I forgot, there is no www. prefix for the site. sorry to all who went to the wrong url. (also, when I edit out the www in the original post, it links to www.aivgames.com anyway, even though it is supposed to link to aivgames.com. Anyone know how to fix this?)
Unless you spruce up your graphics, I don’t think anyone is going to pay for your version of an RPG Maker, when RPG Maker itself with tons of assets, proven capability and a huge community can be had at a for a $25 entry fee.
rpg maker is 25$?? thought it was like 80$ or something.
Anyway, a few differences:
rpg maker has a much higher learning curve, whereas CustomRPG is really easy to learn, especially with our tutorial at http://aivgames.com/crpgtutorials/1.jsp.
CustomRPG is marketed as a game, whereas rpg maker is more of a tool to create games.
CustomRPG will have built in functionality to upload and download games.
CustomRPG will also have ability to play multiplayer with other players.
Also, about ‘sprucing up graphics’, the graphics such as the rock and grass that you see in the screenshot do not come with the program at all. When you are creating a block, you choose the image file. (The grass and boulder were made by me, and I am a programmer, not an artist, so I hope the quality is excusable for a couple of screenshots). The buttons are a different matter, they do look bad i admit, but this is the kind of thing that the beta does not focus on at all, and I will perhaps redesign the menu and buttons in later versions.
So the main differences of CustomRPG and RPG maker come down to that CustomRPG is aimed at a different market than RPG maker (customrpg being gamers and RPG maker being people who are a lot more serious about making an rpg)
But thanks for pointing out their similarities. I didn’t even think about it from when the product was first imagined through development to beta release.
But a more basic (or just older?) version is here:
But, if you plan on marketing it as a “game”, does that mean you will include an actual complete game made with the tools? Maybe I’m misunderstanding this, and this is more like something along the lines of LittleBigPlanet.
Either way though, if you want this to be successful, even in the early beta phases, you’re going to have to seriously improve the graphics to give gamers something to work with. I know you claim not to be an artist, but you’ll need to be (or find someone). For a concept like this to work (communal game sharing game-thing) you have to basically do all the hard work that requires more skill than button clicking (Graphics, particle systems, AI, map editors, sounds, etc) and just leave the fun “design” aspects up to the gamer playing.
Yes, I do plan on marketing this as a “game”. All level editor as well as single player features are included in the beta version.
A lot of the features that you mention are available in the game as is.
graphics - user selects image to be the texture for blocks and enemies.
particle systems - there are no fancy effects in the beta version.
AI - this is fully automatic, when the gamer creates an enemy, the ai in the enemy is already set up. (it will go toward the player if the player is close enough).
map editors - This in the game. The grid you see in the screenshot is the map editor (to use you click on the block you want to place, then click where on the grid you want the block to be.
sounds - the gamer selects a music track that will play for that level.
As I mentioned before, these level editor features are included with the game. But yes, the beta lacks a ton of polish that other games have. The focus was to get the game out there and make some money.
Not sure what you mean by improving the graphics. Do you mean the gui, or that I should include some block textures with the program??
Another good point you bring up in a previous post is the price. 20$ is not competitively priced, especially for a beta. I will probably lower the price in the future (for the beta at least)
My suggestion is to draw hundreds and hundreds of quality tiles they can pick from. (and no, I’m not kidding). Even in the beta phases. If you want to appeal to “gamers” and not “developers” you have to have eye candy. This includes a huge library of custom tiles, images, GUI elements, everything.
You’ll have to go beyond this, you’ll have to do something like have a collection of pre-coded “brains” your gamers can select from, else all the mobs will be exactly the same just with different stats and images.
Again, you’ll need tons and tons of sound and music assets. Maybe even going as far as doing what LittleBigPlanet did, and have customizable music tracks where you can add and remove parts of the tracks to customize them.
This absolutely will not happen until you have a lot more polish and more flexibility in the engine.
I’m not trying to be cruel or discouraging, I’m just giving you the hard facts. If you want to market this as a sellable product you’re going to have to step up your game 10 fold. My advice is to offer the game completely for free right now so you can show off the technical aspects of it, and then charge for it later when/if it becomes a marketable product. As of right now, it’s not marketable. You should ask yourself something like: “Is this a game I’d see on Steam?” (even if you don’t plan on putting it on steam, but it’s a good benchmark for minimum standards). If the answer isn’t anything other than “absolutely YES!” then you’re not ready yet.
Hello everyone!! There is a demo available now for you to try. Also I have beta version 1.1 available with a couple of bugfixes and new features, so if anyone has the game go ahead and press redownload on the launcher. A new launcher is available for download on the site as well, but it is not mandatory to run the game. The site now has a blog/new section for the homepage instead of a redirect.
