A Community Project Options

[Kaust]

@Vexus; Well we'll have to see what others are saying engine-wise but so far XP has been a popular choice, I don't mind getting a copy of it if it ends up going that way, I hear it has a number of benefits over VX. I'm glad to hear you're onboard

@Khachuchrian; So humble! You can always try something outside of music too, I'm thinking of giving some spriting a go =]

@amerk; If we can get enough people interested I'll probably start up a GUC thread with the dropbox (to please the mods, even though this isn't exactly a 'personal' project), idk I answer to Kayden now xD

@bulmabriefs; thank god your onboard, I dont think we'd have any direction without you xD

[khachuchrian]

Whoa! Part of something Big!............

Well lets get this shindig on the road Shall we?

I'm Uber Stoked

[shinyjiggly]

Sweet! This thing is happening!
I'd like to help out with spriting/drawing a little. Nothing too huge, just things that are kinda needed.
Also, I made a design document that anyone can edit. Make sure that you fill it chock-full of ideas and don't delete anything on it!
Design concept document

[Titanhex]

Definitely liking the organization and buzz this project is bringing in.

I'm bogged down with many other projects here in the forum and in my personal life, so my participation would vary off that.

I will gladly pin the thread for it's development when it's fully organized and the game director (Kaust) gives the go-ahead. Continue to hash it out here and I'll try to keep an eye on it.

Meanwhile I can do some spriting, so I can make a community sprites for myself and put it in my profile. Then anyone can use it. Likely I'll get that done soon.

[vvalkingman]

Edit:
*Removed*

This post has been edited by vvalkingman: Mar 20 2012, 09:29 PM

[Titanhex]

Might I suggest instead of making it a rather serious project with a planned design it's rather light-hearted and loose going.

It would definitely help if we allowed a lot of community involvement in the story. Polls on what will happen next, brain storming sessions, and general things of the like.

Also to keep a semblance of community we should loosely use community members and staff, so that the project feels RRR exclusive.

A benefit here is more enjoyment and rapport for members coming and joining in to see the development of the story. However because of the loose structure some organization should certainly be in place, and guidelines established.

This project should see the ability to introduce and remove characters at will. Cameos and guest appearances.

The main character would have to be neutral, represented by a fictional character. Certainly for that reason we can borrow from walkingman's design here.

The villain should be obstacles that all RPG Maker users face. Lack of motivation, low proficiency in certain skills, writers block, poor design, over-ambition, etc. Whether in a literal sense or personified, we'll see as it's created. The journey therefore should be metaphorical for making an RPG.

Perhaps the locations then can also be representative of boards and topics in the forums and outside it.

[vvalkingman]

How about a battle against boredom? That's the point of actually PLAYING a game. We could have a customizable character instead of a developed one, but have some evil organization called BOREDOM that is trying to suck all the fun out of life. It's up to you, who seems to be immune to boredom's powers, to defeat boredom's evil plot. Fun can be a currency that you use to bring other characters to life(this is where cameos/staff/member characters can come in) and to upgrade them. Similar to paladin's quest or disgaea, where you just have a massive amount of characters you can choose from and have join you while only really having the main character and maybe one more "main" to keep the story interesting and allow it to flow. Just an idea. What do ya'll think?

[shinyjiggly]

That sounds pretty cool!
Maybe when the character arrives at a new place, it will be missing most of the interesting things and monochrome until you add something to certain weak spots (areas that were once the funnest in said area)?

Things to think about:
What could be good ways to stop something from being fun? We need to figure some of these out so that we can know how BOREDOM is doing it's thing.
Also, what is BOREDOM's reasons for wanting to suck the fun out of everything? Where is this fun going? What are effective ways to combat boredom in a place that has no fun? (perhaps once boring things can be used in interesting ways to restore fun?)

[kaz]

We should be able to let you have an area to use- this seems like a great idea.

We are trying to get the community spirit and some of the love back into RRR ..this is a great place to start.

