I recently get mails about requests and asking for stuff. Now, I appreciate it when people are upfront with their…demands or requests at least they’re honest enough. But there’s one thing I can’t stand, using Princess Princess or any of my games as a start to butter me up and hope that I’ll do things for you. It doesn’t work that way and I get insulted. One of them is formatted like this:
I love your game. But I can’t do x. Can you teach me how to do x?
As shocking and “rude” this might be, this is the only thing I want to tell anyone who are thinking of messaging me in the same manner, or something.
I didn’t go PMing random people in forums to learn. I actually tried things out on my own. I didn’t even look up tutorials because those are rare back in my time and I was taught not to be spoonfed. I was also afraid of how people would perceive me for asking the most basic questions and question my “seriousness” in regards to my projects. I take what I do very seriously and passionately and the last thing I want is to be mocked for it.
Tutorials are now widely available online for you to read! Go look for them! I know learning everything from scratch is hard but it’s the journey and experience that makes it count. You understand things better and clearer by trying things out on your own and referencing other materials. Your eyes will open up to new perspectives and it makes it all worth it. You get your own style and many other things.
I don’t expect people to follow this and I’ll probably still get them, but I really encourage everyone to think outside the box and work on their games as if scripts doesn’t exist, to at least learn the basics. I encourage you to look at the program you want to learn and open it and fiddle with it. Learn how your tool works. Watch Youtube videos if you have to! See people’s processes! There are also livestreams for you to look over! I can’t stress this enough.
Break open projects and see how they did everything they do! This is how we did it in 2k3! (Not as in use a decrypter, it’s like figure of speech or something <_<)
Encrypted projects? Go to an alternate source and use your collected knowledge to guess how they did an effect! Etc.! Don’t rely too much on asking! However, there is one place that I DO recommend people to look at as it was accumulated knowledge from back in my Gaming World days. And this is RM Tutorials. RPG Maker 2003 or XP or VX/Ace doesn’t matter. They follow the same logic anyway!
The same goes to art. Grab some books, look at online tutorials, DRAW, DRAW, DRAW. I can’t miraculously make you amazingsauce. It doesn’t work that way. Life is about learning, trials and tribulations and SUCCESS. If you’re serious enough to learn something, show it.
Scripts are another matter though. And I can totally empathize with you if you just can’t get it ;_;
And a fitting quote from wordpress just now:
If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it. – Tennessee Williams
Unhappy Sairen doesn’t look much different from regular Sairen. :P
Anyway, agreed.
For example, I loved the way you added item counters in the description of your alchemy skills, so I BEAT THE DAMN CODE WITH A STICK until I managed to do the same.
I’m not sure I’ll ever use it, but I learned a lot from it.
Spoonfeeding is not the solution, guys.
Wait, you started with 2k3? Dang, I feel old. I started with 2k.
I actually started with RPG Maker Ps1 hahaha! Then when I was 13 I started with RPG Maker 2000 but 2k3 was out at that time and it became my love. Forever! Nice to meet another oldbie :D
People shouldn’t break open games that are encrypted! That’s just rude. I don’t usually mind PMs if I did something really complex and I’d be happy to explain what I did. Though if it’s “I dunno how to use switches, can you teach me?” or “I dunno how to make a cool battle system, what did you use” I wouldn’t be very happy.
Oh I didn’t tell them to break open an encrypted project. I just said Break open projects! Encrypted Project? Then look at an alternate source! I guess the sentence structure is weird since I’m thinking in Filipino haha.
Well mostly the questions are very board and non-specific so it’s like…huh?
I figured you meant that but at quick glance I read it wrong and then reread it and went, huh? So I replied anyway, haha.
I know I’ve definitely got my fair share of bad questions. I try to be nice and answer them, but on some of them I really just want to say “I don’t remember. I’m sure you can figure it out by looking at forums x, y, or z”.
I don’t mind getting questions once in a while and I prepared a “template” of answers just in case. But the hated one I have is like they use my game title as the pm title and the content is unrelated. It was really dumb.
I’ve been noticing a recent up swing in the sense of entitlement a lot of people have on the internet at the moment and I’m glad to see a few more people starting to speak out against it. I only started on VX Ace a couple of weeks ago and I’m already looking at my first mini project an thinking how unelegent my scripting is (I only learnt of self-triggers a few days ago). Did I have someone tell me about them, no, I saw someone mention them in a forum post and looked up a tutorial. If people want to be able to make their own games from scratch they need to be able to experiment within the game and come up with thier own workarounds.
