OHR Confessional

I've been thinking a lot about my experiences with this engine, old and new, and have been feeling pretty nostalgic lately. I was compiling a list of random thoughts I have regarding the engine, games, and the community, and decided I might as well post it here publicly where others can contribute.

So have at it! Let's hear your OHR Confessionals. What have you always wanted to get off your chest? What game is your secret shame? What do you regret about your own work? Anything goes, but try to keep it civil. Don't turn this into a series of flame wars and personal attacks. "I really hated (popular game X)" is fine. "I wish (nefarious forums poster) would drop dead" is not.

I'll start this train rolling. Some of these things I've already said in other threads, in HamsterSpeak, etc, but what the hell, let's do this:

-I can't stand Arfenhouse. Replaying it to write the Retrospective way back in the early days of HamsterSpeak was bad, and replaying it AGAIN to write the latest Monsterology was torturous. Aside from a couple of minor jokes, I find the entire thing loathsome. As an attempt at making a bad game, it succeeds brilliantly, but as an attempt at making a comedy it falls flat, and I don't understand what people see in it. Characters mean nothing and it's essentially the same joke repeated over and over and over again for an hour straight. For what its worth, it does do a decent job with scripting.

-I could never bring myself to finish Trailblazers. It felt slippery and I hated how much I had to replay when I died. It was technically amazing when it was released, and I was greatly impressed with its style and scripting, but I never found it FUN.

-I wish Monterey Penguin were as fun as I remember it being. It was one of my favorite games back in the day, and replaying it was sobering. Its probably the number one OHR game I'd like to see revived and cleaned up.

-I really like BoHobo. This game was reviled when it was released, but to this day I find it funnier than most OHR comedy games. If it were released today I think it would have a much warmer reception. It's short and to the point, and like all good jokes, doesn't overstay its welcome.

-Speaking of bad jokes, I'm deeply embarrassed by some of my "jokes games." Ones like Zoidberg: A Musical are still funny to me, and I don't count Walthrus as a joke game, but some of the more random ones no one remembers (Bad Ass Mother) are downright terrible. I cleaned up some of the worst jokes in Gato Sucio for its Special Edition release, because I think there's a funny game in there under a layer of garbage. Some of the jokes in that game bothered me as I was writing them, but I wrote them anyway since it was a Terrible Games Contest entry and I wanted it to be as awful as possible. I regret this now and am a lot happier with the new version.

-"Terrible Games Contest" has become a misnomer. I still enjoy the contests, but (especially last year) they don't really have anything to do with games that are terrible. I think this is a GOOD thing, because its produced much more fun games than the old contest, but the name is really misleading nowadays.

-I had a hard time reading the text during the confessional scenes in OHR House 3 and it drives me nuts. I don't really understand why the confessionals still had terribly imported pictures and hard to read text when the rest of the program now looked and sounded a lot better than previous versions. It didn't bother me as much in OHR House 1 because the whole game was pretty ugly, but everything about House 3, from writing to graphics, was so heavily improved that these just stuck out to me. For what it's worth, 3 was my favorite season.

-I don't miss the "golden days" of the OHR community. I miss the higher volume of games being released, but it feels like the average game released today is of much, much higher quality, and there's less retarded FORUM DRAMA. I know, I got involved in plenty myself back in the day, but the fact that there are some people who are still holding grudges from nearly eight years ago is sick and disturbing. We've got less pseudo-intellectual in-fighting today, and it's for the best. Now, when people get into heated arguments, its usually over more legitimate topics (ie. releasing a really, really shitty game and hyping it up like the second coming of Christ).

-I really wish the Slime Salad games list displayed more than one page of results when filters are on

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Super Walrus Land: Mouth Words Edition

- I keep meaning to fix this

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

To add a couple more (CASTLE PARADOX EDITION):

-I can't believe the "Avatar Contest" thread on Castle Paradox is still going, or that a few users ONLY come to the site to check it. Why someone who doesn't even post on a forum would care about its users avatars is beyond me.

-The CP "Neveryending Story" threads were among the least funny things I've ever seen. While good in concept, they became a source for unfunny people to puke out the same bad jokes for years on end. I'm glad they've pretty much died off.

-I really wish the "big joke" on Castle Paradox way back in the day regarding site ownership had never been public. If you don't know what this is referring to, it's probably for the best. It was the worst thing to happen to the site (aside from its periods of month-long downtimes), fractured the userbase, and gave people who already had problems with the way the site was run unnecessary ammunition. I don't place the blame entirely on the admins involved, either. Both sides reacted childishly and I'm ashamed that I took any part in the arguments that ensued.

-Speaking of childish, the OHR IRC channels are among the worst I've ever seen. Most IRC channels I've lurked/conversed in have been bad, but these really were among the worst. When conversations like this were common, I could find nothing worthwhile: http://www.castleparadox.com/ohrweekly/archives/2004/Oct21st/tim.htm

-Camdog's editorial in response to the above link really highlights a lot of the problems the community had back in the day: http://ohrweekly.castleparadox.com/cam.htm

It's a good response, and he's right on the mark. I don't remember how the community reacted to it, but I'm guessing not many people agreed. Actually, he addresses a problem with the internet in general, but the cases he cites were embarrassing for the OHR community specifically.

