itch.io

Well. Now I'm obviously gonna play this games. You've put me in a difficult position.... Thank you.

I never heard of the people and the things you mentioned, care to explain?

Google can explain it better than I can. But overall a very fun game. Especially the third part.

Wait, your job is having sex with you on fixed hours and you get paid a fixed monthly salary? Do you have a boss who pays you to masturbate? Are you a cam-sex-worker or something?

Well. I'm exaggerating, of course. It's just that I'm working here, wasting my time and nerves. Any job is an exchange of time for money, but mine just doesn't want me to have any free time at all it seems... and don't want to pay me at all... I've put the demo I was talking about on the shelf for now. Going to “REMAKE” EMPTY. Not sure how long that will take. Hopefully, a reasonable amount of time.

If you like and get along with a specific plugins maker, then you can hire them to make all of the plugins that you need for your game and pay them for everything at once instead of paying each plugin.

Yes. That's exactly how things should be done. But it requires careful planning. And the cost? Absolutely, it's $$$. I just don't have that much money to pay for everything. My job gives me about $300 a month, lol. Even for my country it's like very-very not good pretty small moneu. If I show a random girl on the street my paycheck, she'll do one of two things:
- Laugh

- Run and scream in terror.

Also, since you like RPGs, this is a challenge to yourself to develop and use your charisma to convince other people to help you

Yeah. Not a bad plan. You know that guy Airdorf with his FAITH? He manage to get a lot of help from other peoples. I listened his interview with wendigoon and Airdorf in his own words, was very fortunate that New Blood Publishing reached out to him. But unfortunately, this path is not for me. First: the first chapter of FAITH was already very good, so it's not surprising that he was quickly noticed. Second: I live in a non-English speaking country, plus... well, it's a long story. What I wanted to say is that relying on other people won't work for me, at least not right now. I try to do everything myself (except music, because it's very difficult for me and time-consuming). This allows me to work at my own pace, not worry about the financial side of development and just have fun. Yes, I think I can put together a small team of my fellow countrymen, but as practice shows, without income from the project, the "dream team" will quickly fall apart, because everyone has their own life and all that....

So I prefer to be on this wild ride alone.

Hahahaha. Yeah. True. It's just really hard for me when I owe people, and they start expecting things from me....

So? Did you learn anything from making Empty-66822? Did it make you earn experience? Do you think you could make it better now?

Yep. I learned a few things, but it's really just a some basic stuff maybe.

As for Japanese culture... Well, the Japanese way of creating stories is very repetitive in nature. As for everything else, I've never been to Japan or interacted with Japanese people long enough. All my practical knowledge is limited to one person who was a teacher at a place I used to visit often. She was a lot of fun to talk to and generally be around. Japan has its problems, but that goes for my country as well as, unfortunately, any other country.

First rule of games making that every good games makers know: You have to make a game that you would enjoy playing yourself. 😉 This is the difference between people who want to be paid to make games and people who make games because they want to get paid. 😉

Hahaha. Well, the story does need some polishing. But I had planned from the beginning that the story would be... eehh... like... this? An incoherent mess, but it's mostly fine with me.

I'm sorry you had to sit through all this :(

ask nicely

Well. That's a good suggestion, but... It's really time consuming for another person to do something like that. And if it's for free...

My parents raised me in such a way that I feel very obligated to repay in some way if someone does something for me. It's very stressful for me to be in debt, even if this "debt" only in my head. That's why I prefer to pay for work. And that's where the problem comes in (among other problems). Let's say I requested a plugin, and it appeared in front of me in all its glory. And so. A few days pass and I find that I need another plugin or tweak to make. Do I have to ask for help again for FREE!? Just thinking about it makes me sick. It's hard to explain, but hopefully I've made my point.

Wait, it took you 3 years to make Empty-66822? 😲 And here I thought you rushed it to experiment with RPG Maker but didn't actually take time to make it properly... 😅

Hm. I think it more like 2 years. But yeah. Pretty long for this kind of game anyway. I was as inexperienced as a baby at the time. And a lot of things needed to be figured out... Actually not "a lot of things", more like "everything".

