The RoN Problem--How do we solve it???

[Captain Lexington]

So, there have been mumblings in another thread about the fate of RoN. (that is, the Reality-on-the-Norm series  ) Well, I'm game to make one. Shall we keep the tradition alive, folks?

Or is RoN dead?

Shall we start new RoN-type game series thingy?

(I really am terrible at this thread-starting post writing. I feel I am too succinct, like my measly post isn't enough to start a whole thread. That first rule is so imposing...I don't know if this is interesting, helpful, or funny! I try...)

[Steel Drummer]

I think a new series of games like RoN would be awesome. Actually, that might work, because there is a guy making a pack of (beautiful) sprites and animations... This could lead to something good.

[Captain Lexington]

Well, I PMed yht33 to see what he thinks of the idea about another RoN type game series, and I think that this could really liven up the AGS community (As if it needs it). This could indeed go someplace.

EDIT: Or of course it could just fall flat. I mean it could go someplace just as the last one did. I should save that for when the thread is more than one hour old. I am sorry, but I am dead tired. I canna think for the life of me! I promise I'll be less optimistic tomorrow.

[MillsJROSS]

As Yahtzee isn't really the creator of the idea, just the creator of the first game, his oppinions really shouldn't hold too much weight on this decision.

I think what would be more beneficial would be bringing back the Insta-Game idea, rather than new series of games. The only problem with InstaGame, is the consistency of graphics, if say more than one person submits them.

Not that a new series wouldn't be a terrible idea. Frankly, it's really up to whoever would like to create such a series. I don't really like having to work with someone else's previous game ideas and try to fit mine in with them. To me InstaGame has similar resources as RON but people have more freedom to do what they want.

-MillsJROSS

[AGA]

I don't think we need a replacement for RoN, just for someone to make some RoN games. RoN has tons of well-developed characters and locations, and all the resources you could ever need. Starting anew would be silly when there's so much potential with what's already there.

[Radiant]

I don't think we need a replacement for RoN, just for someone to make some RoN games. RoN has tons of well-developed characters and locations

Yes, and that's precisely why (in my humble opinion) a replacement would be a reasonable idea. I've looked at RoN in the past, and it's HUGE. It has literally dozens of characters and locations and such, but the point is that they all have a background history. A long background history. Basically I felt that, to do a good RoN game, I had to read up on everything, play dozens of games first, and ask several insiders for the details. It seems a very difficult place to start for new users. And, most basic plotlines in RoN have already been done.

Also, RoN is set in a quaint little town somewhere. Arguably, a similar idea in a very different setting (say, science fiction) would spark up interest again. Rigel on the Norm?

[CodeJunkie]

I haven't made a RoN game because I only remember about RoN around once a year and as Radiant says, it has grown very big now, so I'd also vote for a new series.

[Akatosh]

As long as it's NOT pirates, count me in.

[Dave Gilbert]

The idea that "RoN is too big" isn't true at all really. 

Yes, there are over 60 characters on the character page, but most of them are very minor and only had little walk-on bits. 

Yes, there are dozens upon dozens of games, but the majority of them are very small and will only take about 5 minutes to complete. 

Yes, there is a backstory, but it's no harder to follow than a season of The Simpsons or something. 

Sooo, how to solve this? 

- Since the main complaint is that it is too big, perhaps there should be a reorganization of the RoN site to make it less intimidating? 

- There should be a way to direct newbies to the series.  Don't newbies have to fill out a quiz when joining this AGS forum?  RoN could be part of that quiz. 

- Make RoN a part of AGS site.  I'm not sure about this one, since RoN isn't necessarily an AGS thing.  There should be a greater effort to call attention to it, though, via this site.  I'm not sure how. 

- Quality control?  There are a number of games on the site that, let's face it, aren't terribly good.  This could turn people away from the series.   I wouldn't want to delete these games (that's a dictatorship), but perhaps there's a way to let the better games shine through while the crap hides in the shadows.  I'm not sure how to do this, as there was a rating system at one point, but it was abused.

- Get RoN mentioned on gaming sites.  I'm not sure if this will work, as I tried it myself back when I was admin.  I wrote a whole bunch of gaming sites trying to generate some publicity for the series, and it only resulted in a small article on adventuregamers.com.  I'm not really interested in trying again, but somebody else could.

I'm out of ideas. Anyone else?

[Radiant]

The issue is not whether it IS true but whether it FEELS true. But yes, that is fixable. For instance, by splitting the character page into one with ten main characters and one with fifty minor characters. And so forth. That falls under point one of your list.

I'm rather surprised to learn that many of those games can be completed in five minutes (although frankly I would not consider those worth the download).

[Tuomas]

As long as it's pirates, count me in.

what a splendid idea! My vote goes there.

[Nostradamus]

As for making RON a part of this site, I still think the RON message board should be merged into this board as a sub-forum (or a branch of sub-forums). That way more people will know what's going in RON.

As for the series being too big as I said in the other thread, I think its possible to get a grip of everything in RON in playing all the games, which are short. And you don't have to include every character and every storyline in your game. A spin-off project could help the people who still don't think they can cope with it.
Or hey, maybe there's a place for a mini RON game that will basically be like a mass extinction of minor characters to help people focus on the major parts of RON. Then only the important characters and storylines will remain to continue.
As I just typed that I got a better idea - maybe the resources should be divided into 1) major characters and places pack - which will be the essential stuff people need to make a RON game, without stuff they would wanna skip. And 2) Minor pack\packs of characters and places for the people who want to use them.

As for quality control that Dave talked about, there are a few RON games by an author I won't mention by name so not to offend him that could be taken out of the RON chronology and put in an extras field of sorts in the RON website. I'm talking about games that featuers a RON character as the playable character but do not really happen in the RON universe nor the RON chronology and don't make much sense basically plus they have very very bad English. Anyone who followed the series knows what I'm talking about. Now there's a still an honored place for any game that anyone put time & effort into making, I just think these games will do better as a special entity in an extras or outsider category in the RON database so they will not confuse people and interfere with the chronology. Just my take on it.

[Ali]

I think Dave's suggestions make a lot of sense. As a non-RoNner, the fact that they're away from my comfy AGS home makes me suspicious of them, much in the same way I'm suspicious of foreigners.

That's an exaggeration, but the quality control issue is a big one for me. From an outsider's perspective, when looking at RoN I've been more aware of its shoddier elements. A number of AGSers I respect have a high opinion of RoN, though, so I wonder if perhaps I haven't seen the best side of it.

I also agree that the site could be arranged in a less intimidating fashion. It might be useful if there was a 'mission statement' of sorts explaining whether or not new RoN game-makers should worry about stepping on their predecessors' toes.

[Nostradamus]

As long as it's pirates, count me in.

what a splendid idea! My vote goes there.

Hmmm... that brings to mind an idea for a RON spin-off series... Hooky McPegleg has been out of RON after just 2 games, to quote from the RON website:

Spoiler

  Hooky defeats No-Beard and takes the treasure for himself, which he uses to buy his own island. (Hooky McPegleg, Pirate Postman).

[close]

Here you go, brand new place, just one character from RON that has been phased out before its due time, a whole new chronology can be started.

[Dave Gilbert]

As for quality control that Dave talked about, there are a few RON games by an author I won't mention by name so not to offend him

Das right.  To bi sure,

Anyway, I still have a soft spot for that lil town.  As I said in another thread, the goal isn't to get folks like me or Creed or Grundy or AGA to make another RoN game.  It's to get talented new people making their own. 

[Akatosh]

As long as it's NOT pirates, count me in.

what a splendid idea! My vote goes there.

Stop mis-quoting me. You're confusing people.

[zabnat]

I have planned to make a RoN game myself, but for the following two reasons I have not made one:
1. I wanted to make my game fancy so I would have to draw almost everything myself. (Haven't checked the new Character package yet).
2. I didn't want to brake the timeline, so I would've had to play all the games the characters I'm planning to use are in. And frankly as the quality of some unnamed games is not the best, this is not very luring option. There is the timeline, but I feel it's not really accurate enough.

Okay. Graphics is not a big issue. Some sprites are good enough and it's not hard for me to do my own if I want to. Anyway I would have to add more animations anyways.
For the timeline and character information I would need some spoiling text that can accurately describe the character. Collection for nicely written walkthroughs for all games would be enough for this.

Something like this could work as quality assurance: A review board consisting of credible persons who are interested in RoN. They would play the games as they like and then give ratings to them. Maybe anyone could a member of this board, but any misuse would fire them and nullify their votes.

[Mr Flibble]

Dark Comet is busy working on something RON, something very RON and something rather special. RON definitely isn't dead!

I think that for new users, it might be nice to have a spoiling summary of RON. I know I was put off at first by not wanting to play through all the games in order to know what had gone before. Maybe something in a wiki, with an overview of general history, and links to each game for people who want to research in more detail?

[Nostradamus]

On the RON website there's a Characters section that summarizes all the main plots and storylines he's been involved in , I think it's preferable that people will play the game rather then read those - in order to catch the personality and style of the character.
Anyway it's useful to refresh your memory of what characters have been through, summarize it and prevent messing up the past chronology.

[Andail]

A new game universe would be cool idea. In order to make it a successful concept, there has to be a very small group of dedicated people who can agree to work under special terms. If they make some good games, people will start to contribute with their own games. It won't work if just one person says "look, I've created a game universe, now you can all make games that take place there, but you must have your plot and graphics approved by me first!"

So don't go and announce your grand project until you have actually released a game first that sort of sets the standard, or people will hardly feel encouraged to join you. Preferably, you should provide lots of sample graphics and templates for people to use.

[SSH]

As long as it's NOT cute animals, count me in.

what a stupid idea! My vote goes there.

Stop mis-quoting me. You're exciting people.

Quite!

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Wasn't Krysis working on all new sprites for RoN?

Anyway, I think what you really need is someone to go through and make a chronology of the canonical games with a page devoted to explaining each story and how it tied into the next one.  When someone comes in and wants to add to the story they will have a solid basis from which to build and a clear idea where they need to start.

That said, I've never been a RoN fan to be honest, but that doesn't mean other people shouldn't like it or keep making games!

[Pumaman]

- Make RoN a part of AGS site.  I'm not sure about this one, since RoN isn't necessarily an AGS thing.  There should be a greater effort to call attention to it, though, via this site.  I'm not sure how. 

Difficult one. Is this something that people would want? In theory we could absorb the RON forums relatively easily; but then, isn't part of the charm of RON that it's not part of AGS and in theory people can make games with any engine?

- Quality control?  There are a number of games on the site that, let's face it, aren't terribly good.  This could turn people away from the series.   I wouldn't want to delete these games (that's a dictatorship), but perhaps there's a way to let the better games shine through while the crap hides in the shadows.  I'm not sure how to do this, as there was a rating system at one point, but it was abused.

This problem also affects the main AGS Games site; there are some very low quality games that perhaps shouldn't feature, but as you say we can't really be dictators and remove somebody's game for "not being good enough".

I'm really not sure what the best solution for this is either.

[Steel Drummer]

Wasn't Krysis working on all new sprites for RoN?

Not just that; he was working on a whole new RoN game. But you know him... he never finishes games he starts. A shame, since his art style is awesome.

[Renegade Implementor]

I'd like to touch on a couple of comments that have been made.

The welcome message on the RoN page gives an explanation of what the purpose of RoN is.  To quote: "It involves the creation of a central environment - in our case, the Reality-on-the-Norm town. Each member of the team creates his or her own game as a chapter to be added to all the previously achieved ones, thus creating a collective and diverse "book" of several independent yet coherent chapters."

The timeline was something I created as a resource which would list games in a chronological order and note important plot points.  However, there are some games that clearly contradicted each other, which is why I had to figure out what worked best.  Which is why some games were not included in it, and the timeline is described as "best fit".

In regards to making new games fit established events, most games fall between 2001-2003 (game-time).  There's nothing to prevent games taking place sometime in the near future or in the past.  Or have characters travel to different cities.  Perhaps opening the concept up and adding to the world might be a direction someone might be interested in.

Continuation:

I don't know if having the entire RoN forum moved to AGS board would be beneficial.  As mentioned above, any engine could be used to make a RoN game, such as Krysis's downhill  skiing game using Gamemaker.  If people saw the need, perhaps a subforum could be created to handle annoucements of non-AGS RoN games and general discussions.

As for what can be done right now, any games or demos made with AGS could be annouced here as well as on the main RoN site.  I'm not sure where an appropriate place to annouce non-AGS RoN games would be, though. 

One of the things I find frustrating is the lack of response whenever I try to generate interest or draw attention to RoN.  There was a discussion on the RoN forum about things that could be done this year, and a new contest/activity section was added to the forum.  Participation has been rather dismal to say the least, but you have to keep trying.  I think RoN still has a lot to offer in terms of stories and potential, and I'm not ready to give up on it.

[Huw Dawson]

I think that the series needs refreshing. I think that having some sort of amalgamation would not be a bad idea.

A big problem with Reality-On-The-Norm was the fact that several people acted very childishly in the creation of some of the games, some of the games were terrible as a result, and a certain person wrecked half of it by abusing the entire idea of a timeline to kill off the biggest character in a very stupid way. Hence why I feel that the entire RON idea needs a timeline fastforward of about 4 years. (to the present day) And, sadly, some sort of regulation system to stop very poor games becomeing a chapter in the history of RON.

Personally I'd like the idea of saying: Right, that's it. Done. Let's start again. But many people would disagree with me on that point.

Heck, if this became a proper AGS thing, I'd definatly make a game for it. Combine some of the old RON stuff with new RON stuff and see how it goes.

- Huw

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Well, Huw, if you want, you can make a game that's set in a timeline fastfoward of about 4 years (to the present day).

Also, re quality control for avoiding poor chapters... why not have a filter here in the AGS Completed Games to avoid those inane first-games as well? It's the next step.

Except that some games are not that bad, and some games are good for some people and bad for others, and all of them have the right to figure in the history of the AGS games database.

Honestly, I find this thread a bit silly.

"The RoN Problem--How do we solve it???"
Answer: make RON games.

People, it's as simple as that. And if the background of RON sounds intimidating, then you don't know RON at all. There's been such a mishmash already - everything's allowed, the only solid rule is not to kill of a character that's been established before your game. You know I was actually working on a game that's set in RON and which involved a journey similar to Orpheus', down to hell in order to save a character most dear to the player? It wasn't a typical RON game, but hey, I was allowed to do it so I did it!

Well, planned it. <sigh>

Which is to say, there aren't many limitations. What RON needs is simple: new games. You want to solve the RON problem? Make RON games!

EDIT - Also, Radiant mentioned the possibility of a Sci-Fi RON. Well, there IS a Sci-Fi background pack in the RON Resources page. ANd why wouldn't it be legit to make a Sci-Fi RON game? Could be a parody, a spin-off, a "what-if" scenario, a flashforward, could be so many things...

[Layabout]

There was a Ron2.0 idea that was being thrown around a few years ago. I can't remember who it was, but I was involved with the creativity process, but it never really got off the ground. Sylpher might have been involved. CLeks also might have been involved... but i cant remember. It was set in space, on some kind of space ship, which had a town. I think...

[Captain Lexington]

Rui--The problem cannot be solved by me and Dave alone! The main problem was 'People aren't paying attention to RoN anymore' and Dave and I already were, so I can't just make a RoN and say the Problem is gone. This thread is so people can discuss what can be done to re-popularize RoN. I'm sure we can stay and make games, but will anyone keep the tradition alive after we leave? If not, perhaps it is time to do something like start a new tradition. That's all I'm saying.

[Dave Gilbert]

Also, re quality control for avoiding poor chapters... why not have a filter here in the AGS Completed Games to avoid those inane first-games as well? It's the next step.

There's a difference between the AGS games database and the RoN database.  If you want to find out about RoN, you look at other RoN games.  If you want to find out about AGS, you don't necessarily have to look at other AGS games.

The oldbies here on this forum all know about RoN.  They either made a game (or more) then moved on, or they never wanted to make a game in the first place.  None of these people plan on making a game, so saying "just make a RON game" isn't the answer.  I know we all hate newbies, but RoN is a community that needs a steady influx of them to keep it going.  The "problem", if there is one, is how to get the word out.  Not how to get the current community members more active.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Right, but what better way to keep the community active than by making RON games and posting them here in the AGS database? It raises the awareness. I know it's not just about the current "RONers", as it were, but the best way to get people into RON is to show them a new RON game. I remember that's how I found out about RON - I saw a game, I saw a few more, curiosity took me to the site.

Never was a community person, so didn't go there, but that's just me.

ALso, "if you want to find out about RON you look at other RON games"... I suppose, but only on a very limited way. If you look at MI5Ron, you don't really get a good picture of RON. If you play the Punk Allen Trilogy, you might feel it's all text adventures. If you play Monty on the Norm, or COmmander Keen on the Norm, you might even feel you *have* to bring characters from other games. Similarly, if you browse the AGS games database, you'll find out all the things AGS can do. Heck, by downloading a newbie game you'll even see the default interface, like it or not. Hey, if you play the second instalment of The Tapestry trilogy you might even feel RON is a very serious subject.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I was having a bit of fun last night/today, but I eventually got bored.





there are just too many characters.  Perhaps this will inspire someone, though.

[blueskirt]

It would be great to have a reorganizing of the games page to make it less intimidating, and it would probably make a few more people play the series, who would have otherwise been scared at the fact there are 75 games in the database already and at first look it seems like that town has more history than Rome. However, I think it would only be a short term solution and would merely delay the inevitable, which also happen to be one fundamental law of internet communities: Without anything new released, most internet communities are doomed to a slow death. And worst of all, there is a certain point during the dying process where there are no turning back possible: to get something released you need new and talented fans, and to attract more talented fans you need something new to be released.

There is also a few questions that are worth pondering about:
Is it possible that pretty much all stories have been told already?
Is it possible that RON was only the thing of one generation?
Is it possible that the series' quality is no longer in par with the quality of today's indies games?

Regarding the quality of RON versus today's standards:
Should the RON ressources get a graphical update?
Would better graphics really be a good thing, as people with no artistic skills would hardly be able to add their own backgrounds or animations without having inconsistent graphics? Is it possible to have graphics that are of today's standards, yet simple to replicate for people with no drawing skills?

One can also push the reflexion further. Let's, for a second, stop considering RON like a series and think of it more like a phenomenon, could it be possible that the RON genre lives, even if there is no new games taking place in Reality-on-the-Norm town? By this I mean that maybe we should change the way RON kind of games are made. Rather than having a big, monolithic series where pretty much everything can happen, maybe there should have multiple and smaller RON-like series created by multiple artists, touching different themes, universe and atmosphere to attract more people to the RON phenomenon.

There are adventure games taking place in fantasy, scifi or realistic setting, there are adventure games that are humorous, some are emotive, other are serious and dark, why not having the same with RON-like series? You could have a dark and serious cyberpunk RON-like series or a light hearted RON-like series with a fantasy setting... several place, time, atmosphere or mood where people could tell their stories. Several smaller series would more likely reach out more people, and these would also be easier to follow and get into as there could have 4 or 5 series with 15 games each, instead of one big series with 75 games.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Re all stories having been told... a student of Schubert's (I think it was Schubert) once complained to him, while they were both strolling along the seaside (or at least in view of the sea), about how all the melodies had already been done, all the music had already been composed. At which point, Schubert turned towards the sea and said "Look, there goes the last wave".

If it ain't true it oughta be, so don't go spoling it by saying Schubert never once saw the sea in his life or something.

[FrancoFranchi]

I'll weigh in as a newbie (but please don't kill me for saying it!)

I've played several RoN games and enjoyed them a lot.  But ulimately, the question of why not make a RoN game falls into the same category of "why not make a King's Quest/Space Quest/Police Quest/etc game instead of your own fantasy/scifi/police/etc adventure?"  Personally, a lot of the fun of planning and (slowly...) working on a game is creating the world and the characters.  For example, why make a game focused around the bum when you could make 'Sydney Finds Employment'?   

Several smaller series would more likely reach out more people, and these would also be easier to follow and get into as there could have 4 or 5 series with 15 games each, instead of one big series with 75 games.

I like this idea a lot.  Working as a group to create a series of "episodes" could create a bunch of interesting miniseries'.  Sign me up if this ever happens!

[SSH]

Perhaps the next OROW could have one rule: it must be a RON game?

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Or the next MAGS.

