Feedback is important

[Bob423 52]

Very few people finish RPG Maker games and part of that may be due to the fact that people often do it alone and try to make a bigger game than they can.

 

I managed to finish The Hidden City of Arcatis, but I got lazy and part of what kept me going was how excited I was to work on the sequel and get the first game out of the way. When I finally finished it, I prematurely released it without much testing and had to reupload it several times.

I haven't gotten a single review of any kind so far. Not even "it was fun." The lack of feedback on this game led me to recording a playthrough and uploading it to youtube as well as writing a summary of the story. I was desperate and just wanted people to not be confused when they played the second game.

It also led me to believe that no one has beaten my game. When I ask someone to play my game, and they do, I expect them to do at least one of the following:

1. Beat the game

2. Tell me what they thought of the whole thing.

3. Tell me they don't like it and can't finish it because it sucks.

4. Tell me they can't finish it because of a mistake I made with switches and when and where they had the problem.

 

What I don't like is when people start to play it, get to around the end of the mountain part and then stop, never playing it again and, when I mention it, they say they've been busy or something

Seriously, if you don't like it, tell me.

 

Feedback is very important. I need feedback or I will assume everyone hates it. I may get discouraged and give up. I need to know what I did right and what I did wrong. I'm different though, since I will continue making my three games because I like coming up with story ideas and making cutscenes and stuff.

 

It seems as though only pros, large teams, and people with crazy talent who don't even need rpg maker get recognized when the programs, to me, seem like tools for people with very little game development knowledge or skill who want to learn.

I would think, that RPG Maker forums would be there to help people learn and the members would give feedback on even terrible games and help the creator get better.

Maybe it used to be like that, but the internet in general has a lot of idiots on it, so I guess it will never be perfect.

Nice forums don't seem to attract many members or give much feedback. The forums that give feedback seem to not care about teaching people and instead basically shun newbs and praise pros.

 

I can't be the only one who thinks this.

Edited December 24, 2013 by Bob423

[Tobychew 0]

Tried playing this game but it crashes after a menu pops up after that just does a black screen tried running as admin and still same problem. Also can't close the process have to logout and login to get rid of it. Also get an error message saying something to the effect that directx audio failed to initialize

Edited January 6, 2014 by Tobychew

[Bob423 52]

Thank you, but that seems like something on your end. Make sure directx is updated and everything. You would probably have the same problem with other rmxp games too.

 

Also what is the menu and what did you do before opening said menu.

Edited January 6, 2014 by Bob423

[Tobychew 0]

There were 3 options new game continue and shut down and I did nothing

Edited January 7, 2014 by Tobychew

[Tobychew 0]

fixed had to disable anti-virus. And what is the point of that little cutscene after exiting the guys house I see no point of it being used

Edited January 7, 2014 by Tobychew

[Bob423 52]

I knew it was something on your end.

 

As for the cutscene, I felt like I needed to show more of what happened during the year that was skipped, but didn't want to do a full scene so I just did dialog. There are more like that

[Tobychew 0]

I get to a lava area with the metroid music and get an error message saying script is hanging

[Bob423 52]

Try again. That can happen sometimes with Blizzard's scripts. For a pro he kinda sucks. Nothing I can do about it :(

Edited January 10, 2014 by Bob423

[Bob423 52]

You guys all proved my point by not replying to this topic. Thank you, Toby for being different.

[ShinkuAura 15]

Well bob it looks like it's my turn to play the game and give you feedback.

 

the game demo you gave me months ago was really good and of course laggy. the cut-scenes felt that it could be more longer and interesting.

lets see if you really did do something with the game

[Bob423 52]

*unlocks topic right after locking it*

 

O.o :D Thank you!

By the way you may want to redownload it. There was a small problem with the starting location...ok big problem. I didn't change it after testing because, like I've said before, I'm terrible at testing lol. Currently working on converting to the UMS script instead of using evented faces for message. It's looks a lot better even if the on letter at a time thing isn't working. It must be Blizz ABS >.>

I also need to add some cutscenes that were originally just black screens with faces and dialog. Hopefully it will be more clear that they're flashbacks.

