Sigh... I haven't been a part of the community in ages, but I'm starting to miss it.

WARNING: I get a little mushy and sentimental here, so exercise caution.

I started to miss the old Verge... not the engine necessarily, but the old community. I'm not
saying that anything is wrong with the new community or the people in it, but the old one seemed
more lively and everyone was more enthusiastic.

Why? Was it V2 that changed the community? It seems that way, but I can't say for sure because
I've only been a casual visitor for the past two years. I'm an outsider now, and I don't really
have any right to make any judgements about the present state of the community.

But really... what happened? Where did everyone go? What happened to all the promising games and
why does new development seem so slow? I know my own reasons for taking the path I did, and now
I'm realizing that I want to come back... it's like I've just remembered my roots and want to get
back to them.

Shortly after V2 came out, I had to leave the whole RPG scene for a few months because of real life.
When I came back, the community had changed. Everybody I knew seemed to have gone into hiding. The
community felt as though it was dying, and even though I still wanted to make RPGs, I wasn't so sure
that I wanted to do it here.

I went out on my own and I developed a whole other game to see if I could do it. It's gone alright
but it's just not the same. I used Allegro to make a game and there is a community built around
Allegro, but it was very different. I felt more at home in this community because I watched it
grow, and I grew with it. I'm not sure why I didn't come back sooner... maybe I just thought that
things had changed too much and that I couldn't come back. But truly, everything I've learned about
making games (RPGs in particular) I learned in this community. I suppose I had to leave to come
to grips with what I wanted and how to do it, but I'm getting close to actually being finished a
project, and I started thinking about where I'm going to be when I'm done.

Now, I've realized that it's not just about making games. It's about contributing to something, and
making a game on my own in my own little world isn't as satisfying as it could be. So, that's why I
want to come back. I want to give back to the community that started me off... the community that
basically made it possible for me to be even moderately successful at doing something that makes me
happy and makes me feel good. I want to help others have that same feeling and I want to help bring
back that old community feeling.

This is also the perfect time for me because my life is mostly stable now. I'm not in school or
anything and my home and work lives are in order. I realize that's note the case for everyone,
and I guess that's why a lot of people are not around any more, but hopefully they'll be back too.

So lastly, I guess I should just say that, if you'll have me back... I'm back. If not, then let me
know what I need to do to come back, because this is where I want to be.

/g

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I have to agrea with you. I can remember all the way back to when vecna dropped v1 dev., and the 'world was coming to an end'. But seriously, back on the Repo, and even the early days of verge-rpg, the boards were very lively, and people were releasing new things all the time, and newbies would come every day (and most likely get flamed), but now, when I check the boards every once in a while, theres only maybe one or two new posts. Argh, hopefully that run on sentance gives the jist of what im saying, sorry, lack of sleep, ect.

I mainly left the community because of different RL events, becoming more social, work, and school. Now though, I've been thinking about all the hours I spent developing Palmer: TDDS, and my other progects, and Im thinking of continueing them, as soon as I get time. God only knows when that will be, this summer im working and taking courses at Umass, but I hope to take enough time to learn V2 again. Enough of me, since almost 99% pf the people here probably dont know me or heard of my demos, so eh ^_^.

Are you continueing you old progect when you come back, or will you be starting something new ? If you do release a demo or anything, Ill make sure to d/l it. Hope to see you post more often, even if I wont be ^^.

joshito

p.s. again, please excuse my spelling and grammer errors, lack of sleep combined with a lot of school work warps ones mind.

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But you probably don't remember me, even though I've seen it ALL(Verge's history, that is).

Anyway, if you wanna come back, I won't get in the way! ;)

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Out of clutter, find simplicity. -Einstein

I remember you, too.. You used to code script for my Beyond the Blue Horizon game. If only more people played it.. the demo rawked. I think it's still on Sylvan_King's harddrive.

But I've gone through like 3 computers since then so all of my verge data is long gone.. what a shame. I used to be good at making tiles and stuff, and I used to even track a little, but I was better at art.

~BS

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simply because the original dev crew refuses to allow tSB to use that name in case they decide to ever make a v3...

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Praetor - Strong enough for a man, but made for a woman.

Well, if I recall (which I do^^) SC was the one if not the best V1 games next to Scully and BW. Eh, just thought I'd throw that in. I wonder where Spram went.... and if hes still working on BW

But, yah, I think that finishing and bebugging V1 would be a great idea. If only I had the time, patence, courage, and good understanding of C to do it (i have a basic understanding, only text programs and what not). Well, welcome back, although thats not much coming from someone who is no longer part of the community either. Eh.

joshito

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In talking with zeromus, he has no desire to ever relinquish the title to tSB's engine... that makes me highly doubt it will ever happen...

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Praetor - Strong enough for a man, but made for a woman.

a

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TheGerf, not just any gerf.

Back when it was the Verge community (instead of the V2 community... more in a minute) it's like a few people in this thread mentioned: V1 was easy to pick up and USE. I don't know if anyone remembers ME... back in the V1 era I was known as raptor151 and I created the _very_ short demo of Raptor: Alien Apocalypse (with all those little bubblehead things and the cool swirly-spiral intro-title movie-thing :)

Anyway, back to the point...

Since V1 was so easy, I grabbed it and slammed together that demo in a matter of weeks, all alone. I did all the characters, all the tiles, all the special animations and graphics... all but the tracking, really. No problem. And it was cool (IMHO)

But then V2 came along (well, was mentioned, anyway) and all those delays scared a lot of people off. See, when you're putting your heart and soul into a project for a long time, it loses its original freshness. After awhile, you've been with your own characters, settings, and stories for so long that you start to hate them, and you don't have the motivation to build the game anymore. The continual delays of V2 hit all those people waiting to convert their games to the new and holy format. A lot of the "oldies" lost interest... at least that's my theory.

And then V2 finally appeared, and all the hype was screaming "greatest engine ever, so open-ended it could be a wind-tunnel" (wow, that was SO unintentionally profound :) and all the newbies that we'd spent our lives *flaming* thought "hey, that looks cool, and I can imagine the games I can make with it."

Fatal error: V2 wasn't easy to pick up and use. Those newbies needed V1.

So the newbies, frustrated by the learning curve, gave up and quit. That left only a few of us "oldies" forcing ourselves to get comfortable with an entirely new engine, like we'd switched from Verge to Sphere or something.

Then, it got even worse. V2 evolved into countless different versions. For a while they were official releases... great. Then unofficial. Then other people started taking the code apart and building their own cool functions into it (word to tSB!) And all of a sudden we have this V2.7 beta 7 monster that no one knows where it came from, what it is, or how it even _tries_ to relate to the roots of the engine, the good old V1.

Whew, that was a lot of waxing philosophical. Let's take a break...

La la la la

la la la

la la

la

:)

Okay, last point, and the thing you've all been waiting for: THE SOLUTION!!!

Pick ONE incarnation of the engine (hell, there's about 40 to choose from now, from the first release all the way up to beta 7) and ONLY ONE. D/L it, learn it, experiment, work with it. Make it your best friend. Find ways around its shortcomings, and expand on its virtues. Build your whole game in that incarnation. IGNORE all the little updates and new versions. After all, RPG development (all game development, for that matter) is about building your game, not updating your engine (unless you're id--ooh! a nasty swipe taken by invicticide!)

So start building games, people. Maybe there's some life left in that oldie community yet.

--invicticide

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