I did try to make a RON-themed Monthly Story Comp once. SSH's was the only entry, I believe... mine own was unfinished and uninteresting.

[DeviantGent]

RON certainly isnt dead. Me and Flibble have been brainstorming something special for RON for what must be about a year now, and it's finally starting to come to fruition. I wouldn't count on this funky little concept keeling over and dying yet...

[Zaidyer]

I've always felt that there are certain things about RoN that make it a challenge to work with, and not in a good way.

• No quality control. Some games are fun, but others are terrible wastes of time. Pretty much anything by Captain Mostly seems to be surreal attempts to dismantle the series, and poor Mika Huy keeps getting stuck in crappy dreams.
  
• No unified art style. Really, it's all over the map. If you're gonna let just anyone write a RoN game, you should at least teach them how to draw. Sphinx got it right by including art tutorials in their wiki, establishing a style simple enough that anyone who knows how to work with pixel art can pick it up. And for those who don't know, tutorials exist to teach the fundamentals.
  
• Series canon has become too rigid. "Davy Jones C'est Mort" should have been ignored immediately, but it wasn't. From that point on, every little detail in every little game has piled up to create quite a big mess that new authors will be hard-pressed to break into.
  
• Community support for new authors is low. Ideally, there would be a RoN wiki to point new authors to, with links to only the most pertinent articles they'll need to build games the RoN way. Currently, that doesn't exist. All you get is "You're building a RoN game? Cool! We'll wait."
  

In my opinion, all of these problems need to be addressed for RoN to be fixed.

[Dave Gilbert]

Sphinx never got off the ground, and from what I understand it's pretty much dead.  Comparing RoN to Sphinx isn't terribly fair.

The art style inconsistancy was part of the appeal, actually.  The first game set the standard - the graphics weren't stellar, but it was a style that anyone with a paint editor could mimic.  In theory, anyway.  Over time, better artists created better versions of the sprites and backgrounds, which were more of a treat than anything else.

Quality Control is a mixed bag.  As mentioned earlier, we shouldn't delete the crap games because we don't like em, but instead devise a way to show off the nicer games while leaving the crap ones to languish in obscurity. 

I would hardly classify RoN's cannon as "rigid."  People are pretty much free to do anything.  The davy jones death thing was the only major hurdle the series ever had, and that occured right at the beginning and was quickly dealt with.  The community didn't ignore it, but instead made it a bit of a running joke.   

As far as the inconsistancies go... what are they?  I knew the RoN history very well back in the day, and I don't remember any plot inconsistancies.  At least, none worth talking about. 

Lack of community support for new authors is a good point, although what else can be done if somebody announces a RoN game?  Nobody is going to help you make your game.  What else can the community do but wait?

[Radiant]

What is Sphinx? Link please, doesn't google well.

QC is actually a very good point. Now I haven't played as many AGS games as most of you, I'm sure, but if I think of RON the first things that come to mind are that they ripped off Commander Keen, and have a magical cow suit that rapes people. Not good advertising.

I'm sure that there aren't any plot inconsistencies, but there may be alternate pasts

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

The art style inconsistancy was part of the appeal, actually.

I have to agree with Zaidyer on this one, Dave.  I think the inconsistency is one of the major problems with RoN, not because the art was terrible but because the styles and quality are just all over the map.  Sometimes you see a sprite that looks nice and sometimes you see one that is just jarringly horrible.  It's certainly one of the things that discouraged me from really getting interested.  I'm not saying the art needs to be stellar but I do think it would benefit greatly from consistency.  The other thing was that a vast majority of the games are more joke than game.  Seriously, play a few at random.  I've played pretty much every single one and most boil down to 'do one or two inane puzzles and read a bunch of dumb jokes'.  There isn't a lot of game to any of them. 

Perhaps we should just consider RoN an add-on to ags/etc for budding game designers to play around with rather than some sort of franchise in danger of being lost and forgotten.  When you treat it like that it's an excellent way for people with no art skill/etc to get a start, as long as you don't expect great games.

[GarageGothic]

What is Sphinx? Link please, doesn't google well.

http://americangirlscouts.org/snarkywiki/index.php/Main_Page

[Zaidyer]

Sphinx died because it was a project to create one large central game, instead of RoN's episodic universe model. That's where RoN lends itself to a greater degree of independence and freedom in terms of game design. I think if you want to "revitalize" RoN, you'll have to organize it better and offer more support for the average game designer. With that in place, you'll be able to add a few more rules for the sake of quality.

• NEVER kill off an established character.
  
• NEVER reveal the bum's true identity.
  
• RoN is episodic. Things that happen from game to game are considered self-contained, and do not necessarily need to be referenced in future games.
  
• Don't steal graphics from other games.
  
• Learn how to draw before attempting to create a graphical adventure. (To that end, a tutorial will have to be written for an easy-to-follow style by someone proficient in pixel art. That said, it would most likely be superior to the style established in the first game and all subsequent derivatives, but really, it's time to move on.)
  
• Be advised that anything you add to the RoN universe will be mercilessly exploited by the RoN community. Try not to use characters or situations you want to keep for yourself.
  

Additionally, I would offer a few crash courses in Adventure game design in general, such as Yahtzee's "Depressingly Common Adventure Flaws" series, a few websites and tutorials to learn pixel art and background art, how to write a good story, and so forth.

It all comes down to the fact that RoN needs more organization than it currently has.

[Dave Gilbert]

"Don't expect great games" is a bit unfair. "Don't expect great LOOKING games" is a bit more accurate.  The point of RoN, originally, was to create a shared universe for people to create stories.  If a game had nice art, it was a bonus, but it wasn't a deal-breaker. 

I don't think art is the major problem here, as a number of the characters were redrawn by Wogoat and look darn sweet.  He did that about three years ago, and nobody bothered to use them. 

-Dave

[Sam.]

The Art is RON was never a problem for me, people reproducing it badly and crowbarring it in under the impression that because their art was simple, it would fit in with RON often led to my annoycance in RON games, some tutorials wouldnt go amiss on RON and perhaps some gentle pruning of the games, I give you permission to take my attempts down if they are putting people off participating. Alternatively, leve all the games up and showcase some of the very best, for inspirado?

[blueskirt]

Re all stories having been told... a student of Schubert's (I think it was Schubert) once complained to him, while they were both strolling along the seaside (or at least in view of the sea), about how all the melodies had already been done, all the music had already been composed. At which point, Schubert turned towards the sea and said "Look, there goes the last wave".

If it ain't true it oughta be, so don't go spoling it by saying Schubert never once saw the sea in his life or something.

I'm not saying that in a smartass kind of way, I'm just asking the question. Pretty much like they can stir the Simpsons sauce for a thousand episodes, it doesn't mean all of these episodes will be worth watching. Or the same way people would groan if Yahtzee ever did another X Days a Something game.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

My answer remains the same, actually, since I was never under the impression that RON was supposed to be like a series - rather, a universe. I always viewed it as an existant universe anyone could add to, whoever they liked.

Of course, if it's viewed as a *series* then everything people have been saying about quality control, inconsistent art, plot holes, etc, all of that is true.

But if viewed as a *universe to be freely added to*, a joint contribution that is also a lot of fun, then all those points are rather moot.

Maybe what we have here is a conflict of these two points of view? People go to RON expecting a series of games and find what is in reality a bunch of games with little in common save for the setting and characters?

Myself, I've always preferred it the latter. A series would have to be too thought-out, too well planned, and would be a real pain to keep as a community effort.

[LimpingFish]

But adding freely to a universe creates chaos. Conflicting character traits, the layout of the town becoming inconsistent because in the last game somebody added a new shopping mall that now clashes with something someone in another game is working on, etc, etc.

About a year ago someone game up with the idea of mapping out the town, taking into account extra "plots" of land that people could add new locations to, which would then be updated on the map, and a list of constant characters who could appear in any games but couldn't be altered beyond what their character traits and such dictated. And nobody from that list could be killed off.

Eventually keeping track of a project like that was just considered too much like hard work, and interest eventually died.

Par for the course, really

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

It's a good thing adding was never cumpulsory, then.

The basic RON universe is still there. I agree that people who actually want to prolong some main story in RON (the Surrealist springs to mind) have got their work cut out for them. But the universe is still there, ready even for series like Kittens and Cacti, or The Tapestry - such trilogies are, while, rather epic, self-contained; in other games there may be a few minor references, but once they're over and done with, they're over and done with.

I've played all the RON games. I was never bothered with the occasional clashes. Maybe my expectations were never as high as the current expectation? Seems like people expect RON to have been much better organized. While that would be nice, I doubt it'd have been half as fun. And since my original expectations were never too high, I always thought "Oh goody, another RON game, let's have some fun!". And fun I did have. And then occasionally came games like Postman Only Rings Twice, or Reposessor, or Better Mousetrap, or Defender of RON, or Purity of the Surf - great games that I liked all the more because I wasn't really expecting particularly good games.

Really, if RON is to be limited to a series, something all that organized, then just do away with the whole community effort and chose a bunch of people to churn out episodes. But that'll truly be the end of RON, because it goes against the whole concept of the thing.

[Snarky]

Consistency is highly overrated.

Do you really care if the geography of Springfield is inconsistent between Simpsons cartoons? Is it a problem that Donald Duck's personality varies between hard-working family man, irresponsible wastrel and duck with an explosive temper and delusions of grandeur? Did you lie awake at night wondering how Kenny could die in every single episode of South Park, only to be alive in the next one? When two versions of a myth differ in details, does that diminish their worth?

There are hundreds of Sherlock Holmes films (and at least a half-dozen different SH adventure games). Very few of them are consistent with each other. So what? Not even the gospels are in perfect agreement.

It doesn't mean chaos, because people will generally reuse the ideas that are good, and ignore the ones that aren't. So a kind of consensus universe can evolve, even if it doesn't conform to any strict chronological continuity or geographical consistency, and even if it comes in multiple flavors and variants.

[LimpingFish]

Kenny dies. Consistently. It's a consistent joke. That fact that he didn't die in one episode is the exception that proves the rule.

The Simpsons uses the inconsistent layout of Springfield as a means to humorous ends; The episode where Marge looks out her kitchen window and sees three different things; The School, the prison, and the nuclear plant, because she happens to be thinking of each of them at the time.

To my mind Sherlock Holmes was always a detective, was always a drug addict, and always had Dr. Watson, always lived a 221b Baker Street. What you call inconsistencies are actually interpretations, a completely different subject. James Bond has been played with a number of differences over the years but the core of the character stays the same.

To say consistentcy is overrated is to ignore the basic fundamentals of storytelling, of world building, of making the difference between a believable world (in a movie/game/book) and a jumble of ideas that fail to gel...consistenly.

If the RON "concept" was meant to be played without, in some way at least, heeding what has gone before, or what was yet to come, then it was a flawed concept.

And that, like all flawed concepts, is why it is dying.

(The Donald Duck thing; it's called being the opposite of a one-dimensional character.)

[Andail]

I never cared much for slapstick-Donald, I prefered the adventurous bold Donald as Carl Barks portrayed him.
And LimpingFish; you can't possibly say that Donald Duck hasn't been portrayed inconsistently, he's in fact the epitome of inconsistency.

As for Simpsons, I found it much more settling when Simpsons actually wasn't consistent, but returned back to zero after each episode.
When they actually started to make stuff linear - like Flanders actually continuing to be a widower and Milhouse's parents divorced - it started to feel a bit alien. However, this might introduce another aspect of Snarky's inconsistency scheme;

* we have consistency when changes in one episode are reflected in the following episode, creating a natural, chronological order (like realistic series)
* we have inconsistency when changes in one episode become "reseted" and the following episode starts from scratch again (like most of the Simpsons)
* we have another inconsistency when a certain episode does not start from scratch,  but in the same time does not feature the changes from the preceding episode. This is some sort of chaotic inconsistency that makes it extremely hard to map or organise the events and elements of a universe.

It goes without saying that a perfectly logical and chronological order is impossible to achieve in a game universe with various different game writers. The only way to prevent inconsistencies would be if the writers, in advance, "claimed" a set of changes in the plot, as well as a date in real time when the game must be released.

[LimpingFish]

In my mind at least, DD would be inconsistent because of various outside forces rather than a disregard for any lack of cohesion with the character. Like Bugs Bunny changing from a borderline psychotic to more of a Humphrey Bogart - George Raft - by way of - Groucho Marx type character, to suit audience taste and popular cultural fads.

I agree that you can have "inconsistencies" within a world, if they serve a specific function.

Principle Skinner actually being Armin Tamzarian in the Simpsons comes to mind. He legally changes his name back to Seymour Skinner at the end of the episode and swears never to mention it again. Yet even this is referenced, in a knowing way, in future episodes.

The fact that he has reverted back to Seymour Skinner by the end of the episode, means that the only purpose this storyline served was a purely humourous one, and the "norm" must be reinstated.

And, as Andail has mentioned, when a big charge occurs in The Simpsons (eg. The death of Maud Flanders) it stays changed, and becomes part of the show's "bible".

That is where consistency comes in.

EDIT: I'd just like to point of that I don't equate consistency with rigidity. The two are very different.

[Dave Gilbert]

Again I ask, what inconsistancies?  As far as I can tell (and I've played every RoN game), the community has done a pretty good job of policing itself.  I don't remember there being two shopping malls, and who says there can't be two?

[LimpingFish]

Nobody, and rightly so.

RON was meant to be flexible, and I have no problem with that. But, on some level, you need to work with some amount of consistency or you run into dead ends. Like killing off major characters, and such. Unless the "reset" fuction is embraced. But some creators have tried to have some storyline consistencies, within the games they have made anyway, and that might end up clashing with the rest.

Can both co-exist? If so, then which is meant to be the "true" RON storyline? Is an "official" RON storyline even necessary? If not, then what exactly is a RON game?

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I think one inconsistency you really can't ignore is Davy Jones/death/life scenario.  'This is how he REALLY died', no wait, 'THIS is how he really died', 'oh wait, he's actually alive' etc.  This isn't really how consistency is handled, and I think if the Simpsons did something like this, for example, people would definitely raise eyebrows.  That's just one example to reinforce Fish's point, I think, but there are other, smaller and perhaps less significant ones.  I wouldn't even be making these statements if I hadn't played the vast majority of RoN games and personally felt them lacking in certain areas, so take it for what you will.  I have nothing against the creators of RoN individually or collectively, so hopefully some of this criticism isn't being taken as a personal attack and rather as a 'well maybe they've got a point' type thing.  RoN isn't utterly horrible and irredeemable, but it does have some flaws that keep it (at least in my eyes) from being more interesting and worthwhile, such as:

A) Weird consistency glitches that are a result of bad planning on the author's part or just lack of information

B) Artwork ranging from good to horrible that throws off perceptions and confuses the viewer

C) Stories that go absolutely nowhere or 'joke' games where you really do nothing interesting (a good portion fall into this category).

Now C isn't a bad thing at all if RoN was just a tool for fledgling game makers as I mentioned before, but if you want to take it seriously and make it something more than that (and some people here seem to, in my mind) then A, B, and C should be given consideration.  The sprites I made on page 2 are just an example of bringing a bit more atmosphere to the game; I'm not saying they're wonderful or even great but they are easy on my eyes and a single style and some solid animations would definitely raise my interest because I am at least partially a visual creature.

In my opinion, naturally!

[Snarky]

Don't you think that people who create stupid, inconsistent, unsatisfying stories would just continue to create stupid, superficially consistent, unsatisfying stories if you attempted to keep everyone in line? I don't see how it would make the games any better.

Kenny dies. Consistently. It's a consistent joke. That fact that he didn't die in one episode is the exception that proves the rule.

The Simpsons uses the inconsistent layout of Springfield as a means to humorous ends; The episode where Marge looks out her kitchen window and sees three different things; The School, the prison, and the nuclear plant, because she happens to be thinking of each of them at the time.

The point is that South Park and the Simpsons don't bother to pretend that each story forms part of a huge, flawless tapestry that depict some "objective" reality. There's no timeline by which you could plot all major events and see the consequences carry on from that point on.

It's really pretty pointless to talk about "contradictions" in these cases. The shows don't observe continuity, or at least only selectively. The fact that you can say "Kenny dies. Consistently" just shows that maintaining narrative coherence has nothing to do (necessarily) with avoiding contradictions and continuity errors. To take another example, the hero of many Norwegian folk tales is Espen Askeladden (the Ash Lad). In every story, Askeladden is a poor boy who ends up marrying the Princess and getting half of the kingdom. Doesn't matter that he just married her in the last story, he's back to where he was and has to win her all over again. The stories achieve coherence by maintaining a permanence of situation, not chronological continuity.

Relevant to the current point, these folk tales were created without any centralized quality control or consistency police. Coherence evolved because stories and elements that didn't "feel right" were ignored or changed.

To my mind Sherlock Holmes was always a detective, was always a drug addict, and always had Dr. Watson, always lived a 221b Baker Street. What you call inconsistencies are actually interpretations, a completely different subject. James Bond has been played with a number of differences over the years but the core of the character stays the same.

Actually, various versions portray Holmes quite differently. Many omit the drug addiction completely, in some it's a minor vice, while in others he's a full-on junkie. There is almost always a Watson, but what kind of person he is varies greatly between different takes on the great detective. It's also worth keeping in mind that the image that springs to mind of Holmes, with his deerstalker and calabash pipe, is not how Doyle described him, but is derived from a theatrical adaptation.

Or take another iconic character: Batman. Is he a tortured soul who inflicts his neuroses on the Gotham city underworld, or is he a wisecracking goofball in a silly suit? Depends on which story you're reading/watching. In Norse mythology, is Loki a basically good-hearted trickster, or the treacherous personification of evil? In some stories he's one, in some the other.

Another concept that should be familiar from comics is the ever-changing origin story, where multiple different explanations are given to achieve more or less the same "present" state. How did Lex Luthor come to hate Superman? There have been dozens of different backstories, only the outcome is more or less the same. Even the person behind the mask can change (think Green Lantern), because the character is to some extent separate from the person embodying that character. There are at least four different accounts of the birth of Aphrodite.

Probably the best example of a character (and "universe") that has been the subject of many different, inconsistent stories, who has been provided with different personalities, appearances, equipment, names, backstories, biographies, settings, relationships, interpretations, themes, styles, etc. ... is Robin Hood. For pretty much any statement you can make about him (lives in Sherwood forest, fights the Sheriff of Nottingham, good with the longbow, in love with Lady Marian, takes from the rich and gives to the poor, lives during the reign of Richard Lionheart, ...), I can give plenty of examples of stories that assume otherwise. Has this complete lack of consistency harmed his popularity? Doesn't seem like it.

(The Donald Duck thing; it's called being the opposite of a one-dimensional character.)

We're not talking multiple aspects of his character here, we're talking completely different personalities. Even with just the Carl Barks stories, we have at least three distinct Donalds: the spiteful Donald who always attempts to terrorize his nephews, the struggling everyman Donald who is only trying to make ends meet to take care of his nephews, and the adventurer Donald who's always up for traveling to exotic countries. If we bring in the cartoons, that's a whole other story again.

What I'm saying is that for every new story, the storyteller has to create the world and the characters anew, even if they have appeared in other stories before. Whether or not the story gels with the "universe" or set of existing stories has little to do with whether or not it maintains strict logical consistency, but whether or not it "feels" true. Sometimes, a story can even contradict earlier conventions, canon or consensus and establish a new, more satisfying truth. That's how you create a high-quality shared universe: by having people experiment and saving the good bits they come up with.

[Captain Lexington]

Just an idea as a new RoN type series:

The Adventure Game Repertory Theater!

So you have all the actors as the character packs, and you can create different costumes based on the original sprite. I'm sure there could even be a modular system for these things.

Each game would be a play played by the Adventure Game Players, working for the Adventure Game Repertory Theater, so you could do any genre you wanted. As for continuous story lines, you could make a game either a full play or just one act, and have other people make the next acts. One play could go on forever, with people making more and more acts.

As for quality control, all you need is an in-depth review by the Adventure Game Review Magazine, who review the game based on content and give it a star rating. (Naturally, all the reviews would be by anyone who wanted to review it--even if it has already been reviewed).

That way people can choose which ones they want to play based on the review, and without a dictatorial deletion of inferior games.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Re Davy Jones' death - it's becoming a running joke, really. ANd Defender of RON laid the path for anyone who wants to delve deeper into it - a nice, organised path.

