Charas, what has happened...?

[HackersTotalMassLaser]

I thought you were already embracing the inevitable.

I am. But you guys seem loftsided

[Archem]

Sure, go ahead, I'll stay here until I'm the only member left then.

It will be a cold day in Hell before I let you have that honor over me.

Or I'll succumb to heart problems. Whatever.

[Natako]

Getting back to the serious review competition, this new system could involve someone giving a game 20 minutes
of their time and recording it and commenting on it appropriately. The sender has 20 minutes to completely "wow"
the reviewer. This would bring publicity to the game itself. It's almost like releasing a really impressive tech demo
for a new game engine or something!

As for the review style, how about we just let the person reviewing each game decide how they want to go about it? You can use a simple program like windows movie maker to make a collage of video clips and such highlighting the good and bad of each game.

I'm going to make a separate thread regarding this, as I like the idea but feel that we're going to be having two different conversations in the same thread otherwise.

Or I'll succumb to heart problems. Whatever.

WTF? Archem has a heart? o.O

[drenrin2120]

Surely, he jests.

[carmen]

I guess you're all right in ways. It's true, the resources for rm2k are what brought is here, but after thinking about it for a while, I've come to the conclusion that while we may have joined for the resources, we stayed because of the community. Whether we found more in common, or argued, holding our opinions. Trust me, I know all about the "this is a rpgmaker community" thing. And like previously stated, its just easier to let people do what they do, and interact, communicate.

I think its all peachy

Edit:wow, don't type under the influence guys and gals. It's HARD

[Cerebus]

Uhm, glad to see you've not completely left again.

And yeah, I came for the resources, but stayed for the community. Though I don't post all that much, Charas is the only Forum I visit, and will probably be for a long, long time, as I don't plan to leave either. I'll stay until the place or myself pass out. Or until I lose my Internet Connection once again...

It became quite less active, though, but that probably won't be the case for too long. I hope... maybe one day I'll come back after 1 day of inactivity and have 2-3 pages of Topic unread, which weren't started by bots.

[Razor]

Well honestly
I've been here for 8 years now
Yes, I was a lot more active back when Forum Gaming was a big part of me, but I grew out of that and forgot how to roleplay.
But still I persist. If I was going to quit forever I would've done it by now.

[Grandy]

What happened is that we realised game-making wasn't all roses and smiles like we first thought. Most here probably firt joined seconds after excitedly finding RPGM, and thought we could make a game that would rival FF6 in a few months. Then reality kicked in after we struggled three hours to make a single variable for that NPC that should say how many coins we have but instead froze the game and moonwalked, after which we kind of just stood around embarassed and murmiring "yeah" before shuffling to all of all trying to pretend that's where we wanted to go in the first place.

[carmen]

I agree with you there.  Fleeting moments of inspiration. The ability to create the games we loved so. I think everyone finds out its not as easy as it looks. It's easy to get distracted. I'm still haunted with inspiration; its kind of annoying. You know I haven't legitimately lifted a pencil in a long long time? It's kind of sad. But maybe like art, seeing you guys make some stuff happen, I'll get inspired to do some work myself

[Grandy]

Wait, Carmen you still here?

I've been absent for some time so I might not've noticed.

Who's next, GhostClown? Tell me that dude still here. He scared the crap out of me.

[carmen]

He's got bigger fish to fry. Speaking of which, he had a review system that I liked, but I'm biased.   I like the idea of you guys starting something fresh from scratch. Scratch. Scratch . Oh yeah. Right there behind he ear. Scratch.
You get what I'm saying.

[Grandy]

Honestly, what we should do is drop RPGM and re-start as a creative forum of sorts. You know, poetry, stories, music, digital art (photoshop/sprites/3D models) and of course game-making.

 In other words take Creative Arts and expand it. It's currently the most popular part of the site, AFAIK.

[HackersTotalMassLaser]

I've been honestly trying to kill this place for a while cause it's lost it's varied fun. But I am too lazy to put that much effort into real consideration.

[drenrin2120]

At first, I thought to myself, "Thats ridiculous! Drop RPGM? Pshhhh." But actually, expanding to other creative arts might not be too bad an idea. The problem is, everyone that ever registers an account here is here for the game-making, specifically RPGM. Charas is known for RPGM. I think we should stay as a game-making community who's open to other forms of art. I mean, we practically are exactly what you described, Grandy.

I think Charas best bet is attracting attention and young, enthusiastic new members who are also interested in various processes of game-making. We could serve as a guide to teaching them not to repeat the mistakes we did which lead to our disinterest in game-making. That is, start small, bigger isn't better, set goals you can actually accomplish. Stuff like that. We can easily start doing this through video reviews. It does everything: attract attention, provide guidance and helpful advice.

I remember one of the coolest things about Charas was the option of having someone critique your work. Now that option isn't available anymore.

[Zerlina]

we struggled three hours to make a single variable for that NPC that should say how many coins we have but instead froze the game and moonwalked

I remember once making a walk cycle where the sprite was supposed to just walk straight, and instead after a few steps he tripped and fell. And I didn't even animate that...

(this was in softimage though)

But yeah, this is surprisingly accurate.

I disagree though that we all gave up because it was difficult. I just think maybe the span of time needed to complete a game is longer than most of our attention spans.