Starmen.Net

Okay. So with the Siege infusing everyone with this overflow of positive energy, I propose we take the next big step.

We all love the Mother series, Itoi's magical world he's created, and it's a great inspiration to all of us... what if we took that inspiration and turned it into our OWN game. I'm not saying we continue the Mother series on our own or anything; I like where it's taken us and I don't necessarily see the need for a Mother game without Itoi. Perhaps we make a game in the spirit of Mother. Something that's directly draws from that world but does something new. I'm sure between all of us there's enough of us to do it. The community's big enough and there's certainly enough talent. It would be an amazing feat, but just imagine it:

The fanfic writers developing a storyline, the artists doing character designs, the musicians scoring the sound for this new world, the programmers developing the game itself; it would be something that would make us work even harder together for a new common goal. Lord knows we're the community with the know-how to accomplish something as big as this. I'd put my hard earned money towards getting this thing off the ground.

So whaddaya say, comrades?

That is an excellent idea. Starmen.net has so many talented people, if we could pull together, we could make one awesome fangame. I like the idea ozwalled brought up about a separate forum.

Now, of course a sort of thing like this would take a ton of commitment. But knowing you guys, that shouldn't be a problem.

I would love to see a huge fangame project in the future.

I think it'd be alot of fun.

If there were enough interested parties to make up a capable team I'm sure I could arrange something for official support on the project.

Of course I'd have to be the project lead. ;)

Though surely you jest, you bring up an important point. The idea that some people certainly feel (for whatever reason, legit or not) that way about certain game-making avenues illustrates one of the many reasons why the site could use such a forum section. Then it would be that much easier to have a more supportive environment for game creation, no matter what tools are decided on.

As much as I appreciate what the PK Hack people do (even though I'm woefully low on any participation in regard to it), I think that having such a forum really could help encourage more people to be involved in the game-making process, and with any number of game-creating tools.

So yeah, I'm not talking about a single game project here -- I'm talking about a number of them over time, coming from various people, and having a forum where not only their products could be shared, but also their experiences, their knowledge, their resources, their works in progress... the list goes on.

Right now, this exists in the form of the PK Hacking section of the forums, but with some of the perhaps somewhat more accessible avenues available for making all sorts of games out there, I think this would be a much-needed shot in the arm for people on the site who'd be interested in making more EB Fangames, be they in EarthBound's RPG style or not.

The fact is that there are people here who are capable of making games happen if they wanted to, and this may be a way to get them to want to... at least more often. Most of the games ever made on the site are FunFest entries, and while I'm not trying to knock those efforts in the least, having more games that are not holiday themed and/or thrown together to meet a deadline, IMO, is a worthwhile venture.

EDIT: .... It may (or heck, maybe it won't) take a while to see some worthy products come out of such an idea, but I think that we'll see less if we continue to more or less ignore game-making and game-maker's fangame efforts by having them rely on a Fan Forum that is too unfocused on meeting their needs, that we're doing ourselves a diservice and missing out on a lot of potential fangame goodness.

I was kinda skeptical at first, but after reading some of the responses, this sounds like it could be a feasible project. I'll help out any way I can when/if it gets going.

I'm not sure if that was a serious comment or not, but I don't think that it would need to see any more drama than any of the other forum sections. Maybe less. I see no reason why it would have to have any much more drama associated with it than, say, the Fan Forum or PK Hack section.

Moreover, I think the way to go for making any fan project is to work with small teams, and what I'm thinking here/ proposing is that there would be multiple teams and the possibility of a number of projects on the go at any given time. Think SOMETHING like the PK Hack section of the forums (only with other programs used to make the games).

If such a forum section were to get running though, I'd like to see it more as an open dialog for people looking to make games, and heck, the people wanting to play them as well. Discussion topics could take any range of forms, from possible plot points, to new PSI attacks, to what makes a game good/bad, to what makes a game "EarthBoundy", to technical programming issues, to the artistic and musical side of things, etc.

This would allow people to freely present ideas, and have them open for comments and criticism, if so wished, instead of them being simply labeled "prospectus" and discarded (though I know some rules would have to be devised to guard against some things). Critiques, comments and pointers could also be given to posted game art, music, coding, etc.

And to revisit a point tayres made in the post that got me ranting (and to whom I'd like to apologize if he feels I'm hijacking his thread too badly), this could be a forum open to games being made in the "spirit" of EarthBound as well, which I think is a very valid and excellent idea. I mean, it's one think to make a game directly pulling stuff from the EarthBound games, but I think it would be interesting to try to get some games going that are spiritual successors of sorts to the Mother series (if nothing else, to avoid copyright infringements).

I agree with Ozwalled, I always have many projects going out at once (2D and 3D) and my hurdle is never on the programing part (if I do say so myself.) but rather on the art part.

After doing a bit of digging, I found out that it still existed.
http://brunoro.freelinuxhost.com/EB3D.htm
This was obviously discontinued due to my lack of 3D artist, and is also why I focus more on the 2D (for the time being.)