Food for thought - RON is dying or dead, and Maniac Mansion Mania is apparently thriving. Bigger comunity? More restricted universe? Characters that people actually know? Discuss, if you will. Shame that it's such a restricted community, what with being german-speaking-only and all.

[Dave Gilbert]

I've been thinking alot about this, and I've come to some conclusions.  The more I think about it, the more I think RoN was a product of its time. 

If you look at the AGS games from 2001-2003 you won't see a lot (some, but not a lot) with beautiful graphics or excellent coding.  Heck, RoN got started at a time when "Rob Blanc" and "Larry Vales" were considered top of the line.

So, the fact that RoN games were a bit unpolished, or short, or unfocused wasn't a problem for most people, since almost EVERY game released had these problems. 

2003 was the last year that RoN was really active.  By "active" I'm talking 1-2 games released every month. 

Since then, RoN has been fairly dead.  Also since then, the bar for AGS games has been raised.  People expect better.   If I released "Postman" or "Purity" now, the reaction would be totally different.

The problem with RoN isn't the inconsistancy of the world or the inconsistancy of the artwork.  It's the inconsistancy of the public's taste.

[Valentine]

My biggest problem with RoN whenever I come across it is that there's just too much. I would have loved to add to it; but back when it was smaller and I could actually make a recognisable contribution. Now, theres so much stuff it I just think anything added would just get drowned by everything else.

That being said, I love the RoN concept. Restarting it is, I guess an option, but it just seems people would be retreading old ground. The varying graphic quality is, I think, one of RoN's attractive qualities - it adds a definate charm in my opinion.

One thing I really think should be done is some sort of quality control on RoN though. I tried to start playing through the games, but too often came across games that were not all that good in my opinion. Maybe two sections of games; one for community-recognised 'official' games, and another for non-official games? Too beaurocratic maybe?

Not sure I can think of a possible solution, just thought I'd offer my opinions. 

[DeviantGent]

A RON wiki complete with character bios, individual and arc-based episode guides, and general trivia/design notes seems like the best way to go about introducing the series' background for those interested in starting their games.

Hell, I'd love to add to something like that. It's not something I'd be able to do single handedly though. Dave? RI? Rui?

[blueskirt]

Dave: You summarized very well some of my opinions regarding RON's lack of polished graphics and today's standards.

Food for thought - RON is dying or dead, and Maniac Mansion Mania is apparently thriving. Bigger comunity? More restricted universe? Characters that people actually know? Discuss, if you will. Shame that it's such a restricted community, what with being german-speaking-only and all.

There are several reasons for that:
Unlike RON, it hasn't been around for 6 years yet.
It's a totally new playground to experiment with for the authors.
The backgrounds and animations are more polished and are somewhat closer to today's indies standards compared to RON's graphics (making it easier to break into the mainstream and attract new fans).
It's based on a known and popular cult franchize rather than an unknown, original one.
Lastly LucasArts was very popular among german speaking adventurers (much more than Sierra) and there is a considerable amount of LucasArts or Scumm fangames projects in that language on the internet.

A few more questions worth asking:
Is there people still interested in making or playing more RON games?
Has RON and the old RON games still their place in 2007, taking into account today's indies standards?
Is there people interested in the idea of having new RON-like projects?
Would it be better to attempt reviving RON or would it be better to simply restart with a new RON-like project?

Personally I somewhat missed the RON boat. I played a few games when I discovered about AGS and the idea of having one big and interesting universe to play around always fascinated me, but then I discovered there had already 40 games released so far and it kinda scared me off. Then the Maniac Mansion Mania boat came but the english translations never did. I also remember Knightbridge Chronicles that looked insanely interesting but was never completed. A couple years later a friend tried to convince me to give RON a second try but since then the number of game had passed from 40 to 65 and I declined the offer. I am however still waiting for the next boat.

[Valentine]

I played a few games when I discovered about AGS and the idea of having one big and interesting universe to play around always fascinated me, but then I discovered there had already 40 games released so far and it kinda scared me off.

My experience exactly, and my major problem with RoN.

[Radiant]

Is there people interested in the idea of having new RON-like projects?

Considering this thread and what's discussed here, I think it would be nice to have a "fresh" RONlike project, probably in a different genre. This would allow people to start small without having to worry about the existing 50+ characters and locations and so forth. It would seem to me that a "dynamic universe" simply loses its charm to new people once it grows too large; this is not a flaw of the concept but a consequence of human psychology.

[bspeers]

I have a RoN game that is soo closed to finished, but game-harming bugs are making it impossible to complete.  As Dave knows, it is a very long game that branches out from the RoN universe.

My advice is to ignore consistency.  Have a character you like leave RoN and go to Swaziland, or start a colony on Mars in an alternate dimension.  My game has been in the works for too many years (it's dos only I think), and now the continuity is all messed up, but you know what?  I don't care!  Just play any RoN game and then branch off in any way you like.  Hell, remake all the characters in pointalism style, who cares.  People should be able to follow spin-offs anywhere they like, introduce as many characters as they like and follow other people's plotlines wherever they like.

Obviously there is an overall story in RoN, and if EVERYBODY sent the characters off in every imaginable direction there'd be too little consistency, but that already hasn't happened.  So don't be intimidated, just play one or two.

However, I also support the idea of a new series, as long as it is about (thinks of something stupid and obvious) three roomates whose home happens to be directly on a rift in time and space.  Or about kittens with superpowers, one of the two.

BTW, I really haven't abandoned Edge, I just keep thinking my thesis will be done and it still isn't, so probably when that's done I'll polish it up. -Yo

[DeviantGent]

I don't really want to see RON close up shop yet - mainly because I've been beavering away at it as my first AGS serialised project for quite a while, and to see it being prounounced dead and shipped off to oblivion, thus rendering all my efforts in vain, would be very much a kick in the teeth.

There's a very simple solution to get RON going again - Release More Games. That's ALL there is to it. A few small episodes, utilising the more updated graphics, would be all that's needed to get it back in the spotlight again.

[Joseph DiPerla]

I think we can learn from RoN. We can avoid repeating certain mistakes that RoN made.

What I would propose is something I have wanted to do for a long time, but noone wanted to do this.  So, being that this is here now, again, I am going to throw in my idea.

I was thinking about doing a realistic series of P&C Adventure games based on Super Heroes we create. Basically, I wanted to create our series similar to Marvel or DC, just in a video game Genre with our own idea's and characters.

We can create a team of administrators who would be responsible for the whole series. Of course anyone can make a game within the series, but we can do this ala George Lucas does with Star Wars. Our administrators can create their own games. But their main job is that to control what games enter the series and whats excepted as Canon or not. They would also approve what character/background/art is accepted and set standards and stuff. This would be the breakdown:

The Series Gods (Atleast 3): These guys approve the style, the characters, the story and other things. They also approve what games are considered canon or not. They also create and modify the rules of the series.

The art Administrator (2 atleast): These guys design the template or basic art style within the game, being either for Characters, icons, items, backgrounds, animations, GUI's etc...

Story Administrators: These guys review all games and other media for consistency and accuracy.

Powder Monkey Staff: Other odd jobs assigned to the series stuff. These odd jobs can be advertising the games, maintaining the website and helping where ever else its needed.

If you all think this is a decent idea, please let me know and I will start a new thread with my full synopsis and idea for this along with some rules I made for this series. Then I can ask who would want to join the administration team and I can then start a website for us. I have 350 gig hosting company that is really good.

[Tartalo]

I must confess I didn't play but one RoN game (I just discovered it), that I haven't read the whole thread, and that I didn't prove my game making skills yet, but I have an idea and a big mouth.

Some are worried about consistency, but that seems difficult to achieve when the collective creation is made of independent pieces. The strong point of this is the amount of ideas that are created, not it's coherence as a unity.

Have you thought about creating a distillation of RoN? After one year, for example, take all the chapters and make a consistent story of it, choose the best puzzles, graphics, etc and create a Full length adventure with it, something like "RoN The Movie". To allow participations make open teams for each task: story, graphics, music... that would allow people that don't know how to make a complete game participating in what they prefer.

Just an idea

[Dave Gilbert]

It's very interesting to read this thread and hear why people are turned off by RoN.  It was a long time in coming. 

The RoN artwork standard (set by Yahtzee in the first game) was never BAD per se, but was specifically designed to be very simple and easy to replicate.  What ended up happening was people creating extremely crap graphics and thinking it was OK.  RoN's graphics aren't support to be BAD, just very very simple.  If *I* can replicate the style, than anybody could.

It seems that the major turnoffs are

1- the large number of games
2- the artwork
3- lack of newbie support

#3 can be easily handled by directing people to the AGS site and a redesign of the site.  #1 and #2 are a mixed bag.  I liked the democratic nature of RoN, where anybody could create anything, but in thinking it over it's obvious that the project got too big.  Way too big. 

The really bad games have extremely crap artwork, and there are (let's face it) a large number of them.  Removing them, or seperating them, would kill two birds with one stone (reduce the number of games, and raise the overall standard of the games)

Part of the original appeal of RoN was taking part in an active universe, but there was no real effort needed.  A 12 year old kid could write a game with Davy Jones saying "Boo!" against a blank background, call it a RoN game, and it would get put up on the website.  Seperating the underchievers, the lackluster efforts, and the (to be blunt) crap games from the rest would go a long way in making RoN shine again. 

Perhaps a voting system could be implemented in order to cannonize a game?  A game is released, but NOT included on the main page of the RoN site.  Instead, people have to vote on whether it should be included in the RoN timeline or not.    This could go a long way in improving the quality of future games, since people will create games to impress (and get rewarded for it) instead of vomiting something up in 5 minutes (and getting the pleasure of seeing it on the web).

As for the current games... yes.  Pruning is needed.  Yesterday I would have said no, but I see why it's needed now.  The current system worked well when RoN was in its infancy, but it's obvious that it's not working anymore.  There are too many games, and a hefty percentage of them are awful.  If that's what is turning people away from the series, then by all means let's fix it. 

[DeviantGent]

I like the idea of distinctions. Something like:

1. Long arc-based games, high quality (Night of the Kittens, The Tapestry)

2. Standalone medium length games, high-medium quality (Purity of the Surf, Defender of RON)

3. Short couple-of-room/one room type games, medium quality (Lunchtime of the Damned, Cold Storage)

4. Random games that don't fit into the RON canon, or games that are just generally not that good (won't cite any examples, but there are plenty)

5. Miscellaneous Quiz games, arcade games, just other fun stuff.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Yes, Dave seems to be coming around and I agree with this sort of thing.  Something I suggested to him was that someone establish a list of mannequin animations, just gray sprites with a bit of shading in various poses and sizes (fat, skinny, guy, girl) and then have that person also redo a few of the original characters using those same mannequins.  Then what you could do is have a sort of do it yourself starter kit with the mannequins in gif format, a solid palette to work from and a few ready made characters to use as a reference for skin tones and the like.  If someone wants to make new chars they would have these mannequins to use to keep the dimensions and style relatively similar.  I'm not saying it would be perfect, but if the shading on the references was say 2-3 colors max the actual character designs would stay relatively consistent, especially with the animations in place.  Of course, if someone wants to do a character not covered in the mannequin list then they could, or they could possibly suggest it.  This would be for a rare case like a non-humanoid or something.  Anyway, just some ideas.

[Renegade Implementor]

Regarding updated graphics, this was something I asked eariler this year on the RoN board.  I think updated graphics would be a good thing, and I'm fond of (and would like to see) the style of the series go in the direction that Krysis and Wogoat.  Partially for the overall look and the ease of use (I've Photoshoped several new rooms from the few screens Kyrsis has done with very little difficulty).  I have a few example graphics if anyone needs a visual reference.

Also, ProgZmax- I just wanted to say I really like the sprites you did.

Now Dave used the word pruning, which sounds like he's suggesting deleting games from the database.  While there are some games that might warrant being removed, would anyone object if games were removed from the site?
- If the amount of games is deterring some people, is separating them by some classification going to make a different?  There'd still be around 75 games on the site, they'd just be rearranged.  Would that still deter people from participating?

[Fleshstalker]

They shouldn't be removed from the site no matter how bad some of them are. I say those that are bad should be separated from the good ones. So the good should go in the timeline and the bad don't.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

I'm with Fury on this one. But then, I'm a pathological collector who has every single RON game in his hard drive and would like to keep on havin' 'em ALL!!!

[Radiant]

They shouldn't be removed from the site no matter how bad some of them are.

I think it should be done the other way around. Instead of removing all the allegedly bad games, add a new section called "featured games" that has ten or twenty of the best ones, as decided by a few of the longtime RONners.

I'm with Fury on this one. But then, I'm a pathological collector who has every single RON game in his hard drive and would like to keep on havin' 'em ALL!!!

I'll go write a RON game that contains a virus that deletes other RON games! Muahahahaha!

[Dave Gilbert]

Yeah, the "bad" games shouldn't be deleted but rather put in a seperate section of the site.  Perhaps the phrase "alterna-RoN" could apply here

[Snarky]

I like the idea of distinctions. Something like:

1. Long arc-based games, high quality (Night of the Kittens, The Tapestry)

2. Standalone medium length games, high-medium quality (Purity of the Surf, Defender of RON)

3. Short couple-of-room/one room type games, medium quality (Lunchtime of the Damned, Cold Storage)

4. Random games that don't fit into the RON canon, or games that are just generally not that good (won't cite any examples, but there are plenty)

5. Miscellaneous Quiz games, arcade games, just other fun stuff.

Sounds good, but isn't quality independent of length? What about short, high-quality game, or excellent games that don't fit into the RON canon?

[d999]

Hi,
   I'm hooked on RON games so I say please give me more.
   I tried to download Surreality: a RON Game, but , I couldn't right click,left click, or get more info and download from there. IE says it can't find the what-chama-callit. So, what's up with that?
                                                       Thank-you,     DA              d999 on forums

[DeviantGent]

I like the idea of distinctions. Something like:

1. Long arc-based games, high quality (Night of the Kittens, The Tapestry)

2. Standalone medium length games, high-medium quality (Purity of the Surf, Defender of RON)

3. Short couple-of-room/one room type games, medium quality (Lunchtime of the Damned, Cold Storage)

4. Random games that don't fit into the RON canon, or games that are just generally not that good (won't cite any examples, but there are plenty)

5. Miscellaneous Quiz games, arcade games, just other fun stuff.

Sounds good, but isn't quality independent of length? What about short, high-quality game, or excellent games that don't fit into the RON canon?

Point. I was trying to stick to 5 catagories. Besides, quality is subjective... maybe it should be based only on length?

Arc based games, Long singles, Medium Singles, Short Singles, Randoms?

[zabnat]

Also some RoN awards or editors picks so it would be easy to get the best from the pile

[[Cameron]]

The idea of having another series where people can freely contribute has been attempted. By me. I failed miserably. The setting was rather different, the entire tone as well. With new people fiding AGS, RON can be a training ground, but if they arent interested in comedy it can kill that option, that's why I wanted to create a darker more adult based series for those of that persuasion. I'm not good at gameplay writing so I wrote an extended cut scene that would be made to create interest and get others involved. However art is also not my forte, as in, below par even for a RON style game. I've had about 15 different artists join and quit. But, if anyone is interested, let me know. You can have the script and rework it or use it as it is. I'd really like to see it made, but at the moment I don't have the time or spirit to continue it.
-Cameron

[SSH]

Maybe better to use tags rather than categories, so a game can be tagged with "Canon", "Medium" and "Quality" or... "Long", "Joke" and "Crap"

[Snarky]

Sure, as long as I can tag something "Brilliant", "Crap", "Canon" and "Nonsense".

[Radiant]

In Soviet Russia, Canon tags you!

[Mr Flibble]

I thought we were all clear as regards the RON canon.

[Layabout]

I agree with Dave. Catagories are the way forward really.

Although, I'm not suprised it is starting to die out. And unfortunatly, some of the best RON games will never be released. Or Completed I should say.

Although, a tale first if I may. A long long time ago, on forums they called dosuser, a relativly unknown chap proposed an idea. It was a SOAP OPERA. But for games. The idea was, why not create a 'setting', one which could be easily expanded and updated. One which characters could be brought in with ease. One which characters could be sent to prison, murdered by another or move to Queensland. (neighbours reference for CJ)
A continuuing storyline, sometimes sub-plots. But then Yahtzee invaded the thread, stole the idea, and turned it into RON. Nice idea, but the continuing storyline part of the idea never made it through.

Episodic gaming long before telltale even thought of the idea. In the beginning, It was a testing-ground for some of AGS's brightest stars. It still may be, but few quality games have been released in the past three years,as opposed to the first few, in which the best games were made.

Anyway, No-one wants RON to die. If you love it so much, make a short game! Keep the dream alive. Although I can talk....

yes I can....

hehehe....

[Akatosh]

I think the RoN series should have a small little spin-off, like "IRoN" (IrReality on the Norm) where continuity doesn't really count and which doesn't affect the real RoN world but plays in the same universe - as with the Simpson's Treehouse of Horror stuff. Something nice to get newbies into the whole RoN thing without making them read up all kinds of stuff first. They can grow used to it first, with the IRoN games, and then slowly shift to the "real" RoN. So whaddya think?

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

I think the first episode should be a IRobot spin-off, featuring iMuse.

[Akatosh]

And the music should be available as a seperate download for people's iPods, I know 

[Renegade Implementor]

If the RoN games are going to be split into catagories, I think it would be helpful if there was a general consensus of what would a) be helpful, and b) a number that wouldn't intimidate people by the number of categories.

Off the bat I can think of two: "Non-adventure" which is self-explanatory, and a "slush pile" where games of, as people have said, lesser quality could go.  As for the rest, how should they be classified?  Short games, arc-based games?  I'm not sure if medium-games or long-games would work as I don't think there are any RoN games that could be considered medium or long.

On a different topic, there was mention of a RoN wiki.  There actually is one, although it's a lonely and neglected thing.  The url is http://www.editthis.info/realityonthenorm/index.php/Main_Page

And again, as others have said, the best way to keep things going is to make games (the themed game comp over on the RoN forum is a good example) or contribute in some other way such as music, writing, or art (traditional or sprite/background).

[Radiant]

Okay.

First off, I'd like the character list split into one-off characters and recurring characters. Because if I want to make a RON game, I want to forget about the former and add cameos for the latter. Ditto for locations.

Second, I'd go for a split into three categories, and these should really be defined by RON die-hards rather than by voting among whomever comes along.
(1) essential. The (few) games that define the really major protagonists. Say the largest game for any character that is playable in five or more games, and/or anything that has a major shaping impact on the RON world. These should be few, because they enable players to "get started".
(2) canon. All short and moderate-length games that have an at least semi-interesting storyline that fits with the rest. Whether these are "arcs" or not is not really relevant, all an "arc" is is a subsection of storyline made by one user. These need not be few; players can play them to get deeper into the world.
(3) slush pile.

[Ozzie]

Man, I'm excited to see people talking about RON again!! Whoohoo!!!

I am, of course, also working on a new RON game. It actually grew bigger than I intended it to be and I think it would be hard to cut it down.
I have completely outlined the story, thought up most of the puzzles, scripted the parser interface and finished one background and nearly one music track. I released the last one on the RON Release Something, though it was still unfinished.

That's not much, of course, but I don't have the time, sadly. If I had I would probably spend night and day on it.

But I will show you the only background for now, so you can see there's still some progress made. Oh, btw, I'm a terribly artist, so I spend 3 DAYS on it so that just people could stop complaining about the terrible graphics.
Here it is:

Apartment Floor Normal:


With night filter and light effects:


Yeah, it's not that great, but I'm improving!!


So, now my suggestions to help RON:

First, I think DarkComet is/was working on a game which took place on a yacht and which didn't care much about RON consistency and rules. But it was clear that it was part of an alternative reality of RON and that this episode shouldn't have an impact on the overall timeline. So, character may have died, but this wouldn't have stood in contradiction.

You can immediately start working on such a game, nothing will stop you!

Furthermore, I think that games should go through an official beta test period. That means that some small consistency errors which might be annoying could still be fixed before they are added to the database.
Some examples:
- With this Luigis Restaurant wouldn't have "crushed" the Pet Shop. (this would have probably killed off the relevance of "Rend" though )
- The misunderstanding the Davys room lies directly at the outside door could have been fixed (I think it was Nightwatch)
- Some strange things like the window of Scids to the back alley which jumps its position from picture to picture (though Yahtzee already introduced it)
- And the window in the upper floor of the Jones House (did nobody else wonder that it didn't make any sense there? Dylan???)