Make me a meany and I will close it down ha!

[vvalkingman]

Here some examples:
-They took the waves from the ocean, so surfers can't surf.
-They took the flavor out of sweets, so kids have nothing to look forward to after dinner
-Stole all the fiction books in a library, so there's only history and non-fictional books
-Stole all the creativity from a group of writers, so now they are stuck with enormous writer's block (i'm thinking they have to go into their brain to literally remove a giant block..idk lol just a thought)

Television, video games, books, board games, parks, etc it's all a distraction! All the energy put into these things can be put to better use, creating a utopia of plainness where society GROWS UP putting all these stupid "fun" things behind them!

So I guess, FUN is a tangible energy in this world. Something that can be sucked up or negated through the use of...idk..crystals? that generals or foremen of BOREDOM control and use to power something dull and random like...mass producing staplers for all the surfers who will have to take desk jobs now.

As for combating boredom, we can have puzzles where you find creative ways to fix the problem. This reveals the boredom agents, leading to the crystal sucking up all the fun. Something like that lol. Let's build on this, i think we're on to something here

[kayden997]

Seems like a legit idea.
I think we should do a Mass Effect type idea and have some options change the way the game should end.
Options will be provided my poll, opinions, or suggestions

Also, how about including the directors in the game?

[shinyjiggly]

-Hmmm... fun-sucking crystals? I think that crystals are a little too interesting-looking. Perhaps the fun could be encased within a plain gray box? The fun would escape if the container were to be too interesting.
-For the library thing, maybe you would have to create your own fanfiction by entering a historical document with a recipe for a messy food-item and cause chaos? There's a lot of ways that this one could be taken. And even the non-fiction section has some fun reads in it as well (I read something about a real chute that lead deep into a real salt mine and it sounded pretty fun to me).

(This is mostly some rambling thoughts, feel free to apply them or ignore them.)
About BOREDOM forcing people to grow up through removing fun, I know for a fact that removing fun things to do will just cause people to try to invent their own ways to have fun-many of which often break the rules. Even "grown-ups" like to have fun, just not in the same ways as children do most of the time. For example, why do some women watch soap operas? It is because they probably enjoy watching soap operas. According to BOREDOM, soap operas are a distraction. With that in place, nobody can watch their soaps and the TV station goes out of business. Now tons of people in the TV show business are unemployed because some chumps decided that nobody should be watching their shows. With all the good shows gone, all that's left is infomercials and the guide channel, which also shows infomercials 24/7. If the main character goes to TV land (pun unintended), thon will have to buy certain products to somehow create fun together. This alone won't change TV back to normal as buying things on infomercials doesn't impact the shows. To do so, thon would have to take a trip to the dilapidated TV station and somehow record new things to go on TV.

Things to think about:
-What roles would homeless entertainers have on the story?
-What exactly happens to homeless entertainers in a boring society?
-If said entertainers attempt to entertain, how will BORDOM try to stop them? Can they in-fact succeed at that?
-Where are the origins of this mysterious main character? Where did it come from? Why did it come exactly? How did it know to come to such a boredom-laden place? Does this main character even resemble a living thing?

Random idea: The main character could be the essence of creativity. Does that sound like it would fit?

[kaz]

Homeless entertainers join together in secret circle- only they have limited "funness" that they have stashed away in secret places. The funness when found release happiness atoms which confuse the boredoms....( boredoms are grey colourless people)

[vvalkingman]

We could use a plain box, they could be called pandora boxes. Seems fitting because BOREDOM sees fun as bad. Anyway, so how about BOREDOM takes away all non-informative programs leaving only the news, infomercials, and the shopping networks.

Now, the danger with this idea is that fun is a relative term. So, as shinyjiggly pointed out, we need to draw a line about what is fun and what is boring. Also, I think that the draining process used by BOREDOM to drain the energy should brainwash those drained to be boring. So all those entertainers that are now out of work, should now be paper pushers or something for BOREDOM INC or forced to make infomercials idk, still working that out.

