How Intelligent Do You Need To Be?

Hi,

I wouldn't say I am stupid but sometimes I feel not quite a bright when I get stuck with RPG Maker Vx Ace. So I decided to make this post to ask = How intelligent do you need to be to use RPG Maker Vx Ace?

I've watched the forums for about a week now and I seem to ask some pretty simple questions, you guys and girls know the answers straight away but me I have to ask for help. It kind of upsets me to be honest, also I word things oddly which makes things even worst :|

I even got stuck on the tutorials and sometimes I just feel, well unintelligent...

How good would you say you are at using RPG Maker Vx Ace?

Kindest regards,

Miffy6000.

I'd say it comes with practice. My first attempt at using RPGMaker all I managed to do was crash the program badly, as I managed to somehow edit a key script by accident. Needless to say, it was all uphill from there.

However, just know it comes with practice. When I look at the work I did my first week of using RPGMAker...well, let's just say that work should be burned, it was that bad. However, we have to start somewhere. I'd suggest just keep trying and asking questions, and reading all the tutorials.

Miffy, firstly, you aren't stupid and secondly I don't think it really matters how intelligent you are at using RPG Maker Vx Ace. So some people can read the tutorials better but really that doesn't matter. If you get stuck on the forums then all you need to do is just make a thread here on the forums, sooner or later somebody will help you out :)

You say that people know the answers straight away, well once upon a time they wouldn't have known the answers at all! They would have had to learnt them and pretty much that's what you are doing. Learning new things about Vx Ace day after day, and that's good because it means you will be able to help others who are like you, New!!!

Think about it this way Miffy. Your creating a Script that will allow Multiplayer in RPG Maker Vx Ace, that's brilliant :D  and that proves that your better at programming than probably a lot of people who are on this forum! Even if you don't complete your Multiplayer Script at least you tried it  :)

And how good would I say I am at using RPG Maker Vx Ace?

I'd say I am Average! I don't know the system very well, like yourself and from time to time I do ask for help - Everybody does :p

Learn to ask for help Miffy, don't be ashamed of asking for help, be Proud :D

Well in my first day i knew few,in the second day i was 38%,third was 52%and after a week 95%(Didm't knew about outside scripts[i only discovered external scripts because my best friend birthday was near and he likes final fantasy,so i searched "Rpg maker vx ace final fantasy battle style" and then i discovered the scripts world).

Now i'm learning Rgss3 and already make 2 scripts(One fully recovered your hero when he leveled up)(and the other is to change the default vehicle speed,enabling auto-dash through a switch,disabling dash through a switch and lastely changing the y distance of the airship based on a variable)

And that's all folks. #Yanflyreignsforever

To simply use it?  Not very, and I have loads of supporting evidence for that claim.  To use it efficiently? To create novel features, interesting stories, and enjoyable games?  Like anything else, smarter than average.  encountering problems that require some thought to solve doesn't mean you're not smart, it's how you solve those problems that matters.  No one in the world immediately knows the answer to every issue they may face.  Smart people find good solutions and move on to the next problem.

It has nothing to do with intelligence - the core of the problem is that you need to know a large number of things, even if most of them are simple.


In my starting-point tutorial (link in my signature) I suggest that all new users should not only work through the official tutorials (something that usually takes one or two weeks if you really work through them instead of simply reading them), and then take another week to simply explore the editor.


And that doesn't count the time needed to follow the other tips and tutorials there.


Bottom line is - most people should take a month of learning and familiarizing them with the program, before they should even consider starting their own game project. And then they should expect to need several months on that first project to get the experience neccessary for really handling the program...


So no, it is nothing special if you haven't understood the RM after a week. That's standard for anyone who has no previous experience with game developing or programming.

Easy enough for a child, they say...

I am NOT very good at it. I have used it for about 45 days, and I still ask basic questions after scouring the internet for answers.  i haven't used scripting, and i just recently learned (sort-of) variables. The Switch tutorial class confused the **** out of me. I for a long time didn't understand switches until near the completion of my first game, so I have these sloppy Conditional branch events throughout my game that you need to have an invisible item to activate. Lol. It's so bad! 

You are the one writing the Multiplayer for RMVXA? Did you read the Steam FAQ? Lol, you're a rare breed! I don't know squat about programming outside of the HTML I learned 10 years ago (and have never used since.) Oooh, I guess one time I "hacked" a flash game and added my own commands and images...