There are some other things which weren't explained (like that the kiddie sheriff is replaced by the older one) but still could in another game, so this is no inconsistency per se.
Even the Pet Shop example wouldn't be a problem as there could be a game which told the story how the Pet Shop got teared down and replaced with the Restaurant. But then, some future games took the Pet Shop and some the Restaurant so at some time it didn't make much sense anymore.

Additionaly, there should be a seperation between story relevant and not relevant games.
For example, Defender Of RON, ISpy, Purity Of The Surf and the Tapestry Trilogy are certainly relevant to the story, as they introduce new characters and locations and new facts, but on the other hand Simon's Journey and Disappearance Time are more something like a Simpsons Episode with the reset function.

This way, you would have an idea which games you would need to play to have an idea of the whole story.

That's all for now!

[Dave Gilbert]

The sherriff was replaced?  I just figured he was redrawn.  He's the same guy, I believe.

The subject of a "quality game" is a sticky one, at least in terms of the early games.  How would one catergorize a game that, while "bad", introduced a character or concept that was used in other games?  By most standards, a game like "Paranormal Investigator" would be considered pretty bad, but the main character (Jhon Steel) was seen in a bunch of other games that are considered very good.

[Radiant]

The subject of a "quality game" is a sticky one, at least in terms of the early games. 

If that was a response to me - I meant the "biggest" game defining a playable character, not the first one. What I meant by "essential" is basically the five? eight? RON games that a new person should play to get a good feel of the universe.


Ah well, with all this thread stuff, I think I'll put together a RON game after ATOTK is complete. Shouldn't be that much work. I've even got an idea for one.

[DeviantGent]

First, I think DarkComet is/was working on a game which took place on a yacht and which didn't care much about RON consistency and rules. But it was clear that it was part of an alternative reality of RON and that this episode shouldn't have an impact on the overall timeline. So, character may have died, but this wouldn't have stood in contradiction.

Not me Chief. I'm currently working on The Exorcism of Julian Lapis and a multi-part serial, Dawn of the Dayists - all of which is set firmly in the canon.

Are you thinking of Kunafits? He was planning something like that, lots of character deaths and whatnot.

Oh, and that window thingy is meant to be the skylight from Apocalypse Meow. I snuck it in when I did that revamped background which took the best of everything and merged into one uber-Town Square.

[Renegade Implementor]

The subject of a "quality game" is a sticky one, at least in terms of the early games.  How would one catergorize a game that, while "bad", introduced a character or concept that was used in other games?

Simple, by the whim of the RoN admin of course.  There, how's that for a display of adminstrative power abuse.

Seriously, everyone is going to have a different opinion on what should be considered "bad" or "quality" in reference to RoN.  There should probably be a small group that would determine what qualifies as a quality game, average or just plain bad game based on a few criteria.  This would, hopefully, keep the process impartial and fair.

[Ozzie]

Oh, DC, you're right, it was Kunafits. I confused this, sorry.

The sherriff was replaced?  I just figured he was redrawn.  He's the same guy, I believe.

I don't know. If the redrawn sprite looks 20 years older like the original one then I would call it a different character.

Also, you're right Dave, I didn't make a distinction between story-relevant & quality games.
But I think that some games, though they might be horrible for themselves, brought some interesting ideas to RON. I, for example, will reuse The Spoons in my game.

[edit] But I don't think that you would have to play the game where they first appeared to understand RON. I probably never finished it myself. It seems non-relevant then.
But I would say that Davy C'est Mort, for example, IS a relevant game, if only because of my prequel ideas [/edit]

I think, to distinct between story-relevant and not relevant games is important for developers, not for pure gamers.
For gamers there should be a featured page.

I think another problem is that for the most time only one person is working at a RON episode. It's not the way that one does story and scripting, another the music and the last does the graphics.
Something like this is pretty common for "normal" AGS games.
Of course, musically, we have the excellent RON theme. But most people get easily frustrated with graphics, so while there might be good ideas, either the game doesn't get finished or it has ugly graphics.
Sure, most who are good at graphics make also their own games. But it would help to establish the thought of collaboration a bit more, especially because there's necessarily not much new to add in terms of sprite or background graphics or for the musical background.

Furthermore, some character descriptions are awfully thin on the RON page. I had to play Dead Man's Political Party to find out the name of the sheriff!!
There should be a list of all the roles of the alley bum. Nothing would be less funny than a repeated one.

[edit] At last, there should be walkthroughs available for every RON game. It seems bad enough that you have to play through many of them to get an idea of RON, but it's really terrible when you're hopelessly stuck at a puzzle. It doesn't help the research of the back story. [/edit]

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

There's plenty of walkthroughs available... and for those that don't have a walkthrough... well, I'll just say that I've played through the lot of them (except for Belusebius' Arrival, which I just cheated until I saw the end, because that game is dreadful) without hitting major trouble.

Plus, there's always the Hints and Tips forum.

ALso, what's the problem with a repeat personality of the bum?

[Dave Gilbert]

A repeat personality is fine.  The issue was revealing a TRUE identity for the bum.  The general consensus was that it would ruin the character.

[Ozzie]

A repeated personality wouldn't break any rules, of course.
But like I said, it wouldn't be very funny if the bum was a hippie for the fourth time AGAIN.
I would look for something new, and the list of all the roles of the bum could help.

Rui: There are some walkthroughs, that's true, but I think only for a few first ones.
I was glad that "Defender Of RON" had a walkthrough included because I think that this was the hardest game.
Of course, you can say that not many games make much trouble, and that walkthroughs aren't necessary. But I wouldn't consider this very developer-friendly and I think that most people are turned off from RON because they think they would have to play through all these games.
I think I needed 2-3 weeks to play through the most RON games (skipping some surreal "gems").
Walkthroughs would probably help that developers wouldn't feel intimidated of the mass of games. And I think you could at least cut the time to the half down you would need to play through all them.

You could ignore the walkthrough issue, but then you shouldn't wonder that nobody wants to develop a new RON game.
I don't think that this is the only problem, of course.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

A repeat personality is fine.  The issue was revealing a TRUE identity for the bum.  The general consensus was that it would ruin the character.

Like when the aliens came and took him away?

[Renegade Implementor]

Like when the aliens came and took him away?

Yes, and they also returned him.  That's either a case of mistaken identity or the aliens couldn't tolerate him for very long.

As far as I can tell, it seems like most would like to have tags or classifications of:

1. Canon (games that make up an established history of RoN)
2. Essential to newbies (games that best serve to introduce characters and plots to those new to RoN)
3. Non-adventure/misc (puzzle, quiz, arcade, any game that isn't classified as adventure)
4. Substandard (games that people feel are of a lesser quality and should be separated from the rest) - note: this needs, perhaps, a more diplomatic term.

Is this close to what people where thinking?  If it is, then a small group, say 3 or 4, should get be formed with the purpose of going through the existing games and sorting out what should go where.  If anyone is interesting in this part, let me know.

[DeviantGent]

Instead of 'substandard', how about simply 'other'?

[Anym]

Inspired by this thread, I'm currently in the process of playing all of the 75 RON games with 33 still to go. It has definitely become HUGE and strongly disagree with the claim that the majority of the games can be completed in five minutes or so. Expecting somebody to play them all to get a grip of everything is simply ridiculous, especially considering the questionable quality of a good deal of the games.

Rather than integrating RON more closely with the AGS site and forums, I think an effort should be made to try to reach other game making communities. I think most people here are at least remotely aware that RON exists, even if it's just because they wanted to check out the other games from the guy who made the Trilby-/Blackwell-/Ben-Jordan-/Whatever-games, but I guess it's pretty obscure anywhere else. I'm not familiar with other game development communities and I'm not even sure if they exist, but I think it might worth a try. I'm not familiar with Maniac Mansion Mania either, but noticed that they have Visionaire and PaC-DK (something I hadn't even heard about before) templates in addition to an AGS and character sprites in .PNG-format and not just as .CHA-files. The reaching out should probably wait until the issues of the intimidating large amount of games in general and relatively large amount of games with questionable quality have been tackled, though, in order not to immediately scare away anybody who decies to check RON out.

Ideally, making a RON game should increase your potential audience, however, I think the two factors mentioned above (large amount of RON games and obscurity of the RON project) actually conspire to make the potential audience of new RON game smaller than that of a non-RON game, which I guess can be a pretty big issue if your making freeware games for an already limited audience. I know that I didn't play any new RON games for quite a while because I stopped playing them about five years ago, never had the time to catch up and so when a new RON game came out, I thought that I should play all the games that came out in between first, which by that time had grown to an impressive number, which I didn't want to go through all at once and thus I ended up playing a non-RON game instead.

So, I think we need to lower the hurdles for both players and prospecitve game makers and, as has been suggested before, the best way to do that is probably by making the number of games less intimidating. Rather than having a review board or a set of tags, I wonder if a self-regulating system would be feasible. Bascially, each game (or even each character) gains weight for each other game that references it, thus indicating whether a game has been accepted as canon by the game making community or not.

Alternatively, regarding categories or tags, I think they should be:

• essential games (not just for newbies, games that establish the setting and the main characters)
  
• recommended games (not just those important for the canon, but all good games, that aren't essential)
  
• other games (games you can afford to miss or that you should actively avoid)

Length shouldn't matter. Neither should whether it's an adventure game or not. If an action game in fun or manages to advance character development, let it, if it sucks, ignore it.

Also there should be a suggested playing order within the categories, preferably with optional pointers what game from a "lower" category you could try in between. Bascially, somebody who's new shouldn't have to wonder which game to start with. Currently you can sort the games page ascending by release date, by timeline, by rating or descending by release date. Each giving a different game that probably isn't the perfect starting point. In fact, during replaying all of the games I began toying with the idea of a playing order guide, but I'm far from being done, since I haven't even played them all yet.

Yet another alternative to this (although one that's probably neither realistic nor really thought-through, just one I wanted to bring up) would be something like Reality's version of a Crisis on Infinite Earth (which is what DC comics used to clean up the convoluted continuity in its superhero universe). Basically, a big game (with pretty graphics if you want) that retells (or even reshapes) the "essential" stories in a coherent way, straightening out issues like graphical or geographical inconsistencies or the circumstances of Davy's death, which would then become the central piece of canon from which to start out.

Just my two cents. Sorry, that I seem to be a bit late for the actual discussion, but I was busy playing the games.

Oh, and if you want to start contributing right now, check out http://ron.the-underdogs.info/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3437

[Ozzie]

Like when the aliens came and took him away?

Yes, and they also returned him.  That's either a case of mistaken identity or the aliens couldn't tolerate him for very long.

As far as I can tell, it seems like most would like to have tags or classifications of:

1. Canon (games that make up an established history of RoN)
2. Essential to newbies (games that best serve to introduce characters and plots to those new to RoN)
3. Non-adventure/misc (puzzle, quiz, arcade, any game that isn't classified as adventure)
4. Substandard (games that people feel are of a lesser quality and should be separated from the rest) - note: this needs, perhaps, a more diplomatic term.

Is this close to what people where thinking?  If it is, then a small group, say 3 or 4, should get be formed with the purpose of going through the existing games and sorting out what should go where.  If anyone is interesting in this part, let me know.

The difference between "Canon" and "Essential to Newbies" doesn't seem very big.
The last one seems to have just less games than the first one.
RON may have the problem that you can't play only the five best games. You probably won't have an idea what it is all about.
But I think people who want to have a full grasp of this town should play through the canon. And the ones who want to enjoy only the high points should better play something like the "Recommended Games", like Anym suggested.
These contain, of course, also games, which are fun, but not in any way relevant to the RON history.

Edit: Something like "Crisis on Infinite Earth" would be a very BIG project, so I don't think that there would be anybody interested in making it.
Dylan compiled a nice Timeline and we should see if it is complete enough. I think there are some things, especially in the later games, which got ignored.
However, I think it is enough when we build the future RON games on this one and the city map.

Another thing which I would recommend is a introduction of the important RON characters in your game. This shouldn't be necessarily at the beginning of the game, but as a menu option for the newbies.
I think that's easy to make. You can introduce them on many levels. They could talk to the player in their own manner or appear in a typical scene (like Mika talking to the Chief Editor of The Realiser about an article or Lucca talking to his brother while something starts to scorch in the oven).
This shouldn't be harder than including some character.say and move commands, so it's not a big thing.

I think I will do something like this in my game.

[DeviantGent]

Well, got the ball rolling on the Wiki. Updated the games page with information on Lunchtime of the Damned, and even if I've missed some info (probably have, was just a quick thing) I think I've got a nice idea for a layout.

Come on everyone - let's get cracking on this thing!

Also, Chapter V of my little novella Back to Reality has just been posted. Major kudos to Dylan for his help with this thus far. The first person to guess where I'm going with Julian's story gets a basket of muffins.

[Valentijn]

Hi all,

I'm Valentijn, the guy behind 'Defender of Ron'. It's the only game I ever made and I've been quiet ever since. But I've been lurking on the RON forum ever since, and read about this discussion going on here.

It's really great already that people are thinking about how to revitalize RON! (Personally I'm also really happy to read several people mentioning my game as one of the better ones!!)

I've always loved the whole idea behind RON and in fact I do intend to get back to it one time. I have many ideas for an epic game called 'Lord of the RON' (now what could that be about?). While never actually getting around to start on it, I also sadly noticed the RON-world dying out. I enjoyed the occasional small game but in my opinion, the last really really good game (one of the best even) was III Spy, released in September 2003.
From about a year up until that point and still around the same time the RON site got massively overflooded with very meagre games. I think the-one-person-nobody-actually-mentions-not-to-be-offensive-while-everbody-knows-who-we-mean-anyway sort of killed RON by releasing an overload of games under the pretentious banner of them being 'surrealistic', while those games were -in my humble opinion- really nothing but heaps of pointless empty childish digital manure, quite possibly mainly flawed because of a lack of beta-testing. And also because of a lack of standards.

I recall that whenever somebody raised an argument about quality standards back then, they instantly got the argument back that RON was RON because it was so liberal and it had to have as little standards as possible. That whole idea always put me off a little. And the world got inaccessible indeed exactly because of it.
Personally I have issues with the 'no killing established characters' rule as well: if you could do that you could make games more surprising and thrilling, while you can also use the death of one character to develop another character, but I do understand what made people set this rule and I can see how out of hand things can go without it.
Although, problems are easily fixed if some sort of quality committee is formed. One might put question marks to the justification of who such a committee's members would be, but why not get some sort of election together? It may be necessary. If the presentation of the RON games gets a revamp, it may benefit from people in charge.

And I do think a revamp of the site is a great idea. Getting different categories together and putting the trash out seems to be exactly the thing to be done.

I think categories should be:
-essentials: canon games, games that develop major characters and games considered by many to be the best of the series (Dave Gilbert's games, Creed Malay's games etc)
-quality stand alone games: games which don't do anything for the timeline or major characters but still are of high quality (maybe Grundislav's excellent 'the Chef'?)
-non-adventure games (which could even be removed as far as I'm concerned...)
-collectors only
(Sorting games simply on length won't work. You can have crap long games as well as magnificent short games. A quality division is needed above anything.)

...and of course, there you'll easily get to the questions of who decides what's good. This can be solved easily by getting a good working voting system together, although I'm all up for combining it with giving a group of people some authority. Those people should also check any upcoming RON games to see which category they'll fall under, and perhaps also to check if they can be accepted at all in the series.
Why the latter? Because there have been games like the original 'Intergalactic Life'. It's a text parser game made with poor grasp on the English language, I think it wasn't beta-tested, and many people said it was hardly playable when it came out. But the creator thought of it as being finished and the non-existant acceptance bar made it possible for the game to be incorporated in the RON game list. This is exactly what you shouldn't to if you want to keep the series accessible.

So apart from the re-categorization of games, and having the RON-world governed, I think there should be a reconsideration of rules. The liberal idea of allowing anything that has something to do with RON as long as it doesn't kill of established characters and it doesn't reveal the bum's identity... it simply doesn't work. More rules are needed.

My two cents at the moment. Thanks to everybody again for thinking about it; keeping RON alive is a noble goal! I'll keep following this discussion!

[Dave Gilbert]

It's Templeton Tijn himself! 

I do agree that the whole "no quality control" thing was a sticky issue in the past, but it was something we were willing to deal with because there were still decent games coming out once in a while.  Things have obviously changed since then, and it's painfully obvious that the old ways of doing things no longer work.

The "no killing established characters" rule should stay, however.  Even with a panel or committee, it opens up a large can of worms that would cause more strife than it's worth. 

I'm curious how the newbies of the group discovered RoN, as there hasn't been much of an effort to call attention to it. 

[Ozzie]

I'm curious how the newbies of the group discovered RoN, as there hasn't been much of an effort to call attention to it. 

Well, you're right, there wasn't much, but as you mentioned before, there was an Adventuregamers article. This brought me to RON.
I think though that, earlier or later, I would have found it through this forum.

[LUniqueDan]

+++ An humble n00bie view +++

There's a series of games called 'ROM', 'RON' or whatever.
- Some of the first features 'who sounds sooo important' can't run easily on XP.
- One of the main character is as alive that the Heisenberg's cat.
- The plot are like a sitcom, like The Simpsons. But most of the times, they were yellow, or pink, not to mention 3D, 2D or with no graphic at all.

Are you're really trying attracting new blood with that?
RON games are interesting when you followed it live.
Even with a serious klean-up, starting to built a new RON game is like

(Restricted 18+)

Spoiler

having oral sex with an unshaved whore, after she got some gang bang fun with the US congress

[close]

It's not anyone fault. You just forgot to set proper rules at day 1.

If You really wanna save RON :
Create a new template :
Including : the 5-7 mains characters.
Including : 1 set of all the important townsquare backgrounds. Already linked. Forbidden to modification.
(If people wanna add details they'll use 'object'). Dot.
Too bad if they wanted a 16 frames animation for the chef. It's a Ron game. Dot.

And for god sake erase the timeline and just do a Read-me with 15 characters names followed by max. 2 rules each:

Mr Burns
- Power Plant owner, boss of Homer.
- Must be greedy and rich.
- Can't have physical strength at all.

If you can't make such synthesis because you are afraid of losing too much, that only means that RON died with is first creators. Do something else.

Oh and have a nice day anyway.

LUnique"I will like, but won't do a RON game"Dan

Spoiler

And F*** You, newbies rules

[close]

[Valentijn]

Thanks for your viewpoints LUniqueDan.

I hadn't thought about the problem that some games won't run on WinXP. Does anybody know how about many games have this problem and which of the 'important'ones they are?

The Davy Jones thing seems to be a huge problem indeed, in terms of making the series inaccessible.

RON and the Simpsons/Springfield have always been similar in idea. They make for a good comparison. Are you trying to say that while the Simpsons are always consistent in art and design, RON's art varies between awful and alright? I could see that point. I can also see your points regarding narrowing the 'important' contents of RON down to a handful of characters, similar art and to ditch the complex timeline.
Those measures still seem a little too extreme for me.


I think the steps that should be taken in order to resurrect RON are these:

1. Make RON accessible.
2. Attract attention.
3. Govern RON so it won't fall back to its comatose state.

The remainder of this post I will focus on point 1, so not to become as complex as the RON timeline.

Besides my large post above I recently posted another long post on the RON forum with my ideas and viewpoints (http://ron.the-underdogs.info/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3501#3501). I'll now try to get my main points through here along the lines of these steps.
I may also repeat some of what I said in my above post but I think it bears repeating within this organised scheme.


1. Make RON accessible

Problems:
-too many characters
-too much difference in quality of the many different games on the game pages
-too much difference in styles of the many different games on the game pages
-too much difference in graphics of the many different games on the game pages
-too complex timeline
-Davy Jones is dead and alive and both and neither

Solutions:
Filter the games. Get a list of main games. Get rid of games that won't really appeal to anybody. Separate specific categories. Narrow it down to a list of main, essential games that draw attention and make people want to make their own game.
The timeline is important. I suspect most people love continuity and getting things to fit within the frame. It's what keeps it all together. But while respecting the timeline, don't take it as a basis for getting an 'essential' game list: take into account that nobody would make anyone who has never seen Star Wars watch the Phantom Menace first in order to get into the movies (I mean, everybody would still start out with A New Hope right?).