Something I've been holding back is that the leader of BOREDOM is perhaps someone who was sheltered as a child and told to grow up by his parents. The perfect enemy for a game about fun imo.

As for the main character, I'm thinking he/she's just a normal kid trying to have fun when their home is drained of all fun. For some mysterious reason, he/she is immune to the drain. By mysterious reason I mean I haven't thought of it yet lol. There needs to be a rogue scientist or agent that tells you what BOREDOM INC is up to and that YOU are the only one who can stop them! This provides a hook of sorts that I think is better then "OMG, all the fun is gone I MUST give the world it's fun back!" lol thoughts?

[kaz]

The child is immune because their "real father" was an entertainer who discovered the secret to destroying boredom. He left behind a small statue of a clown ( now a banned icon) which contains funness crystals. The father is rumoured to be wondering around with the secret societies...

[X-M-O]

The child is immune because their "real father" was an entertainer who discovered the secret to destroying boredom. He left behind a small statue of a clown ( now a banned icon) which contains funness crystals. The father is rumoured to be wondering around with the secret societies...

I love it! XD

You guys are coming up with some funny and interesting ideas here - keep up the great work!

[vvalkingman]

Homeless entertainers join together in secret circle- only they have limited "funness" that they have stashed away in secret places. The funness when found release happiness atoms which confuse the boredoms....( boredoms are grey colourless people)

That is a GREAT idea! Anyone who has been drained is drained of color and turned grey/black/white. I also like the idea of rebels or small circles of people still able to have fun(via stashed objects of pure fun or simply a comedy troupe that being together gives them fun energy, etc), perhaps the draining wasn't as complete as they thought. Push the idea that no matter how much you take away fun, that it's part of a human's nature and can't be "drained". Idk, i think we are on the verge of forming a moral or something lol

The child is immune because their "real father" was an entertainer who discovered the secret to destroying boredom. He left behind a small statue of a clown ( now a banned icon) which contains funness crystals. The father is rumoured to be wondering around with the secret societies...

Hmmm OR perhaps he is the rogue scientist! Originally thinking that the cause was just, seeing you playing with your friends and having fun made him see the error of his ways and he found a "loop hole". He gives you an object(small statue of a clown....or some kind of funny bracelet...idk "I'm BANANA'S!" with a picture of a monkey on it going crazy which for some reason negates the draining process lmao) which will eventually be destroyed by the leader of BOREDOM but the hero and their cohorts find fun anyway...within themselves?

[shinyjiggly]

Anyways, since nobody seems to be adding things to the design document, I added some things that were discussed here. here's another link to it.

Has anyone here seen the movie Pleasantville? That movie seems like a good one to get a couple ideas from.

A game that could perhaps be looked at is Drawn to life, which doesn't really pull it off very well in my opinion. (if I were the "creator" of mimiga ripoff village, I would let them create their own things instead of locking it all to myself and making it so that only eldrich abominations can be made by my creations. Bring on the inception layers!)

EDIT: I placed the design document into the dropbox so only use this link if you aren't able to get added.

[kayden997]

Alright, I've set up a dropbox folder... via https://www.dropbox.com
In order for me to add you guy (who ever is willing to work on it), just let me know via PM.
I'll need an e-mail address for this to work.

Not saying we have to start it now, but we could put document, pictures, ideas, and such in the folder.

[Kaust]

Gone for a day= mind.blown.
I was also thinking, forget staff/directors/mods all those boring structures, anyone who contributes should get a cameo, even if its just an npc on the side of creativity.
I love where this has gone. I'm afraid there can be no set line of boring/fun as there is no real right and wrong. Which is why I think you should establish between fun and creativity. They certainly often coincide, even to the extent of synonymous, but 'boring' people such as taxmen have the fun of problem solving, though their jobs are not creative (at least, not the legal kind xD)