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- I hate this obsession people have with avatars and avatar threads. I DESPISE them. I know this is irrational, but it's always bothered me on every forum I've used.

- I think the OHR Community was a more fun place to hang around back in the old days. Average game quality is up now, that's a good thing, but I can't imagine making friends with the users here anymore. I dunno what changed.

- I miss when people made RPGs. A lot. It's one of the reasons I hardly ever play new OHR games. (And I know I just finished making an OHR movie, but still) In 99% of cases I'd rather just play a game made with an engine properly built for its genre.

- I have never been able to get into any of Orchard-L's games and I'm surprised other people can. They're beautiful, they look like tons of work went in to them, but I don't like them. Again, I have no rational justification for this.

Re: Surlaw:
None of the OHR chatrooms are even active anymore, not counting #jsh/#sew/#shiz/etc, which aren't really OHR chatrooms. I kind of miss having those too. I know it seems like there was a lot of immature discussion, but that's the nature of IRC and chatrooms in general. There was a lot of good OHR and general discussion in them too. I never would have gotten people playing OHR House 1 without the chatrooms.
[18:54] <TheGiz> And that was part of the fun
[18:54] <TheGiz> You felt like you had friends
[18:54] <TheGiz> People who WANTED to see your game
[18:54] <TheGiz> Now I don't make gmaes because I feel like there's not an audience of people who care

- I do NOT miss the Heroists. They're the only reason I slightly prefer this era of the OHR community. They made (for the most part) crappy games and bragged about them, and wrote gigantic articles with a lot of misinformation and pretentious name-dropping/"This is how I do it so it must be right" writing. I'm not saying all of them (or even any of them) were bad guys, but the whole situation was just plain idiotic.

- The IM vs. CN thing was the stupidest internet war I've ever seen, and I agree with Surlaw, it made a lot of users jump ship. I even left for a while.

- The OHR needs better resolution if it wants to make any impact outside of this community. Sorry James, programmers. 320,200 doesn't cut it these days.

- I wish the programmers would DOCUMENT new features and explain how to use them, especially when they aren't obvious to non-programmers.

- The ratings on Slime Salad's game list make NO SLIMING SENSE. Just browse around for a while. I'll be perfectly honest; I've calibrated a lot of my own ratings just to make ridiculous comparisons between games more accurate. This is probably because so few users rate games, but it still annoys me.

- The song list/art forums on CP are what I think drags the site down aside from mistrust and stuff.

- I dislike most of the classic OHR games I've played, including Trailblazers, EOTE1&2, Vikings of Midgard(might change after new updates), Wingedmene, Horgoth, many others.

- I will never understand why people think I Made Dis is more than a joke game. I've written stuff I like about it in the past, but jesus christ it is not one of the top 10 OHR games. Love the game for what it is, not what it isn't, I say.

Edit: Also, isn't it supposed to be ocnfessions?

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My website, the home of Motrya:
http://www.jshgaming.com

- I generally regret dropping the Zantetsuken we all knew and loved. At the same time, I hate running forums, it drives me crazy.

- I wish I hadn't appointed the people I did as mods on Zant (excepting Hachi, mod of Duhhh, and Chameleus of Gen Disc.) only because people always say that "the heroists ran Zantetsuken" and it makes me angry. Well that and I don't think Rinku actually did anything as a mod.

- I hated CastleParadox. I still kind of do. I generally like everyone who runs the site, but I just don't like the site itself. I kind of found it personally insulting at the time it was founded in 2002. I never liked the attitude. I feel like the site was too nice in letting stupid, stupid threads even EXIST.

- I still believe that the 4-map limit forced people to really try to make a good game and I kind of wish it still existed.

- I treat OHR games like the games I buy, so I have a huge pile of "should play"s that I haven't gotten around to. I don't think I've really played an OHR game since 2003.

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� Blasphemous Saga Fantasy
� Comic Art & Illustration Portfolio
� Zantetsuken!

-I never would've given the OHR a chance if I'd seen this http://hamsterrepublic.com/ohrrpgce/index.php/FAQ.html instead of the Help Me forum.

-I still feel like the OHR is the best "game creation engine" you could ever find, but it seems like no one is finding it anymore.

-I hate all the threads about "What's wrong with the OHR" and"Why the OHR is dying". That's the kind of negativity that's killing it.

-I read Hamsterspeak religiously, and it's the best thing the community's had in a long time. Monsterology in particular reminds me of the kind of awesome stuff Nintendo Power used to print, and anybody and everybody working on it should know they're doing great.

-I miss the general audience of the OHR community. Granted, alot of people were pricks back in the day, they still played your game and told you whether it sucked or not. You could post a game online, and within a week, someone or someones would have played your game and given you reliable criticism.