I wouldn't have thought that Davy Jones' death would present such a problem. There's one really vague game with a unique style wherein he dies (Davy Jones C'est Mort). There's a non-interactive thing which tries to make more sense of it than the notice of Davy being sexually molested to death by a man in a cow suit (the Universal Equaliser). And there's a -quite nice (in my opinion)- game which brings Davy back in a very clear way (Davy Jones Is Back). I don't think it should be so hard to follow but apparently people have issues with the series, perhaps because of the controversial first game (featuring a rather disturbing rape scene)?
My solution would be: separate these games and put them into a subfolder, giving an explanation of the history of the games next to it.

So how should the games be separated? There should be an essentials list with the best of the best. HOW to compile this list should be collective thoughts for later, I would first like to know if others agree with my ideas or not.
Similar to the essentials list, there should be another page with 'the good stuff', featuring all games which are just nice to play but you wouldn't miss out on too much (save for the occasional odd character development) if you'd decide to skip them.
Then there is a bulk of games that are considered to be of lesser quality. All should be heaped in another folder: collectors only.
An obvious way to decide which games go where is to make a rating system or voting system, or maybe go by their current ratings on the RON page although those may be not too reliable (says the guy whose game ranks on the third spot...) Food for later!

Please get rid of the arcade games and the quizzes. They don't contribute anything to the series other than making it a haphazard inaccessible mess. A quiz can be made in HTML. Who would care to download an AGS quiz featuring five questions that you either know if you played the relevant game or don't know if you didn't? What's the point of having a paratroopers game supposedly connected to RON because it's said to be one of the characters' dream?!

Demos should be removed. You see a demo, the first thing it tells you is that it's not finished. That equals inaccessibility, especially since the real games of the couple of demos featured were never finished.

The text parser games could go under another folder: 'non-AGS' games. But it should then be a subfolder of the 'collectors only' folder as that is what they would have been anyway.

My ideal RON game page would be:
(based on some sort of rating system)
-essentials
-good stuff
-collectors only / optionally with subfolders for Non-AGS, Non-Adventure, Das Tobi-as' games
-the Davy Jones debacle (<= possibly a subfolder of any of the above, maybe even within essentials!)

You may notice I'd like to separate the 'Tobi-as' games. This is partly because of subjective, personal dislike of his games but also because I think the unique style, pretentious 'surrealism' (is it, really?), crude graphics, nonsensical puzzles, poor dialogue and most of all lack of critical beta-testing makes these games very inaccessible, and the large amount of DT-games is, at least in my humble personal opinon, one huge factor of the overall RON-inaccessibility. I may be a bit too harsh on the poor guy, I wouldn't like to offend him personally or incite a nasty argument here or a personal attack or anything - I really don't blame him, the lack of rules and (acceptance) standards are what 'killed' RON and it simply had to happen.
My point is that these games are so 'unique' that they shouldn't clog up any of the main folders but get their own space. They probably have their target audience and fans, somewhere. This is just how I feel, I'd be interested in other opinions.

Speaking of other opinions, I'd love to hear what people think of the points I made above.
Do people agree that my 'three steps' are the issues needed to be adressed to save RON?
If so, let's first discuss the accessiblity issue. Do people agree with my folder division idea? If not, please tell me why and share your own ideas; what would make up an accessible RON game list in your opinion and why?
Who is going to take control of the situation? Renegade Implementor, you are the guy behind the RON site, right? How do you feel about revamping the website?

Keep the discussion alive, we might save a town!
Thank you all for thinking!

[Radiant]

In my opinion... since there was already a suggested split between "must play" games and "optional other" games to improve accessibility... throw that C'est Mort game out of canon. Throw it out of the FAQ. Don't mention it at all in any of the places that new users are expected to look first. Regardless of what oldbies think of the game, regardless of what explanation you put to it, just don't mention it there, and put it in the archives somewhere. I'm tempted to quote Steve Ballmer here.

Why? Because for a wide variety of reasons, it is extremely succesful in chasing people away from contributing to RON.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

So, should we throw away all the other games that involve Davey's death? That includes "Defender of RON", one of the best games in the series.

It's been done, and it's affected the following games. There's no point in shirking out of that.

[Nostradamus]

All early RON games can run on XP if you run them under win95 Compatibility mode (right click--> properties on the .exe).

[Dave Gilbert]

RoN managed to tick along quite fine for two years after the Davy death thing.  That's certainly not the problem.  Several other games used it in their plotlines (or as a joke), so erasing it from existence wouldn't magically revive the series.

The "just make more RoN games, people!" argument does make the most sense, although there should be some effort to call attention to it.  And once people ARE paying attention, there should be something worth looking at.  I do agree that the website is a little inaccessible now with the huge quantity of games, and no idea where to begin (or avoid the - ahem - games of dubvious quality).  I don't see the point of a wiki, since that all can be handled on the RoN site itself.

[Radiant]

So, should we throw away all the other games that involve Davey's death? That includes "Defender of RON", one of the best games in the series.

Obviously not. My point is that it's a horrible first impression. Nothing should be thrown away at all (and note that I didn't suggest that either). You should simply stop advertising it in five or six obvious places. At the moment, you're effectively marketing RON as "that series where the protagonist got raped to death by a cow, which caused a lot of strife in the community, then resurrected which caused yet more strife". Simply move the focus somewhere else.

[Dave Gilbert]

The Davy thing is mentioned on the FAQ because people would naturally ask about what happened. I'd hardly say that it's the focus of the site or mentioned in a number of places.  It was a regrettable incident, but it's something that's part of RoN now and steps were taken to make sure it didn't happen again.

[Radiant]

Well, therein lies the problem, Dave. You would like people to become more interested in RON, but you are essentially unwilling to make minor changes to the site that would help them to catch and keep interest.

[Dave Gilbert]

Um, i never said that.  If you read my previous threads you'll see the suggestions I have made.  I just don't think the Davy death thing is really that much of a big issue.  It's mentioned once, on the FAQ, and that's it. 

[Ozzie]

When the old RON games run under compatibility mode then it should stand in the FAQ at least. Not all people come to that conclusion, probably.
Also, when possible, maybe some RON contributors should compile their old RON games with a newer version of AGS.
This doesn't always work perfectly, of course.

1. Make RON accessible

Problems:
-too many characters

Actually, I don't think so. There's mainly Davy, Elandra, the Bum, George Watstatt, Mika, Melt & Drake, Phil Nihilist, Lucca, Dr. Die Vie Ess, Death and Gower, maybe the chicken too.
I think the rest was never really that important. The nightguards? The sheriff? Well, not more than supporting roles.
So, what's the problem?
I think we talked through it before. There's no seperation between main and other characters. They are all in the same pot. That's irritating for beginners.

-too much difference in quality of the many different games on the game pages

Yeah, right. Like we discussed, a categorization is necessary:
- Canon
- Recommended Games
- Other

Also, we should specify with which engine the game was created and in which genre it belongs.
These would be my suggestions.

-too much difference in styles of the many different games on the game pages
-too much difference in graphics of the many different games on the game pages

Well, it's impossible that all RON games have one consistent style, except if there were some head artists who make all the graphics of all the games.
But it's maybe a weakness of the concept. Everybody has a unique style and differing talents. The best you can do is to pick the backgrounds which are the most similar in style for your game. So, better don't choose the Town Square from Phantom Inheritance and with an old picture of the forest...

-too complex timeline

Dylan tries to cut it down. But to be honest, we can't forget the history. We should recommend on the start page for the developers to have a look at the timeline.
If we just try to cut it down to, let's say, Lunchtime of the Damned, I Spy, Apocalypse Meow & Purity of the Surf (just to have an extreme example), then people may see the introductory and some of RON best games, but they may also be confused. Because of all these strange side plots that don't seem to make sense (the appearance of death as a lifeguard would be strange for example). And they would miss some very important history points.
If they would then create a game based on this knowledge then we might have even more games with story inconsistencies.
The timeline would start to make even less sense and new users might be even more frustrated.

So, I think the only thing we can do ist to include those game in the timeline which have real significance.
This means that they had moments and introduced new characters which were also referred to in games of other authors. Also, they shouldn't totally contradict with the former RON history.
Further, we should include a walkthrough on every game page. This might reduce the time to get known to RON.
You can't hide the fact that many things already happened in RON. We should only try to make it easy, uncomplicated and short on time to get introduced to RON.

take into account that nobody would make anyone who has never seen Star Wars watch the Phantom Menace first in order to get into the movies (I mean, everybody would still start out with A New Hope right?).

You mean, it's better to play the games in the release instead of the chronological order?
Well, maybe. I did it this way.
I can also see why this is the better way. For example, a new game is set at an earlier time but still does refer to sth. which got revealed later on.
This problem is probably best explained with the Chzo mythology:

7 Days Skeptic may happen at the end in the timeline but was made as the second. And that's the reason why it doesn't have references to Trilby's Notes or 6DAS, though they happened earlier in the timeline.
When you would play it in a chronological order you would be confused to find yourself in a spacecraft as part of a horror moment, for example.
Or, then in 6DAS, you would control Somerset and have now idea who he is!

Still, while this means that it would be a better way to play the games in the order they were released it could be an interesting experience to play it after the timeline.
Also, the timeline is important for reference.

-Davy Jones is dead and alive and both and neither

I wouldn't have thought that Davy Jones' death would present such a problem. There's one really vague game with a unique style wherein he dies (Davy Jones C'est Mort). There's a non-interactive thing which tries to make more sense of it than the notice of Davy being sexually molested to death by a man in a cow suit (the Universal Equaliser). And there's a -quite nice (in my opinion)- game which brings Davy back in a very clear way (Davy Jones Is Back). I don't think it should be so hard to follow but apparently people have issues with the series, perhaps because of the controversial first game (featuring a rather disturbing rape scene)?
My solution would be: separate these games and put them into a subfolder, giving an explanation of the history of the games next to it.

I don't understand this subfolder thought. For me, the whole thing with subfolders may make it more complicated than easier.
I mean noobs may ask themselves why there's a DasTobias category, what DasTobias is, what it contains, why it is seperated. Also, just to make an own category for three controversial games seems a bit silly.
I don't think that Davys death makes no sense or is hard to understand. The controversy was about killing the character and not because it was a story quirk.
When people can laugh in a Simpsons episode when a steel block gets awarded for the best employer of the month then people won't be too irritated by the death and resurrection of Davy Jones. After all, he's even a sorcerer!

An obvious way to decide which games go where is to make a rating system or voting system, or maybe go by their current ratings on the RON page although those may be not too reliable (says the guy whose game ranks on the third spot...) Food for later!

Well, yes, we should definately improve on it. The current voting system was abused. I think it would be a good idea that only people with a forum account could give a vote.

Please get rid of the arcade games and the quizzes. They don't contribute anything to the series other than making it a haphazard inaccessible mess. A quiz can be made in HTML. Who would care to download an AGS quiz featuring five questions that you either know if you played the relevant game or don't know if you didn't? What's the point of having a paratroopers game supposedly connected to RON because it's said to be one of the characters' dream?!

Ehm, I think it would be unfair to remove the arcade games. While the paratrooper one has nearly nothing to do with RON it's a good game. So it should belong into Good Stuff. But it's not an adventure. That's a reason why we should categorize the games after the genre.
About the quizzes: Theoretically, you could use audio & graphics to make them prettier, maybe these mediums could even be relevant for a question. So, in general, they are nothing bad. But I have to agree: the current ones aren't very inspired...

Demos should be removed. You see a demo, the first thing it tells you is that it's not finished. That equals inaccessibility, especially since the real games of the couple of demos featured were never finished.

I agree totally.

The text parser games could go under another folder: 'non-AGS' games. But it should then be a subfolder of the 'collectors only' folder as that is what they would have been anyway.

Like I said already, we should also make categories for the game engines.

Speaking of other opinions, I'd love to hear what people think of the points I made above.
Do people agree that my 'three steps' are the issues needed to be adressed to save RON?
If so, let's first discuss the accessiblity issue. Do people agree with my folder division idea? If not, please tell me why and share your own ideas; what would make up an accessible RON game list in your opinion and why?
Who is going to take control of the situation? Renegade Implementor, you are the guy behind the RON site, right? How do you feel about revamping the website?

Keep the discussion alive, we might save a town!
Thank you all for thinking!

Discussion is good.
Of course, my opinion is also only one under many.

[Valentijn]

Good to read your thoughts, Ozzie, I agree with pretty much everything you're saying.

The problems I listed were what I, based on other posts in this thread, thought that people in general would see as the main inaccessibility issues. I also don't think that there are too many main characters, but it is indeed as you are saying; right now all characters are listed on the site's characters page.
(Let me quickly add that I've always liked the contents and presentation of the website myself, but I can see how newcomers might be put off by a list of about 90 characters)

Your 'canon / recommended / other' division is about what I opted for as well with 'essentials / good stuff / collectors'. Sometimes it's better indeed to choose 'canon' over quality. The very first game (Lunchtime of the Damned) and something like Reposessor are both very nice games but wouldn't top the list. Still, they're essential in shaping the RON-world so they should go in the main list for sure.
You understand my Star Wars analogy correctly (the Yahtzee comparison works much better!). If you would force an order going by what happened first and what happened later, it will take some time before 'the newcomer' reaches games like Purity of the Surf, the Melt & Drake triology or III Spy... most of the games of which I would say they make up the very best of RON.
What I now think is best is to have one extra piece of information with each game: a 'games referenced' list. What do you think?

I totally agree with you on the graphics point. It's just that some people were complaining about poor art in some games. But I guess the games that don't have much to offer in any department will be filtered out to the 'third category' anyway, and badly drawn games which are in one of the main categories will be there for a reason. So I don't think this will present much of a problem.

Well, maybe you're right with 'the more subfolders the messier'. I thought since people seem to have issues with the Davy Jones games, to have them separated (but of course still available), and to get a less messy 'others/collectors' folder by getting more stuff out of there that is just loosely connected to RON (the arcade game, at least the 'dream' games, ...). I was actually thinking of something like how Reality on the Norm is now featured on the AGS games page: simply one entry that links to all (=>the site). I'm still of that opinion but I can see your point here.

And okay, maybe not remove the arcade games and the quizzes all out. But these really do need to be separated from the bulk, as to not make more bulk where you'd still have to fish out the normal games. In my opinion, at least.

I'm all for a better voting system and then base a new presentation on that. One problem here is that there don't seem to be so many people hanging out on the RON forum these days.
Would it be possible, perhaps, to get ALL the games on the AGS game page? This was actually something I was thinking about for the 'step' of attracting attention. The current 'one entry that links to the site' isn't really the advertisement RON needs.
Speak of subfolders. Here you have "short games / medium length games / full length games / MAGS-games / non-adventure games / joke games / demos".
Would it be possible to get another folder there for RON-games? Have all games there? The voting system in here is pretty alright, at least it's way more reliable than the one on the RON-site.

Cheers,
Valentijn

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

All this discussion of arcade games, quizzes and non-ags games being stored separate...

...I mean, RON isn't an AGS project. Isn't that the whole point? RON is a community project. Since AGS is so damn good and so accessible to newbies, and there's a lot of packs for use with AGS, it's the suggested engine.

But the arcade games and the quizzes are as much part of RON as, say, Science of the Discworld or Wee Free Men/Hat Full of Sky are part of the Discworld series/universe.

[LUniqueDan]

Hum...

Nostradamus said :

All early RON games can run on XP if you run them under win95 Compatibility mode (right click--> properties on the .exe).
 

Don't worry kid, I can Run older stuff than that, under worst circumstances, with my hand tied over an acid vat.  That was not a tech tread. It's a publicity problem.

Sure I can ask about who's who. But I do prefer doing a game instead.

Listen the wisdom of the newbie :

A 10 yo autistic kid, deaf, and with serious color blindness can understand easily who's who in the Simpsons.  And this before the show starts.

A 4 yo molested child, raised by monkeys in the jungle of New-Caledonia, who have no f+++ idea of what's the stone age, will got the point of The Flintstones.

So please : Take 10 sec and watch RON like if you don't know it. And just re-read your posts with this perspective. You may find true enlightenment.


I'm sorry to re-quote myself :

A) Is the difficulties of keeping RON alive came from the reasons you wanted it alive? (long timeline, getting personally involved through years... crush for a given character who have suuuch a huge past...)

B) Is the difficulties to make RON  attractive / coherent for the newbies came ALSO from the solely origins of RON itself.  
Let's tell the truth : RON is NOT a Simpsons show : It's adventure gaming and everyone are trying to transgressing the boundaries.  The odd that any of the main character get killed were very high at the beginning. Or that someone mess with the bum identity.

EDIT : That's why we wanna create stuff !! No for any RON Worshipping.
EDIT2  : RON will work as a series of Fan Game. But there is no original You are failing where MMMania win.

C) Why keeping RON alive anyway? . It's sounds obvious but it's not. Old - RONites around here define RON as a community project. And we're 7 pages of tread asking yourself how to create/rebuild a community !?!. That's why Davy's dead hurts. It was a possible cement of the series.

Anyway... My last mean comment : Censorship for naive ears.

Spoiler

If keeping RON alive matters so much for you. If having a RON community matters so much. WHY THE F*** just not doing yourself RON game !?!. The RONite in this tread cumulate years of scripting.

[close]

Have a good day anyway.

LUnique"Gimme a Template and I'll rebuilt the temple in 3 days"Dan

[Valentijn]

Hi Rui,

Maybe. The thing is, what I would say: the openness of RON, the whole liberal idea of 'anything goes' (save for about three minor conditions) used to be the whole point, but also made for it's inevitable demise. I actually think we'd have a more durable RON-world should the main list (at least the 'canon'/'essentials' folder) become 'AGS only'.
You won't get the RON of 2002-2003 back but you'd have a more stable system. RON make II.
Removing the arcade games/quizzes all together is probably way too extreme (not to mention not so nice for their creators). It's of course also really nice to have a 'franchise' going on and see your fave characters in different presentations. But in any case, I think separation, like how non-adventure games have their own category on the AGS game page, is necessary if the huge game list is to be re-organised into something more accessible.

Dan, speaking for myself: I'd love to make another RON game! But I have other projects going on which I want to finish first and I can't see myself starting on any game within the forthcoming months. And should I ever start on one it may take more months to finish. But I love to share thoughts about how to keep the series alive, since I like the concept so much and think RON still has so much in it, and could still appeal to many people.

[Ozzie]

Anyway... My last mean comment : Censorship for naive ears.

Spoiler

If keeping RON alive matters so much for you. If having a RON community matters so much. WHY THE F*** just not doing yourself RON game !?!. The RONite in this tread cumulate years of scripting.

[close]

Because there's a concept called time and I can't handle it.
I have already enough today with math at university, otherwise I would work nearly nonstop on it.

Edit:

What I now think is best is to have one extra piece of information with each game: a 'games referenced' list. What do you think?

Actually a nice, but a bit problematic idea! When does a game get referenced? Probably not when one of its characters gets featured (I mean, every game featuring Mika would reference ISpy and everyone featuring Davy Lunchtime Of The Damned...)
I'm sorry, I'm not sure how this could work.
Hm, well, there are some rare cases, let's say the Melt & Drake games, the ISpys and the games with Gower running for mayor belong to each other....
...but these are the only ones that spring to mind.

Normally I would say, it doesn't really matter what I think.

But then, this is the irritation: whose opinion matters???
For RON, this would be the community, naturally.
But, honestly, it doesn't exist anymore.
Now the question is: Should some few people take the fate of RON in their hands, create a new license scheme, new rules and a new content organisation without affirmation of the (lost) community?
I think it has to be this way.
But actually, it's a big task, and it would be an unreasonable demand on Renegade Implementor & Bumblearse alone, especially since they weren't asked. This is community work.
And that's a problem without a community.
We have no time, but need games to promote new people. We have no community that can reach decisions and change the organisation.
Well, I just hope that some nice games come out in the future. Dylan has his last Tapestry game in the works. There's the exorcism of Julian Lapis and judging from the extremely short demo it does have at least graphics which show that some work has gone into it.
I work also at a game, somehow. I've finished two more backgrounds in the last week, but I can't promise that it will go on like that.
Also, I would need many animations and I can't animate even if my life would depend on it.