Alright I’ll stop since I’m getting ranty but I agree with the post and wish people would stop expecting others to spend their time teaching them something that they could learn themselves if they were willing to do some research.
Teach a man a lesson and he has learned how to do one thing. Teach a man to learn and he will learn for life.
I believe giving people’s studies a little bit of guidance can go a long way, even if they go about the wrong way asking for help. For instance, many aspiring artists don’t understand how important it is to study from life and they are unlikely to figure this out on their own. However, after pressing this into their minds and they discover the results, some may believe you hold esoteric knowledge. In that case it’s important to teach them your knowledge is not special and to guide them to become independent learners. The same thing goes for programming, music composition, or any other skill really. On the other hand, if you turn these people away with contempt they may never really get it on their own. Each and every one of our struggles are different. What worked for us might not work for someone else or anyone else for that matter. Our help can be only as good as our understanding of others.
Entitlement is out of control on the internet which is frustrating I agree. It’s truly disheartening to receive demanding messages when your schedule is filled, your energy is gone, and the fridge and cupboards are empty. But it’s an important thing to help people, perhaps even the most important thing we can do. Only by selflessly leading these people by example can we ever hope they learn to be empathetic of others’ struggles, just like the confused novices who do not understand the importance of life study. We must continue to practise empathy in these disconnected times or hope for a connected future is lost.
Teaching something that can be found in the manual or tutorials we painstakingly write in forums to help people is where they should go. I’m an advocate of use Google first before asking. And what is the point of teaching them something if they don’t even know the commands you’re talking about in the first place because they didn’t play around with the program? A program that is very user friendly and with lego pieces that can be easily understood?
I’ve been really patient and had been answering their questions, making tutorials, doing videos and redirecting them to certain places. But I have limits. Especially when the RM community is flood filled with tutorials (Like one I even linked) and guides (http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/forum/22-rmvx-ace-tutorials/) scattered around.
What offends me is that they take my attention by saying they were going to say something about my game (using it as the title for their message) and then apparently it’s unrelated! It’s insulting. This is why I made this blog post. I like to think I’ve been empathetic enough considering how many resources I’m doing and the support I’m giving on the forums. But approaching me in such a way is insulting.
I might be misreading your post but I am confused on what kind of message you’re trying to deliver.
Damn these whipper snappers and their me, me attidute. Back in the old days we didn’t even have but the very basic tutorials and the help file didn’t even work. There were tons of great games created despite the fact that the only help came from few forums where some of the users were honestly not quite all well in the head.
Now look at things, the helpfile of Ace is incredible, there’s tutorials to do just about anything and there’s enough resources and scripts free to use to make the longest RPGmaker game ever made. (Curiously, what is the longest RPGmaker game ever made and how long?)
Yet, people still act as if we’d be in the old hey days and don’t just bother doing even the most basic of research and finding the answer themselfs. (Many questions I seen have been answered by a 2 minute in a google search) They’ve been babified too much, instead of trying out their wings, their mother flew them all around and they don’t take chances.
We’ve all been asking silly, easy to figure out questions sometime or another but it’s just gotten ridiculous lately.
O hai Nessi i like princess princess, how do you make the people talk with text showing and faces on it? i have had this program for 2 minutes and i already am lost at what to do! i wanna make my original final fantasy game and sell it someday, so if you help me, you get free version!
I feel the same way about asking questions. I’m always afraid of what people will say to me, and if they’ll pick on me because the question might be easily answered(especially when it comes to scripts …). I try to figure things out on my own, and I get a sense of accomplishment when I finally do. It really makes you feel a lot better about and a lot prouder of what you’re working on.
I’m sure some people don’t think they’re coming off as rude when they ask questions in that way, but I do understand why you are insulted by it. Questions are better asked out in the open, anyway, so more people can give different answers and opinions.
(Hey! I also started with PS1 RPG Maker and moved on to 2k and 2k3, haha.)
The easiest way is to make links in your blog to tutorials. I’ve also some people who ask me how did I do some stuff, so I’m honest and direct them to a tutorial. Yes, people are lazy to search but we all have a lazy side.
I don’t really mind people asking me because it’s my way to tell them : “you can do it too, here’s how to do”. I think, I just want people to get better and make better game.
That’s doesn’t mean that I don’t understand your feeling because you want people to be interest in your game and not ask you question about how you did it.