ACTUAL adults protagonists because I am sick of teenagers saving the world while still going at school and living with their parents, which I find plain ridiculous, this is a thing which will NOT happen in my games as I want my characters to be ACTUALLY credible!

Yeah, I know what you mean. I played Yakuza not too long ago, and it's really refreshing when a game isn't about high school kids. I'd love to see some Persona about an unemployed dude in his 30s, haha. I think that would be awesome.

I considered it too, I considered starting with the scenes that I had in mind even if I don't know how to start the story but I already know this would be a mistake because, as a player, I already played MANY games whose stories were developed in disorder and this ALWAYS results into inconsistencies which ruin the stories for me because their inconsistencies make them lose their credibility whereas credibility is the point of any story for it to be immersive because you can't immerse yourself into a story that you can't believe, that's why we have to start from the start in order to keep it consistent and believable and this is why I didn't start mines yet because I am overwhelmed with ideas but I don't know how to get started.

I understand. Well. First rule of storytelling. YOU have to like it, even if it's looks goofy. If even YOU aren't interested, who will be interested in it? I think maybe you're overthinking it a bit, but truth be told, there's very little room for overthinking in a personal matter like "story".... What I'm trying to say is that you should be happy with what you're doing. That's all I'm saying.

Oh. And as one alien man once said: ""Done" is better than "perfect"".

Well... I guess we are fortunate that you fulfilled your obsession into a virtual reality instead of actually ripping a girl's arms off since you were thinking about it for years...

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahahhaahhahahahahaha. Thanks. It's not like a obsession, I think. But. Welp. Yep.

See? This happens every time a story is developed in disorder. You started yours in the bathroom with the disarmed girl without actually knowing how to lead the story to this scene and this is why everything which happens before this scene in your game is inconsistent because you added it AFTER and therefore you did not develop your story in a logical order which resulted into an inconsistent story, this is the mistake that I experienced too many times as a player and that I want to avoid in my own games which is why I need to figure out how to start my stories and develop them in a logical order.

Hmm. Maybe. But for me, it's more like I didn't pay enough thought to it because I was too preoccupied with the possibilities. But yeah. True.

Wait... You actually want to cut stuff out from your game? When it is already empty as it is? You actually need to ADD content, did you not pay attention to everything I suggested you so far?

Haha. Nah. The cuts have to be made. There are parts I wasn't sure about a few years ago and I don't know if I can do them properly right now. So it's best to shove them under the rug..... Of course, I plan to add something.

Which are the parts of the game that you already are completely satisfied with?

My grandfather was an painter and once told me, "Paintings are never finished, you're always working on them". I went to see him one day and he was "improving" a painting he had painted 20 years ago, haha.
There isn't one thing I'm completely satisfied with, and I don't think there ever will be.  But yes. There are some things I don't plan to change dramatically. For example, the story. It needs a lot of polishing and just more and more fleshing out, but I'm quite happy with how it plays out.

So. We'll see...

You barely scratched RPG Maker's potential because you barely made use of pluggins to improve and customize your game which is still a basic RPG Maker game

Hmm. Maybe. But there are a lot of things I unfortunately can't do with plugins. Most of the time they are a temporary solution. I mean... eeh... It's very hard to explain. Example. Have you played Fear & Hunger 2: Termina? It has a BEAUTIFUL UI design. I look at it and think to myself: "Yeah. Great stuff!" And now I want to, at least, replicate it in my project. Let's set aside the artistic component and look only at the technical side. How to do this? Well. Turns out you need to know js and something about core code of rpgm. There is no plugin that makes it easy to customize the UI the way I really want. AND ON GODOT YOU JUST DO IT. So plugins are a great thing, but more often than not, it turns out that a plugin for a specific idea simply doesn't exist :(

Oh, come on now! You completed this game just one year ago, you didn't lose your youth within one year, did you?

