Growing the Community

I periodically bring up in conversation, or sometimes even play OHR games during my livestream sessions, which usually have about 30-40 people who've never played an OHR game outside of my own. There's some significant interest in quite a few of them - I've had people go on to download Slimes and they've had great words about its addictive nature, but I've gotten the most universal praise for Horse Game for some weird reason. I can't explain why. In recent years I've even heard people quoting from it whenever I do my semi-yearly runs at TFF or Anthrocon.

While I do think there needs to be some degree of outreach to encourage other folks to pick up the engine and try to make games with it, I'm starting to think that perhaps the "ambassador" game needs to actually be about HAMSTERS again, and would love to see Wandering Hamster reclaim that title from Vikings of Midgard.

I also think we should look at the engine from the perspective of a person who doesn't know the first thing about what to do to make their game in the first place.

Perhaps instead of an ambassador game, there could be a premade file with a few heroes with a few attacks, some enemies already set, a couple of items and a few shops already to go. And of course some basic tiles, like for a cave, a town, a world map, you get the idea. That way, instead of expecting a newbie who doesn't know the first thing about putting all those things together to "make their game", they'll already have a few basic templates to work with and even the math and graphics sorted out for them so they won't have to worry TOO much about making everything from scratch and not having it mesh well together. RPGmakerVXace does this. Why doesn't the OHR?

I realize Vikings was originally intended to do this, and its graphics and music is and forever shall be free for use, but I suspect the problem may be more inherent to the fact that young game-makers may be overwhelmed by the sheer number of things they have to do on their own, that they quickly give up and move onto other game engines that already provide clear examples to base their own work off of. The engine is MUCH more flexible (and complicated) than when I joined the community.

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To friends long gone, and those I've yet to meet - thank you.

Fenrir, your suggestion kind meshes with another suggestion (hosting sprite packs) and because of this I think it might be a good plan to do this. So basically, the plan would be to make several sprites for new designers to use and then put them into an rpg file, along with base attacks, textboxes, stores, items, and all that good stuff. Perhaps even some basic scripts could be included.
Also, to not just create a situation where a bunch of newer games all look the same, perhaps there should be groups of tilemaps and sprites each done by different people.

How about we just start up a sub forum under the Games section to host free sprite art?

I could tell you the answer to this, my young friend who was interesting in doing some RPG making was introduced a bit ago by me, and he was intimidated the sheer lack of where to begin and even what does what.
I've promised him I'd be making video tutorials for beginners when the Beelzebuffo version comes out, as he tried the more famous (though not as awesomely named) RPG Maker (trial version), and he found the numerous help videos a great assistance.
...thus why I'm making the videos, it's for beginners who don't know what they're doing yet and how to use the basic functions of the OHRRPGCE.

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dOn'T MiNd mE! i'M jUsT CoNtAgIoUs!!!
Play Orbs CCG: http://orbsccg.com/r/4r6x

I don't think a forum format is really the best bet for a sprite database. It should be something more easily searchable and sortable.

I personally really like Fenrir's idea here.

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Super Walrus Land: Mouth Words Edition

I'm thinking this ought to be prominent enough to merit a brand new section of this website dedicated to hosting a slew of free resources, maybe something like a micro-sized Steam Workshop with images and ratings and all that. I have no idea who built this site or who is capable of programming such a thing, though.

get back to me in about 1 to 2 years on that one ;)

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dOn'T MiNd mE! i'M jUsT CoNtAgIoUs!!!
Play Orbs CCG: http://orbsccg.com/r/4r6x

Me and me. If there's significant interest (in the form of people actually submitting a critical mass of graphics before the fact), I can put something together.

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

Well I don't know about sprites, but I can certainly throw more tiles together for BMRT (the tileset collection I uploaded some time back). I can even make them more readily compatible with the default palette.

For sprites, there's the other project I was working on, but those sprites are mostly for for use with the walktall script.

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Being from the third world, I reserve the right to speak in the third person.

Using Editor version wip 20170527 gfx_sdl+fb music_sdl

Well there seems to be 2 ideas here; one being to create some sort of open source sprite database and another to create a new game to act as the new companion to the ohr program.

As for the sprite database, I'm completely for it. However, I'm just not too sure that it will bring in that many new people. There are already several sprite databases out there so I'm wondering how ours would be any different.

As for the new game, I think it could be cool. I remember there used to be tutorial games for the OHR, I'm not sure if any of them still exist but they really helped me learn how to use the engine. I think that if we set up a nice looking game that teaches the player how to use the ohr as they play it while also providing open source graphics and scripts we might be able to get a few new developers.

It probably wouldn't be very different, but even some of the bad sprite packs in HamsterSpeak still get a hundred downloads a month just through Google searches.

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Super Walrus Land: Mouth Words Edition

I'd be willing to submit the random enemy sprite for public use.

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dOn'T MiNd mE! i'M jUsT CoNtAgIoUs!!!
Play Orbs CCG: http://orbsccg.com/r/4r6x

I love the idea of a tutorial .RPG file being included. I think we should actually marry that idea with the other idea of tutorial videos; whoever creates this hypothetical tutorial.rpg could film the process and then just maybe edit the video a bit (like speed up the spriting / drawing stuff and chop the whole thing into chapter-type sections), maybe have voiceover when it comes to selecting a non-intuitive submenu, a simple plotscripting intro with some slices flying around (and include the script with tutorial.rpg of course), importing sfx and music, etc.

Then not only would they have a nice jumping off point in tutorial.rpg but they could actually watch it come together on youtube.

I would be willing to submit my hero graphics for public use.

sounds like we've got somethin' goin' here for the sprites type thing. I'd like to resurface this from the battle sprites thread, a thing I call "giboo", and offered to let anyone who wanted to use it....use it.

If we do get this officially started (the free sprite thinger), then I'll be sure to submit random enemy sprites for it. I have fun drawing various foes.

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dOn'T MiNd mE! i'M jUsT CoNtAgIoUs!!!
Play Orbs CCG: http://orbsccg.com/r/4r6x