I see gaming moving strongly away from pc games.  Though the market of pc gaming is still billions it’s shrinking in my opinion.  Still time to make a play in the pc gaming space.  With ports to console, games stand a chance.  With tablets, games stand even more of a chance.  Tablets may be MMO’s new home because of screen size issues.  A game that can play on tablet mainly and some reduced gameplay on phone.  O why not, just as much gameplay on phone as on tablet.  I am concerned mainly with RPG’s and MMO’s.  The new directions they can take with phones and tablets.  Would the programing side need a new sort of engine layer?  Would tablets need to come with better graphics chips?  Would graphics suffer or become easier on tablets or phones?  Where will the swinging pendulum land?  What is fun of a game like on tablet and phone?

examples of blender in image files

A collection of objects I created in blender with add-ons and vertice by vertice extrusions.  The add-on’s rock!  Very powerful, a lot of leverage for getting something created.  I don’t see how to do these things in a reasonable amount of time without add-ons.  It’s also why I pursue so hard to use, then create my own add-ons.  Leverages to make stuff fast.  Finally I am remembering how to maneuver in the 3d environment of blender and with keyboard shortcuts everything is fast.  And the number of them?!!  There are many shortcuts to create things in blender.

I am thinking for completed objects putting different textures on them is the way to create graphically distinct objects.  I want a script that codes them, then displays maybe 2-20 at a time quickly and I can select and pick the best or most interesting and do something with them.  I mean I really a thinking of flipping though pages to get interesting objects.  Like pulling ideas from the ether, I pull art from a 3d environment.

The random polyhedrals rendered image.  Did some smoothing on some objects.  Then joined other objects together.  very cool to manipulate huge swaths of  a scene easily.  It’s like there was a fog for days as I tried to create something.  Then when the pieces came together, this came into being.

The scenarios I’ve done were 10-15 in D&D, numerous parts to each of those and 10 in Talislanta.   there are likely a dozen others I’ve participated in and helped shape but for solid: hey, I think I made this. The number stands at, at least 25.  That I could roll out many more I have no doubts.

they were fun to come up with back in the day, why not now?  I feel the forces building to do so.  Which setting?  Whatever setting rolls out ideas the easiest, fastest, and funnest.  Do I write scenarios for players?  or written for the writer of the scenario?  kinda like cookbooks, which is better?  There is not much to replace a good dungeon master.  Sure 1000’s of options from predictable players can be taken care of by preestablished code and rules sets  but, ah, there are 1,000,000’s of possibilities I can conceive off the top of my head.  What is the permutations of options in current video games?  something on or the order of 10^100 more than likely.  But depends on the game and how it’s counted.  They might be fun.  A look at specific games permutations of game play options.  See if some patterns emerge such as best ranked games for a certain reason/reasons what they had as options of play.  Is there an upper limit to options? (skyrim and Bethesda games i’m thinking here)  Is there a lower limit? (tic-tac-toe i’m thinking here).

whatever the limits they are meant to be broken.  or at least tilted at.

game design ideas
dungeon crawl, simple
overland crawl
story
battles with creatures
puzzles to figure out
magic to wield
gauntlet style, which is diablo style
mmo facebook style
mmo facetime/skype style

overland crawl,

puzzle game, like NY developer in that email i got
based off texas hold’em inspired
rows and columns, a guessing game and points scored
can go with something that can be rolled out to facebook

next part is off this website: ehow article

there are animals and everything is done through them.
1. know your concept
sci-fi/fantasy richness of plot and action
2.  boil it down
there are animals and everything is done through them.
there are aliens and everything is about how they interact
3.  pitches, this one is more marketing and presentation than anything else, knowing your market and who will buy, who will pay, presentation skills for publishers.  really this one is a kind of afterthought when making great games or marketable games though it could be argued it’s a first thought.  to know who will be playing and how much fun there is to be had for them and how to get them to pay up for it.
4. attend game conferences, this one can be great for motivation but I find there are so many ideas, and cool stuff other people have done to check out, that new ideas for yourself or a small group are overwhelmed by too much info.
5. target your publisher, this is basic know your publisher kind of stuff.  know who you are wanting to collaborate or work with and who their customers are, who will be my own customers.
so it’s what I have so far to moving the game design and creation meter for myself and a few others.
I could I guess get another D&D style group(s) going and generate new ideas that way.  getting them from idea, to paper to computer to developed game is another story.  I generated some awesome ideas and products in the past so this time around maybe things will be different.  Famous last words.  I go on anyway.

