Updating RMMV.co

[Xyphien]

Saltuations people of RMMV! It's about that time we go ahead and update RMMV. It's been slowly dying and the theme has been the same for over a year. With this I have a few questions, and Ideas I'd like you all to vote on and tell me how you like it.

Firstly, I am thinking about updating the website to Xenforo 2. Right now we have XF1 and there's some known bugs with it. One of the biggest ones is being the bug where people cannot edit their posts. It's strange. However, in doing so I would need to get some more donations as I currently do not have the funds to make the expensive jump, as well as some addons we have that make the website unique won't be available right away for the new update. This means we might lose some stuff such as the badges, and a few other things. I'd try my best to implament stuff equal to that of Badges.

As of that, I'd like to do a RMMV theme competition where everyone goes ahead and makes a theme image for the new website and everything else that comes with it. I was wondering if everyone would be interested in that as well.

And lastly, I'd like to get some personal opinions on what you all think we should do to get the community interactive, and talking once again like the good ol' days. Be it events, gatherings, etc. We want some specifics on what you all think would work. You are the ones that make this website as amazing as it is after all!

 

[Lakaroth]

On the theme I can't help ...

But I want share my opinion, not only on this community, but on all those on RPG Maker, and the reasons that made me leave gradually ... with much regret. :(

I'm not one who has just discovered RMMV, I started using it at the end of the 90's thanks to Don Miguel, Rpg Maker 95 and I'll tell you more, the first version I downloaded was not in English but in Russian LOL
But I opened a door in my mind, I could create RPGs, and with thousands of notes and notes here and there I started to study it.

I have developed dozens of demos and games with each version released, there was no indie market, or today's mobiles ...
It was not a real engine, but today it is!
RMMV is Cross platform, is not certain Unity or Unreal , and there are many alternatives, but you might be surprised to see what it can do ...
My disappointment is precisely on this subject, I find underestimated and wasted the use of RMMV, mobile support almost absent, a few old tutorials, plugins that work almost only on Desktop, (I can assure you that on mobile 70% of plugins does not work) and above all, all the same games beyond the RTP, it is as if you were seeing kids with enormous potential, wasting time on things that will never be tradable.

With this I do not want to make controversy, it is normal that 70% of the contents of the community are on who is learning and not who wants to monetize seriously, but it's a shame because you can :)

I do not put the link to my apps because it seems to advertise, but I have thousands of installations and excellent feedback, and start to monetize, just with RMMV.

If only there was more openness to different projects, coming out of the clone of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, in my opinion RMMV could grow and have its space in the professional world!

Here in the forums I found users with incredible skills, in development and not only !!!
I personally have published in the past here, two games in my opinion that it is impossible that they have not been noticed, and instead have gone unnoticed because different from what is expected from RMMV is why I slowly abandoned the communities with regret. ...
Just a sample of an old RMMV game that i've made, and no one care on RMMV's community :P

PS: The voice over is Robert Belgrade (Alucard in Castlevania SOTN who collaborate with me)

 

[CT_Bolt]

As of that, I'd like to do a RMMV theme competition where everyone goes ahead and makes a theme image for the new website and everything else that comes with it. I was wondering if everyone would be interested in that as well.

And lastly, I'd like to get some personal opinions on what you all think we should do to get the community interactive, and talking once again like the good ol' days. Be it events, gatherings, etc. We want some specifics on what you all think would work. You are the ones that make this website as amazing as it is after all!

I'm cool with still using XF1 but yeah the theme has been the same for a while huh? lol
...Would be nice too have some kind of contest and see what else people can come up with.

Just a sample of an old RMMV game that i've made, and no one care on RMMV's community :P

PS: The voice over is Robert Belgrade (Alucard in Castlevania SOTN who collaborate with me)

Oh wow! How did I never see this? Anyways... looks pretty cool to me. Good work on that.
Is that available to play?
Mind sharing what plugins were used?
Looks like maybe QABS and some parallax mapping?
...maybe even custom code just for that game?

