/ig/ - RPGMaker / Gamedev

A survival horror/action game, about a bunch of desu maids in a haunted mansion, the idea couldn't be more cheap. It was 2013 I think.

Bonus points because I actually worked for a while on it, then I saw hordes of horror games coming.
… wtf was I thinking!?

a yume nikki fangame

Oh yeah, I worked on this in 2014.
I tried doing a mystery game which featured an investigation system, where you can in the end choose who is the culprit of each case based on the evidence. Basically, the MC was a detective in the late 80's/early 90's and some strange cases where happening around the town, with some paranormal touches based off Lovecraft mythology and whatnot. My idea was to make the player lose sight of right and left and make things pretty hard for them, so in the end you could blame the wrong people, and that would have consequences, since some characters were key pieces on the table, and their disappearance form the scene was bond to bring more misfortune, which would affect the story and thus the ending.

It was also thought to have a more PC-98 retro aesthetic (maybe you noticed it on the table), this image was just the sketch of MC's room, my idea was to add more dither and classical old coloring, but I never went that far. I also wanted it to have legit OPNA BGM but the few songs I composed are loops not longer than 20 seconds or so, so in the end I discarded it. I realized it was way more work that I could actually have done by my own. As much enthusiasm I had, in the end I only had ideas for the gameplay (featuring a realtime shooting system, icons, status bars and more nice things), but I lacked a real story, music and art. It just burned out in the end. That, and the RPGmaker scene was going low and even lower down the pipe.

Still, even now I feel tempted to work on it from time to time, but I know that I can't keep up with it. I can't draw for shit, I don't have time even for arranging songs on FM synthesis, and I can't write anything I can feel satisfied with. It was simply too ambitious for my first game. I learned my lesson and decided to put it off forever, or maybe for the meantime. Who knows, maybe it will see the light someday.

Not precisely a "bad idea" per se but rather a bittersweet reminder that chances of abandoning midway are high, even if the project doesn't sound bad. Creating a game is like making a wall and trying to jump over it. If you don't have the skill then it's bond to fail; the more you want to put on it, the higher it will become and hence harder to climb too.

>>148
is pic related what you worked on?

>>148
Then how about getting gud, practice and then working on it again? Just that room looks better than most modern rpgmaker shis

>>148
Discarded ideas are fine to post too. Forgot to include them in the op.
For the story, if you can’t come up with anything satisfying, you could always recreate an already existing mystery story and adapt it to your game’s gameplay. You could pick up a story from a book, or even mix many different ones, or use one as a base and add on it other things that you want.
For the music, I don’t know how to help as I’m also having some problems with that, but there are tons of cool music free to use if you opt for not creating your own. As for the art, I don’t see any problem with it, that map in your image looks pretty good.

>>146
That’s one of my bad ideas too. I bet almost half of uboachan could say the same.

>>143
The gif is tiny but from it and the description your idea looks more fun to play than most “rpgmaker horror” games.

>>151
>I bet almost half of uboachan could say the same.
>only half
You are being generous.

>>149
Yes. I was testing perspective and sizes to learn what felt more natural, so some colors/shadings are bleeding a bit and it things look wonky here and there.

>>150
>Then how about getting gud, practice and then working on it again?
Well, first of all, I don't have enough time to put into anything related to the project itself as of late, or to practice and improve. The second problem is motivation, I already lost most of it.
As I said, at the very least I don't have plans on working on it soon, but there are chances that I will change my opinion in the future. I honestly don't want to lie and say that if I will work on it or not because not even I am sure about it, plus this whole "hey, I may or not may work on it!" thing makes me feel like an attention whore.

>Just that room looks better than most modern rpgmaker shis
I'm glad you liked it, even when it's a rough sketch full of dicks.

>>151
>For the story, if you can’t come up with anything satisfying, you could always recreate an already existing mystery story and adapt it to your game’s gameplay. You could pick up a story from a book, or even mix many different ones, or use one as a base and add on it other things that you want.
I thought about doing this too, but things didn't blend exactly as I wanted. My major fear was basically that the game may not have sounded bad but the development of the story was going to feel completely uninteresting, since I couldn't connect the dots between the scenes. You know, like, there are games that sound pretty good and the mechanics look nice, but when you play them you realize that the story lacks a lot of stuff or that it wasn't well planned, so it just doesn't work. And that's exactly what I was feeling when I was planning the story. No matter what I tried, I felt I was lacking something, or the pieces would simply not fit together, or it felt highly unnatural.

However, it's been about two years already and I consumed a lot of different media and grew up a bit, so I want to believe that if I give it another shot it will be different from last time. I was simply too ambitious, but if I simplify things a bit maybe I can come up with something nice in the end, even if it's not the perfect story I in my head back then. I mean, if I learned that simple things can be fun as well, and to be less elitist with myself, maybe things will be easier this time.

>For the music, I don’t know how to help as I’m also having some problems with that, but there are tons of cool music free to use if you opt for not
The problem would be that I'd have to arrange them in 6 FM and 3 SSG channels, and that could take 3 or 4 times the amount of effort. Plus, the ambientation of OPNA is simply amazing for the kind of thing I want to do. I actually designed the whole thing with this in mind, so it's a big "must" on my list, and I'm not really willing to change it so easily.

>As for the art, I don’t see any problem with it, that map in your image looks pretty good.
When I said art I was referring to CG, animations, bars, icons, character/background design and more complex sprites. I'm by no means an artist, I don't consider myself one either. Actually, to be quite honest here, I hate the enormous amount of effort that drawing requires, specially because when you're actually not good it's extremely unrewarding, considering the time you put working on it and the quality of the finalized product. So, yeah, things are hard on this side regarding art. But thinking about it now, I could have easily eliminated some of those things to simplify the development and spend less time on being a faggot. Sadly, I was just too stubborn back then.