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RPG in a Box

rpginabox.com

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Re: RPG in a Box

#61
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think Blender was (and still is) exceptionally good at community building. Just freeing your product might not get you enough traction by itself.

Clearly you are unfamiliar with the process. Step 1, open source project. Step 2. Step 3, profit.

Re: RPG in a Box

#63

This is not a rocket propelled grenade startup

I'm more surprised nobody's brought up RPG, the classic ptogramming language (which, like COBOL, isn't as dead as you might think) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RPG

When I saw the headline I was definitely hoping for some fun new tool for the IBMi server I maintain, but I knew the chances were slim :)

Re: RPG in a Box

#64

This is built on Godot: https://godotengine.org/showcase/rpg-in-a-box/

It looks like it's mostly self-contained and it doesn't seem to have a clear way to leverage Godot, which is a pity. It uses it's own script language, own resources, etc. It'd be really interesting to have something like this, and have full access to Godot, use shaders, custom nodes, plugins like LimboAI, Beehave, etc.

They do provide ability for users to export the project as Godot 4 if needed.

Re: RPG in a Box

#66

We humans are story telling species. RPG in Box is what got my 12 year old son interested in programing. Not python. Not AI. My son wants to tell stories and let others experience his stories. Programing is just a means to an end.

When I give short talks at schools about game dev I try to make it super clear that we are all born game designers. We all make up games as children and a large part of that is story telling. Every child has seen a face in a cloud and 'designed' something outside of themselves. This is where teachers are amazing. Teachers know how to nurture that against the pressure of society crushing it. It was python+pygame that…

A few years ago I took a class of middle schoolers through a simple game dev course and rarely have I seen a group of kids so motivated. Using microStudio[1] they built the story, art, music, gameplay, and levels - I only helped a bit with the code. They kept asking about it long afterwards, so I eventually threw it up on a static site: http://uprag.quest (warning - flashy jump scares)

[1] https://microstudio.dev

Re: RPG in a Box

#68

Inventing your own programming language for your personal project is a TERRIBLE idea, and will likely doom the project in the long run. Languages require a huge amount of support, and you're going to be way too busy building an RPG maker to properly support a whole language. That means you're just going to wind up with a shitty unsupported custom language no one wants or knows how to use.

Wouldn't Lua be the classic/obvious choice for this application since it has such inertia [1]? I remember RPG Maker supporting Ruby back in the day but a lot has changed in the past 20 years...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Lua_(programming_lang...

Re: RPG in a Box

#69
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think Blender was (and still is) exceptionally good at community building. Just freeing your product might not get you enough traction by itself.

>Just freeing your product might not get you enough traction by itself.

Plus not everyone wants to give their product away. I see that advice all the time here and reddit and other places, "just opensource it" as if that's a solution to every problem a creator might have. I even saw it on a gamedev subreddit where a guy was asking how to make more money and people were saying to make it opensource, as if making it free would somehow increase sales for him.

Re: RPG in a Box

#70

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…

>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.

Seems like he should have set a higher goal.

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