Hm. But what we definately would need is something like a RON 2.0, but less vague like Web 2.0, this should have more or less (in my opinion):
- better quality control before inclusion in the RON catalogue (fixing inconsistencies, checking playability; production quality might also play a role (MI5 Bob or The Spoons were unacceptable in my opinion))
- better graphics (nice for the eye, attracts more people. There has been done some work on it - see the sprites by Wogoat)
- new content organisation (seperation of main and supporting characters, in some cases adding more information about characters, all Bum identities, categorization of the games (Canon, Good Stuff, Other), more informations about the games (what engine, what genre, also, games should be searchable by author)
- walkthroughs for every game (Anym does good work on that, keep going )
- compact overview for beginners & developers (clear timeline, tutorials (like for background graphics),...)

Okay, this is all I can think of. Critic and other suggestions are welcome!!

[Anym]

I don't see the point of a wiki, since that all can be handled on the RoN site itself.

Well, the main advantage of a wiki would be that everybody could help writing and improving game descriptions, plot synopses and character profiles rather than just the admins, which are doing a fine job, but are probably busy enough as it is. But I admit that currently the wiki doesn't even provide the basic functionality of the current RON site and that's making it quite unappealing (to me at least).

Having now played all of the RON games, I can confirm that all the RON games ran fine, even without compatibility setting, under Windows XP for me (well, except Nightwatch, that is). If that isn't the case for other people, it might be possible to repackage most of those games with an appropriate ACWIN.EXE. I'm also (albeit slowly) writing walkthroughs for the games that don't seem to have one yet.

Regarding categories, I really don't think there should be more than "essential" (I really wouldn't call it "canon", because almost everything is canon, but there is important canon, like the mayoral election, and less important canon, like a new character arriving in town and I wouldn't think of it as "best of the series" either, it should be as small as possible, but as big as necessary), "not essential, but really good" (note that some of the best games, like A Better Mousetrap should be here rather than in "essential" IMHO) and "neither essential, nor especially good" (see also my previous post) and no further subcategories. I think everything can fit neatly into those categories, including non-AGS and non-adventure games which shouldn't be treated any different IMHO. I see no reason to treat games by a specific author any different either. If you want further granularity, then you should probably use tags in addition to the categories (non-adventure game, works as a standalone game, dream game,...) rather than have an intricate hierarchy of categories.

Davy Jones C'est Mort would be an "essential" game in my book, but I guess that's open to discussion. While the question about his death should probably stay in the FAQ, it might be a good idea not to name it explicitly if you don't want people to get a wrong first impression.

The characters also should be divided into important and unimportant ones. This might even be done automatically by counting their number of appearances. And if the game pages start listing references to other games, then this system might even be extended to games themselves as well (again, see also my previous post).

<EDIT 1>

When does a game get referenced? Probably not when one of its characters gets featured (I mean, every game featuring Mika would reference ISpy and everyone featuring Davy Lunchtime Of The Damned...)
I'm sorry, I'm not sure how this could work.

Actually, that's just how I imagine it. That way the people who make the games basically decide what carries how much weight in the canon. Nearly every game features Mika, which makes I Spy quite important. On the other hand, few people used Knoffel, indicating that Intergalactic Life was less "embraced" by the community. I'm not sure if it would work, but I thing it just might and at the very least it would be interesting to look at.
</EDIT>

Regarding demos, I agree they should be removed from the games page, but not from the entire RON page. There should still be a demo section somewhere. For example, the Without a Prayer demo is funnier and arguably has more gameplay than many of the "proper" games. I seem to remember a "Games in production" section from an older version of the RON site, featuring, among other things, screenshots for Descension. However, the only demo on the games page, that I can think of at the moment is the one for Time Out (which should be removed from there). Edge of Reality, while labeled as demo is more properly classified as part 1 in a series that didn't get finished IMHO. If you want to remove it anyway, what about the Melt & Drake games, which are also pending closure?

I always regarded the timeline more as a developers resource than as a playing guide and I always appreciated the all-inclusive approach, so I'm a bit skeptical about removing stuff from it. If you don't want it to scare newbies away, I think it would be better to keep it out of their sight than to cripple it. Newbies should get a big START HERE link pointing to the essential games category, probably already ordered by timeline.

I also agree that the ratings system needs an overhaul. The highest rated game is quite bad IMHO and the lowest rated game has a score lower than 1 that should be impossible in the employed rating scheme.

I also want reiterate one more point from my previous post, that I don't think tighter integration with the AGS site or the AGS engine is the way to go:

Rather than integrating RON more closely with the AGS site and forums, I think an effort should be made to try to reach other game making communities. I think most people here are at least remotely aware that RON exists, even if it's just because they wanted to check out the other games from the guy who made the Trilby-/Blackwell-/Ben-Jordan-/Whatever-games, but I guess it's pretty obscure anywhere else. I'm not familiar with other game development communities and I'm not even sure if they exist, but I think it might worth a try. I'm not familiar with Maniac Mansion Mania either, but noticed that they have Visionaire and PaC-DK (something I hadn't even heard about before) templates in addition to an AGS and character sprites in .PNG-format and not just as .CHA-files. The reaching out should probably wait until the issues of the intimidating large amount of games in general and relatively large amount of games with questionable quality have been tackled, though, in order not to immediately scare away anybody who decies to check RON out.

<EDIT 2>
I think RON has more in common with a soap opera than with a sitcom. Things do change over time and if you watch/play a single episode at random you can't expect to get everything. That's probably not a good thing, but that's the way it is and so Lost or Desperate Housewives would probably better analogies than The Simpsons.
</EDIT>

[LUniqueDan]

I know ... I'm not into RON.
I know ... My participation to this tread can sound controversial
I know ... I have hell of a time express myself

But are you realizing the main paradoxes of this tread :

The best plan you found to attract newbies :
- Making stricter rules
- Making stricter graphical requirements.
- Making stricter this and that.

Which means on the concrete world:
- Removing anything not good enough.
- Removing anything who break coherence.
- Doing a lots of extra jobs, while precisely you need extra people.

ARE-YOU SERIOUS???


I have a extraordinary respect for all the top game creators who enjoyed belongs to the RON community. (You know who are and I'm not here to licks anyone *** ). But, again and again and again : What are you trying to do?

Is this only a Vanity fair ? The series/characters/plot  that YOU start?
or
Creating a strong environment to release creativity easier?



LUnique"I don't wanna have a degree on Ronities"Dan

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

There have been several thoughts on "stricter" this and that, but overall the one plan everybody agreed with was categorization, innit?

The environment *is* strong. Creativity is all about the person who wants to make the games. The only reason I don't make a RON game is lack of time and general lack of game-making interest - I've got a RON story in my head, which I've even talked to other people about. The story is not in the least constricted by the RON environment. So naturally I tend to raise an eyebrow when people talk about a "too complex universe". Hey, if you want to add to the main storyline, sure, it's complex. X-Files and Twin Peaks also got REAL complex, but the X-Files also had its own "monster of the week episode" unrelated to the X-Files alien mythos.

I'm digressing a bit. What I mean, mostly, is that this discussion is taking us somewhere, which is great - don't think it isn't. People are just trying to figure out the best way to put it into practice without negating all the hard work that made RON. Put it like this - if you don't want history repeating, you need a constant reminder of what happened before. If you don't want another dictator, you need to remember what the past dictators did, and how they got where they were.

Plus, if you'd delegated the first 4 X-Files seasons to a sub-category and focused essentially on the following seasons, you'd have missed the best episodes.

[Valentijn]

A lot of good points made by both of you, Ozzie & Anym.
Dan, although I though your first post contained some interesting comments I'm afraid you're starting to troll me out a bit here. Making stricter rules for attracting newbies is not a paradox at all (having a well maintained, solid system is more appealing than a chaotic mess). With comments such as "No for any RON Worshipping" and "you are failing while MMMania win" and "You're being overly negative while people here are simply having a good think tank discussion on how to keep something alive that more people may care about. So you don't care about RON's future... well we do, please leave us be.

Anyway. The 'games referenced' info could indeed be taken as Anym suggested. I was also thinking that instead of listing every single reference (such as my earlier post suggested), you could say that for some games you really need the basis given in another game (like the status of the mayor or the coming of Death), so instead of listing every single reference you could narrow it down to a need-to-know basis... although this may indeed prove to be a difficult task.

- better quality control before inclusion in the RON catalogue (fixing inconsistencies, checking playability; production quality might also play a role (MI5 Bob or The Spoons were unacceptable in my opinion))

This for sure! To me, the DasTobias games and the Underworld were unacceptable. One thing that led to the current state is the way how in the past, lots of poor quality games simply had to be accepted because they still adhered to the minor rules.
I agree with your '2.0' suggestions. This is how RON is to be kept alive after we hopefully get some life back in it. It's probably a good idea to have such a template ready on a revamped site, so people know what to expect from the future, see that it's going to be maintained, and can get a good frameset right away in order to make their own games! But not too jump ahead too fast, let's try to get the life back in first...

The reaching out should probably wait until the issues of the intimidating large amount of games in general and relatively large amount of games with questionable quality have been tackled, though, in order not to immediately scare away anybody who decies to check RON out.

I agree with this for a 100%!! I actually had my suggestion for getting the world more on the AGS site ready for a later discussion. BUT, the reason why I wrote about it now, is the problem of the quite dead RON forum. There are some people posting there but I think they're all posting here as well, and more people get involved here. More people are needed if we want to get a better voting system in. If we get one on the RON site now, we might have to use the votes of about five people as a basis. It's a problem.

I think everything can fit neatly into those categories, including non-AGS and non-adventure games which shouldn't be treated any different IMHO. I see no reason to treat games by a specific author any different either. If you want further granularity, then you should probably use tags in addition to the categories (non-adventure game, works as a standalone game, dream game,...) rather than have an intricate hierarchy of categories.

Well, would it be so intricate? Take the AGS game page and look at the different folders there. Non-adventure games are moved to a different folder there as well.
You may put five out of every eight games in the 'third folder' but that would make such an unorganised bulk again. If people start playing through that they still fall into an endless junkyard, is what I think.
Additional tags are neccesary anyway.
Hmm, well, maybe I was a bit too subjective & mean when I voted against the DT games, but earlier in this very thread people were already referencing them as clear examples of low quality products that only made for a more confusing world. The nature of these games is so unique, but they are similar to each other, which is why I thought - and still think - that they'd best be heaped together (so, about like it is with the current RON link on the AGS game page).

You could do it with three folders, have the essential stuff and the good stuff and then move all the other games with a certain low rating in the third folder. But I think it would be similar to sweeping the trash under the rug. It's still there and it's still a mess.

I always regarded the timeline more as a developers resource than as a playing guide and I always appreciated the all-inclusive approach, so I'm a bit skeptical about removing stuff from it.

Yeah, me too. I wouldn't want to remove stuff from a timeline (actually I'm an archaeologist so by nature I prefer to add to a timeline!). But how do you feel about having an all inclusive timeline as well as an extract with the really major events and need-to-know stuff?

Oh, and indeed, the Simpsons analogies don't work anymore.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Re quality control -

By those standards, I don't think "Paranormal Investigation" would have been accepted, would it?

However, the flat and uninteresting character of "John Steel" was taken into account for future games. He got fleshed out as "a creepy man of few words".

Things grow, mostly in unexpected ways. You want quality control? Go right ahead, but first tell me - in a community effort, with all sorts of crazy ideas (even Nihilism had a point -a glued down silo door- that was used in later games, and that game didn't even have an ending!) and people that are so creative, who decides what stays and what doesn't? And who can say that anything may or may not work in the long run?

Want an example? Let's go back to Davy's death. And I'll bring up Defender of RON again - those two combined brought to lift The Surrealist, one of the biggest plot points of RON (very ignored...), just ripe for the picking. I'll argue that without Davy Jones C'est Mort, it wouldn't have appeared.

Overall, the game makers have been making their own quality control, haven't they? Picking up on what was good and leaving behind what was bad - most episodes are mostly self-contained, so that's entirely possible.

Categorization is good - selection of "commonly-agreed-as-canon" games is good. Go much further than that, though, and you'll start curbing creativity in a way that won't even be visible until much, much later on, if ever... but it just won't be as rich as it could have been.

And there should always be an overall "RON collection" with *all* games listed chronologically. If for nothing else, people need to be able to say, "Damn, I could do better than this! Especially with these characters! Why, I could do so and so, and then so and so, and then... holy cow, I'd better make a game with these ideas!".

Mind you - I've been pretty much skimming this thread, not fully reading every single itty bitty point. If I'm starting to repeat myself, or am deviating from the main points, please point it out to me, else I run the risk of doing it again.

[LUniqueDan]

Valentijn : I'm sorry - I didn't want to act like a Troll.  I gave you my most sincere apologize if I may sound crude or overly controversial.

(BTW, and apologies to any of whom think the same)

But I still maintain : those questions do matters. Maybe I'm not sufficiently involve on the R. universe, finally, to give an opinion.

Anyway, I won't post into this tread anymore.

Wish You Good Luck,
Sincerely.
- Dan

[Valentijn]

Oh, I'm sorry Dan, apology accepted and here's one back from me! For a moment I was a bit unsure what you were trying to achieve; the two quoted comments went down a bit wrong with me.
It's good to hear from your perspective as well.

[Valentijn]

Rui, very good post!

Quality control goes into highly subjective debates indeed. And it goes against all that shaped RON in the glory years.
But we do have this current problem that RON is in a coma and several people in here have stated they feel RON has become too inaccessible. How I see it: it is the whole liberal nature that made it so. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy thing. You either have all the freedom in the world leading to all the chaos in the world, or you can have 'law and order', which would probably be the more accessible option now.

But yeah, some degree of the original freedom should still be given, I agree.

Thank you for using Defender as an example - it's my game after all! I can agree with you and confirm that I was indeed trying to uplift some of the lesser appreciated/some of the looser games by getting loads of references in, and installing some plot points that could be used to tie more together (the Surrealist). And I've been very vague about Davy's dead or alive status throughout the game on purpose, trying to make it both into a joke and into a mystery... by looking at his house, using the door of his house... and did any of you ever try using the x-ray eye on his grave?

I'm digressing. All what you're saying is true. But I'm just not sure at all if the past ways can be maintained while dealing with the accessibility problem, and if we want to ensure that RON won't be overflooded again with an overdose of bad stuff covering the good stuff - yes, very subjective, again, but there are quite some people who think there are too many bad games on the list, aren't there?

I actually wouldn't like to have a graphics standard installed. What I would like to have as a quality control feature is an obliged beta-testing rule (at least two testers). Something that would prevent games from being hardly playable the way Intergalactic Life was.

Although I said earlier that I'd be in favour of an 'AGS-only' rule, this is actually not what I would really want myself. It's what I think would be most beneficial in sense of resurrection.

I would like to keep all the games available. Okay, so I said a couple of times that I preferred the quizzes, the action games and the Tobias games removed... but I keep seeing these as special issues. I still can't see the point of the quizzes, I still think the action games/non AGS-games need to be taken to a separate folder, and I still think the Tobias games work better grouped together than as loose fodder throughout the pages.

Rui, your point of 'creators getting their own quality control in' actually is more pointing out the fact that creators are getting a canon control in. Games can become more canon when other games make use of them (the Jhon Steel example works very clear here). In this light it seems stupid to get three categories in but still it is probably the best idea to do so. Games could always be moved from one category to another. Perhaps if rules and regulations are installed like we are suggesting it now, Paranormal Investigation would end up in the 'other/collectors' folder indeed. But then Purity Of The Surf would have come out, possibly pulling the game with it to the canon folder. Or leaving it where it is... but then making use of a 'referenced games' tag...

In any case, I love the way you're thinking, the things you're saying... but I'm wondering if it isn't more idealism than the road to salvation...

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

It probably is. It's a character flaw, I'm more of an idealist than a practical person. I would know *exactly* how to make things work to their very best if we were in an ideal universe, catered to my vision of "ideal".

In other words, I'm pretty much like everyone else.

But ayuh. I know I'm not really helping much on a practical side, I just want to say a couple of things while it's still time for them to be said.

[Nostradamus]

+++ An humble n00bie view +++

There's a series of games called 'ROM', 'RON' or whatever.
- Some of the first features 'who sounds sooo important' can't run easily on XP.

Hum...

Nostradamus said :

All early RON games can run on XP if you run them under win95 Compatibility mode (right click--> properties on the .exe).
 

Don't worry kid, I can Run older stuff than that, under worst circumstances, with my hand tied over an acid vat.  That was not a tech tread. It's a publicity problem.

Don't call me kid, and lose the attitude. I'm not far from your age. You said you couldn't run the games so I offered a little help. I'm getting sick of trying to help people here to always have some smartasses (usually new people in the forums) having a stupid remark and\or think they know better. The fact is you said you couldn't run early RON games on XP so don't go around cocky about how your supposed "superior" OS skills.
The post was also not only for you but for the benefit of other people reading the thread who maybe had that problem, they might have seen their solution now.
And again, lose the attitude!

Moving on.
Back to RON...

[Ozzie]

Of course, the thing is that the importance of a game can't be judged when it is released.
It would need at least a half year to see how other authors adopted the characters and ideas in that game.
RON is very dynamic and the importance of a game can't be foreseen.

Regarding quality control: I guess the thing I would like to reach with it is that people stop to work lazy on a game and draw just a background with three colors (red for the wall, black for the outline and gray for the bottom, a method that's not seldom in "The Spoons", for example).
If you do a RON game you should be a bit more ambitious and not try to make a game as bad as possible and see if it gets accepted.
It's not about reaching a professional niveau. I mean the graphics of "Purity of the surf" weren't pretty, but the game had wonderful writing and was well put together. Also, you feel that the author had fun making that game.
And, as a player, you also want to have fun with a RON game.

Regarding the timeline:
I agree, there should be an all-including timeline and one with the essential games.
Maybe it would also be a nice idea if I could search for essential games ordered in the timeline.


Of course, the authors shouldn't be a seperate category.
But the catalogue is so big already that we probably need a search function. And with that I should also be able to search by author.
And, at the moment, I can't look what other games the author made when I click on his name on a game page.

Regarding advertising RON in other game-making communities:
Well, we should start then to offer the character graphics in sth. different than the .cha files, like .pcx or .png.


Of course, it will take some to come to a RON 2.0. It won't happen over night. But it should happen.

[Anym]

better graphics (nice for the eye, attracts more people. There has been done some work on it - see the sprites by Wogoat)

Nice, but by no means necessary IMHO and it shouldn't be a priority.

better quality control before inclusion in the RON catalogue (fixing inconsistencies, checking playability; production quality might also play a role (MI5 Bob or The Spoons were unacceptable in my opinion))

Unacceptable how? Those two games didn't strike me as especially bad. Sure, they aren't cream of the crop, but the puzzles have a sense of logic, the games don't have any obvious bugs and they aren't inconsistent with the rest of the series. Are the graphics not good enough? Do they introduce too many new characters and locations? And compared to what? I think they'd probably compare favorably to such "standard" titles like Lunchtime of the Damned or Vengeance of the Chicken.

Take the AGS game page and look at the different folders there. Non-adventure games are moved to a different folder there as well.
You may put five out of every eight games in the 'third folder' but that would make such an unorganised bulk again. If people start playing through that they still fall into an endless junkyard, is what I think.

Well, it's Adventure Game Studio, so people expect adventures, so putting non-adventures in a different category seems reasonable. RON on the other hand is a shared universe where the games can be anything they like. Sure, the first two categories would probably be made up entirely by adventure games made with AGS, but that shouldn't discourage anybody from writing RON interactive fiction in TADS (as I think it would if other genres or engines were "ghettoed" away).

And is the problem really that there are many bad games? I thought the problem was that people have to wade through piles of the bad games to get to the good ones. If the games are categorized into "everything you need to know" and "everything you don't need to know might want to play anyway", is it really a problem if the "third" category is an "unorganised bulk"? Especially if it's labeled "collector's only" or something along those lines. Newbies wouldn't immediately exposed to some of the "worse" games anymore. I would expect people to play the first two categories first, so anybody who then wants to play through all of the games in the third one as well, probably is already intrigued enough not to be scared away by what he sees there. A (new and improved) rating system, the timeline, the name of the games' authors and references from other games would be enough "order" IMHO.

You could do it with three folders, have the essential stuff and the good stuff and then move all the other games with a certain low rating in the third folder. But I think it would be similar to sweeping the trash under the rug. It's still there and it's still a mess.

I'm not even suggesting sweeping it under the rug (away from sight), just move it to a back room (still visible, just further away). But what would be the alternative? Purging everything from the database based upon some subjective criteria? Wouldn't it still be a mess even if it was categorized further? And if you really want more categories they should be based solely upon the games' content, not the author or genre. For example, you might want to have something like "meta-games" which could house Davy Jones Spellbook and the quiz games (but not the arcade games) or something like "dream sequences" (which could house many of Tobias' games, but not all of them and also games not made by him).