-It's not really a problem per say, more than the fact that it just happened. We're all relatively close to the same age, a few years apart, yes, but for the most part the same. We all got really busy with life and other stuff and naturally our time to make games has gone down the tube. I used to spend hours after highschool working on games, even in college when I lived at home. I think this has happened to a lot of people, which has severely cut back their time for the projects. Which has caused us to use our time a little better, granted joke games pop up in between serious ones, but the serious ones are great.

-We as the veteran users, are pretty much the main ones making games, and the few and far between game releases is because of the above mentioned statement. If we want our community to get better, we have to somehow target kids that were as old as we were when we first joined. Hell, in the last few years we've had a few really good people join. Twinhamster being one of them.

This is a great editorial but this made me giggle:


... wasn't St.Ajora an alt of Mogri's?

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� Blasphemous Saga Fantasy
� Comic Art & Illustration Portfolio
� Zantetsuken!

- Hee hee hee

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

-I hate all this OHR House bullshit out there. It was a good ORIGINAL idea. Why so many people feel the need copy the premise with "their own wacky spin on it" is beyond me. Plus, I am convinced that the only people who find those games funny are the people who make them and the people IN them.

-I hate furries.

-I hate people who are obsessed with anime. It all looks the same and being able to draw it does not make you a good artist.

-I hate "game production companies" that consist of one person.

-I hate cosplay.

-I hate the people who don't play any of the new games that come out and then pine for the Golden Age of the OHR.

-I agree with Gizmog in regards to Hamsterspeak. I truly anticipate it and actually get pissed when it doesn't come out first thing in the morning on the first of the month. (This has happened maybe once or twice. ) I hope it never goes away.

I love some of the experimental games, but when I'm one of the only people that still seems to be making RPGs with this thing I kind of feel like a jerk. Even though I dislike a ton of RPG styles, I'm going to have to agree with this.

I personally couldn't get into Boundless Ocean at all. It's gorgeous, but it felt really, really dry.

Haha, awesome.

I kind of have to agree with this too. I understand the pros of using the Wiki format (A hell of a lot easier to keep track of everything, easier to moderate/monitor, etc) but it feels a lot less personable than the old Help Me forum did. Even though that forum looked ancient, it served a good purpose. I obviously like this site and I like trying to help people out on Castle Paradox, but there was something about an anonymous help forum that wasn't really tied directly to the community that made it feel easier to just ask random questions without feeling like an ass.

This is a pet peeve for me too, simply because I made up my own "company" when I was 8 years old and it seems really, um, backwards to see people in their 20's doing the same thing. As a kid I felt cool by having a "company name" I could put on my comics, but now I'd feel like a jerk if I did the same thing.

Haha, at least when its delayed I usually post a message explaining why. It's usually not ENTIRELY my fault. You should have been there for the old OHR magazines though, where we'd wait months between issues with no guarantee that anything would ever be released.

My number one problem with the site is the rotating color scheme. Everything but the non-default one is really god damned hideous. It's a petty problem, I know, but I complained about it when the new themes first launched and it still bugs me.

Speaking of colors, here's another thing I said when it first came out and still stand by; I'm really, really not a fan of the new OHR master palette. I can't complain too much because I use my own home made palette anyway, but the selection of colors is really bad for cartoonish graphics, and I feel that that's the style most new users will try for, since it's a lot easier than going for realism with 20x20 sprites.

Also this thread's going really well, thanks everyone.

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Super Walrus Land: Mouth Words Edition

Try tomorrow's nightly builds. I am working on adding F1 help screens to every darn menu.



I agree. I would love to know how to fix it :P


I regret how very few OHR games I have played to completion.

This is awesome, thanks.

I think my biggest problem with it is that it looks like nearly every other Wiki on the internet. If it had a unique theme to it, it would be a lot more inviting. I mean, I still love your design of the main Hamster Republic site. It looks old, but that kind of works when you're promoting an engine for old-school games. It's unique, has cute art, and is very usable. The Wiki feels a lot more sterile in comparison.

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Super Walrus Land: Mouth Words Edition

Amen! The first time I used it was for my TGC entry and it is downright DRAB. How many shades of brown/tan do you need?

Another pet peeve of mine: Number based grading! I hate it! I hate it in professional magazines, on amateur websites, wherever. I've got no problem with Top X lists, and I've got less problems with a thumbs up/down system, but I don't like grading systems that say, "This game's graphics are a 7/10," or "Overall, I'd give this game a 8.6/10." These kinds of number grades are utterly meaningless to me, and on top of that too many people read reviews and only pay attention to the numbers.

When I started HamsterSpeak, a lot of people wanted us to use number grades, whether it be for an overall score or divided the way it is on sites like IGN. I refused, because I'd rather force someone to read a whole review than just skim the score at the end. I feel like it was the right choice, even though I know some people who I totally understand and respect don't like it.

Also, I feel like the average quality of reviews has gone way up, but that's also why we have so much less of them. People are spending a good amount of time writing them now, rather than just posting a paragraph about how much game X sucks. This has its good points and bad points.

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Super Walrus Land: Mouth Words Edition