I'd like to see a forum for this kind of chat, but as far as "big project that would require collective effort" I do have one started (alone) that I will share if the interest is there. However, the bane of most people (I would target some RPG Maker people here) is the fact that they show screenshots way too early and then loose interest, creating a hype that they could not sustain. With that said, what this means is the fact that the team (any team, not necessarily with me) need to fuel their drive not with constant screenshots, but rather advancement through the project without feeling the urge to spoil everything.

I...don't know if what I said makes any sense...if not I guess I could rephrase it again.

However on the topic of "many projects" I do honestly wonder if there's enough people doing projects to begin with...but I don't know much about that.

I have a home recording studio and I play a multitude of instruments. I'm totally down for scoring the game (I would say I'd like to head that department, but I'm not looking to usurp any of our other awesome musicians), and I'm quite willing to work with others on that. I'm also an artist, but the only thing I lack is a scanner... easily attainable. I've also had experience writing scripts before. I can't say I know anything at all about programming at this point though. I gave up on that back in high school.


I'm really happy to see that others are interested in this idea. And I doubt the would be too much feuding amongst members on this. Remember, we'd be working towards a common goal here. It's to be kind of a hive-mind project here. Certainly we'd need people with the motivation and know-how to be at the helm of certain tasks, each with their own staff, but I'm sure that nobody's feelings would get hurt to the point of flipping out on each other. Everybody should have some sort of creative input at some point.

And it wouldn't be some lame Mother rip-off either... something that draws inspiration from the series instead of blatantly copying it... we might as well call it Step-Mother if we were doing something like that.

JamesPicard_007 wrote on Mon, 09 July 2007 22:23

This is where I fully disagree.

The way I figure it, there WOULD be an increased fangame presence IF there was a forum for it. I feel it's a "if you build it, they will come" type deal. Some of the strongest fangame work on the site in a while has taken place in the past year or so (there had been what, three or four threads going relativity strong at one point), yet they're continually buried by the rest of the activity in the fan forum (due to their slow-by-nature progress, and have no real avenue or sub-community that's designed to encourage and assist with their efforts.

Just for a second, think about comparing this to the Blue Discs forum. The general site forumgoers would have been saying much anything about the discs, obviously, had the forum not been opened to members, but once it had, there was a lot of posts and interest generated for the simple fact that the forum section was there. Had that been something that would have been announced in any other section of the forums, it would have been buried in a matter of weeks, months at best, and a whole lot less people would have had a chance to know anything about the things. Now (and no offense here meant to coreycorey2000 or whatever), take Fangames, give them their own section where more topics can move along at a more leisurely than average rate of being updated (and appropriately so), and more people get to pop in and actually take a look at what's going on in current projects, even if there hasn't been an update in a month or so.

You could, of course say something like "well, fan comics deal with the same kind of problem of getting buried in the forums", and you'd be right, but the big difference lies in the fact that at LEAST comics get to be seen in the official main page updates, which occur on a regular basis. This can't be done (at least, surely not in the same way) for fangames for obvious reasons, so they can't even get that kind of exposure until someone actually finishes something, which, let's face it, probably takes a fair bit longer than a comic page does (no offense meant to the comic creators of the site). As such, I think that it's even more important that some extra lovin' be given to fangames via the creation of a forum section specifically for them. No, I'd not ever guess that it'd be a super BUSY section of the forums, but I say it's something that would be very good to have anyway.

As far as I'm concerned, it's a matter of whether we, as an EarthBound / Mother fan community actually want fangames or not. If we want them (and I know I do), the fact is that there're not exactly coming out or even being worked on all too often, and having a forum to SAY we want them and want to do something about it may just be a huge step in the right direction. If we don't want EB fangames though, the current model of just letting them get forgotten in the fan forum may be the way to go.

A dedicated Fan Game forum would guarantee nothing at this point in time. While I understand what you're saying oz and agree to a point I still feel that there's no reason for it right now. I'm not trying to intentionally knock Fan Games being that I am the infamous ambitious mind behind 2015, but I just feel that there isn't enough Fan Game presence to warrant it. Now if there were more consistency in current fan game topics and people actually asking for assistance in various avenues of game creation I'd agree with a sub forum however given that the creation side of the coin seems to land so rarely I just don't see the justification.

Quite right, but even though I'm a big Fan Games advocate, I still tend to side with James on that one. In the end, not many fan games projects are ever finished; of course a dedicated forum would be a good insight, but only if people are able to finish the project.

What I mean is that there simply is to many "projects" that are 2-days work and then discontinued by the author, which makes the random forum-goer loose interest in fangames as they are never finished. There are always exception, for instance Capt. Muffin's RM2K games and such, but overall, most RM2K games that appear on the forum were an impulsive creation by the author who quickly loses interest. If that impulsive person would have never posted anything in the first place, and instead only the dedicated person did, then maybe fangames would be taken more seriously now.

Tayres is right. I fully agree with the whole work ethic problem. If you don't want to commit then don't and stay out of it. I on the other see this as a great opportunity to interact with my love for Earthbound and share this excitement with others.

So hit me up when your calling for artists.

I wish there was something I could help with, but I have no skills.

