Castle Paradox

[Iblis]

http://ohrweekly.castleparadox.com
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OHR Piano

[Moogle1]

[Rinku]

I was thinking it might be interesting to write a "history of the Ohrrpgce" column every month. But I'm not sure how interesting it'd be to most readers.
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Tower Defense Game

[J.A.R.S.]

[Iblis]

[Artimus Bena]

I would be very honored to help out. One of my most marketable skills in this area is flash experience. I can make things pretty. However, that is probably not the highest priority at the moment. I can write articles on music since it's where I have the most experience, but I do have an idea for an interview-type game-design article.


Something occured to me when you commented on the community's lack of life. If this is accurate, then the source of this is probably (in my opinion) the result of an almost-purely internal motivational system. Basically what I'm saying is, we're all spinning our wheels in the same mud, and we're only wearing out our tires. What I think we should do is somehow reach outside the box of CP with our games, to the average game-design enthusiasts, where not only CP members are exposed to CP content, but also the many people out there who are just in love with games or making them.

Many of us here (as far as I know) just create things to appeal to the other people in the same small community. Why not branch out, and design our games for the general public, using the community as help toward the goal? From the site design, it's obvious that's what the community was meant for.

I believe a magazine like this can help. If we design it for, and market it to, just about everyone out there possible, I think our creativity could find a little more meaning. This is why I think the "general not-necessarily-ohr-related-game-design-discussion" should be the MAIN focus of the magazine. This subject would include everything of course, the graphics, the music, the programming, everything involved, focusing on one aspect at a time each month (or however often it comes out). The game reviews and such would stay of course, as well as everything else, but if we market it as mainly a magazine with game-design articles, instead of just-another-community-magazine we can help other people who aren't CP members, as well as spread our content outward, instead of inward. If done right, and marketed in the right places, we could add more (possibly valuable) members who previously didn't even know about the community, help out people looking for game-design (or even team efficiency) advice, and reach a wider audience for our creativity.

I'm not saying we get rid of anything phc suggested, but I am suggesting that we try a different angle this time around.
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SACRE BLEU!

|||Compositions!
|||Eldardeen Soundtrack!
|||Red Mercury!

[Rinku]

I think this is getting off topic, but I don't believe the magazine could directly help give the Ohrrpgce a wider audience actually. It's a great idea but it's mainly useful for the use of Ohrrpgce developers. People who don't use the Ohrrpgce never read Ohrrpgce Monthly or Ohrrpgce Weekly, and although Septaweekly's audience was slightly larger it wasn't enough to draw that many new people in.

I think a better idea is just to create really great games, because if the games are good enough people outside of the community will play them. I've mentioned before that Missing had 20,000 downloads and Sword of Jade had 10,000 -- but I think it's possible to create Ohrrpgce games that could do even better than those outside the community. If there's a game that's made in the Ohrrpgce that's downloaded as much as, say, Cave Story, then there will be a lot of new users to the community.

Another important thing is to improve the engine enough that it's comparable with the RPGMaker engine. Why can't it do everything that engine can do? Why are walkabouts and tiles still limited to 20x20 even though there's no real reason for that anymore? Why isn't there transparency yet, and why can't you yet make games in a higher resolution than 320x200? There's no technical reason that it shouldn't grow beyond those ancient limits. If the Ohrrpgce did improve enough to give RPGMaker a run for its money, you'd see a lot of new users.
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Tower Defense Game

[The Wobbler]

[PlayerOne]

[Rinku]

I think 320x200 should be kept of course, just that there should also be the option for higher resolutions. I'm not saying to go from one cookie cutter to another cookie cutter, I'm saying to go from a cookie cutter to a knife.

I personally am not a "retrogamer" except that I believe that old games generally had better gameplay than newer games. But I do not believe that the conventions of older games (lower colors, lower resolution, etc.) are better than modern capabilities. Although there's value in purposefully limiting yourself to older conventions in order to learn game design, they ultimately limit the type of games you can make to games which will appeal to people because of nostalgia.

As for "Why not just use RPG Maker (or one of the other actually legal tools)?" -- most people do, that's why the community is so empty. The ones that still use the Ohrrpgce are (no offense intended, this is just how I see it) either 1) those whose skills and game development ability haven't yet surpassed the need for the Ohrrpgce's limitations, or else 2) those can't be bothered to learn a better engine because they're like an old dog that can't learn new tricks and are too familiar with the Ohrrpgce and too embedded in its particularities to make games in anything else, or else 3) people developing the Ohrrpgce, or else 4) people who have games half-finished in the Ohrrpgce which it'd be too time-consuming to port to another engine, or some combination of those four.

EDIT: I should mention that one version of RPGMaker, RPGMaker XP, is actually legal to use. In fact there are very important and even some commercial games made in it, such as Super Columbine Masscare RPG! (which created a huge controversy this year and caused the Slamdance Games Festival to be closed down, with people hailing it as the most important video game since pong), and Aveyond (which is a commercially successful independent shareware RPG).
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Tower Defense Game

[The Wobbler]

[Rinku]

It did a few things that were important; e.g. someone who was actually wounded in the real Columbine Massacre played it and said that he agreed that it was artistic and that he felt he better understood what motivated the killers because of playing the game. But it's a pretty big topic and it's better covered elsewhere.
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Tower Defense Game

[The Wobbler]

[Rinku]

I agree with that, but I don't think that's the only criterion by which we should judge the importance of games. For instance, Mortal Kombat did nothing new in a game, it was a bad clone of SF2, and there were games with extreme violence before it, but it was still important culturally, for the reaction it got.

SCMRPG's culturally important because it showed most clearly to the public that games are judged by different standards than other art media, because it was pulled from a festival whereas a film about the Columbine Massacre which was in the exact same festival was not pulled. Other games probably have been banned from smaller contests like this before, so it's not the first, but the reaction to that decision was pretty pronounced, it was covered in the New York Times & Wired etc., raising the issue to widespread discussion.

I agree that SCMRPG's not the most important game since Pong, but it's important in the same way that Mortal Kombat and GTA are, it's on their level of notoriety.
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Tower Defense Game

[Komera]