Am I any good at level design?  Maybe not graphically, but textually I have unused skills there from a long time ago.  Maybe 3-10 scenarios written.  And some of those scenarios were epic.

An insanity inducing experience.  That’s what I expect from a LoveCraftian experience.  And lots of excitement from playing a game based around the theme.  A little off what Monria is atm, but I think of insanity inducing in a game may be done with Oculus Rift.  And I base that off another blog post on Eve Online’s Valkyrie review that a player has the ‘feeling’ of being inside the game world and fearing the consequences of battle and exploration.  Fear in Entropia Universe is in that your avatar can die, lose money, or be pirated.  Drones still scare me, but that is minor and easily overcome with proper weapons and armor setups.  But it took some effort to handle them.  The other more powerful robots and creatures are though, still fear inducing.  Fear of losing money is also a factor, but in Entropia, easily overcome also.

Back to inducing insanity.  Being impossibly hard, sorta check.  Fearsome looking monsters and mobs, check.  Artificial intelligence that can induce fear, check.  Fun to be scared, check.

I have experienced Monria through a youtube video only, as I am too much of a chicken to brave space in Entropia.  Soon maybe with my barebones setup I would go.  Or mothership travels, though I don’t know if there are stops at Monria yet.

But as for inducing fear I am thinking odd things like slimes or oozes that immerse an avatar in a maddening movement conundrum.  I mean huge oozes and slimes enough to engulf entire areas.  I could make a list of fears here and ways to induce them so I will.

based from :http://www.selfhelpcollective.com/top-10-fears.html

1.  fear of flying, check for EU (Entropia Universe0, lots of flying and getting into space to get to Monria.
2.  fear of public speaking, check for EU, sometimes chat is eerily quiet.  Sometimes it’s trolls to blame.  Sometimes it’s fear of retribution from other players.  Protecting reputation is also a concern.   What if there were a way for mobs to attack when someone speaks?  Some effect on aggro is what I’m thinking here. Another idea is a mission that absolutely requires a player to do a reputation up or down on the reputation statistic of an avatar.
3.  Fear of heights.  Somewhat easily simulated.  Some tall in-game structures to fall from.  I enjoy falling in MMO’s myself and have earned numerous in-game achievements for accomplishing ridiculously high falls.  Even better is flying an airship or spacecraft in-world up to 1000 meters, and then jumping out.  check.  On the moon how this could be simulated IDK, maybe a mission requirement to jump into a pit of lava, ice, or slime from a great height whether by vehicle or climbing something.
4.  Fear of the dark.  Easily simulated with dark shaded and textured monsters and places they skulk around in.  I think this is already in there as an underground cave system of some sort.
5.  Fear of intimacy.  huh?  A mission with an npc who somehow touches a person’s emotions of friends and family then somehow those connections are threatened.  Forming them in the first place would look weird in an MMO game context.  I’ll try to make it fit anyway.  A short list of friends in-game.  Hard to see how this would play out.  Maybe an instance that cuts off communication from friends list and chats, then a situation where it is an absolute must to get that contact.  Then a device or action to reestablish the connection and resolve the mission.  Kinda’ like PVP areas, so far, but even more limited.  just tossing out ideas here.
6.  Fear of death.  Fear of dead things.  Anything death-related.  This one could see the most game context, as art and environments and monsters to draw from.  And hunter inspired experiences.  Out on an edge here.  Then also the formal trappings of death:  mortuaries, funeral homes, coffins, corpses and graveyards.  All cleaned up and made presentable in a gaming context.
7.  Fear of failure.  Hmm. tough one to fit.  Within a game context though, not completing a mission.  Not completing a mob kill.  Not making money.  Not having fun.  Odd, haven’t thought of those as failures before but yet there they are.
8.  Fear of rejection.  acceptance and love of others.  Provide npc’s and ways to encourage other players to accept and help one another may be the cure, part of these missions or encounters.
9.  Fear of spiders.  Easy one.  The closer to real life spiders, the most fearsome inducing ones and most common, the better.  Also fantastic looking and acting, mob spiders, the better.
10.  Fear of commitment.  npc’s that demand a lot.  This is a tough one for a game context.  But getting a player to commit more and more time.  Committing more and more resources.  Committing more and more social time to get past an obstacle.

