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About 2 years ago, sometime in mid-March, was when I started to create Pokémon Tri-Master. Although back then it was either called Pokémon ‘Rainbow’ or didn’t have any title at all, lol. I don’t remember why, but for some reason I arbitrarily set my own due date to finish the game as 2 years later (which is this month, although I’m about 2 weeks late, lol). I don’t know why exactly I selected 2 years as my deadline, but I assume it could have been due to some facts I looked up about other games at the time.
In any case, during the course of this project, I believe I took 2 hiatuses that lasted ~1 month each. The last month and a half were probably some of the most productive since I just wanted to finish the game and “move on” with my life. But then I realized something. . . .
There really is no “End”. . . .
This entire project has been for me first and foremost a source of stress relief during the last 2 years. It has also become a new ‘hobby’ for me to work with RPG Maker in my free time. One of the best things about this hobby of course is that it has been completely FREE to work on. I’ve never poured/spent any money on the project and have never needed to. Having a hobby like that is invaluable !
The first time I started this project involved me watching a few Youtube videos about making one’s own Pokémon game. I don’t even remember who’s video I watched at first since I was a bit annoyed with the way the Youtuber presented the material, but I was able to get thru his first few videos to be able to start doing things on my own. I never watched the videos again, but instead found the Pokémon Essentials Wiki to be my primary source of information to design my game. After that, it was just a matter of continuing to develop the game and looking up things on the Wiki from time-to-time.
Certain events that took me hours (perhaps even days) to program now take me only a few minutes to program. One of these early examples was the event in Viridian Forest with the lost Meowth. The girl was originally supposed to follow the game player, but being new to RPG Maker made it hard for me to script such an event since I had to consider what happens to the follower if the game player has all their Pokémon fainted. It took me about two days to figure out how I wanted to do that event, but for some reason (perhaps a year later), I decided to simplify that event so that it doesn't the girl following. Even today, there is a sort of glitch/bug for players to get another Amulet Coin there after the first one. I think I’m actually going to purposefully leave that glitch there for nostalgic purposes.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago and I learned that the project could never really be ‘finished’ per say. What I mean by that is that even though the game’s story is done, there will ALWAYS be things within the game I can change or want to make better down the road. And because of that, I’ve been able to confirm that this project has kind of been a sort of ‘transmutable’ piece of art. I don’t usually work on artistic endeavors, but what’s great about this is that it involves logical work to some extent with the scripts written and programming the events to work. However, its artistic nature is what I believe allows it to be continuously changed and improved upon. Of course, I won’t be doing any of that anytime soon ! Although having the project end feels a bit strange, I’m also relieved that I have been able to start and pull-through to finish such a project !
I do plan on having a post-Game but it’s honestly probably going to be quite short (after all, I have already maxed out the software’s 999 map limitation, lol !). I guess after that, it’ll really be ‘done’.
However, although the project is ending . . . . I just remember that . . . .