Looks like I'm more on the conservative side regarding quality control in RON (which means liberal quality control). I very much agree with what Rui said:

Overall, the game makers have been making their own quality control, haven't they? Picking up on what was good and leaving behind what was bad - most episodes are mostly self-contained, so that's entirely possible.

I think the inaccessibility stems more from the fact that there's no easy way for a newbie to tell a good (or an important or self-contained) game from a bad one (which is something the categories would hopefully take care of) rather than just the existence of bad ones in the database. Maybe that's idealism, too, but it sounds sensible to me.

[Valentijn]

But what would be the alternative? Purging everything from the database based upon some subjective criteria?

Well, maybe, yeah!
I think somebody (preferrably a selected 'jury' or something like that) is going to get into the subjective anyway even if the 'three folders' plan will be acted out. I mean, what exactly will make a game go into the second category rather than the third?

Yes, an improved voting system. Should be decisive. Which brings me back to my point about the current inactivity on the RON-site. Where are the voters? I think they'll be found right here. RON was never an AGS series by essence, but it's how it's best known. If somebody is familiar with RON they're also familiar with AGS.

I personally still don't see why more subfolders make for a less organised layout. It's like entering a paper archive either having loads of documents scattered in different rooms, or having those documents in labelled boxes in those different rooms, or having labelled boxes in labelled cabinets in those different rooms. It's one extra mouseclick making the difference. You could have a number next to the subfolders indicating how many games can be found there.
It's just my two cents for the organisation. If nobody agrees with me on this, then don't do it.

Priority goes to a main sorting system. Extra tags are a must, as is the ability to sort games based upon tags and do multi-queries: 'give me all/long/short/... games and list by: ranking and/or game type / engine / author / ...'

Although I really love the liberal idea and the possibility of having lots of creative input from different sources, the old rules made it possible for a six year old to get a game together where you have Mika in the town square, clicking on Scids in order to reach a night-time forest area, where she can pick up a blue cup after which she'll say "I want to be a buterflie", after which you get a message saying 'game over' indicating that you finished it. Such a game then had to be put on the games list, after which the kid in question could make a sequel a week.
Even though somebody else could then make a game making creative, good use of the contents of the cup-butterfly concept, you shouldn't have to expect that. And in the meantime, RON gets killed again because people will get the same issues that were made clear at the start of this whole thread.
Such a scenario should be made impossible to make for durability.

I think the inaccessibility stems more from the fact that there's no easy way for a newbie to tell a good (or an important or self-contained) game from a bad one (which is something the categories would hopefully take care of)

Categories along with a better voting system, and also a timeline extract. The current huge timeline is fantastic. It's well kept, very complete and thought through. It works. But it's a huge list that probably puts people off on a first confrontation.
What would be the really important stuff? Which games should be presented as the main games? What will make up the introduction to RON?
A voting/rating system seems to be the first thing needed. I'm lost as to where and how to get a new system together.

[Ozzie]

better graphics (nice for the eye, attracts more people. There has been done some work on it - see the sprites by Wogoat)

Nice, but by no means necessary IMHO and it shouldn't be a priority.

You know, I don't care that much about the graphics. And I agree that other things are more urgent.
But it's part of the plan to attract more people. I haven't weighed the importance of the tasks.

better quality control before inclusion in the RON catalogue (fixing inconsistencies, checking playability; production quality might also play a role (MI5 Bob or The Spoons were unacceptable in my opinion))

Unacceptable how? Those two games didn't strike me as especially bad. Sure, they aren't cream of the crop, but the puzzles have a sense of logic, the games don't have any obvious bugs and they aren't inconsistent with the rest of the series. Are the graphics not good enough? Do they introduce too many new characters and locations? And compared to what? I think they'd probably compare favorably to such "standard" titles like Lunchtime of the Damned or Vengeance of the Chicken.

Well, I have to admit that I played them, hm, two years ago, but as far as I can remember I thought that these were the least enjoyable ones (together with the Surreal Dreams).
Well, you could say that there were no bugs, no showstoppers, the story was consistent with the canon and that's enough for inclusion.
But I think that developers should get pushed to try it better. For example, they could be asked to add more hotspot descriptions, to fix the grammar (well, that would probably need the help from a native speaker) and the perspective of the backgrounds.
Often there's nothing totally wrong, but some fine-tuning can make the difference between a somehow okay and really good game. 

Well, I understand that the graphics are a critical point. When are they good enough?
Maybe graphics alone shouldn't hold back for inclusion in the RON catalogue.
Still, it should be definately recommend to look at some drawing tutorials or ask someone for help with the graphics.
Like I said, it's not about reaching professional niveau.
But it should also be more than a door and a bare wall and bottom.

Looks like I'm more on the conservative side regarding quality control in RON (which means liberal quality control). I very much agree with what Rui said:

Overall, the game makers have been making their own quality control, haven't they? Picking up on what was good and leaving behind what was bad - most episodes are mostly self-contained, so that's entirely possible.

That's an oversimplification. For example, nobody picked up the story about the Surrealist (okay, except this eye-torturing game "Surreality"). Josh Beachcomber was never seen again after Purity of the Surf.
And I haven't seen a reference to the Tapestry episodes in games by other authors.
It doesn't always work like that. Often it's also the question how much work it is to follow one storyline or develop a character more (for example, I think the reason that Punk Allen was never used more is because he had no walking animations, afaik).
The Surrealist was also a vague concept and pretty much everything could fit in. The border was so wide that it wasn't that easy to come up with a good explanation.
And about the Tapestry stuff: these are unusual dark games and that's probably the reason why it hasn't found its way into other RON games.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Or maybe it could be because, like Cabbages and Kings, The Tapestry is so obviously a trilogy made by the author and still unconcluded that people don't want to mess with that storyline until they know how it ends, hmmm?

Surreality was an effort, and the first one to pick up on the surrealist. Since then no games did, but then again, that's pretty much the point where RON games stopped being the work of love that they used to be, with a few exceptions. Also, I think it's unlikely that anyone expected one single game to explain the whole Surrealist thing, and if that's the reasoning people had then maybe that's the problem. It's supposed to *grow*, in much the same way that, say, the X-Files mythos or the Twin Peaks storyline grew - or even the Legacy of Kain storyline. Lots of people adding their bit, taking care just not to contradict. Eventually it'll take shape.

Naturally, if people just look at it and go "this is too big, there's no way I can explain it", it doens't work. No one has to explain it, just add to the mystery until it takes shape.

Josh is still there. So no one has bothered to pick him up yet, he's still there.

Also, "Punk Allen" having no walking animations as a reason for him being use makes sense... but only when you don't think of characters like, say, the blue alien. That guy came from a text game, and a really weird one. Someone had to draw the character. Once it was drawn, it was used. Meaning, if someone really wants to use a character, stuff like that is the least of people's worries.

[Ozzie]

Or maybe it could be because, like Cabbages and Kings, The Tapestry is so obviously a trilogy made by the author and still unconcluded that people don't want to mess with that storyline until they know how it ends, hmmm?

Well, that surely explains why Melt & Drake were picked up in many other games...  :

Surreality was an effort, and the first one to pick up on the surrealist. Since then no games did, but then again, that's pretty much the point where RON games stopped being the work of love that they used to be, with a few exceptions. Also, I think it's unlikely that anyone expected one single game to explain the whole Surrealist thing, and if that's the reasoning people had then maybe that's the problem. It's supposed to *grow*, in much the same way that, say, the X-Files mythos or the Twin Peaks storyline grew - or even the Legacy of Kain storyline. Lots of people adding their bit, taking care just not to contradict. Eventually it'll take shape.

Naturally, if people just look at it and go "this is too big, there's no way I can explain it", it doens't work. No one has to explain it, just add to the mystery until it takes shape.

That's true of course. Maybe it's just my way of thinking. I try to conclude most things.
Yeah, you could spread some hints, but eventually it should lead up somewhere, unlike the X-Files.

Josh is still there. So no one has bothered to pick him up yet, he's still there.

I know. My point is, he wasn't picked up. So to say that only games are good which also get referenced in other games is wrong. So, you can't say that there's proper self-control.
And, of course, John Steel is an interesting character, but "Paranormal Investigator" wasn't really great.
Additionally, even if you could say that only games are good which get referenced then this wouldn't mean that the game which is referencing is good.

Also, "Punk Allen" having no walking animations as a reason for him being use makes sense... but only when you don't think of characters like, say, the blue alien. That guy came from a text game, and a really weird one. Someone had to draw the character. Once it was drawn, it was used. Meaning, if someone really wants to use a character, stuff like that is the least of people's worries.

Well, actually, dasTobias remade Intergalactic Life into a graphic adventure and in that Knoffel was a real ugly sprite. I guess Dave Gilbert asked someone to redraw the sprite.
But in most cases only one person tries to do everything himself.
And interesting enough, most people who are interested in RON are horrible graphic artists.
Also, I want to use Punk Allen in my game. But I need to ask someone to help me out with animations because I can't animate, really.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Well, that surely explains why Melt & Drake were picked up in many other games...

Well, I was talking about plotlines. You're talking about characters.

And, of course, John Steel is an interesting character, but "Paranormal Investigator" wasn't really great.

That was my point exactly - although the game was not good, it gave birth to an interesting character.

Well, actually, dasTobias remade Intergalactic Life into a graphic adventure and in that Knoffel was a real ugly sprite. I guess Dave Gilbert asked someone to redraw the sprite.

Ah, right, I'd forgotten about that. Still, if Dave Gilbert wanted the sprite enough to ask someone else, what's to stop someone from doing the same thing?

BTW, it'd be much better publicity if the *news* item of the RON website was currently working.

[Dave Gilbert]

Well, actually, dasTobias remade Intergalactic Life into a graphic adventure and in that Knoffel was a real ugly sprite. I guess Dave Gilbert asked someone to redraw the sprite.

Bit mean of me, but I actually used Knoffel as a way to poke fun at his creator (i.e., the horrible english).  And, er, I drew that sprite myself. :-/  The sprite of Maria Scotterson (the real estate lady) was taken from a text game though. 

I do agree with the point that a game or character doesn't have to be referenced constantly to be good.  Mika is in a heck of a lot of games, but I'd hardly call all the games that star her as "good."  I really enjoyed the "Phantom Inheritence", and consider it one of the better games (simple but sweet, plus the production values are the best in an RoN game), but nobody has yet to take the characters or plot points introduced in that game and do something with them.

[Anym]

You know, I don't care that much about the graphics. And I agree that other things are more urgent.
But it's part of the plan to attract more people. I haven't weighed the importance of the tasks.

Yeah, but I don't think it should be part of the plan at all. If people are turned off by simple, but clean low resolution graphics, they probably won't be attracted by elaborate low resolution graphics either. Also, people are going to be turned off by the graphics in the games, not the graphics on the resource page. Over time, the overall graphics quality in the resource packs (if not necessarily in the games themselves) has steadily improved and if you manage to attract people, I think it will continue to do so (quasi by itself). If anything, graphics tutorials should be made.

Well, I have to admit that I played them, hm, two years ago, but as far as I can remember I thought that these were the least enjoyable ones (together with the Surreal Dreams).
Well, you could say that there were no bugs, no showstoppers, the story was consistent with the canon and that's enough for inclusion.
But I think that developers should get pushed to try it better. For example, they could be asked to add more hotspot descriptions, to fix the grammar (well, that would probably need the help from a native speaker) and the perspective of the backgrounds.
Often there's nothing totally wrong, but some fine-tuning can make the difference between a somehow okay and really good game.

I've seen much worse, but I agree with you. Maybe people shouldn't be able to "release" a game on the RON forums for immediate inclusion on the site, but rather release it for public beta testing there and only after that it would get added. Of course, that leaves the tricky matter of "approving" games.

That's an oversimplification. For example, nobody picked up the story about the Surrealist (okay, except this eye-torturing game "Surreality"). Josh Beachcomber was never seen again after Purity of the Surf.

No, I think the idea of that self-regulation isn't that everything from good games is going to get picked up, rather it's that few things from bad games will get picked up again. Take the all the characters and locations from Edge of Reality for example. If things from a bad game are picked up again and again, it's probably because somebody picked it up in a good game sometime.

And, of course, John Steel is an interesting character, but "Paranormal Investigator" wasn't really great.

That was my point exactly - although the game was not good, it gave birth to an interesting character.

No, Jhon Steel was an empty shell, that was only made into an interesting character later on (by other people). And if you see future appearances of Knoffel, it's probably because of his appearance (which was also different in character than what we have seen of him so far) in Purity of the Surf rather than because of the games he featured as player character.

What would be the really important stuff? Which games should be presented as the main games? What will make up the introduction to RON?

The bare essentials, as few as possible, according to me, first draft, subject to change:

• I Spy introduces Mika Huy and, as she is new in town, it also re-introduces most other early characters and it summarizes the events of Lunchtime of the Damned nicely.
  
• The Repossessor introduces Death who's presence has to be explained somehow and advances the mayoral campaign subplot.
  
• The First Stitch introduces Greyson and Simon Jones, recapitulates most things that have happened so far and serves as introduction to the tapestry subplot.
  
• The Postman Only dies Once introduces Max Griff, fleshes out Mika Huy, features some minor characters not yet seen in the above games, advances the mayoral campaign further and has Phil Nihilist drink nuclear waste which hints as the superhero subplot.
  
• Davy Jones C'est Mort features the death of a character, or maybe it doesn't, and shows that RON games can be of a different style than the above games.
  
• The Universal Equalizer makes clear that said character really is dead without revealing how he really did die, so that there's no ambiguity about whether he die, only about how he died.
  
• A game that established that Michael Gower has been in fact elected mayor and that takes place during the time that Davy Jones is dead, probably either I Spy 2 or Dead Man's Political Party, but not both.
  
• Davy Jones is Back resurrects a character.
  
• Cabbages & Kings introduces Melt, Drake and a couple of other characters and features some more not yet seen in the above games and serves as introduction to the kittens subplot.
  
• III Spy fleshes out some more characters and features some more characters not yet seen in the above games, has Gower run for office again and provides a quality standard to aspire to.
  

As much as I like them, I couldn't bring myself to include any of Grundislav's games because they didn't have enough of an impact and the tapestry and kittens are still incomplete and haven't made much of an impact yet either, so I just provided "hooks" for them. On the other hand, I also didn't want to leave out Davy Jones C'est Mort, because I do find it essential.

[Ozzie]

Well, actually, dasTobias remade Intergalactic Life into a graphic adventure and in that Knoffel was a real ugly sprite. I guess Dave Gilbert asked someone to redraw the sprite.

Bit mean of me, but I actually used Knoffel as a way to poke fun at his creator (i.e., the horrible english).  And, er, I drew that sprite myself. :-/  The sprite of Maria Scotterson (the real estate lady) was taken from a text game though. 

Well, DasTobias actually liked the appearance of Knoffel in your game. so I guess he took it positively.

Eh, I just guessed that someone else drew the sprite, because, ehm, I had the impression that you're not a great graphic artist. And, since I'm equally untalented, I couldn't imagine that you could drew a nice looking sprite.
So, respect!!

About the timeline: that's really a cut down one, Anym. I have to check if the Grundislav games are really that unessential. Also, while Purity Of The Surf wasn't referenced it had much story development (much like Soviet Union Strikes Again!, which introduced Thakbor, his mom, Mr. Namyah...).
So, Purity and Union should be included.
Edit: Oh, and I would be more for IISpy instead of Dead Man's Political Party.
Doesn't Pirate Postman play at one day of Dead Man's Political Party?

Well, that surely explains why Melt & Drake were picked up in many other games...

Well, I was talking about plotlines. You're talking about characters.

Well, that brings up the question again when a game get referenced. According to you when a plotline gets deepened, but Anym thinks when a character gets adopted.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

No, Jhon Steel was an empty shell, that was only made into an interesting character later on (by other people).

Well, yeah, that's what I've been saying all along, to illustrate the value of a mostly unchecked  community effort.

[Duchess]

So I also went through the process of answering questions just to have my go... hope my views are of any help.

Valentijn got me into Ron 2 1/2 years ago and I do admit I found it hard to really see the point of it when I played the first couple of games. I think what made me go on, though, was that I knew that Tijn had similar tastes to myself when it comes to games, so I just trusted his opinion. So I guess to get interested in Ron, and play the games that are important since they introduce essential characters and plotlines, but don't feature interesting puzzles or good graphics you really need some one to tell you: get through this, and you get to some really great games.

I've been interested in adventure games pretty much since I knew about the existence of computers, and I'd always dreamed of making a game of my own. Getting to know AGS was great, and it appealed to me that using the Ron template, characters and rooms I would be able to release something without drawing for ages. Still, I felt a bit disappointed when I first got into Ron. It seemed more as a corset to me to have to work within this world, which however grew on me with every game I played. The characters all seemed a bit flat to me at first. For one thing, I didn't like Davy that much. He has really great appearances in later games, though, but it's also great to have a character that is essential, but that you may or may not want to include, and if you don't, you can continue a nice running gag of not stating where he is and whether he is alive.

Much of the charm and power of Ron for me really comes from the amazing way that weak games and characters have been handled. For instance, the way Knoffel was used by Dave Gilbert was just amazing, it wasn't clear as to whether he was subtly taking the piss, or whether he really thought the character was - with its "alien" bad English - part of the Ron continuity. Weak games have kept the Ron community going in some ways, it seems.

At the same time, it would be very helpful not to have to play all the weak games to get the references. Maybe a wiki wouldn't be such a bad idea (since the work involved would just be too much for just one person), one where you can look up, say, "Purity on the Surf", and then get a link to an article about Knoffel, that explains shortly what the character is about. Of course there should be a chance for people who don't want the spoilers for other games to check out those games, but for people who just want to play one of the games deemed "canon" there should be a way of quickly getting into all there is to know about the characters used. That is colossal work, though, and I'm not sure I could do it (for one thing, I never cared to play "Paranormal Investigation", but I always enjoyed the Jhon appearances, mainly because I had somebody (i.e. Tijn) telling me how the character came accross in its first appearance). So a quick run-through all the weaker games, possibly with screenshots, would be a really nice resource. I'd also be willing to help, as far as I played the games, if more people think that this would be a good course of action.

Apart from that, the character pages should be arranged differently indeed, with minor characters being in a different section. However, it's always nice to see the minor characters. I often searched through them to see which one looked like I would imagine a minor character in my game, and then I could just modify the sprites in question a little. It also wouldn't be out of the question to have an "all-purpose" sprite who assumes loads of different roles, sort of a reverse to the bum. I felt forced to modify the sprite enough so you wouldn't confuse him too much with a minor character from a game I didn't play, so it would be good to know that there is one character which you can fit into every role if you want to.

Different games folders is another good approach. Much has been said on that matter, I don't have anything vital to add, I think.

As to quality control... indeed Dan had a point in saying that stricter rules may not necessarily be attractive to new members. Overworking the Ron page and stating "all the games have to pass a quality test before they will be released" is clearly not the desirable course of action. I suggest that new games should be in a section for "new games" for half a year or so, not regarding whether the older Ron-ners think it's a good game or not. In this stage the game should be open for discussion. I think that some authors may even not react completely insulted if you suggest some things that would make the next effort better, as an adventure and as a Ron game. If an author really doesn't want to do anything else than that exact game and it's not what most of the members of the Ron community are looking for, well, then it's moved to the "other" folder (or however it's labeled), but it should still count as a vital approach, and might even spark of some nice references.

One should avoid giving the impression that there's an all-knowing jury who either pat you on the back or grade your game as substandard. I think what separates the weaker games from the better games is mainly the experiences the authors have had with games, and their ambition. Imagine someone who never played a Lucasarts or similar quality adventure. It wouldn't be surprising if their game didn't have much of a story, or any interesting puzzles. Then it would be up to the community to suggest good games that handle some problems in a better way, hopefully leading new members to great new (retro) game discoveries, and maybe sparking off new ideas.

Phew, I was already afraid this was going to be a rather long post, so thank you for bearing with me. As a final thing - I've been working on my own game now for months (while it rested most of the time), and posts pronouncing Ron dead really make me uneasy. It's great that it seems to be consensus to try and keep it alive. The thread really motivated me to put some more work in it, though, so it's great to have some anxiety, to still want to have it released before Ron is shut down. Which I don't want to happen.