Then maybe next article is how to overcome or mitigate these fears and how to translate them into a game.  A few of the entries do provide solutions for the puzzles presented by the fears but are not fully made out.   An achievement system for in-game obstacle and fear overcomes.  The reward for getting past the above fears.  Could get into some serious issues but how to layer money and fun on those in a game context and maybe help a player overcome the fears in real life as well as overcome them in the game.

I see most of my own fears as being overcome when I can discuss, get support, and reassurance from others about my fears.  Also acting on my fears and facing them helps too.  some from the pages of wiki-how, overcoming fears

http://www.wikihow.com/Overcome-Fear

1.  Analyze your fear.  Noting mob behaviors.  Figuring out the puzzle of how best to fight a mob or get past it.  Sidenote:  maybe there should be unpassable mobs.  or really, really, really hard mobs to overcome.  Upping the analysis required would be a way to help with this one.  More moving parts to think about, more difficulty in overcoming, but once achieved, nirvana.  Completing missions having to think about how best or even how to complete the mission.
2.  define the fears contours.  This may mean figuring out what makes a monster tick.  For a brief series of missions but plentiful missions, a series that’s easy to overcome.   Then further series with greater rewards but increasing difficulty to overcome more fears.  I can see maybe 3-4 levels of fear working in a game.  Missions are easy in that they have a beginning and an end which is what defining the contours is about.
3.  imagine the outcome you desire.  for Moria the outcomes include getting loot, defeating a tough monster, defeating a tough puzzle, completing a mission, bragging rights, in-game respect and more fun to be had for the experience.
4.  change the way you think about fear. well, I’ve certainly done that writing this blog post.  Making the fear a source of fascination.  Isn’t this what brings people to Lovecraft anyway?  Horror movies and scary things in general.  Then the relief that the fear is not so big and bad.  The situation not so impossible or defeating.  Overcome and rise by thinking and talking about each aspect of the fear.  Then letting the fear in, having it pass through the psyche, and be at one with the love in the world.

article that I jumped off of along with other influences today:
http://lovecraftzine.com/2014/02/06/a-new-lovecraftian-mmorpg-massively-multiplayer-online-role-playing-game/

scoping out a market.  this particular search sequence for rpgmaker based games and game creation
I did some phone searches but they don’t give number of pages done on keywords.  I am guessing maybe 100 some keywords that pertain to rpgmaker.  Some mix of rpgmaker searches and actual sales figures.  Then tracking down what got made with it and
those games sales.  google adwords for a more accurate far view. Then with a few general video game market rules.  Then on to sales figures and projections of markets.  A weighing of the odds and voila, game market scoped and new developers’ chances realized.

For instance, does quality really make a difference?  How much quality is enough?  Is it more quantity of content that wins the day or quality?  Kinda like horse racing, is one horse or game really better than another horse or game?  By skimping in weird places some and emphasizing overlooked areas some strange successful efforts could be had.

When I examines as a starting pount from Google Adwords it appears there are maybe 8000 people a month in the market for making an rpg game.  Which means 96,000 people a year  look to make something rpg game related.  Assuming 80% cannot get to next steps and 20% do, brings it to 19,200 who can and do create something.  It could be even more lopsided but as a starting point in the dark it will do.

And to further extrapolate maybe 20% of the 19,200 will pay up at most $60 for a service or product.  Which brings revenue to 3,840 purchasers and $230,400.  And that’s just for game making tools.  The actual games sold are another subset I fear have too many sets and subsets to take on as a whole.  For another time.

How many people are involved in JRPG market? or generally RPG market?  What are the real numbers and flow?  How can yet even more people be drawn in to spend a dime or six?

customizing  rpg maker,
certain limits on ‘objects’ created. replacing existing ones in lite
maybe put custom stuff into resources menu selection..png format is suggested
get items icons down to 24×24 pixels
sweet victory. I got a custom icon of grass into RPGMaker Berzerkist game.  REplaced Hand Ax icon
with my grass icon.  three hours of code and done and on to lots of icon creation.
in gimp anchoring is important for copy/pasted custom icon.
don’t forget more room can be added length wise in multiples of 24 pixels.
but there is extra room on original iconset file.
also under View in gimp 2.8, snap to grid and view grid are important for placing custom icon in
with the others in iconset file.
now off to make so many more items.  theme them and plug it in.

took a lot of msn searches to get it done.  I’ve given up on browsing forums in favor of search boxes well phrased.  It seems I always got caught up in off topic issues that weren’t helping on forums.  So by filtering the unnecessary items with a search engine I got to the helpful stuff.  I turned the Hand Ax of Berzerkist game made with RPGMaker into a 3 stalks of grass icon. 

