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RPG in a Box

rpginabox.com

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Re: RPG in a Box

#41

Post by jamalaramala »

noduerme wrote: post #24
jamalaramala wrote: post #22

Looks like a really nice and polished project! A note to the author -- if you ever considered going open source, you could use the same strategy used by Ton Roosendaal to open source Blender: In July 2002, Ton launched a campaign called "Free Blender" to raise money (100,000 EUR) directly from the community. To everyone's surprise and delight the campaign reached the goal in only seven short weeks. In October 2002, B…

This is a great comment. It's notable that this is a possible path to mutual success. But on the other hand, $100k seems like quite a small one-time payout for a huge amount (obviously years) of effort, unless someone has exhausted all other plans to continue trying to compete with established software by commercializing their project.

Yes, $100K was a relatively small sum -- but the company that owned the rights was going bankrupt, and Blender was going to die.

For a lucrative game, a reasonable value would be 2 to 4 years of earnings.

For example: if the product makes $10K/month:

    $10k × 36 (a mid-range multiple) = $360,000
With this amount, the author would have at least 3 years of headway, with a much larger open source community.

Re: RPG in a Box

#42

Post by kubb »

nottorp wrote: post #40
freetime2 wrote: post #9

My first thought on seeing the RPG in a Box homepage is that the graphics don't really do anything for me. Maybe it's just nostalgia having grown up playing Final Fantasy games for SNES, but when it comes to graphically simple games, I find that pixel art graphics resonate much more with me. So I would probably lean more toward RPG maker if I wanted to make an RPG. But then I had a look at the community showcase [1],…

> it's just nostalgia having grown up playing Final Fantasy games for SNES What did Nintendo do to you people? I've grown up playing very pixelated games on the ZX Spectrum but I have zero nostalgia for those graphics.

It’s because the art for these games was so good, it didn’t feel like the hardware was a limitation, more like it just had a particular style.

I’m currently playing Octopath Traveler 2 and it completely recreates this feeling, the art is beautiful and very pixelated.

Re: RPG in a Box

#43

Post by Kiro »

freetime2 wrote: post #9

My first thought on seeing the RPG in a Box homepage is that the graphics don't really do anything for me. Maybe it's just nostalgia having grown up playing Final Fantasy games for SNES, but when it comes to graphically simple games, I find that pixel art graphics resonate much more with me. So I would probably lean more toward RPG maker if I wanted to make an RPG. But then I had a look at the community showcase [1],…

The community showcase makes it look all over the place and hard to understand what it is (is it just another engine?). I love the current graphics on the homepage though. I'm also sure it's a good choice for their target audience who probably knows RPG Maker but want to make it 3D, which is in fact nostalgic since they probably grew up with Minecraft etc.

Re: RPG in a Box

#44

Post by koonsolo »

jamalaramala wrote: post #39
koonsolo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, developer of RPG Playground here, and I agree with you. My platform has moderate success (multiple games released each day), but to compete with RPG Maker means being 10x better. I was hoping to grab some of that market, but marketing wise it's incredibly difficult.

Blender had moderate success when it was closed source, but not enough to pay its development, so it was going to die. After its creator raised €100,000 to release it under the GPL, Blender became the leading open-source 3D tool it is today. And they make enough money from recurring donations, service subscriptions, merchandise, conferences and trainings.

Blender is great, I also use it. It's a nice example on how a non-developer tool is successful with open source.

There are/were plenty of open source RPG makers, but they never gained any real traction.

I considered open sourcing my product in the past (did so with a previous game), so maybe one day. I still have some big things planned :).

Re: RPG in a Box

#45

Post by Kiro »

wsc981 wrote: post #18
the_real_cher wrote: post #15

This is not a rocket propelled grenade startup

Thanks, the title had me confused.

I honestly feel bad for anyone primarily associating RPG with weapons and not the beautiful world of role-playing games. You're missing out.

Re: RPG in a Box

#48

Post by footlose_3815 »

I'm having a very rewarding experience doing this mostly from scratch in Gamemaker using Claude.

When I see apps like this, I get the fear that it has those RPG maker vibes where all the games will be same-y. That Roblox / minecraft kind of lack of uniqueness that makes for a great mod-game, but it always harkens back to the same patterns you use in the game engine that start to bother gamers like me.

I'm working on a pixel RPG in gamemaker right now, using Claude as help, and I've developed a reasonably complex classic pixel RPG in less than a few weeks. I still had to constantly correct claude, but it was more often 10 steps forward and one step back. My whole engine and experience is mostly done, and now it's the fun part of designing the world.

I almost have an entire sheet of custom sprites I plan on offering as well.

I wouldn't trade my experience for some out of the box thing where I don't own a lot of the game's core content.

Re: RPG in a Box

#49

Post by HelloMcFly »

pragmatic8 wrote: post #47
gitroom wrote: post #46

[flagged]

This has been bothering me for a few days; I’m 99% sure that my parent is a bot. If you take a look his profile, _all_ of his comments share a remarkably similar structure.

Yes, I think you're right. Another observation: despite asking so many questions across their comments, this account also never responds to others who respond to them.
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