 

[Lakaroth]

I'm cool with still using XF1 but yeah the theme has been the same for a while huh? lol
...Would be nice too have some kind of contest and see what else people can come up with.


Oh wow! How did I never see this? Anyways... looks pretty cool to me. Good work on that.
Is that available to play?
Mind sharing what plugins were used?
Looks like maybe QABS and some parallax mapping?
...maybe even custom code just for that game?

Thanks... i have an old demo somewhere :)
I can find it for you!
Give me a few days i'll find it!

PS: My latest project an horror escape room made with MV too :)

Available for android for free :)
Bye!

 

[CT_Bolt]

Thanks... i have an old demo somewhere :)
I can find it for you!
Give me a few days i'll find it!

Sounds good! Can't wait to try it out.

PS: My latest project an horror escape room made with MV too :)

Available for android for free :)

Oh cool, just played it for a little bit. Cool game! Nice smooth & professional feeling.
Good work putting that together.

 

[Lakaroth]

Sounds good! Can't wait to try it out.
Oh cool, just played it for a little bit. Cool game! Nice smooth & professional feeling.
Good work putting that together.

Thank you!
I'll send you a PM when i've find the Dark Dithering demo.
(I don't want go more out topic here) :)
Best!

 

[Essy]

it is as if you were seeing kids with enormous potential, wasting time on things that will never be tradable.

This is a major factor for myself. RPG Maker XP was my gateway drug into programming. One of the greatest strengths and weaknesses of RPG Maker is that everyone is working on their own project rather than collaborating. This means that at any time something new and great is being made but the average quality of almost every project is quite low. I blame the accessibility of plugins and RTPs for this behavior.

I'm a software engineer with average spriting and animation capabilities. Projects I work on alone should in theory be good mechanically but wont necessarily look good or sound great. Without artists and musicians I'm worth very little on my own. Even Kan Gao isn't a one man success story.

With this I do not want to make controversy, it is normal that 70% of the contents of the community are on who is learning and not who wants to monetize seriously, but it's a shame because you can :)

If we look at the forum's front page most of the RPG Maker related real estate is taken up by resource forums and learning forums. There are some 'professional' sections but there has never been any pushes to manifest a professional culture on the forum(and even then that traffic will be eaten up by the discord.) Despite gaining large amounts of experience with UE4 I still see MV as a great but underutilized game engine. I know that Xyphien has tried to increase professional interest in MV with his crowd-sourcing website project but perhaps that focus should be through the website itself.

 

[Xyphien]

@Essy @Lakaroth @CT_Bolt Tell me if the following would be a good start to the new updates.


Things I'm looking at changing with RMMV

Community Project Showcase. - This means that we will feature projects that require more than one member of the forum participating in it. For example, they'll need an artist, mapper, programmer, etc. Not required, but having those would be more ideal to feature as they can create a more professional feeling game. With that, they can sell it on the site, and we'd promote it in multiple ways.

Community Youtube Channel (Actually focusing on it) I'd like to sit down with a few people like @TheUnproPro and talk about getting a RMMV official youtube channel up and actually focusing on it. With me having a $600 mic, and over $1,000 in recording/streaming hardware and software I'm sure I can put together a few things, as well as unpro seeing as he's done amazingly well on youtube.

Upgrading or potentially upgrading to XF2

New theme - Community made theme.

Monthly Staff Picks - I'd like us every month on the first (Starting tomorrow) to sit down, and discuss what the best resources out there currently are, and promote them. They can be both free and paid. As long as they're of quality.

Focusing on the Developers Den & Support / discussions section of the forum.

 

[CDman]

Saltuations people of RMMV! It's about that time we go ahead and update RMMV. It's been slowly dying and the theme has been the same for over a year. With this I have a few questions, and Ideas I'd like you all to vote on and tell me how you like it.

