Your Old Projects/What Were You Like When You Started Out

[juptersdaughtr]

I thought it might be fun to share some of our first experiences with RPG Maker or Game Dev in general. If this is a bad place for this thread or we already have one I apologize.


So I logged into my email and found some horrifying back ups in that google drive account. Old VX Ace files from when I first got it (I was around 11 or 12). And whoooo boyyyyy. I guess I uploaded them accidentally when I was getting a new computer a couple years ago. I would have never saved these monstrosities on purpose. I had them burred deep within the depths of my old PC and thought they'd be gone for good.

It was all cheesy Corpse Party/Ao Oni/Mad Father type rip offs that never made it past, like, four maps (which the world should be thankful for). I came into the community from watching let's players play things like witch's house, mad father, ect. So that would probably explain the shear level of awful that my early stuff had.

I had like 5 different projects that were basically the same freaking game. I remember using no time to learn how the engine actually worked and just slapped crap from Google into it. Tilesets? I'd nab stuff from 2003, XP, Ace, didn't give a single crap. Facesets? A whole bunch of mismatch anime art I'd find through google images poorly edited out of their picture.

Some screenshots of the only game that actually go any progress made in development:

Spoiler

That may look okay. Ugly and badly designed, but inoffensive. However what you can't tell is that I had no idea how to parallax map and the tutorials were too hard (ie tl;dr for tween Jupiter) and I literally just made the maps in paint.net without any concern for a grid and...saved them...over tilesets...and each map had it's own tileset of just a completed map in the B/C layers. I no longer have the files to this game (apparently the backup upload stopped halfway through and all was lost but screenshots for the game page -don't click on that unless you hate yourself-). The worse part is that these were the best screenshots and I used them to market my game. Now just think about what the rest of the game looked like. Lord.

How the heck I couldn't wrap my head around parallax mapping but could configure Khas's lighting (VX Ace vets remember...) I'll never know. I guess I just copied events from the demo file it came with.

Even when I finally decided to follow a tutorial, I just kept in my ways and used parallax maps, but only the base layer with the entire map on it (I actually have an example of this one)

Spoiler

Note the stretched bed, dresser that isn't in the shadow, lack of a grid, the blue VX Ace background from when I screenshot the map to edit, and the 2003 mirror and dresser.

Unfortunately my earliest stuff was lost to time :( if you think 13 year oldish stuff was bad, the stuff from when I was like 11.... If I had it I'd definitely do a play through....


Do any of you have any (literal) beginning horror stories?
Or did you start not being an absolute nightmare?

 

[LTN Games]

I love horror games, it's my favorite genre to write for and I don't like writing very much lol. One of my older projects that I hope to resurrect some day was named "Subject Zero", it was a horror game where the player starts in a hospital with no memories of who they are or how they got there. That quickly starts to change as he explores the abandoned hospital.
You can check out the game(for download) here https://rpgmakermv.co/resources/subject-zero.2/ this game was created in a week using VX Ace and the Luna Engine, it's battle system is ABS and it has some really awesome lighting effects. I wish MV had some nice lighting effect like Ace does.


I have a few other older projects and unfinished projects that I will post up later today when I get more free time.
P.S Great idea for a thread I hope to see some interesting projects on here.

 

[Companion Wulf]

I first started with RM95, but didn't seriously start developing games until RM2K/3. The few games I did release were popular in their own rights, but were never widely known or circulated.

When it came to RMXP, at the time its engine and prospect of using RGSS to change virtually every aspect of the game, was exciting. So I started recreating and reinventing the game I'd created in 2K/3. Of course, because I knew nothing about Ruby script, I had to ask around about it, asking how to do certain things, or began teaching myself.

Unfortunately, my inquiries were met with ridicule, condescension, ignorance and more than a little hubris, so I continued on my own. I'd not had much self-confidence to begin with, so this practically destroyed it. Undeterred, I continued working on it on my own and for ME. Just for fun, you know?

As development continued, several "interested parties", intrigued by my ideas and the few screenshots I shared on its blog, asked about its progress. I released a beta demo, only available to select people. Again, it was met with a lot of negativity, and by the same people I realised that shot me down in the first place.

Nowadays, I tend to work on things regardless of others' opinions. I recognise recurring patterns in trollish behaviour (whether it's negative comments or reviews, etc.) and have learned to differentiate between constructive and destructive criticism. Those comments/reviews that I consider as "genuine" are, of course, taken to heart, if to make improvements and learn from than anything else.