It's been a while, I'm sure long enough so that no one here remembers me. Let me give some background info - I discovered VERGE in its original state, back sometime in 1997. The webpage? inlink.com/~vecna/crs.htm. Later on, it was moved to the repo, verge.vivid.com. The repos future was in question, so the verge admins hastily put up v-rpg. Locke, owner of the repo, was going to enhance the site, but decided against it due to redundancy.

In my mind, anyone who has waited until now to declare the end of the community is nuts. The community as a whole broke down before the release of V2... Months before, when the release was slated for "any day now", the #verge irc channel would have 70+ users, and the message boards would attract 180-250 posts a day. VERGE had grown slightly since the repo days, where 35-40 users were on irc, and 100-150 posts were not uncommon. During all of this time, 70-80 verge FANSITES existed. Not just a site proclaiming the new final fantasy, a site from someone who liked VERGE. They've all since closed. #verge on irc is luckily to attract 10 people, #vchelp around the same number. The boards don't get any more than 10 posts a day, and rarely that many. How have we fallen from grace?

V1 was nice, easy, and there was a steady supply of new demos, games, and code flowing freely throughout the community. When something cool got accomplished, everyone grabbed the .VC file, scoured over it, and was amazed. It was not uncommon for a post like "Poker Game sourcecode" to get 15-20 replies? Why? Because everyone could look over the code and learn this. Reguardless of ones coding style, it wasn't hard to understand V1.

When the hype around V2 grew to the point tht it burst, VERGE died down a fair bit. Not to this point, but most of the newbies were inactive. Then BAM, out of nowhere, V2 was released. Everyone downloaded a copy - (historical reference: You needed to fill out some demographics to D/L V2) It was damn cool.

There is where the community died.

Newbies were struggling with coding, and had little to no reference material to go by. Newbies tried desperately to scrape together teams for ambitious projects, much like some verge 1 games, however, the teams fell apart due to a general lack of dedication. Because they could accomplish nothing, and no new games were being released for them to play, their two big reasons to stay here were gone. The flow of newbies has slowed down greatly!

However, it wasn't just the newbies who left. Oldbies who had been working on games for years or more, realized they could not convert their projects to this new era. The entire community, or what was left of it, kind of scoffed at V1, and as such, no one wanted to develop. This didn't really matter, because the Oldbies could always comment on the up-and-coming games... right? Unfortunately, because of the lack of users, and a lack of dedication among current users, no new games were meant to be.

Do not take this as my complaint of no new demos, for this is far from the truth.

V2 was made with no packin, little documentation, and it was made not out of vecna's experimentation and urge to make an RPGCE, it was made because the community wanted it.

vecna left verge, as a full developer, shortly after the release of V2. His last words, a well-developed page-or-two essay, can be found somewhere. Maybe not on this site, but its out there.

One of the key VERGE content suppliers, IRC, still produced a few demos, but none of the vergers there ever went on the sites or boards, so most users did not get to see these demos.

Overall, VERGE has been destroyed by a lack of motivation, a lack of documentation, and a lack of communication.

What is this we have had in the year or two since V2 has been released? A downward spiral. Oldbies were dropping like flies, and newbies coming in slowly. The community has continued in its long, prolonged, miserable death-echo. Although we have had a small team of users and developers, the real problem was not addressed, and just made more complicated from version-fallout.

The community curled up in a fetal position, and what is stabbing it that last time? Version Fallout. V1, V1+, V2, V2.01, V2+i, V2+j, V2.5, V2.6, V2.7, Python VERGE. No one knows what to use and very little standard is maintained. And now, what few users that do exist have been told to convert their projects totally again. The V1-V2 destruction that happened, that toppled a thriving 200+ user community will surely destroy a bed-ridden 10-15 user.

Just the observations of, as far as I can see, the only oldbie left that isn't a developer.

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VERGE-python could make the game for you and sell it and automatically return the profits, but the community is far important than the program itself. What use is a stable verge if only the developers use it.

Yes, I have heard of that, that's whats called a self-fufilling prophecy. Problem with your statement is that you assume VERGE isn't dead. If you read my post carefully, you'll note that I didn't say "VERGE is dying", I said "VERGE is dead." All of the game makers have left. There are 3.. maybe 5 games still actively being developed. And with team members leaving and no new team members joining, these are dying out.

... Once again, if you read most post, It's very hard to suggest how it can be changed. Let me use an analogy. VERGE is a person. It had a heart attack, and sat in the operating room for a few years. Then was the time to say how things could be fixed. VERGE (in terms of the scale and way VERGE was) is dead, they've given up with the defibulator, and the time of death was announced.

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I don't think it's a coinsadince (excuse my crappy spelling) that VERGE-Python was announced when the VERGE community was really low. Obviously the people are more important than the product, but it's the product that the people are using. Hopefully VERGE-Python will be more "attractive" to the newbie. Newbies come and go easily, so VERGE should be easy enough to jump into, so it attracts many more people.

Besides, do you think VERGE would have faired better if they just stopped at V1? Maby what verge needs is a makeover, to be modernized. Since they want to use Python, you can bet that VERGE will actuially be structured, well, at least hope it will be ;).

Here's what I think VERGE needs:

1] Structure
a] A total newbie should be able to
click "Screenshots" to see what VERGE can do, and
click "Download", and see one link at the top for
the latest complete official release of VERGE.
b] A total newbie should be able to unzip the file
and have all the required files (not counting
the game data files. I'm talking about files
like console.gif).
2] Motivated Community
a] The people make the community. Do you know why
there aren't any new demos out? Because people
don't feel like making them. There is no less
usability of verge then theres ever been. I can't
draw worth crap, but if I don't get any help, i'm
going to go ahead with my game, with graphics I
draw. Ontop of that, do VIDE.

I could go on and on and on...

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I agree, for the most part. Vecna built VERGE- the dev team made it better- everyone hyped V2- V2 killed VERGE (no offense to any of the dev, especially Aen- you rock :)). Speed Bump was dumped with a lot of responsibility. Taking VERGE back to it's roots of V1 will do a lot of damage to VERGE- now that everyone's touched the power they don't want to let go. Taking it to V2 will also do a lot of damage- newbies will be lost.
What he is doing is a hybrid of both. This is the best thing to do and maybe the only thing he can do. He is not reviving VERGE- it can't be revived- he is rebuilding it. VERGE 2.7 will be released with a new version of WinMaped that's simple to use and edits CHRS. The biggest weakness of VERGE, VC, will be fixed with a new language that will retain all of VC's exact commands/functions. Standard Libraries of RPG functions will be released with it. I am hopefully releasing tile sets for free use. I think I heard a demo is being released with it. All the power (and much more- that should be hidden from a newbie) will be there. There is nothing else he CAN do. If it fails, oh well?

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..

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I meant this:
I think he just wanted to make a fun game engine- that's the responsibility he volunteered for. Instead, he got the responsibilty of reviving/rebuilding a dying/dead community.

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I started with very little prior knowledge. I could do this in C: int main() { }
And now I agree with choris, I don't think it was too complex.
The problem probably just arose in the fact it was that much more complex than V1 (which I've never really used) and that one actually had to RTFD to understand it.

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TheGerf, not just any gerf.

And I'm one of the few who've kept my old name since back in the days...

-rpgking

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Out of clutter, find simplicity. -Einstein