I like BigEd's response, and it's very true: Smart people find answers (or sometimes make them) while others walk away from the problem.

@Andar: My first game was me tutorialing o_o I started it not as a serious project, but just an experiment with the engine, learn its limits. And it took me about a month :)

Thank you for your help everyone.

I'm going to read through the tutorials on Monday morning, it'll take me a while but as long as it helps I don't really mind. :)

I agree with you philteredkhaos - I do not believe that RPG Maker Vx Ace is simple enough for a child to use ;)

Thank you again everybody.

Just practice more. I started when I was like 5-7 and I still have...problems. Lots of people need help don't be afraid to ask you'll learn eventually and maybe you'll even be able to make scripts. :) Who knows maybe you'll help someone who needs help sometime. :)

@Monkeysnow55 :)

Yeah I guess practice does make perfect. Hopefully one day I'll be able to help others instead of them helping me.

Thanks :)

You could also consider side projects for learning basic things. To give you an example: back in June, I decided to create a side project for the sole purpose of learning how to set up my items/armor/weapons/skills. So that nothing else interfered, I used the generator to make 5 dungeon levels, added some monsters, a couple ladders, and that was it. The levels existed just to test out my armor, weapons, skills, and so on, nothing more. It will definitely win no awards as a game (unless this was say 1983 or so), as it has little to no plot, but it gave me an easy way to balance the systems in my game at least.

I still return to it from time to time by copying over my changed systems from my main project, test them in the side project, see what is working well and what is not, then going back to the main to edit.

It's normal to not really know the intricacies of the program at first. I was a bit like you lol, asking questions every day. But now look where I am - four games under my belt (4th to be released, hopefully this month) - and only the occasional question!

@bgillisp:

Well sounds like you know the software pretty well now. Thanks for your help :)

@Hotfirelegend:

You were like me? You poor devil. Four games under your belt - That's Amazing :)

Forth should be released this month, eh? That's pretty amazing mate. I wish you the best of luck for the future...may you release many more games :)

Kindest regards,

Miffy.

When just starting out, you may not KNOW things, but that has NOTHING to do with the abstract concept we call "intelligence."  Even the very concept itself is flawed anyways.  There are so many profoundly different "intelligences" --- you have gifted artists who can't add two numbers together, genius mathematicians who forget to get dressed (Einstein), talented dancers who can't add, enlightened monks who forget how to wash their own dishes.

In my case, when I started, I had already been doing computer programming for over 30 years, so the concepts and the idea of "put your instructions in computer understandable logic" are old hat for me.  So I quickly figured out the raw basics of VX Ace, but still have a lot to learn and I'm sure I make newbie mistakes in the games I write.   And, if you hand me a hammer and nail,  I can successfully put the nail in the wall maybe 50% of the time.

So "How good are you at using VX Ace?"  is also a vague question.  I'm pretty good at basic events, some scripting, basic map layouts, game balancing, but not at all when creating custom artwork.

The best advice I can give:  Do all of the excellent tutorials --- really perform them, in a test project --- and start out by making a simple demo game, to give yourself some practice.  Over time, you'll learn more.

Look at it this way --- everyone who is alive MUST have come from parents who had some ability to learn and adapt.  After all, the immense changes to the planet that have happened since humans came into existence mean the people who couldn't learn and adapt well died without leaving descendants.  So, clearly, you have the ability to learn.

How easy is it?  Well, it is very visual and I think it's really easy to use.  My advice:  Bite off a small piece of the elephant (understanding all that RPG Maker can do) at a time so you don't get overwhelmed. 

Best of luck!

@whitesphere:

Ah thanks for that it made me feel a whole lot better :)  I would have clicked the "like this" button but sadly I have used up all of my likes for today, but don't worry I'll like it tomorrow :) . Thanks for your help buddy, sometimes it does feel hard using RPG Maker but its strange because I can code pretty easily but RPG Maker Vx Ace just puzzles me, don't know why?

Sadly though I can't learn the tutorials just yet, its not easy to focus on any projects at the moment, mainly because my house is so doomy and gloomy. With my gran being so ill everyone is very upset and at the moment my mind is focusing on her, this is also stopping me from reading :|

I guess your right, my parents are pretty intelligent, or I think so anyway. My dad can't do math's but he did own his own business. And my mum, she home taught me so I guess both my parents are quite intelligent :)

But I will start the tutorials soon!!