I got a notebook full of maps and story ideas for an earthbound hack, but I never made one because I'm not good with c++ and whatnot. If you guys ever commit to making a hack FOR REALS, like a whole new game with pk hack and not just some silly little thing, let me know. I'd love to be a part of that!

As far as what I made goes, I drew a few enemy ideas, a few towns, had a few plot ideas and basic story. It revolved around the starmen's activities after the fall of giygas, and a machine they created that makes inanimate objects come to life. There was also a werewolf infestation!

Some of the ideas I came up with ended up being remarkably similar to various things in Mother 3, but that was a coincidence. I was a little bummed.

I've always wanted at least a staffer that would help out fan-game developers on the site and post updates, fan-art style, in the newsroom with info and screens and such from peoples' games.

I secretly want to be that person. -_o

Would anyone support my campaign? Hehe...

I think the fan-gaming part of the community needs a little more attention rather than just being tacked on alongside fan-art (though it's one avenue of art that never gets the spotlight here). I believe there's some really creative people here that could create all sorts of snazzy games if they had the support and the helpful knowledge.

I don't have a problem with random .exe hehe.

But yeah, I could handle that. Gaming IS my career path, so a lot of my time
and energy is devoted to development... and, thus... hours and hours of debugging.

It's a strange sadistic joy.

Perhaps a forum JUST for fan-aps is too much at this point, but a coordinator
type person just seems to be in order.

I'm totally not against the idea, but as some have pointed out, the drop-out/give-up rate for fan games is pretty huge. Hopefully a little more focus on fan games might help that out a little, I dunno.

Given many past experiences (like zoiff and 2015, to just name a small percentage) I'd really recommend not trying any giant collaborative projects. The drop-out rate for hacks is pretty big too, because people bite off way more than they can chew. We need to get the point across that smaller-scale games are what to aim for.

Anyway, I'll talk stuff over with reid and see what he says about a new fan game d00d.

Tomato wrote on Wed, 11 July 2007 23:15

This is exactly the type of thing that a forum for this sort of thing would be incredibly useful for: discussion of ideas JUST LIKE THESE (that is, how to encourage people to make games that are on a less grand/colossal/epic scale, and making shorter games more attractive to make, and so on).

And not to discourage the idea of a new FanGame staffer/updater (not in the least, in fact: I support the idea wholeheartedly), but a fangame forum would also skirt the complication of having to have everything extensively played and whatever as well, IMO. A forum would provide the opportunity for people to show off what they've made and SHARE what they've made to make it available for other people to build upon, making many of the unfinished games BUILDING BLOCKS for the people to come.

Truth is, in the past year, we've had these (non-PK Hack) fangames worked on:

-EarthBound: Memoirs
-Father (EB Online muliplayer)
-Ranger's "Another EB Sequel"
-Mother XP
-Earthbound 2: The War Against Pokey
-The Earthbound War Simulator
-Holiday 5
-generic crappy fangane
-Mother: Of Memories
-Saturn Valley Online
-Saturn Valley Brick Game
-Earthbound : The Forgotten Story
-Earthbound TI84 Edition
-Earthbound Online Rpg
-EarthBound Ages Remake Demo
-(ozwalled's unnamed EB Fangame)
-MOTHER X
-Phoenix Wright (funfest game)*
-EB No Matsuri - The Game*
-Rescue Reid IV*
-Neverquest*

*technically, starmen.net fangames, but whatever.

(if there's any I'm forgetting, please let me know)

So yeah -- that's 17 games. SEVENTEEN. (21 if you include the site fangames) And there's always the possibility that I'm forgetting some. The point is: when in the history of the site was the last time that there was that many fangames that were attempted? If there IS a time for a fangame forum, it IS NOW. YES, I understand that most of those never reached completion and/or have been abandonned. But the point is that there's a fair chance that MORE would be worked on, and MORE would be continued if there was more attention given to them.


Moreover, the fact that the drop-off rate for the PK Hacks is so high hasn't been a reason for it not to have a forum section....

Yeah, Rob brings up a good point. It seemed people were inspired by others' projects and decided to start their own. While a fan-game is dubious work and dedication that list proves it's a definite breeding ground for community relations. Because of my own game I've made some awesome friends and have seen budding artists improve their craft.

As for a forum... I'm kinda on the fence. While it would be killer to have one it doesn't seem fair to other forms of art (though writing has it's own forum, that seems understandable) or practical to divide up the main board. The Fan-Art Forum does just fine with its catch all topics, several fan-game threads, and the occasional music ones. It's not congested at all.

I had to give up on Sister due to family problems....

I think if there was a major fan game, we could definitely do a good job on keeping it Mother-like but still having it much different, as mother 3 was to earthbound.

I can't really help much in this project but I can offer this pivotal piece of idea:

It should be an MMO (or have a multiplayer mode or something)


Why? Because we can always talk about Earthbound but we never get to play it together.

Stevesesy wrote on Mon, 16 July 2007 20:57
I Concur.

Capn, once you get the section 100% fully up and have lots of good tutorials, resources, etc. ready, then I might consider making a new forum.