The Goblins Fan Forum

ÔÇ£Right then... set the interdimensional portals to ÔÇÿonÔÇÖ, set the flux capacitors to ÔÇÿstandbyÔÇÖ and... Lights! There! Welcome to God School!ÔÇØ



ÔÇ£Welcome! Welcome! Welcome! IÔÇÖm glad you all found your ways successfully through the interdimensional gateway! Grab yourselves a seat or puddle or cloud or whatever you prefer and weÔÇÖll begin.

ÔÇ£Now, introductions. My name is... well, itÔÇÖs not that important. WhatÔÇÖs important is that I am the messenger, or avatar of the World Builder known to you as thinkslogically and I am here to help you all become gods of your own dimensions as well! ...With a good deal of assistance along the way of course!

ÔÇ£As many of you will have noticed, there are a lot of games in this forum, but there are almost always more players than there are spaces in games, especially in the most popular ones. So this ÔÇÿgameÔÇÖ is designed to help more of you become game creators yourselves by teaching you the skills youÔÇÖll need to design and draw an image-based game (of whatever style you prefer), and then to spend some time teaching you how to create beautiful maps of your world, invent exciting and original places for your players to explore and then fill them with curious NPCs, deadly monsters and treasure that it truly to die for!

ÔÇ£For those of you who remember the original God School back on the Keenspot forums a lot of this will probably be quite familiar (including a few recycled Ratha-original lessons), but weÔÇÖve thrown in plenty of new stuff too so even if you played before you should still find something new and exciting to test you!

ÔÇ£So, if you are still interested in joining this course, I suppose there are a few things you should know:

"Firstly, God School is open to everyone! It doesnÔÇÖt matter whether youÔÇÖve never used a drawing program before or are already running your own games like a pro, weÔÇÖll be starting at the beginning and covering everything you need from the ground up with loads of great tips and tricks to make your life easier.

"The second thing is commitment. If you sign up to the God School, please try and participate as much as possible and complete each of the assignments you are given. Each new lesson will go up on a Saturday with assignments due on the Friday which should give you plenty of time. However, if youÔÇÖre short on time and canÔÇÖt afford an hour or two each week to get this stuff done then this game probably isnÔÇÖt for you.

"Thirdly, the course schedule (as it stands at the moment) will be about 6 months long:

1. Installing a graphics program & the basic tools (thinkslogically)
2. Using Layers (thinkslogically)
3. Creating a freestyle adventure (Arles)
4. Editing someone elseÔÇÖs work (thinkslogically)
5. The selection tools (thinkslogically)
6. The path tool (thinkslogically)
7. Making your own sprites (thinkslogically)
8. Building a simple dungeon (thinkslogically)
9. Making animated gifs (M0rtimer / LooksandSmiles)
10. Q&A Session (everyone!)
11. Keeping everything organised with spreadsheets (lingrem)
12. Using BBCode to format your game in-forum (SeeAMoose)
13. Constructing a plot (Nerre)
14. Map making (LooksAtYouFunny)
15. Monsters (NEED A TUTOR)
16. Populating your world with NPCs (lingrem)
17. LOOT! (Arles)
18. Balancing the stats (NEED A TUTOR)
19. Setting the mood (Arles)
20. How they did it: LoneStarNorthÔÇÖs games (LSN)
21. How they did it: EvilCoatRackÔÇÖs games (ECR)
22. Actually doing it (thinkslogically)
23. Graduation.

ÔÇ£ItÔÇÖs all subject to a bit of change depending on how things go, but thatÔÇÖs the plan for now. If anyone wants to volunteer to teach a session (even if it's not on the list) just let us know.

ÔÇ£Now obviously this is quite a lot of work, but by the end of it all we should hopefully have a pretty awesome resource to help aspiring Game Masters create exciting new adventures, and you should all have your very own Universe just waiting for players to destroy!



ÔÇ£The first lesson will go up next Saturday, and all you have to do if you're interested is sign on the dotted line. That's it!ÔÇØ

M0rtimer wrote: Anyways, L&S, how would you want to do the part we both got? I was maybe thinking that, if you were to handle the GIMP aspect, I could simply show the neat timeline feature Photoshop has?

If anyone else still wants to join the class, you're free to do so for the rest of this week. After that, it's closed doors (unless you're extra persuasive).