Thank you for your help whitesphere :D

Miffy.

Let's be frank here, this is not an easy software to learn. I've seen many people cry and become all emo over it, reverting back to 10 year old little girls.

BUT.... that's because they LET IT GET TO THEM.

Just take your time, go as slowly as you need to, save your ambitious ideas until you're well into knowing how to use this, oh, and don't disregard people because they have more or less titles released.  Keep your head high, and just like a video game, if you feel yourself getting frustrated, set it down and walk away; come back to it another day.

You got this.

The fun part about RPG Maker is that most of us know the answers because we've been tinkering with these programs (or previous iterations of these programs) for quite some time.  Many of us have even scanned the help files or asked questions ourselves on the forums.  RPG Maker is very much an "experiment to learn" type of program.

Most of the time, people suggest that newcomers to the program read a lot of the tutorials (or look some up on YouTube).  Personally, I think you learn some other valuable things that you can't find in a tutorial by creating a "test game".  Which, all that means is, you explore all the features and such of the program in a way that wouldn't actually wreck any idea you had for a game.  Your test game is there just for testing.  You can add, delete, modify as you want.  It isn't going to be some kind of "finished game".  It's a fantastic way to learn how switches and variables work.  It's even a good way to learn how a lot of the features in Eventing work.

It's easy to look at what others are doing and say "I want to do that too" without taking into account that you have only just set your hands on the program a day ago and the "others" you're looking at have been using it for a couple of years.


It's like learning anything. At first, EVERY LITTLE THING you want to do is a struggle, because you know WHAT you want it to do, and it SEEMS simple in your mind, but you just can't figure out HOW to do it. You have to spend the time to learn EVERY LITTLE THING. And it's really discouraging because it's slow, you make mistakes, and everyone else makes it look so easy. Well, guess what ... a couple of years ago, most of those "others" were going through exactly the same thing and feeling exactly the same way.


You've just got to stick with it.


Biggest mistakes you can avoid:


- don't try and do too much. Don't look at some awesome game that has lots of special, custom stuff in it and say "I want to do that". Leave that until later on, after you gain confidence.


- don't expect the knowledge to just come to you. Read the help file (F1). Read tutorials. Make a "junk" project where you can just create maps and events for the sake of messing around. Experiment.


- don't think you have to script. Spend a LOT of time just looking at all the event commands. Click on each one, look at its options, try and figure out what they're all for. Experiment.


You'll go through waves of feeling like you don't know anything and struggling with even the tiniest things, to getting a little bit more confident as things start to work the way you want them to, to feeling like you finally have the hang of it, and then the whole thing will be repeated as you come to grips with one thing and launch into another.


Just stop every now and then and look back, and realize how much more you know today than you did yesterday, or last week, or last month. Everybody is always learning, and everybody goes through the same stages :)

Basically, what they said. While a child COULD make a decent game with RPG Maker, it would have to be a highly dedicated child.
Frankly, that's where the real distinction is - whether or not you've got the mental stamina to dig in and keep digging until you've got a grasp on the system; not some arbitrary number declaring your raw ability to take tests designed to measure your ability to take said tests... (Which, pretty much, is the textbook definition of IQ and IQ tests, anyway.)

Case in point - MENSA wants me. My IQ is estimated to be in the 150-160 range or thereabouts. That IQ and pocket change will get me a cup of coffee. Or possibly bus fare. I feel I may be one of the best suited people here to state, without false humility or foolish pride, that high IQs are absurdly overrated, inherently flawed, and largely useless on their own. :p

Take my word for it; you'll get farther with a bit of dedication and steady, grinding work than you'll get with merely high IQ. :p

@Warpmind

I knew several people like that in college.  Their IQs were probably in the 150-160 range (mine is around 130), and they were very good at their engineering classes without even trying.  But, they were bored with the classes and dropped out.  So, in the end, it was their motivation (or lack thereof) that determined their success.  In my case, I did average to below average (C average) which was in the bottom 20% of my graduating class, but I did graduate, which many people did not.

Conversely, I know people who may not have as high a measured IQ, but who make the absolute most of what they have.  These are the people who succeed, no matter what type of intelligence is their strong suit.  In fact, the superb short story "Flowers for Algernon" is a very poignant take on "IQ" as the main character, Charlie, has a low IQ but intense motivation, and is given IQ boosting surgery...and finds he is as lonely, if not MORE lonely than he was before the surgery.