Wandering Hamster and the OHRRPGCE

So, a few months ago, I got it into my head that it was time to look up some video game-making software.  I had heard of these things back in the late 90's, an RPG maker available for the playstation.  I never got a look at it, and I didn't pursue it.  I think it wrote it off as too much work, or better yet, wrote off the playstation memory card as too small to provide for anything worth doing.  Whatever.

I got to thinking about it, though, and my hankering to produce a video game has not gone away in the decade since.  If anything, I've been encouraged by the tremendous number of independent games I've seen, and even more so by the good ones!  I figure that it's worth a try, so I decided to do another search, and I turned up a program called the OHRRPGCE.  This program had actually been released in the late 90's and has been revised and maintained in various forms since.  

The current form of OHRRPGCE included a sample game called 'Wandering Hamster' which I decided to play, and I composed the following post.  However, I never published it, and I now return to Wandering Hamster and the OHRRPGCE, publishing this post as I wrote and a follow-up.  Cop out?  Probably.  

08/15/12:

Hey there, Hamsters and Hamstettes,  I'ma gonna give this here RPG maker a look-see!  Starting by playing their example game:  Wandering Hamster.  Free to download for Windows systems.  

I put in about thirty minutes yesterday, and what I found was a fun little satirical 8-bit style RPG, similar to Breath of Death VII or Cthulu Saves the World.  However, I already feel the interface is better in this game.  It follows more of a Final Fantasy II(IV) menu style rather than the Dragon Warrior I Menu style of Cthulu and Breath.  Very Humorous, and so far, there are more little touches and more original dialogue in the town full of random folks.  

I'll put in a couple more hours - Hamster is incomplete, so it will apparently just drop off at some point - and then I will go about dissecting it with the RPG maker it was created with.  I have some ideas brewing.  I'm not sure I can put in the effort necessary to produce something...  But if I do produce anything at all, believe me, I will post it!

11/04/12:

After a long gap, I've returned to this game.  I went through the first dungeon, which was moderately difficult and moderately funny.  One thing I didn't mention before was the battle music for the initial environment is really great - it starts with a rapid-picking banjo but develops into a more 'battle-theme' styled song.  

All-in-all, Hamster plays like a low-rent Final Fantasy IV (with active-time battle system from FFVI) I think it gives me an idea of what the ohr-rpg-ce is capable of.  

I found this game when I was looking around for a free RPG maker to play with.  I've had trouble tolerating the interface so far, so I think I'll look around for another free RPG maker.  And maybe I'll play Wandering Hamster a little more.  It's kinda fun =)

-D

So, what have I been up to lately?

Hi there everyone.  I haven't posted as regularly as I'd like, I've been busy and stuff.  Right now I'm just playing Metroid I, which is a huge pain in the ass and I might give up.  I've got high jump, screw attack and the ice beam, but I just get lost too damned much.  And I always think to play the game after I've turned my computer off, and I don't want to boot it up just to get a map.  That game is just too hard.  (I've discovered the italics button- watch out!)

But on another note, I've been doing some basic research on games and gaming.  Mostly Indie Gaming.  After Jack's post about Shadowgate, and his challenge to the indie gaming world, I decided to take a look to see if there were any shadow-gate style indie games.  I remembered the Crimson Room, and the rest of the series:  The Viridian Room and blue room and white room, etc.  But, as I was researching information on these games, I got to thinking about the history of indie games... and then I fell down a rabbit hole.

It turns out there is way more going on in indie gaming than I realized.  There are hundreds of creators out there, just itching to make games.  I can barely even find the time and initiative to talk about making games, but over here, I found a damned list that you can post to and someone might make your game idea!!  Egad! Okay, okay, breathe, breathe.  I'm going to try to post a little map of the rabbit hole so far.  It goes like this:

Google search.  "Hello, what is this?"  DIY gamer dot com?  That sounds awesome.  What am I looking at? Wait a second.  So, what you're telling me is that you had a contest for people to create First Person Shooter games, start to finish, in seven days?  Really?  And they did?  People can just do that?  Okay, I'll play one: First Person Tutor.  Haha, this game is funny.  Kinda fun.  Neato.  There are several other games on this page that look interesting, and you can play them in-browser.  I just got in this damned rabbit hole, and I have at least two hours of exploring to do on this one page.  But I don't feel like stopping just yet, so I keep going.

Oh, here's an interesting new(to me) website called Glorious Train Wrecks.  Isn't that a great title?  It turns out they have a game making contest too.  They just finished up their fifth one.  They also have a list of development tools and hundreds of games submitted to them.  Jeepers H Crackers, what am I supposed to do with all of this?  Can someone please pay me to write about the indie game scene so I can pan for gold in all of these (probably) shitty games?  I would very much like to do that.  But I have no attention span, so off I go!

Oh look, DIYgamer.com has an article about Indie Games and they mention Crowd Funding.  You know, Kickstarter.  And, apparently a new one aimed specifically at games.  Card games or video games, it doesn't matter.  Here we go, 8-Bit Funding!  Okay, so now there's a place to ask for money to develop your games?  And there are a bunch of projects already on it.  048tyhdfs;ovndzkjs.  Too many choices, too many possibilities!  At this point I'm just closing my browser tabs.  I've got more than ten open on this last chain, and it's time for me to focus a little more.  Let's copy down these addresses into a text file and move on.

Oh, hey look, an adorable Mario Spin Off game that "compresses" all the levels into one screen a piece.  Super Mario Summary doesn't truly compress the levels, but it does make one-screen levels inspired by the original Mario.  Not a bad little puzzler.  Kinda tough, best played with JoyToKey.  Oh, wait a sec.  This game was made as part of Another Damned Contest?!  Wow, indie games are seriously thriving.  This contest is like the twenty fourth this site has had.  I had no idea it was so open ended.  My head is popping.  But in a good way, I think.  I certainly know that if I come into a huge cash of free time, I know how I'm spending it!

Okay, so, I think it's time to get the hell out of this Rabbit hole.  Oh, one quick stop by another article on DIYgamer.  They're referencing a 'rouge-like spaceship simulator?'  What is rouge-like?  Oh, I see.  Random dungeon generation, RPG elements.  I've played games like these.  I guess Diablo is like the most advanced/successful rouge-like.  I see, the genre is based on a 1980 game called Rogue. So the popular name for the genre became "Rogue-like."  Right on.

Okay, okay.  I'm getting out of the rabbit hole now.  I hope you've enjoyed your time, sorry if the arrangement of links is little chaotic.  I guess I didn't so much make a map as scribble on some paper by torchlight.  Still, there's a great big marker at DIYgamer.com they are organized and oh so full of new info for the interested.    And then there are at least three links here to game creating contests, which I find very interesting.

So, I guess I'll leave you with a link to a game creator from Cameroon, Africa.  I think the graphical style is great, the music is awesome, the controls not so hot, and the level design can really use some work (I can't beat the first level).  

So, without further ado:  PHL's Air Flying Game.