 

By the way, I locked it because I felt that it was pointless to keep it open. You proved me wrong and I probably shouldn't have locked it in the first place. Bad moderating I think :(

 

I feel like I've just been silly now. I was getting discouraged, but I guess it really doesn't matter. Especially since I'm not as serious about game making as most people who never finish a game.

[ShinkuAura 15]

*unlocks topic right after locking it*

 

O.o :D Thank you!

By the way you may want to redownload it. There was a small problem with the starting location...ok big problem. I didn't change it after testing because, like I've said before, I'm terrible at testing lol. Currently working on converting to the UMS script instead of using evented faces for message. It's looks a lot better even if the on letter at a time thing isn't working. It must be Blizz ABS >.>

I also need to add some cutscenes that were originally just black screens with faces and dialog. Hopefully it will be more clear that they're flashbacks.

 

By the way, I locked it because I felt that it was pointless to keep it open. You proved me wrong and I probably shouldn't have locked it in the first place. Bad moderating I think :(

 

I feel like I've just been silly now. I was getting discouraged, but I guess it really doesn't matter. Especially since I'm not as serious about game making as most people who never finish a game.

 

You clearly need to have confidence in your game no matter what. I think your biggest error was to release the game unstable and untested. Now i'm not trying to lower your moral but it's mostly the truth. maybe you don't have 100+ downloads because it has a lot of bugs. well let me tell you one thing. in every game that has been created has at least one bug, one bug won't kill your experience. Gamers like me like to abuse bugs because they're ether funny to abuse or if your really bored with the game. Of course if they're Online game glitches/bugs i don't abuse them because it could be a game changing experience.

 

back on topic. don't give up Bob if your going to develop a squeal you need to have awareness in your coding if you don't want any errors. We developers don't know what's limit. You may want to ask someone to make you a patch system for rpg maker xp before you start that way you can patch your game without having to re-upload your game. ACE has such feature and works fine for me. i tend not to have bugs because i am aware of what my have and has.

 

Yeah man i'll download it today and test it out tomorrow.

[Bob423 52]

Thank you, you're awesome and 100% right. I've already had Pol test what I have so far and aside from the weird glitches caused by rmxp itself that he didn't even mention, it's good so far. I'll be changing a few things of course before I get to where I can officially start working on a demo, so It will all have to be re-tested including the demo. So far everything has been going much smoother now that I know more about the program. Unless I actually redo the entire game, The Hidden City of Arcatis will never be free of annoying bugs. Like I said, though, I'm currently doing what I can to improve the parts that I can without undoing too much. I'll be releasing a v1.1 with a slightly different ending and a few scenes tweaked to avoid too much confusion. I didn't like how I originally avoided the whole, a character can be revived in a battle, but not during a cutscene, thing with a certain character so I redid the ending and put it at the beginning of the sequel and also posted a video for people to see if they've beaten the first game so they don't have to wait for the sequel to be released to it...just fixing the ending was a better idea lol

The fix was basically this: A character dies, but the reason they weren't revived was stupid, so I made a new rule about Mana and Magic that prevented them from being revived. A rule that was mentioned in the new ending, but it wasn't explained in great detail because, well, someone was dying.

 

I've just put too much time into thinking up the lore, rules of magic, etc. to quit this trilogy already. I literally have "A person or animal in Arcatis cannot be revived if..." written on a piece of paper next to me with like 4 rules on it and some rules about speaking with dead people. i.e: it's very hard to do unless the Angels help you. Talking to bad people who have died is even harder and can cause a lot of problems (It's basically opening a portal to the demon world using massive amounts of dark mana. So it's probably obvious what the consequences can be.)

I also have a .txt that starts in my game's equivalent of 1232 BC and ends in 2001 AD and several important events including main characters' birth years.

Considering this is an independent project made with rmxp, non-commercial, and made by ME of all people, I think that's a pretty big deal. If only I could make it look as good as something like To the Moon and was great at character design. My series would probably become more popular I think if I had the resources and skills. I certainly have the time.

[ShinkuAura 15]

I downloaded the game, but i been struggling to play it. I have school work to do and stuff and i can't allow myself to get distracted by playing. I think you'll get your feedback from me on Saturday because Friday i'm mostly free for the whole day.

[Bob423 52]

Awesome, thanks!