ANNOUNCEMENT: Smile Game Builder, SGB Tutorials and Quietus

Sadly, I neglected the RPG Maker Times blogs for a long time. That’s going to change because my focus has shifted, especially since I finally bought a new computer.

Smile Game Builder

Last Sunday (25 July 2021), I made an announcement in the Smile Game Builder Discord that I would no longer be as active with the engine as a whole.

This is for several reasons, but the main one being SGB’s limitations and intrinsic flaws. When creating a game, such as Quietus, which requires a custom menu, these limitations and flaws become apparent, thereby stymieing its development. The way that SGB interprets, processes and activates event triggers and commands seems to be a little "off". This often means workarounds, which aren’t always efficacious.

I’ve been with SGB since the very beginning – since its pre-release in fact – and I’ve enjoyed every moment of it. However, I guess there comes a time when you simply outgrow it or it outgrows you. This is especially relevant if you’ve been with an engine for such a long time and there are fewer significant updates. Or another more competent, more capable engine comes along or catches your eye.

While my continued support of SmileBoom, Smile Game Builder and the SGB Discord server is stalwart, my time with the engine itself (as a whole) is probably done.

SGB Tutorials

With that said, however, I’d still like to create tutorial videos for it. Its popularity as an engine is still relatively strong, after all, plus it still has a large placement in my heart.

The main theme for the tutorials is a multi-part series focused around The Explorer’s Guild. This includes the guild itself, guild ranks, bounty hunting, jobs, recruitment, skills, battles, and much more. It’s a homogenisation of old and new tutorials, but built from scratch, from start to finish. The eventual end result is a complete, comprehensive and unique system for your games.

Quietus (An SGB Game)

As many of you may know by now, my main project for SGB is Quietus. This is a psychobiographical game reflecting on birth, life and death, and the choices we make that shape the future.

At this point, however, development on this game has temporarily halted. This isn’t due to a lack of commitment to developing the game or lack of motivation. My determination to complete at least one game for SGB is steadfast. It’s due to the aforementioned limitations and flaws when creating its custom menu.

It means, I now need to rethink the best strategies for implementing a functional menu system. This is an integral part of the game itself and its system structure. Given SGB’s incongruity for creating a really complex menu system, I may need to dumb it down some or work on a more generic format for it. Alternatively, start it again completely from scratch and test it each step to determine where it’s malfunctioning. That’s ultimately part of the frustratingly tedious part of game development, after all!

Be sure to check its progress here and on its GameJolt page!