Here’s the list o’links to get it done.  Some are the last page read but a little clicking back gets to the info.

http://wordpress.com/my-blogs/
http://wordpress.com/post/
http://t.lenovo13.us.msn.com/?pc=MALNJS&ocid=LENDHP
http://www.rpgmakervx.net/index.php?showtopic=44813
http://www.alteredgamer.com/rpg-maker/54402-vx-for-beginners-adding-chests-and-customizing-your-items/
http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/7020-import-change-item-icons/
http://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-image-convert-indexed.html
http://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-palette-dialog.html
http://www.rpgmakervx.net/index.php?showtopic=14747
http://www.bing.com/search?q=zooming+in+gimp+2.8&form=LECNTX&pc=MALNJS&mkt=en-us&scope=&pq=zooming+in+gimp+2.8&sc=0-16&sp=-1&qs=n&sk=
http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/16744-importing-custom-iconsresources/
http://www.rpgmakervx.net/index.php?showtopic=27313
http://borealisrpg.wordpress.com/2008/03/22/sprites-and-art-1-importing-files-into-rmvx/
http://superuser.com/questions/117754/is-there-a-way-to-copy-urls-from-all-open-tabs-in-a-google-chrome-or-other-brow
http://www.winhelponline.com/blog/copy-ie-addresses-open-tabs-urls/

And that may be it for now.  Fantastic tools of energy.

Chase scene to open. A few real world references to an alien planet to paint the picture, cotton like plant, weirder than cotton though. What if there were no need for dyes for cotton like plants and the plants being made to grow different colors. Each plant giving off different colors of blossom and seed husk. Being breed to give off all of one color. There goes dye systems of some mmo’s and games. Harvest everything, minecraft style?
A theme of animal empathy. That animals are meant for peaceful pursuits. That cycles don’t happen. That the real world animal world outside pets is dog eat dog, cat scratch cat, where animals struggle just to survive let alone be civilized like humans. In a futuristic future a vision maybe that animals and humans coexist as civilized members of society. Prevented from tearing each other apart by laws and enforcement. and perhaps from inner needs to coexist in a benevolent way of life where laws and enforcement are unnecessary.
The Xik are mentioned as the arch enemies who wrecked earth or Terra. Could turn out something interesting. (up to pg.9) How are pages referenced in e-books anyway? I have hard copy so perhaps a concern for another time.
Ecological balance as a game mechanic. What does balancing an ecosystem lead to? Breeding and population growth and decline. pheromone production items to encourage breeding. balancing spawns of certain creatures based on spawns of other creatures. A definite limit around what mobs are available to be hunted, hunter, and left in peace. There has to be a steep reward to not hunt an animal maybe. say an avatar interacts with animal to provide it something good like food, companionship, or other physical pleasantries and gets? stat boost? defenders against hostile animals? animals tamed against robot persecutors? a collection of positive animal karma to use like mindforce powers?

naming engine 2.0.

The note being it could be used to write out every name ever possible.  what are the stats on that?  maybe 3 raised to the 26 power which is 2,541,65,28,29 combinations or is it 26 raised to the 3rd power for 17576 combinations?  It is 17576 combinations according to msn search.  So to raise it to 4 letter words is  456,976 combinations.  At 5 letters it is 26th to the 5th or 11,881,376 combinations.  At 6 letters it is 26th to the 6th power or 308,915,776 combinations.  And some 7 letter names for 8,031,810,176 combinations.  At 8 letters the count clocks in at 208,827,064,576 combinations. This likely covers 80%-90% of all names in the world in the English alphabet.  So it’s not unlimited but bounded.  A definite wall of naming but with special characters and a couple of creative methods such as adding last names and middle names the possibilities quickly climb into the stratosphere.