gamingislove

Well, 2014 is coming to an end ... and so is the first (official) year with ORK Framework, more or less.

How has it been for you? Did you achieve everything you wanted? Do you like working with ORK so far?

Development-wise it was a pretty great year, added a lot of new stuff and had fun doing it most of the time ... the new UI had been a bit of a pain, though.
And you guys keep coming up with the best/craziest ideas :D

Kirb

Well, you know me! :D I'm glad to have helped shape ORK to some degree since the beginning of beta; and I think it's come a long, long way since then.

ORK has been one of the best, most flexible tools I've worked with, better than any proprietary tools at studios I've worked; so as a designer, I congratulate and thank you.

There's still more things I'd love to have (of course!), but it's been a wonderful year working and growing with ORK.

mattratcliffe

Well I am still a fairly new ORKling, having only begun my project with it a couple of weeks ago. For me it's the speed with which I can get a working combat system together with character advancement so I can test my game ideas!

Look forward to new updates in 2015 and beyond.

cheers
Matt

Wood

I'm new to Ork, still working the tutorial, but I can already see the flexibility and power of the framework. Personally, I think I am fortunate to have discovered Ork at this time, as it seems to contain all the basic RPG components I could ask for, and it is stable.

To answer your questions, Yes, I do like working with Ork, though I need to get more familiar with it. To reach my goals with Ork, I need it to continue to grow, and I may need to bolt on some 3rd party assets. As a non-programmer Indie developer, I am always looking for ease of use and ways to get my visions packed into a game. Ork has a lot to offer in these areas.

Keep having fun with Ork.

Firrerreo

Gotta agree with @Kirb - it beats the crap out of the proprietary tools we've used at the studios I've also worked at. And comparing it to 3rd party tools we purchased, it's also way easier to use and extend functionality with, and more importantly, the support you provide @GiL is *amazing* and always timely.

A colleague and I have also had success using it to teach game development to some high school students, so that's also been a blast. :)

Catacomber

Having come to the Ork Framework from using Ork 1, the learning curve wasn't as steep as I expected and the Framework is so rich and flexible, I'd say my experience has been extremely satisfying and productive! The support from the creator has been fantastic. This forum also has been very supportive and I'm happy to be using what is undoubtedly the best game editor (and probably app editor) out there.

Catacomber

I forgot to thank Kirb for all the betatesting he did of the ORK Framework. I think we all owe him a lot of thanks for all his hard work. I was busy with WizzardIsland but was always following the betatesting posts and he really should get a loud clap of hands.

Happy New Year! : ) Looking forward to 2015 and a similar thread at the end of next year to celebrate what ORK has been for us in 2015. It can only get awesomer. : )

JellyPaladin

I'm not especially good at programming and I've never even looked at more than 4-5 sections of the tutorials here, but simply by jumping into ORK headfirst with a strong knowledge of RPGs, I've come out very happy with my core battle system, character growth and customization, menu layouts, equipment setups, my fashion subsystem, complex enemy AI, and other things I'm probably not even remembering right now. Every major thing I've done in ORK has been easier than expected.

Contrast that with something like 2D Toolkit, where I read dozens of forum posts and tutorials but was still puzzled for months about seemingly basic things like collision detection and animating a player character. 2DTK is awesome, so I'm not badmouthing it, but I'm saying this to highlight that ORK is intuitive even to somebody like me.

So I can say honestly that my past year has been incredible. =) I haven't had anything to put up in the Showcase forum yet, but I'll definitely be finding pixel artists in these next couple of months and you'll be hearing from me once I have enough not-placeholder sprites to do screenshots. :P

Final words:

I've had many feature requests for ORK and I'm sure I'll have many more, but that's because I just have a love of so many RPGs and I'm a gameplay-oriented person with a clear vision of what I want to do. Everything that is possible in ORK simply works and GiL is always adding more at a speed that never fails to surprise and impress me. It's an amazing framework.

Cheers to you GiL, cheers to everyone here, and a Happy New Year--and a Successful New Year and a Prosperous New Year too. :D

keyboardcowboy

I didn't start working with ORK seriously until August. That's when I decided to give ORK a serious test drive. I was skeptical about ORK working for my little project. It wasn't until I saw Dead Gear that made me give ORK a serious look. I thought ORK was just a JRPG engine (RPG Maker on steriods if you will.)

Well, I was wrong about it being just a JRPG engine. After that wall was breached, and remembering this was still Unity after all, my project started to take shape. I just finished up my party creator. And the project is starting to take off now.

If I were still coding the engine part myself (like I was before), I wouldn't be anywhere near where I am. I've limited number of hours to work dev. So, ORK has saved me a lot of time! Thanks Gil.

Griffin

On the RPG side, I got everything I wanted, and it's thanks to you for taking ideas into consideration. I would really love to see some point and click adventure options!

Alex1234

imagine making a full fledged RPG without this framework, you'll be doomed!

this framework saves us a crazy amount of time in coding part,allowing you to focus on your aesthetics of your game design. i've come to the point where the mechanics of my game is the sole problem i have to tackle now everything else work just fine :)

Tuxedose

Well sorry for the late answer but here I go:

I am a new user of Ork as well (bought it just before christmas), and after plowing through the tutorials I can only say that I love it. I read in a post somewhere in these forums that you should "make the games that you want to make, not the ones you think will sell". Well with a genre like RPG's I, as an indie developer can finally make a game in the genre that I love the most even if I only have a small team with me.
Ork is fun to work with, powerful and a huge timesaver!

Time to develop RPG's everyone! :D

wtyson

it made me feel all warm in fuzzy inside. or was that the rum...