Quote:Originally posted by Joewoof

Damn, they should make a stuffed doll out of that thing. It looks... huggable!

Isn't that awesome!? I spent like, 4 hours trying to hunt down everything about the artist to see if he did anything else similar but he didn't :(

It's the equivelant of the bad monkey/monkeykick image on this site, but on my site... uh.. yea..

Cool. Omni, you were part of that ragged ol' RPGM community too eh? Nice.

That cutsy troll will really sell if made into a stuffed doll, really!

Very true, rpgking, I'm using GameMaker and I'm avoiding the 'drag-and-drop' part of it like a plaque. Coding rulz!

Quote:Originally posted by Joewoof

Btw, in which sub-forum are we supposed to discuss game design issues? Here?

Generally, yeah.

In other words, NPC, you're just tinkering with it soley as a fun - but pointless - hobby, eh? :P

Quote:Originally posted by Joewoof

In other words, NPC, you're just tinkering with it soley as a fun - but pointless - hobby, eh? :P

Don't open a metaphysical can of worms here. Of course it's a hobby. It's sure as hell not a business.

Quote:Originally posted by Joewoof

Well, a few of us do use it as pre-training for business. :)Indeed we do.

Anyway, about Geas... first of all, thanks for your kind words! My apologies about the lack of any sort of explanation, though, about what button does what. It uses some default Verge inputs, which everyone who has been in the community for the last century knows about. Honestly, it hadn't even really occured to me that the Tech Demo would be all that interesting to new people; it was mostly to show the people who were already here what I was up to. I'm glad it helped as a sort of primer as to what Verge is capable of, though. ^_^

That said, you'll want to use Enter as confirm, Alt as cancel, and Esc to bring up the status menu. These are good defaults to check for most Verge games that don't specify otherwise. Although, I think most people actually end up using Space to bring up menus. I guess I'm just a freak.

And now, to hijack Joe's thread for a minute, this is directed to everyone: according to the Member Directory, it looks like the site actually gets a pretty solid couple of new accounts registered every day. It's just that very few of these people ever posts... Are they afraid of us or are they off working on games? I'm always curious as to why all these new accounts I see created don't post. If you, the reader, is a new person who hasn't posted, don't be afraid! We love you! :D (/hijack)

Quote:Originally posted by Omni

I mean that in a completely non-creepy way. Just so you know.

I'm not entirely sure that's possible.

I see three issues off the top of my head that kind of explain why most of us haven't really gotten anything 'epic' done.

1.) Most of us that are able to actually DO anything in verge have been around a little while. Even if you were 11 or 12 years old in 1997, you are probably 19 or older now - which means we have jobs and college to worry about. It's not like it was in the old days when we'd come home from school, and pour the entirety of our creative souls into creating another useless 1 day project, just to see what kind of cool stuff we could make. The truth of the matter is that many of us are probably here because we long for those days, even if we can't truly put commit the necessary time and effort anymore into creating something 'epic'.

2.) Expectations. A lot of people, since the beginning, have come to verge under the impression that you hook your computer up to your brain, press a button, and it spits out the best RPG ever made. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) it's NOT like that. Verge has NEVER promised to be a fast or easy route, but one that ultimately has very few limitations for the adventurous, compared to extremely limited tools such as RPGMAKER XXXX and the other Game Maker 'competition' that verge had back then. Back in the day, you actually had to read the documentation to be able to jump into these kind of programs. And even though people will probably tout Verge's 'non-userfriendliness' as a negative, back when it originally came out, there wasn't really such a push toward it. In addition, for what is essentially a programming tool, the 'lack' user-friendliness is exactly what makes it different from the afformentioned 'competition' to verge - while those tools were easy to make games with, most of those games ended up looking mysteriously the same because of the point-and-click nature of RPGMaker, and it's inherent limitations.

3.) 2D games are old, for the most part. People aren't as interested in them anymore. Back when verge first came out, Final Fantasy 3/Phantasy Star 4 and the like had been out for about a year, and 2D RPGs were slowly becoming all the rage in America. The 2D RPG was cool, and everyone wanted to make one. This is no longer true, for the most part. The only people who use verge now are most likely those that still hang on to the ideal of the 2D RPG. Although of course this doesn't apply to everyone, it's probably true for the majority.

edited: I forgot about Phantasy Star 4, which I get the sneaking suspicion was the true reason that Verge got made in the first place. O.-

> Yeah, I just realized that after trying out Phoenix Flame, Kil. It's not just limited to your demo, but most of the Verge games seem to be dead set on not letting anyone else other than those already within the community play them. If my bro didn't accidentally figure out that Alt-Enter exits the status menu, we'll never get anywhere in the game.

I hoped that the controls should be in the readme.txt file, but nope. Not there either.

It's starting to make me believe that not only are you guys hard on newcomers, but outsiders in general as well. Geas is a tech demo, so it's not very important, I guess. On the other hand, its stated that Phoenix Flame is a complete game. A complete game without even a controls list? Unheard of in the GameMaker community.

No offense though, but you guys really know how to complicate things. No wonder all those newbies lurk and leave in a single day and never return. >_<

> Who's Basil?

> Lol, that happens all the time, Omni. That's why some people eventually pick up and leave the RPGM community - me, for instance.

> As a side note, maybe coverage on other RPG sites could draw a bit of attention to Verge, and attract more people like me to it.
I'm sure you guys will scare them to death before they even consider of staying, because of various reasons I've already mentioned.

Honestly, some problems are incredibly apparent, and yet nothing was done about them. I'm sure that it is partly because not many serious new guys actually point them out to you oldies, but it's still little excuse. For instance, you just cannot assume that newbies will automatically figure out all the controls, but that is what many of the games here are currently forcing the players to do.

> Btw, are you guys fussy about making multiple consecutive posts? You're not such tightasses (like some GM forums), right?

> Ugh, posting with a fever definitely sucks. I hope there wasn't many grammatical errors. T_T

Quote:Originally posted by Joewoof

> Yeah, I just realized that after trying out Phoenix Flame, Kil. It's not just limited to your demo, but most of the Verge games seem to be dead set on not letting anyone else other than those already within the community play them. If my bro didn't accidentally figure out that Alt-Enter exits the status menu, we'll never get anywhere in the game.

I hoped that the controls should be in the readme.txt file, but nope. Not there either.


Well, to be fair Phoenix Flame was a compo game. It is a 'complete' game, but it was made in a week. I was about 10 minutes away from being disqualified when I wrote the readme. However, the basic controls *are* in the readme. I just downloaded it from the site and found that the only controls I didn't include were the 'arrow keys' to move the player and pointer. I guess I assumed that that would be somewhat obvious. My bad. I guess ALT+X was left out as well, but if I remember correctly it was in window mode, and could be closed using that fancy X thingy at the top.

And ALT+Enter does something? :P That's news to me. :P I think one of the bugs that was in the game was that if you opened the menu multiple times, you would have to close it multiple times. (Pressing ALT lots.) Again. I made it in a week on very little sleep. :P

Anyway, as I said it was a compo game and the last thing on my mind was how to make it more 'outsider' friendly. I didn't realise that it would be used as a 'game to play' to see what Verge could do. I really just wanted to do well in the competition. ^_^