It looks, well, dead. On the other hand, an update a month isn't too bad for a small RPG-making community.

I've been following Verge for a couple of years now, hiding in the shadows, looking at you big elites and your awesome record of barely ever releasing anything.

Verge uses a C-based language, and I know basic C++, so it's only a matter of time before I figure out how to make use of this thing. The engine seems to run incredibly smoothly, unlike Sphere(with games that lag and drag all the time) and GameMaker(with that cursed scanline), except for a few bugs.

Question is, is this place active enough to make my stay interesting? Or are you guys still going to be around in a couple of years time?

Put it this way, the verge community has been around since circa 1997, which is a hell of a long time.

As for the higher ups, or as you like to say 'big elites' not producing things- They have done a great deal, we have

McGrue to thank for this website, which - is a tremendous task. (dont ask how I know) as well as SoTS (and is currently working his ass off for sully), oh and he does a lot of the news.

Vecna is God.

Lore is the server pimp, as well as common drunk and is responsible for creating initiative for news updates.

Gayo is cheif reviewer and is responsible for a metric butt-ton of news posts

Not to mention all the people who have made the docs supersexy, I could go on for a long time about people who have contributed, (yes, even tat for maped3)

There's a lot that goes into actually being _productive_.
These 'elite' folk have done a fair share and some even do moonlighting rpg production.

Not to mention real life, people do have jobs, some even have friends (?)

___

The community once upon a time went through a stage where it was hip to display the percentage of completion for your 'mega-awesome' game in your forum signature, or superkewl grafiks as a signature with a link to your progress. About 4-6 months later when the person disappears from everything it's safely assumed that the project was scrapped along with efforts. It wastes the time of people like Rysen, who has made a shitload of music for rpg's that got scrapped. (he's not the only one, tile artists, artists period, and even programmers)


There are people out there who have made games all the way, I've personally found that making a whole lot of hype on something you're still uncertain about doesn't help anyone or even create excitement, demos/releases out of the blue are exciting!

Even though I'm VERY confident in my own project, I dont want to 'assemble a team', partly because the art in my game is rather simple- and music can always be added, back in the day things were 'team this/that' and then the project died.

Now me, I'm optimistic about quite a few projects out there right now, very promising material/demos, moreso than I've ever been since I 'joined' this... community. Yes this is a low time, but eventually somone will release something.

What I would LOVE to see would be 'expansions' to demos that have been released, some demos have just been off the charts awesome, and a person (at least I do) gets so sad when the demo is over; and we sit around waiting for some news about the piece or an update or expansion on the project.

For some reason people think releasing 1 demo is the limit, and then they need to release a full game, this doesn't always have to be the case, even though you want to keep most of the content for the official release, you should progress as much as you can, and after a good while just release a taste of what you've 'changed/upgraded/added, no one says you need to release everything you have up to a certain point, that's bad form!

I've also figured out that some people get SO hung up on making 'programmatically cool' effects or method of doing things, that either their goal was a simple effect to 'share' how superkewl they are, or they simply burn out because they spent a good amount of effort on making the ubereffects. If you notice, and I'm no exception, damn near half of the demo's are tech demos involving 'effects', which is all dandy, but then we have a lot of '3d-this' and '3d that' stuff.... and yes, even my stupid 'draw!' demo...

Few people seem to want to commit to making a project work- and I'm not sure why, I can guess though - people feel rushed like they need to make it superfast and superleet.
Diver down took a 'long' time to make, and look at all the publicity.

I can tell you what I expect in a good RPG (can't really speak for others but I'm sure I'm on a close path)
, A GOOD FRIGGEN STORY... AND CONTENT. Kewl effects are a plus, but I'd rather have an 'ok' battle system/item/shop system/effects setup and a shitload of content and a story that's going somewhere in an rpg. The story is supposed to make a person hooked, the content/activities.

End rant.
<grue: say nothing about improperly placed apostrophes' ;)>

Hey man, I still have a pulse. I'm breathing. I also have real life and I'm enjoying gaming, both of which interfere with game creation. I feel my projects should be made at my own leisure, not rushed because someone else says 'Hay ull onlee be kool if u maek gamz'.

The community is alive, it's just kind of glacial right now. I find the hustle-bustle of activity occurs mostly around holidays, when competitions are held and free time is in excess. Also, just because we don't post our progress or a demo every day or week doesn't mean the community isn't cracking hard at their own game projects.