Firstly, I am thinking about updating the website to Xenforo 2. Right now we have XF1 and there's some known bugs with it. One of the biggest ones is being the bug where people cannot edit their posts. It's strange. However, in doing so I would need to get some more donations as I currently do not have the funds to make the expensive jump, as well as some addons we have that make the website unique won't be available right away for the new update. This means we might lose some stuff such as the badges, and a few other things. I'd try my best to implament stuff equal to that of Badges.

As of that, I'd like to do a RMMV theme competition where everyone goes ahead and makes a theme image for the new website and everything else that comes with it. I was wondering if everyone would be interested in that as well.

And lastly, I'd like to get some personal opinions on what you all think we should do to get the community interactive, and talking once again like the good ol' days. Be it events, gatherings, etc. We want some specifics on what you all think would work. You are the ones that make this website as amazing as it is after all!

If I were to vote for a theme it would have to be something centered around resource creation and sharing amongst the users of the site (not sure if it qualifies as a proper theme like you are talking about). RPG maker is a wonderful software, but it gives you very limited resources when it comes to character creation and most of the additional ones cost money. My biggest issue with the software is that we have no simple means of creating Busts as opposed to faces unless we are talented artists in our own rights. This is a problem that makes the games more impersonal to those playing them. I understand that this is a community site and not where I should criticize the software but I also would like to say that it's surprising that a fix hasn't come from this community. So I think a theme around uniting the users of the software to solve the common problems in the community would bring activity back to this site. Also an optimized organization system might also improve the site. Maybe splitting the forums into categories and subcategories like Resources splitting into Hair, Mouth, Face, Bust, etc. Also allowing people to put out their own software for resource creation would also be a good idea. I've seen some people do incredible things to work around problems with the base software by making their own resources so if someone is willing to make a resource generator for the community that should be allowed to be downloaded straight from here or at least able to be accessed to download through a site via hyperlink to said site.

 

[Azdak]

I'm not sure if this would be a good idea or not, but what about some kind of live chat room?
A place where we can all talk, support and help each other out.
A place you can just hang out together as a collective and easily talk about RPG Maker and other stuff.

I would also agree with the person above me about Demos.
I think people should be encouraged more to try games made by others.
Maybe get rewards to play and review Demos. (more points, different names, trophy, gold stars etc.)
(Have staff picks for demos?)


I like your idea about a Community Youtube Channel.

(I've no idea what XF2 is so I can not comment.)

 

[Xyphien]

I'm not sure if this would be a good idea or not, but what about some kind of live chat room?
A place where we can all talk, support and help each other out.
A place you can just hang out together as a collective and easily talk about RPG Maker and other stuff.

I would also agree with the person above me about Demos.
I think people should be encouraged more to try games made by others.
Maybe get rewards to play and review Demos. (more points, different names, trophy, gold stars etc.)
(Have staff picks for demos?)


I like your idea about a Community Youtube Channel.

(I've no idea what XF2 is so I can not comment.)

We have a discord chat, which is exactly as you've described :) As for the demos, and game testing I'll work something out for all of that :D
I'm planning on adding a lot more with trophies, and other things as well :)

 

[lorddonk]

I wasn't a huge member of this community but I received the email that was sent out and thought I'd leave some comments. Personally I can only give my own opinion as someone who lurked here (I actually apparently never made a post before so HI) and mostly just project threads.

I was a member of a few other forums but then became inactive for various reasons and I can outline why those reasons are in case they help:

