Happy 18 RotN

Started by Renegade Implementor, Sun 17/02/2019 18:20:25

Previous topic - Next topic

Renegade Implementor

Today marks 18 years of Reality-on-the-Norm!

Click'd

Based on a release date, I suppose?

Renegade Implementor

Yep.  The first RotN game "Lunchtime Of The Damned" was released Feb 17, 2001.

Retro Wolf

Wow, 6 years since I made Reality Check. How life has changed since then!

Shame we don't see much RON content anymore.

Hobo

I'm still planning to make a RON game at some point, maybe for the 20th birthday or 21st.
I mean, RON's way too young to retire, right?

Danvzare

Quote from: Retro Wolf on Mon 18/02/2019 19:02:51
Shame we don't see much RON content anymore.
Quote from: Hobo on Wed 27/02/2019 21:56:27
I mean, RON's way too young to retire, right?
I can't speak for everyone, but I can certainly say why I've never made a RON game. Perhaps it might shed some light onto the reason why no one makes RON games anymore.

My reason, is simply because I have no idea where I would even begin. I don't know any of the characters, who they are, their personalities, what they do, or anything.
With something like Maniac Mansion Mania, you at the very least know who Bernard is (and at the very most, know the entire cast from Maniac Mansion and Day of the Tentacle). It gives you something to start with. You don't feel like you need to know anything about it to start making something for it. Unfortunately it's primarily German, so it feels a bit exclusive as well.
With Reality on the Norm, you don't know anyone, since they're all original characters.
I know that a lot of people say that it doesn't really matter. You can make any of the characters do what you want. But it doesn't feel like you can. One glance and you can see a rich history, and for someone who wasn't there when it started, that history seems impenetrable. But at the same time, you don't want break any of that history.

For example: I know that Davy Jones is a sorcerer. But what if I didn't and instead made him into a pirate because of his name? Then imagine I learnt the truth halfway, or even after finishing the game. While no one would probably care, I on the other hand would very much care.

Also, I was never fond of the artstyle for some reason. But that's a very minor point.  :-\

Click'd

Quote from: Danvzare on Thu 28/02/2019 13:09:14
Unfortunately it's primarily German, so it feels a bit exclusive as well.
Not everyone speaks English either. I think there's a somewhat active French speaking AGS developers community which we have next to no contact to.

The rest of your post, though. Yeah. You'd have to play all the games that came before - to see if your ideas have been done, and to get the personalities right. Either for your own peace of mind, or for (real or imagined) "guardians of the license".

And from the player perspective, I'd feel obligated to also play all the previous games first, to see if there are any references to characters or plot points I wouldn't get otherwise. On top of that, I'd feel I am late to the party, and everyone else has moved on.

Basically, it had a good run, but that same history is preventing any new input.

Retro Wolf

At the time I made my first RON game I had only played a handful of the games, and at that point there was 70+.
I prepared for Reality Check mostly by reading some of the short biographies of interesting looking characters, then the short descriptions of some of the games they appeared in.
Oh this guy Davy can use magic but he's not that good, ooh look an old style detective, David Hasselhoff? That's funny!

I did not know tons of information about the adventures of these characters, but I had a small understanding of how some of these characters could behave. I made an original guy for the main character that I could shape how I wanted.

I only had to make a couple of small references for continuity, I had the shop worker guy mention that he once dressed up as a llama and defeated David Hasselhoff, this little nugget of info was put in there even though (at the time) I had not played the relevant game where this event occurred.

I like to think an easy way to approach it is as if you were hired to write an episode of the Simpsons, these characters never really develop, you could watch just one season of that show and understand their behaviour. How many episodes has Homer Simpson taken on another occupation, but at the end of the episode he's reset to default working at the nuclear power plant?

SMF spam blocked by CleanTalk