b e a r d
Not really sure what I should start working on next tbh. As far as my current game goes, right now the only thing I can do is rework the trailer to make it shorter and more interesting. There are some other things I need to add for the paid version, like ng+ and the retro soundtrack, but I want to make damn sure the base game is as close to perfect as I can get it first. Those things are extremely simple to get working too, so I'm not too worried about it.
For my next game, there's a lot of stuff I could start working on. I have a pretty good idea of what I want the music to sound like so I could start on that. I'm still really not sure what kind of look I want to go for. Ideally, I'd make it a 3D game in Godot, but I have no 3D modeling skills and I don't know anyone that would be willing to just help a first timer by making all of the assets. I could use stand-ins in the meantime I guess. I could also start learning 3D modeling or learning 2D art, which could benefit the game even if I decided to stick with something like RPG Maker.
As far as the next game goes, I actually already have the entire story, all the concepts for the levels/areas, concepts for puzzles, etc. It's pretty much all on paper atm. So there isn't much I could do there.
I could technically start writing the story for my NEXT next project, the God's Disdain sequel. Not sure that would be a good use of time atm though.
There are certainly other engines out there too. Smaller ones, but ones that are much more focused on specific things. As much as I think Godot, Unity, and Unreal are great and really powerful, they're also very broad and that makes it hard to even just figure out how to use them. What I like about RPG Maker is that it's very clearly meant to make RPGs with it, so it's very focused on that, but if you know your way around the engine you can still get it to do a lot more than that. That's rad.
Just saw some videos for RPG In A Box and EasyFPS. Both of those look pretty interesting to mess around with as well. The former is mostly voxel-based, and the latter is sort of like an engine to make a DOOM clone in. I can see the game I want to make working in both of them as long as they can do everything I'd want them to.
It might behoove me to check out a bunch of these and try to get all of my mechanics I want built in the engine to see how fast I can get them done as well as if I can get them made at all. Just do a bunch of tech demos and then pick from there.
@BlinkRape good thing about architect is that the dev is super active and responsive, and once you buy it you don't have to pay royalties for your games or anything like that. I do wish there was a demo though because $50 is pretty steep just to try it out.
I could realistically learn how to code my own thing, but I always go back to the fact that something like rpg maker already has pretty much everything there and I just need to tweak it, whereas something like Godot means that I would be doing it all from scratch. You can kind of do 3D stuff in RPG Maker too, but it's easier to do in Architect. The entire source code for the game itself is available in RPG Maker, even if the user interface isn't, so it makes it easy-ish to still change things I don't like or need to be different. Especially with community-made plug-ins.
It's a matter of, you know, I have so many games I want to make and so many stories to tell, but so little time to do it. Learning so many different things and then applying them all from scratch is daunting. Plus, rpg maker is in itself a little niche and filling that instead of following the crowd with ps1 horror still seems cool to me. I know I could technically get something better or more ideal with a different engine though, so that's sort of the dilemma.
@beardalaxy Check out Solarus. It's like RPG Maker but for Zelda clones.
@xianc78 thanks, I'll check it out! Who knows what I might be able to do with it. I'm trying to make a horror game with puzzle elements and chase sequences, so this could theoretically work.
To be honest, I quite like the way RPG Maker works and I've been using it for almost 20 years at this point. That's always going to be a hard thing to break away from. There's a software called RPG Architect that is like RPG Maker on crack, and that's something that I think I could get a lot more mileage out of going forward while still being closer to RPG Maker than anything else. It's got 3D support built in too, so I'd be able to make my next game (it's horror) something of a cool 2D-3D hybrid that way.
There's also the prospect of a new RPG Maker coming soon. Nothing has been announced yet, but they're definitely cooking up something. Judging by the dates between other RPG Maker releases, a new one should be coming within the next year or two. That could change things for me also, if they've got something like 3D implemented in it. I really wish I could just take RPG Maker 3 straight from PS2 and use it on PC with the added ability to import assets. That would actually be pretty much my ideal game engine, funny enough.