can with what you have and progress, slowly.
If you do wish to take up the violin, Paganini may be excellent to listen to, for inspiration, but won't be much good for learning the basics. First things first, and 'slowly' is the new 'fast'.

 

[iblamevictoria]

This isn't a goodbye, otherwise it would be in that forum, I just needed a place to put own my thoughts and have input from a community I love. Who knows, maybe it could be the push I'll need.

Wow. It's almost surreal how similar my experiences are to this. I used to be really attached to a game idea called Terravia that I came up with around sixth grade(Yeah, it does sound like Terraria, but that game wasn't out when I was a kid), and was OBSESSED with turning it into something. I started with comics, then with shot stories, then with games. RPG Maker is where I turned because I only knew a little about coding (I knew BASIC, some C++, and a lil'
Python). The game was too ambitious. And it was almost too generic. Stop me if you've heard this before: "Some nobody dude embarks on a journey to fight seven major monsters before they can summon their ancient god and destroy the world. Oh. And it takes place in medieval fantasy." I ended up scrapping the project completely and only bringing over a few story points for my current game.

I have very similar experiences with game development, and a very similar creative mindset. I have trouble liking a lot of my work whenever it's just me who is looking at it. And even when people tell me it's good work I'm sometimes skeptical. It's common for a lot of creative people. I sometimes think that if I can impress myself with my work then that'll mean I know I've made it. I don't mean to sound stuck up or anything. I dunno. You just have to persevere through it and keep making things.

I know it's difficult to make unique games in an engine that is as restrictive RPG Maker, but it's important that you persevere in your ambitions. Keep making stuff that you want to make. If an idea is worth sharing then stay with it for a while. If it's still depressing to have to work on it then throw it out for a while, but try to keep working on SOMETHING. Someday something will work out and it'll be great. Even if people dislike it, you may not, and at least you know what to do next time.

Go simple. Go easy on yourself. And have some fun. Because when you don't, you'll only keep putting yourself down.


I hoped that helped at all.

 

[BlizZaga]

I find that trying to work on everything at the same time (music, characters, coding, mapping etc.) is a recipe for disaster. I've always loved games, My first love was Zelda as well, then I really liked the "portable" games most. DS, game boy advance, color.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, work on something that you enjoy doing first, I started making custom characters with Mack's looseleaf sprite generator. Then I started making characters out of them and editing them for use as sprites in my game. I thought I was just wasting my time mostly. BUT the reality is, you're not. I spent a lot of time looking at RPG maker tutorials on youtube about parallel mapping and complicated coding and I got frustrated because I don't really know how to use photoshop etc.

When I really sat down and just started playing around with a few maps using the BASIC rtp stuff and not trying to set up all these custom tiles and make everything perfect, that's when I started to make progress.

And it's completely ok to put down a project for a week, month, heck, 4 months or more and just take a rest from everything to recharge your batteries. In the meantime, play some games, read some stories, think about what you like most about those games and those characters and stories and set that information aside.

Like what the previous poster said, start and make a simple game. Just get used to the mechanics, basic shop, small town, maybe a few maps of a forest (that's what I did anyway). Have fun with fiddling around with the battle mechanics. I named some magic skills creatively, like, Scorch, or Ice Prison, etc. then I decided on some animations (battle skill animations) for those specific skills, and magic attacks.

Don't beat yourself up that your game isn't "perfect" right at the start. That's what I did, and it only made me feel bad about myself. That I wasn't a good enough developer or I just "wasn't being creative enough". Just reading about some things on this forum and getting ideas has helped boost my confidence. Try not to get bogged down in that feeling that your first game isn't "good enough" for others to play or even yourself, what's important is learning how everything works and building confidence. And if you really really find you can't do something, maybe it's too complicated and you could simplify it a little, or ask for others input and help on certain things.

Start with what you like to do most, be it mapping, or plot building, or character customization, to get excited about your game again, or even just totally make a completely simple nonsense game with hilarious characters and dialogue just to take the pressure off of: "I'm making a game, wow this is too hard for me right now".

Anyway, I hope this helped. Oh, just realized this is almost a month old thread. Oh well. Maybe someone will see this.

 

[Phil]

:( Well, it was fun working with you buddy.
Even if the game isn't complete, I still appreciate the time together.
Silence might never come into reality, but the passion for the game was surreal and out of this world.

See ya later, alligator :)

 

[Wize1]

Nothing to it but to do it.