• Annoying moderation - Certain places would close support questions immediately which was annoying. Some other places are so strict with posts that you feel like you are stepping on egg shells anytime you say or post anything. What is the point of discouraging posts? And what is the post of posting to say that the question was already answered in another post? That always irked me. But then there are places that would be totally un-moderated and people would be popular in the community just because they trolled and left snarky comments everywhere.
• Too many boards - it discourages discussion to have tens of thousands of boards for every little thing and makes the board in general look abandoned. IMO the only boards needed are Announcements, General Chat, Support, Ideas/Feedback, and Project Showcase. Maybe a separate board for Projects in-development or Recruitment if thats a big thing.
• Too many of them try and use the forum to make some sort of resource thing and its frustrating because they aren't really designed for that. I'd love a global hub for resources where people upload their things (instead of it being linked to from imgur or something) so that they don't get removed unless someone specifically asks for their resource to be removed. Too often, someone changes a Photobucket album around and poof all their resources are gone. And the only "official" one I'm aware of is really poorly designed and takes 20 years to load. But I don't think cramming it into a forum really works. Perhaps with really good "tagging" features it could work where people are made to tag their items appropriately and make separate posts for each resource
• Visual design is also key. This particular site seems to have way too many banners and ribbons and clashing colors all over. It looks cluttered and off-putting. Even the typeface used for messages is too tight and small. I'm on the default theme. I hated the phpBB look and left a forum when they switched to that software. The only features I personally think matter are usernames, avatars, links to social media, and a profile where you can write a bio and advertise your game. Signatures are annoying and bulky and make the page look too busy. There should always be an option to turn those off if you want. I like the ability to "like" a post as a "thank you". I liked another popular forum that used to allow you to have "Game Pages" but the requirements were too strict and off-putting.

Also tied in with that is RPG Maker as a whole. I lost interest with it because my own project got stuck and there weren't really any resources that helped me accomplish the story help I needed. I made posts on forums but most were either abandoned and never replied to or a combination of reasons listed above.

That my 2 cents! Worth about as much as you paid for them.

 

[Xyphien]

Annoying moderation

I understand this whole heartedly, which is why I promote a more laid back discussion for the community. There's only a few big rules we follow, such as no one word posting, and other smaller things of that nature.

I'd love a global hub for resources where people upload their things (instead of it being linked to from imgur or something) so that they don't get removed unless someone specifically asks for their resource to be removed

We have an actual section for Resources. You're even able to sell them and buy them directly though it. https://rpgmakermv.co/resources/
There's tags, features, etc. All built into it, and it isn't in forum style. It's an actual directory with easy navigation, and uploading features all added.

Visual design is also key. This particular site seems to have way too many banners and ribbons and clashing colors all over. It looks cluttered and off-putting. Even the typeface used for messages is too tight and small. I'm on the default theme. I hated the phpBB look and left a forum when they switched to that software. The only features I personally think matter are usernames, avatars, links to social media, and a profile where you can write a bio and advertise your game. Signatures are annoying and bulky and make the page look too busy. There should always be an option to turn those off if you want. I like the ability to "like" a post as a "thank you". I liked another popular forum that used to allow you to have "Game Pages" but the requirements were too strict and off-putting.

We're updating the whole theme, and style of the website here in the future. More than likely this weekend or even today/ tomorrow to be honest. So most of this will get fixed. This is far from PhpBB, and uses one of the leading standard software in the forum industry right now known as Xenforo which we will be upgrading to Xenforo 2 here during the theme change. As for game pages you can upload your games, and even sell them directly on our resource section of the website.

 

[LTN Games]

I'd rather see improvements in the community as a whole, improving activity and engagement to me is the most important aspect of any forum. I find I start avoiding forums where activity is lacking or I have to wait for someone to engage with my threads and replies etc. Getting people together to engage organically is fun and I find so many great discussions and friends come from that alone. I find most new discussions is either a support question or someone posting in the introductions. It's not very engaging to me, I'm not always in the mood to introduce myself or answer a support question. I want natural and organic discussions, I love seeing other people's game progress or general discussions about game development.

Anyways, I'm not sure all of the ways to improve engagement in a forum but I think it will require a few people to get the ball rolling, if there were a few dedicated people who replied and supported other discussions then it really starts to improve from there on out. The more engaging a community is the more engagement you will get from new members and outside influences.

We could start with this current contest you're holding, a good way to get discussions rolling is to ask them to post minor updates or you could even create one main progress thread where people can stop by and talk about their progress and current issues they're facing with the game they're making for the contest. Maybe they'll post some art, or screenshots of a map, either way it's engagement and that's important in a community.

 

[CT_Bolt]

@Essy @Lakaroth @CT_Bolt Tell me if the following would be a good start to the new updates.