I never announced my game on the Ron forum because I didn't want to pressurise myself by such an announcement. I did consider checking my plot ideas, but since my plot is closed in itself and doesn't change any of the major characters I thought I better keep quiet, so as not to spoil anything, or to raise hopes for something which is never released.

However, I'm about 85% finished now, and I can say with some safety that I will release it by summer, which can mean either July, if my current phase of motivation lasts enough to make me work alongside uni, or September, if I should feel I'm too busy after all and wait for the vacations to do the rest. And yes, I'm a newbie, and yes, it's gonna be in German and very surrealist. Okay, kidding on the last two points. So much for "f*** release something": I'm about to. Really. And I can't wait to see the reactions to my efforts, so I hope at least the people involved in this thread will believe enough in Ron to play my game when it's finished.

[Ozzie]

Well, great to hear that someone else is also working on a RON game.
I have the feeling that a few RON games get silently developed.
Maybe a new release may also push others.
Overall, I think that all those worked on and unfinished projects got unusually ambitious.

Well, if such a game gets finished then it's even better.

About beta-testing:
You can release a RON game without quality control, yes, with grammar as poor as possible, with graphics to let your eyes bleed and a story that makes no sense or, even worse, bores you to death.

But, in my opinion, it shouldn't be added to the RON catalogue then and not be considered an official RON game at all.
So, if you want it to be official you should try your best and invest some time.
Anf if you're poor at something then you can probably ask for help.
Nobody has to do everything alone, I think.

[bumblearse]

As one of the admins for the RoN site, I just wanted to make short post to let you all know that I'm taking onboard all the comments that have been made. I have already started work on how we might implement RoN 2.0 (for want of a better name ) to make it more accessible to new and old users alike. In all honesty, although the site has had a couple of makeovers since I joined, the information structure has never really been touched.

I think that the ideas around control are very valid; even in a community there needs to be direction, and it is up to the community 'leaders' to provide this. Having a core group in place to provide support during the production of new games will hopefully encourage new members and provide a measure of quality control at the same time.

I think it would also be useful to split the site into two sections: 'play' and 'make'. The 'play' section would contain everything required to play the games, including information on technical issues and 'hints and tips'. Hopefully, through a positive experience of the community, we can then get them to move over into the 'make' side of the site. This part would include detailed breakdowns on location and characters, tutorials and resources; everything you need to make your own RoN game.

Finally, I was going to say something else, but I've completely forgotten... doh!

I look forward to your comments!

James

P.S. At the moment the site is experiencing some technical issues which are completely out of our control, but hopefully these will be sorted out very soon.

[tamaravel]

Hi! I have not played a lot of the RoN games, but here are a few suggestions which might make the project better(and more user-friendly)
First, I think that the resources(graphical) should come in formats that are easier to edit, because it is actually very annoying having to import these into AGS and then extracting the graphics(especially for characters!), users should have the option of using pre-made .CHA files , or using just the graphics so they can be edited(this can be especially useful for people using
programs other then AGS).
Secondly, why not create a starterpack? This could contain basic main characters and backgrounds(plus a word document giving some info on each character and location), as well as objects/inventory items,some music, a custom RoN-themed GUI/template and a few tutorials to get people started.
Finally, all of the graphical resources should be improved in a consistent style, and graphical(as well as scripting) tutorials should be offered,as well as a critics' lounge style board where people can post their artwork,music and demos in order to promote a quality control rather then directly enforcing it.

[Valentijn]

Good to hear from you, Bumblearse! It's great that somebody's really enacting upon this thread and RON 2.0 ('name pending') is getting realised! I really like your idea of splitting the site in the suggested sections!!
Should you need any help in getting some information pages or such together, feel free to ask, I'd be happy to try and help out.

Anyway, something I still wanted to add, or more, repeat, is the suggestion Dave Gilbert already made very early in this thread (and I myself made later as well) to get a better RON promotion on the AGS site.

The counterargument to this was that RON isn't (at least, has never been, and probably isn't going to be) AGS exclusive. But I still think that RON is best known for having AGS games, and it may do the community a lot of good to start advertising with the very best it has to offer - which currently are some of the AGS games.

Right now there's one link leading from there to the RON site, as well as a couple of odd games having their single entry (MI5 Bob, for one). I see MMMania has more entries, easier found right there at the letter M.
Wouldn't it be a good idea, wouldn't it be possible to either:
-Get ALL of the RON AGS games on the AGS game pages, giving all titles the RON prefix (=the option I'd favor as the games can then all be rated using the better AGS rating system, on a place where more people go than the RON site (even tho that site is going to be revamped))
-Advertise with a selection of the best games (the suggested 'essentials')

I think there is one game in particular which should be used as a sort of flagship. It's 'The Postman Only Dies Once'. It features a classic RON art style (people may easily get the idea that they could do that too, as opposed to something like III Spy or the Phantom Inheritance), good puzzles, a very nice story and lots of good jokes... but most of all it features enough different 'classic' locations to make for an 'essential' RON introduction and even above that it has a great introduction into many characters. You don't need to know that Mika arrived in RON in I Spy in order to understand her character in the Postman. You don't need to know who Davy is and his whole death thing isn't even featured in the game; the character is presented in a very clear way. A lot of things are really good about the game, I think it clearly shows what you could do with AGS and RON, I think many people will agree with me on the good quality of this particular game.
I think it would be very helpful if the first RON game people play is a good game, that will encourage them to 1. play more 2. make one themselves. In my opinion, The Postman Only Dies Once is this game. I suggest it's the game to go on top of the list on the games page.
Does anyone agree with me on this?

[Ozzie]

It's definately a good game, especially the scenes where Mika questions the town people are hilarous.
I agree that we should make AGS pages for all the essentials games.
It's not wrong to promote RON here, especially since it originated from the AGS forum, but we should also consider to promote it in other game making communities. And that's why the sprites should also be available in normal picture files.

Also, I agree that RON 2.0 is a stupid name. And RON Reloaded is not better!
But when we reach that new stage we should also promote it as such. RON, now even better than before!

Oh, btw, thanks Bumblearse for your efforts!!

There's also one other thing I wanted to clear up: How can a game work in the timeline when it has more than one ending?
Toxically Earth has 8 different ones! It's not possible to build on this one because they can't be all considered!!

I personally think that multiple endings should be allowed, and not just that there's one happy end and the rest are failures.
But I think the game designer should make clear which ending is the right one for the continuity!
Or there should be the rule that a following RON author who builds on such a game should decide which ending was the right one...

[DeviantGent]

RON 2 - Electric Boogaloo?
RON Part Deux?
RON II - The Fall of RON?

Or if we want to be completly gratuitous, why not simply 'Reality 2.0'? 

[Valentijn]

I quite like that idea of an author picking up a multiple-ending game thread deciding which is the right one, that might even surprise the author behind the original game!
Of course it's only really an issue if some endings have a specific unique impact on the world.

In any case. I was thinking some more about the folders and categorising and such. All the time I've been looking at how it's done with the AGS games page, but to be honest I always thought that was too disorganised as well.
One filing system which is, in my opinion, an excellent, organised and user-friendly one is the one used on Home of the Underdogs. You can do lots of different sorts of queries there, and then sort the list based upon multiple conditions.
Something like that might be a good example for a new RON layout. I'm all for loads of extra tags/labels per game. I like Anym's suggestion made in response to my ideas, of getting 'themes' in. And maybe another tag could be given to 'puzzle type' (simple / errand / nonsensical(abstract) / complex / ...). Similar for art style and everything, and with a few easy clicks on the search page everybody can find the game they may like best.

It may even be a nice idea to nick the recommendations thing from Home of the Underdogs, where three similar ('if you like this you may also like') games are given. I sure discovered lots of stuff via the Underdogs' pages... including RON! Okay so maybe incorporating this on the RON site won't work at all with so many similar games... but in any case, it never hurts to look at good & working examples!

(By the way... 'World of RON'? 'RONmania'? 'RON - the next generation'? okay I'll shut up now...)

[Anym]

About the timeline: that's really a cut down one, Anym. I have to check if the Grundislav games are really that unessential. Also, while Purity Of The Surf wasn't referenced it had much story development (much like Soviet Union Strikes Again!, which introduced Thakbor, his mom, Mr. Namyah...).
So, Purity and Union should be included.
Edit: Oh, and I would be more for IISpy instead of Dead Man's Political Party.
Doesn't Pirate Postman play at one day of Dead Man's Political Party?

Thakbor, his mum and Mr. Namyah are quite negligible characters IMHO (even though Thakbor was among the very first dozen characters to be created) and they alone don't provide a compelling reason to include The Soviet Union Strikes Again! especially if we also consider Purity of the Surf (which features Thakbor much more prominently) for inclusion. Purity of the Surf was also a hard game not to include and I guess you could replace III Spy with it, but ultimately, it didn't provide many plot hooks and all the character development (especially Josh, Thakbor and Knoffel) wasn't picked up much either, so ultimately, because I wanted the list to be as short as possible I decided against it.

While Hooky McPegleg, Pirate Postman also takes places during the period of Davy's death and the mayoral election, I felt it didn't deal with Davy's death that nicely, because Hooky, didn't really know Davy and because the game features another character dressing up as Davy. Also, the game is strongly linked to Lost Treasure of RON, so including one, would almost inevitably mean including the other, which was one more argument (to minimize the number of games) of opting for a single game rather than those two, because, if taken together, they are almost stand-alone, not unlike Purity of the Surf.

I never announced my game on the Ron forum because I didn't want to pressurise myself by such an announcement. I did consider checking my plot ideas, but since my plot is closed in itself and doesn't change any of the major characters I thought I better keep quiet, so as not to spoil anything, or to raise hopes for something which is never released.

It's good to hear that there are also games "secretly" in development. Even if your plot is self-contained, you might want to make a quick post about it though, just in case somebody else makes changes to a character or location or somebody introduces a character very similar to one you are going to introduce, so that ideally, they could me merged into one character, so that there aren't too many "duplicates".

Wouldn't it be a good idea, wouldn't it be possible to either:
-Get ALL of the RON AGS games on the AGS game pages, giving all titles the RON prefix (=the option I'd favor as the games can then all be rated using the better AGS rating system, on a place where more people go than the RON site (even tho that site is going to be revamped))
-Advertise with a selection of the best games (the suggested 'essentials')

While I'm against a tighter integration of the RON/AGS site/forums, I like the idea of having all the AGS RON games in the AGS database and see nothing wrong with. It might even give the games some more exposure. I'm a bit skeptical about adopting the rating system, though, as it wouldn't be inclusive of all the games. Of course, one might argue that all the best games are AGS anyway and the rest should just go unrated, and be sorted at the bottom of a "sort by ratings" list, but I'd find that rather unfair (especially for non-AGS games that are good, like The Sorcerer's Appraisal).

Note that "essential" isn't the same as "best" and if I were to compile a list of the ten "best" games it would be vastly different from my list of "essential" games.

I think there is one game in particular which should be used as a sort of flagship. It's 'The Postman Only Dies Once'. It features a classic RON art style (people may easily get the idea that they could do that too, as opposed to something like III Spy or the Phantom Inheritance), good puzzles, a very nice story and lots of good jokes... but most of all it features enough different 'classic' locations to make for an 'essential' RON introduction and even above that it has a great introduction into many characters. You don't need to know that Mika arrived in RON in I Spy in order to understand her character in the Postman. You don't need to know who Davy is and his whole death thing isn't even featured in the game; the character is presented in a very clear way. A lot of things are really good about the game, I think it clearly shows what you could do with AGS and RON, I think many people will agree with me on the good quality of this particular game.

It may even be a nice idea to nick the recommendations thing from Home of the Underdogs, where three similar ('if you like this you may also like') games are given. I sure discovered lots of stuff via the Underdogs' pages... including RON! Okay so maybe incorporating this on the RON site won't work at all with so many similar games... but in any case, it never hurts to look at good & working examples!

That gives me an idea: Choose-Your-Own-Reality! (provisional title)

The Reality Chamber of Commerce welcomes you to our beautiful town of Reality-On-The-Norm. Make yourself at home! To familiarize yourself with our town, we respectfully suggest you start at 0 and then continue from there as you wish. Enjoy your stay!

0:
Play THE POSTMAN ONLY DIES ONCE and then,
     if you want to know why a zombie is running for mayor, go to 1,
     if you want to know how Death came to live in Reality, go to 10,
     if you want to know how Mika came to live in Reality, go to 5
     if you want to know more how the sheriff lost his leg, go to 4,
     if you want to know how the drinks got swapped with the nuclear weapons, go to 7,
     if you want to know what kind of packages Davy sends to Abu Dhabi, go to 3,
     if you want to know who is going to become the new postman, go to 14,
     if you want to play another game by the same author, go to 41,
     otherwise, go to 12.

1:
Play LUNCHTIME OF THE DAMNED and then,
     if you want to know how Davy got his start as a magician, go to 24,
     if you want to play another game as Davy, go to 3,
     if you want to play a game as Elandra, go to 8,
     if you want to get rid of Davy, go to 2,
     otherwise go to 5.

2:
Play VENGEANCE OF THE CHICKEN and then,
     if you want to bring the chicken to justice, go to 4,
     otherwise go to 5.

3:
Play THE SOVIET UNION STRIKES AGAIN and then,
     if you want to play another game as Davy, go to 1,
     otherwise go to 5.

4:
Play FOWL PLAY and then,
     if you want to know how the chicken got the gun, go to 2,
     go to 5.

5:
Play I SPY and then,
     if you want to know what Davy and Elandra did in the meantime, go to 8,
     if you want to know how Bill Cosby died, go to 1,
     if you want to know how the chicken got the gun, go to 2,
     otherwise go to 10.

7:
Play RETURN OF DEE VIE ESS and then,
     go to 69.

8:
Play BLAST OFF and then,
     go to 5.

10:
Play THE REPOSSESSOR and then,
     if you want to know why a zombie is running for mayor, go to 1,
     if you want to know how the chicken got the gun, go to 2,
     otherwise, go to 13.

12:
Play DAVY JONES C'EST MORT and then,
     go to 23.

14:
Play THE LOST TREASURE OF RON and then,
     go to 18.

(...)

The Reality Chamber of Commerce is proud to be associated with Yahtzeebrand, Cloudy Davy Real Estate, Linders of RON, Grundy's market, Scid's bar, Chez Chef and Dominatrix Pizza.

[Ozzie]

Thakbor, his mum and Mr. Namyah are quite negligible characters IMHO (even though Thakbor was among the very first dozen characters to be created) and they alone don't provide a compelling reason to include The Soviet Union Strikes Again! especially if we also consider Purity of the Surf (which features Thakbor much more prominently) for inclusion. Purity of the Surf was also a hard game not to include and I guess you could replace III Spy with it, but ultimately, it didn't provide many plot hooks and all the character development (especially Josh, Thakbor and Knoffel) wasn't picked up much either, so ultimately, because I wanted the list to be as short as possible I decided against it.

While Hooky McPegleg, Pirate Postman also takes places during the period of Davy's death and the mayoral election, I felt it didn't deal with Davy's death that nicely, because Hooky, didn't really know Davy and because the game features another character dressing up as Davy. Also, the game is strongly linked to Lost Treasure of RON, so including one, would almost inevitably mean including the other, which was one more argument (to minimize the number of games) of opting for a single game rather than those two, because, if taken together, they are almost stand-alone, not unlike Purity of the Surf.

Okay, it's some while since I last played through all RON games, so I have no ideal qualification for choosing the essential games.
Still, when you don't want to include Soviet, why then IIISpy. It actually is also a very standalone game and you can't say where it even belongs in the timeline. It fleshes out characters, something Soviet does do too. And features many new characters, like Soviet.
In my eyes Soviet has tons of story development. Oh, and you see Davy's room for the first time. And you get to know that he needs a magic ring for...magic.
Okay, I get silly.

About pirate postman: I played it again yesterday and it wasn't really a problem that you didn't knew the first part since its happenings were summarized at the beginning. I'm not sure about its inclusion, though. For the timeline, it would be the most relevant of Grundislav games, though.
I haven't played through IISpy for now, but it seems like a nice game.

Edit: Sorry for my fucked up post, I was in time struggle.
I like the idea of choose-your-own-reality though.

[Shinan]

I've now spent a couple of hours reading through this thread, that I came by by mistake when lurking these forums for the first time in a couple of months. RON is fairly dear to me, I've made one game ever and that was a RON game (Simon's Journey), it probably wasn't all that good and would probably be put in the "other" category. But still, if I were to do another game (they're always brewing there a bit, though nothing ever happends) RON is probably where I'd do it.

I think is great because it enables newbies (like me) to make a game rather easily, I came upon RON while looking for some of those insta-game things for resources and I've made unreleased test using RON graphics because honestly, I'm just not that good at graphics myself. With that said the graphics style of RON fits me perfectly since I can use the premade stuff and I can with little effort edit some things to suit my needs (A change of clothing, an open window, an item here or there even a simple change of pose) without it feeling too inconsistent with the overall style.

All this said I also like the rather low standards (liberal was it?) of the games because when I played through the RON games, trying to figure out how I could fit in, the thought that struck me was "I can do something like this." and that encouraged me. Because of my inferior graphical skills I'm always discouraged when I see all kinds of amazing screenshots with beautiful sprites and background in 256 colours and I sit there in paint and can hardly do a trash can. However I also agree that these "lesser games" don't really belong in the same room as the "cream of the crop".

Looking back at this post I haven't really provided much constructive because I think most of the things that can be said have already been said. I'll just add that I agree. There should be a list of games for newbies to play. The games should also show off what can be done with the resources available (A game done using only existing resources with no editing done to them), while still being interesting.

Umm yeah, I'll go back to lurking and if I get the time I could try to churn out a short RON game during the summer. I just have to remind myself not to get overly ambitious... And re-learn AGS of course.

[Dave Gilbert]

All this said I also like the rather low standards (liberal was it?) of the games because when I played through the RON games, trying to figure out how I could fit in, the thought that struck me was "I can do something like this." and that encouraged me.

That is EXACTLY why I created "Repossessor" back in 2001.  It was the first time I thought to myself "Hey, I could do something like this!"  If it weren't for RoN, I would never have thought about making games at all.   That's the main reason I hate to see it die.

As for the "essential" games, should the focus be more on showing RoN's history or the characters?  A mix of both?  A game like "Chef" hardly moves the story forward, but it has a lot of excellent character moments that really show what RoN's all about.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Not to mention it defines the Chef's and his character's personality. We've been moving away from characters - surely games that define characters are as important as games that advance the (many) storyline(s)?

Mind you, a subcategory especially for these character-development games is more than reasonable.

[Duchess]

Okay, I'll just bring this topic a bit further to the top of the forums...

I just wanted to give my compliments to the Ron page admins that the site is up and working again. Today I could even register for the forums, so I may post my game plot there, as suggested. Last week I repeatedly tried registering and got errors all the time, so it's great that the problem was only temporary.

I checked out the Ron-wiki, and yes, the characters are all jumbled into one article, with the minor characters happily mixed with the more important ones. I'd really like to register and redo that, so we really have the funniest, shapliest characters (the bum, Mika, Max, Davy...) up front. I have some time off next week so I might as well be doing that. Is the wiki in any way to be expanded, and tied into the Ron page, or should I rather try to write my stuff in html and post it to someone or something? Hope bumblearse or whoever's in charge may read my reply soon.

At the moment things are looking up for me putting up the game for beta-testing by June. This thread has really helped me to get back to work, and I enjoy scripting and painting some of the last few bits a lot these days, so keep my optimism going!

Unrealistic greetings!

[Radiant]

Where is this wiki you speak of? I saw no changes in the site other than that it's no longer offline.

Anyway, figuring that "how do we solve it" is by making more games, I've got a plot sketched out. However, I have no spare time at the moment to do any actual coding. Working title is "Root of all Evil". Coming some time later this year, cross fingers.

[Ozzie]

Where is this wiki you speak of? I saw no changes in the site other than that it's no longer offline.

Anyway, figuring that "how do we solve it" is by making more games, I've got a plot sketched out. However, I have no spare time at the moment to do any actual coding. Working title is "Root of all Evil". Coming some time later this year, cross fingers.

[/quote

For the wiki, look here.
I think like Radiant said, it's the best idea first to start making games again.
After that I would approach a redesign, personally.