Well. Then I started I was 22 or 21? Now I 26 years old. I'm almost ancient at this point. OF COURSE I'M JOKING, but yeah...

My problem is the opposite of yours as you thought you would improvise as you go along, I have actually been (over)thinking for years about what to do and I barely started actually doing anything yet because I actually don't know how to start, I am better at improving along the way than starting from scratch, which is why I have been spending more of my time playing other people's games and sharing my ideas of how to improve them (which is rarely well received as their ego dictates them to NOT take advice and rely only onto themselves, preventing them from improving 😅) than actually making my own games which is my actual aim.

Sounds not bad. Well, uh. Starting something is almost never easy. But. For me. I have an idea, a scene, if you will. And it keeps popping into my head over and over again. That first scene with the girl with no arms? It really occupied my head for almost 3 or 4 years before I just couldn't take it anymore and wanted to make it a reality. So that's pretty much where I started.
Look inside your head. Take a scene that you really like or can't get away from and start there.

And you can count on my moral support, which is a blessing that not many people earned because most of people I tried to help improve rejected me because of their ego making them believe they need nobody as I explained so you are blessed to be open-minded to people wanting to help you improve as opposite to people who stagnate because they reject advice.

Haha. Thank you. I really appreciate it. Well. People who create things tend to be on their own, it's true.

Yeah. That's about as true as it gets. But I just can't help myself. I need a little refreshing. And that translates into working on a new "game". Like I said, I have some ideas for EMPTY, but for now, I don't think they're enough to start working on it. All I have in my head are thoughts of "I need to cut this out", but I still need to add something else too, hmm? There are parts of the game that I'm completely satisfied with, even if they don't look very good and completely amateurish. So focusing a bit more on those parts, cutting out what I find too tedious to balance and getting into satisfactory shape. And we can call it a day, I guess? I think it'll take a year? Or if I start cutting things hard, six months? But I don't want to cut too much, so a year?

So yeah. That's the way it is. Thanks for the responses. It's always nice to read sincere criticism or advice.

Welp. I'm sorry. My vacation started and I spent 90% of the time without internet. So, uh. I just forgot. oops. I'm sorry.

imagine how you would have made Empty-66822 without all the resources available for RPG Maker that you did use to make your game

Yep. Godot doesn't have anything but basic UI assets. But consequently there are no problems with other people's code and everything else either. I mean, a lot of times while working with rpgm I had problems using it for my needs, and I'm not a coder, so learning the original rpgm code wasn't an option for me. SO GODOT. Everything you do here, you actually know how it works, and because of that it's very easy to tweak something. EXAMPLE, UI. I wanted to change the UI in rpgm, and how to do it? I HAVE NO IDEA! But yeah, it's different with godot.

Here is a long wall of truthful text from you.

Yes. I completely agree. EMPTY-66822 has a lot of problems just at the gamedesign level. There are a ton of elements that just don't work (literally and figuratively).  I was pretty young and inexperienced (as if anything has changed except the word "young", haha) and so basically my workflow was: "I'll figure it out as I go along". That was a terrible mistake! But by the time I noticed where it was all going, it was a little too late to make any major changes (which really need to be done) because my free time started dwindling rapidly. So. I decided to just take it drag it to the end, whatever it took. The result. You can see...

OUR character never speaks and has no personality, which makes us feel as if we are the most irrelevant person of the world

Hihi. Yep. But it's just the way I like it, sorry. Can't help myself. 

As I said, you don't need a new game (yet 😉) to fulfill your wishes because Empty-66822 still has room for improvements and expanding, you barely started to build your town but your town is still empty

Yeah. You're right.  Sometimes I have very sleepless nights. And on such nights, I think about how I could improve EMPTY-66822 (no kidding).... And what's the answer? Well... I really want to take combat and many other things out of the game. I can see myself going back to this game in the future and "remaking it" (lol), I have a concept on how to do that, but for now I'm afraid to even look at EMPTY-66822 again. Hmmm... Yes... You really got me thinking.