Not to say, the community couldn't be more active. We certainly could. I mean, I find relatively sad that the last HOV's entries still haven't been judged ;__;. Releases and contributions by others sometimes motivate the community to work harder. It's true. Hey, Joewoof, maybe you could inspire us?

Thinice: That was a great speech.

Also, 15786 posts in just the 13 months doesn't seem too inactive to me.

I mean, 13672 of those were from other people than me, even!

I'm surprised how confusing it is to get started. Although it seems like a no brainer, it should be stated somewhere in the manual (and in HUGE BOLD letters - because if it was, I missed it) that you have to open system.vc (with Notepad!), write the code in it, save it, then run verge.exe to test it out. It took some time figuring that out, which is simply amazing.

Are old timers here intentionally giving newbies a hard time? Probably not, but this tiny snag is annoying nonetheless.

Don't you guys want the community to grow? Because the Hello World document should have a link on the side menu. Something to get the new people started, instead of having them search for it among the various other docs.

Getting started IS a downfall here- I agree...

Last newcomer to my knowledge was 3 days ago.

Keep the negatives/positives balanced like you have, that way you'll avoid trollage.

I'll try to answer some of your tech questions to the best of my ability. Your questions in bold.

Apparently, you have to do quite a bit of research to be able to use it.

Well VERGE uses a very C like scripting language, so to really do anything becides map making you have to write atleast some code. That said there is the v1rpg library that has some really good (and well made I might add) text boxes, menues, etc.

What's that deal with maped3 and .net-whatever anyhow?

Maped3 (along with the rest of the offical dev tools) are all written in .NET. All this means is that you have to have the .NET runtimes on you computer to use them, no need to know C# or anything like that.

I'm guessing that it means that events cannot be executed simultaneously?

Events are executed one at a time, and there is no OO in VERGE. You could probably make something OO like in the code if you really wanted to.

but how efficient is it?

Efficient enough to do weird things like A* pathfinding, Line of Sight, Blurs, 3D effects, and still run well on low spec machines. That said you don't need crazy things like that to make a game, so basically if you have a computer that can run DirectX 7 or whatever the min req is, you can run VERGE.

I browsed through the manual and saw that it removed the need for 'break;' in the Switch statement. That's definitely a plus.

I'm not sure if this is a plus, but yeah there is no break /shrug

...that you have to open system.vc (with Notepad!)...

It's in the README.TXT (You can't argue with my logic. It's correct. That and I just checked nener nener nener :p) But yeah, should be more visible.

Are old timers here intentionally giving newbies a hard time?

Yes. They are. (Because I feel like being an ass right now)

Edit: Gah, 2 people got in while I was writing that... oh yeah and to your how does VERGE stack up question:
VurGE iz liek teh besst eevar!!!11!thirtysixpoint7

and *Makes throat clearing noise*

It's in the README.TXT.
You mean those pathetic disconnected descriptions of what does what? Good luck on figuring those out first time without prior knowledge of Verge. By the time you go through a fourth of the manual, you've already forgetten that a readme.txt exists. It's puny.

The Geas tech demo was quite impressive with its lighting effects, but I'd like to actually know which button does what, so I can actually play it. -_-' Nevertheless, it does show what Verge is capable of. I was starting to have doubts after skimming through the functions, but this blew that thought away.

I guess I'll start with a doltish text-based thing. Just to get a hang of vergec.

How long has Longhorn been in a beta stage?



V3 changed compilation, no vcc shortcut needed... As for getting started, those tutorials forementioned are excellent resources but need more publicity.

The 'NEW HERE?' button NEEDS to STAND OUT, and it also needs an update. Grue - if you need someone to make it not-suck rifle me an email (thinice AT vrpg)

And as for the pathetic descriptions and such, I SERIOUSLY think that we should distribute the engine with the single-page HTML version of the official manual, yes I know it has a 'few' images on it, include them! that's why you can save a webpage to your comp.... and the browser save func saves everything relative.

Also - dont get me wrong, I just love that troll image- Although coming off a tad strong, I think I understand what joewoof is doing here, he's trying to press us to think and make things more user friendly here, and to make some changes that will definately benefit. I can come to appreciate this and agree.... however my power is limited.