Hi, I'm an artist who studied animation for 3 years at art school, and am also a Self-taught musician. I'm an avid fan of RPG Maker, and have dabbled much with RPG Maker 2000, 2003 and now VX (lovin' it). I have had numerous random projects I have invented over the years, and most of them never really went anywhere. Right now, I have a few games I'm casually working on.
1) "Code Experiments" (Lack of better title), has approx. 3-7 minutes of carefully evented opening sequence and story setup; this was a good learning experience for me understanding how to use lots of common events for general storytelling purposes, and used all my own custom MIDI music!
2) "Order of Anders" I developed a neat Torch/Light Spell effect I was proud of using images and blending modes to cause natural light effects. Not much past that here, other than a few maps.
3) "Tales of Oorna" My newest creation, really just an excuse to get me past creating a handful of maps (and coming up with a game that is FAR to big or hard to wrap my head around). This project was basically lets map out a fun story that is contrived yet simple, and will let me jump into parts of game design that I have always found very difficult up to this point (mapping villages/dungeons, designing and balancing the whole battle system and monsters, encounters, etc). I'm forcing myself to just do it, and I think my approach of planning in MS Word and conceiving what I want before opening the game (as well as hand-drawing out map ideas before straight mapping them), I find it much easier to create something I like.
So hi, wanted to introduce myself and move beyond a lurker, and contribute! I also need your help. Any advice for how to move past a RPG "dreamer" and to become a "maker" would be quite appreciated.
I am planning on perhaps uploading a demo or two on the site, and want advice on where to put them as well so I don't post in the wrong places. I want to upload my first game (the 3-6 minutes story demo) for c&c, and would like advice on cleaning up, presentation, etc. Also, I want to upload my Torch/Light Spell Demo, but I'm not sure where to put it. I know where the scripts are on this website, but this isn't a script, it's just an idea for lighting effects using events and pictures, conceived by me. Pretty simple, but really cool, and I haven't seen much like it in games.
So yeah, where to upload those files, and advice as a still basically beginner. Note I also am looking to workshop the Lighting Demo with more experienced users to come up with ideas for how to expand on it and make it more functional.
Thanks!