But well. Firstly I want to have some fun at put together demo for a new game. Then nothing (I HOPE, I WISH) will stop me from some "heavy adjustment" on EMPTY-66822.

Thanks.

I'm considering using godot. I tested it last winter and it was pretty simple and powerful for what I want to do next.

But what?! Bring it on! Throw me your reasons to not make another game then I'm going to counter them all and convince you to MAKE another game, come get some!

Then I worked on EMPTY-66822, even doing a little things was fun. But next game... I really want it to have some gameplay loop, replayability value or something... I want it to be of better quality. But. Since I don't have as much free time as I had from 20-22, this needs to be carefully planned.

Thanks for messaging me. It's fun.

Hello. Sorry it's been a while. I've been busy with work and stuff, you know how it goes..... I got your e-mail.

So.

Your characters weird me out because you left them white instead of coloring their skin so please, at least color their skin for my sanity! 😅

I found a bug when you climb with L-412 after having...

Now that I think about it, this is not a bar, this is a restaurant, because it serves food whereas bars serve only drinks, therefore I suggest you to rename your bar into restaurant for credibility's sake. 😉

And after that goes a loooooooooooooong bug report.It's so long I don't even think the game works at all right now, lol. Thanks. I really appreciate you telling me about all of this.

I want to dive deeper into this story so what about a sequel after I played this game so thoroughly and gave you such an accurate feedback to improve on your mistakes, hmm?

Hey, can you translate what XXV says, please?

Sigh, I completed your game and there is still a question which has been haunting me ever since I started it: What about the 8 powerful entities who have taken control of the town that L-412 warned us about?

And what about the thing who talks through Mari in her apartment inside the pocket reality, what is it about? Also, I did complete your game and I still didn't find out what the title Empty-66822 stands for?

Nah. Don't want to answer to those. Not now, at least. 

In the end.

I apologize for such a small response. It's June 29 as I write this. And it's really hot. I'm melting in my four-legged $2 chair right now. Perhaps because of this, it's hard for me to respond more fully.

Bugs? Yes. There are a lot of them. When I started making this game, I didn't have any experience. So I had to learn the hard way. There were many, many bad decisions made even at the concept level, and also mismanagement of almost everything.

RPGM is not a good engine if you have 0 experience in making games and you decide to make a non-JRPG. There is a bug. Fix one, two more pop up. I add something, and it all falls apart.... I can't even bring myself to look at the code again. If I ever touch this game again, I'll probably redo it almost from scratch. I've been working on this project with all the free time I had, and as you can see, it's still not enough...  Free time came to an end and I had to rush it. You can get through it without bugs (I think) if you follow the walkthrough exactly, but where's the fun in that, right?

I'm thinking of making another game, but not on RPGM. But it's still just in my head even after a year. I really want to make something interesting and fun.... AND BUG-FREE IF POSSIBLE. But...

So yeah. Thanks for your comment on this project. I really appreciate the feedback because, really, it's so easy to get lost.

Oh, yeah, by the way. I apologize for my English. I'm melting and it's really hard for me to think right now --_--

Hmm? That's weird. I just tested it. Works for me. If you have problem with Itch.io download. Try some links from f95.

Hihi. You're welcome.

Yo. Yes, it is. The next (and last hahahahahaha) update this year is 100% (now watch me as I fail). I think around summer or early fall.

Eeeh... Depends on what you mean by "soon." I hope to release a new update sometime this summer/fall. Yeah.

I also apologize for going so many days without a response.

Ha. Sorry for the late reply. I didn't get a notification. Yeah, it's WIP. I currently uploading new update.

Haha. Eeehhh. The game is a real mess right now, and it's really hard to explain. BUT. There is WALKTHROUGH. Scroll up the page and you will see it. Sorry to make you suffer through all of this. I forgot to put WALKTHROUGH in the folder with ver. 6.01.

Download and follow it. It will be much easier this way.

Yes. I broke it. Fixed now. Please download new version. Thanks for report.

Haha, there is none. So far. I'm sorry if I confused you.