Things I'm looking at changing with RMMV

Community Project Showcase. - This means that we will feature projects that require more than one member of the forum participating in it. For example, they'll need an artist, mapper, programmer, etc. Not required, but having those would be more ideal to feature as they can create a more professional feeling game. With that, they can sell it on the site, and we'd promote it in multiple ways.

Community Youtube Channel (Actually focusing on it) I'd like to sit down with a few people like @TheUnproPro and talk about getting a RMMV official youtube channel up and actually focusing on it. With me having a $600 mic, and over $1,000 in recording/streaming hardware and software I'm sure I can put together a few things, as well as unpro seeing as he's done amazingly well on youtube.

Upgrading or potentially upgrading to XF2

New theme - Community made theme.

Monthly Staff Picks - I'd like us every month on the first (Starting tomorrow) to sit down, and discuss what the best resources out there currently are, and promote them. They can be both free and paid. As long as they're of quality.

Focusing on the Developers Den & Support / discussions section of the forum.

Yes Yes & Yes! A great start! All very good ideas.
(PS. Sorry bout the delay... thought I had replied).

I'd rather see improvements in the community as a whole, improving activity and engagement to me is the most important aspect of any forum. I find I start avoiding forums where activity is lacking or I have to wait for someone to engage with my threads and replies etc. Getting people together to engage organically is fun and I find so many great discussions and friends come from that alone. I find most new discussions is either a support question or someone posting in the introductions. It's not very engaging to me, I'm not always in the mood to introduce myself or answer a support question. I want natural and organic discussions, I love seeing other people's game progress or general discussions about game development.

Anyways, I'm not sure all of the ways to improve engagement in a forum but I think it will require a few people to get the ball rolling, if there were a few dedicated people who replied and supported other discussions then it really starts to improve from there on out. The more engaging a community is the more engagement you will get from new members and outside influences.

We could start with this current contest you're holding, a good way to get discussions rolling is to ask them to post minor updates or you could even create one main progress thread where people can stop by and talk about their progress and current issues they're facing with the game they're making for the contest. Maybe they'll post some art, or screenshots of a map, either way it's engagement and that's important in a community.

Yes, 100% agree with all of that.

 

[Amysaurus]

Upgrading to XF2 and maybe some new themes would be fine, imo. Wouldn't really help with inactivity, but they wouldn't hurt either.

I think it'd help to cut down on some of the bulk in the forum. For instance:
- The blog/wiki systems are barely used (only 1 blog post this year, and the last new wiki page was in 2017), and I really don't see anything they accomplish that couldn't be in a topic instead.
- The link to raisegamer or whatever it was isn't working, so it should probably be taken out.
- Several sections have barely any topics after years of being around, so they may as well be combined with more popular sections. For example: MV Deployment, MV Videos, Technology/Utility Discussion, and Skill Swaps/Resource Trading only have 18 topics between them.

Tbh, I'm a bit wary of having staff picks/featured projects.They're not bad, but they've never been consistent any other time there's been an attempt to do that sort of thing here.

P.S. If we switch fonts, I'd recommend either Quattrocento or Verdana as the default.

 

[KaineOfElderon]

If i can add one thing now that it seems to have changed,,,server errors...been trying to post something for over 6 mins now and keeps giving errors

 

[LTN Games]

@KaineOfElderon I'm assuming that is due to the current changes happening, once the changes are complete those errors should stop.

 

[KaineOfElderon]

I hope so cause can post here but not anywhere else...though I should really be doing my actual job...but paperwork is so boring....rpg maker project and me 1 real world 0

 

[Amysaurus]

I'm sure everything is still under construction, but just for some early feedback, I'd recommend shrinking the top banner, and saving the scrolling banner only for events or featured resources/games. (For reference: my screen is 95% banner when I load a page from my laptop)

There's a whole section for resources that we won't need a slide to notice, and it's a better look to put a donation link in the top bar and footer instead of having it take up a big part of the screen.