Farewell

[Foxkit 4]

This has been a long time coming. This wasn't a snapshot decision I made last night. I do feel that I owe you, the community; that has nurtured me, dealt with my selfish behavior, and allowed me to stay here and be myself, an explanation. I have a few reasons for my decision. First, I see very differently on game development than a lot of the people here. I feel that I won't be able to grow any further unless I go and branch out else where. I want to try different things I've been hearing about. I actually want to do real coding and not just scripting. I recently came across an old computer article labeled "How to be a hacker," by Eric S. Raymond. Regardless of the tittle, it reminded me why I wanted to get into coding in the first place, and that I had been distracted by irrelevant things.  This is directly related to my second reason. I feel that the RPGM software is too limited for what I wish to do. For me, I have things I dislike about a lot of the software I have been using for the past few years to do my hobby development. Most people here will agree with me when I say that they are not the best products for their price or for what they can do. I feel that there is an entire world out there to be discovered as far as gaming, not to even mention computing.

 

My third reason is the switch from GDU to RMU. For the past 4-5 months I haven't touched any Enterbrain  software. I have been working directly from a command prompt into my linux box dealing directly with code through a word editor. So I was very happy when GDU was announced, I thought, "Hey, Mark has some really lofty goals for what he wants from this community! Great!" I was incredibly excited for the change. After however long GDU was up, I came back to find RMU. I felt like Mark called it quits too early. That he had waved the white flag before the battle had even been fought. I honestly feel like he copped out because of less traffic. Mark has given his reasons and I respect him for that. I mean no disrespect to him. This site is his baby. A product of his hard work. No one likes to see something that they put so much effort into not get the attention it deserves. It hurts. I feel that I can't stay here and be able to do things they way I want to. I have mad respect to the Makers of Crawl, and the name of that user created content island dungeon crawl game that I can never remember. You guys have some serious guts to advertise your game on a site that is not tailored to your game at all. It also has paid off for you guys, so the risk was worth it. The guts it took to take that step are not something I have. I will be sorry to leave this site. You guys are a great bunch. Your fun, spirited, and an occasional few are intelligent and wise. I will hold you guys and everything you've taught me in the light in my travels.

 

Foxkit

[Marked 197]

Is this post sort of like a protest to the change? Most members would just leave quietly. You already know my reasons so there's not much for me to say, but I feel like I've got a few things to say.

 

You know what I think about enterbrain and its software, right? What you say makes a lot of sense. And when we were RMXPU, I was thinking forward to GDU I was thinking of attracting members like you or the sort of stuff you want to get into with your game making.

 

I felt like Mark called it quits too early. That he had waved the white flag before the battle had even been fought. I honestly feel like he copped out because of less traffic.

You could be correct I quit too early, who knows what could have happened. In my opinion, probably almost certainly nothing. Maybe I copped out. Here's a graph

 

It's kinda bordering on 45% decrease in pageviews here. Practically, if you're in my shoes, this is what a website does. It gets viewed. You know my rationale for switching back, which turns out was wrong in some respects.

 

Here's the situation. I started the site as a 15 year old when I had a lot of time. 7 years later I'm almost about to enter into a career (as a lawyer, oddly) and days like tonight I waste sitting here instead of study affects my grades. I'm not a game maker and since switching to GDU all of the staff left the site. Aside from a few awesome members who still care, I'm completely alone and RPG Maker is all I know. At the point of the switch back the site was inactive. It was almost dead already. So I was left with options, quit entirely or refocus on RPG Maker, as we did when traffic was at its peak. It was the rational choice and the only choice for survival of the site at the time.

 

You may as well have left because the site is dying if not already dead. GDU would have never of worked without anyone here. So we'll see with RMU. I'll never put the effort into the site I put into GDU, but things are in place and things are happening now. There are unique features here and everything is expandable. Hopefully you see because I'm working away at things almost each day. I wanted GDU to work and that idea is not necessarily dead, it'll die with the site whenever that happens, but for now its about getting things sorted and bringing back a member base and finding new staff members.

 

Oh and active members here jumping boat to other RM sites didn't help our cause either.

 

If members are keen to do something and make things happen on the site, I'm always there to make those things happen. For example, there would never be a scripts section in bigace didn't request it. If you guys had told me you wanted GDU back in the RMU v GDU topic, I would have switched back.

 

My vision has changed to that of the web developer: it's the functionality for me. As for where the site goes and what happens to it, that's up to the community. There's one purpose and that's helping people making games. However we achieve, whatever functionality or unique systems that are necessary, I can make them.

 

I'm glad you recognize the effort I put into the site :P I now have 2 jobs, a web designer and a web developer (on top of my studies), all skills I learnt from trying to make this site better. Specifically from trying to make GDU, which took a full 2 years (I literally started the code in Dec 2010), and only took 4.5 months to die. It was a massive project, but everyone left. RMU -> GDU is however a mere design and nav change. This still uses the GDU system I wrote.

 

It's sad to see you go. I like when some members leave, but not the decent ones. You should at least bookmark the chat and pop in sometimes. I spent 45min writing this, coz I care

[Leon 55]

...I will really, really miss u.  At least stay in chat...  I agree that RPGM is limited, but to go on a grand scale without having the teachers or resources to do assist and work together on projects using those developing tools, its a lost cause. Unlike Field of Dreams, they wont come if you build it anymore... people are too selfish for that.  We need to stick to what we know to survive, and hopefully, expand a little at a time.

 

I do hope to see you around, but understand your choice, and respect it.  Plz at least PM me a skype name or sumfin to keep in contact?

[ShinGamix 1]

Foxy Kitty! Don't leave me...hahah! I will miss ya.  :ehh:

[Bigace360 38]

Another member gone because of Enterbrains ignorance. Good luck to you in other engines.

[dolarmak 23]

I get the fact that you want to expand your knowledge, try new things and broaden your horizons, but that shouldn't mean you just stop going to the forums here. Sure I know most of us use RPGM, and it's not what you're interested in, but it's a shame when you drop friends simply because you're growing out of RpgM. I'm sure the community could help you in other ways and that you'd still be welcome.

 

Good luck with your learning. Hope you find what you're looking for and succeed in your endeavors.