A New RPG Maker draws near! Command?

[CHKNRAVE]

what kind of announcement of an announcement

 

[Parallax Panda]

@HalcyonDaze
I assume you don't know about his other channel?

Well since it's kinda related to this announcement I guess it's okay to give you a direct link.

 

[HalcyonDaze]

@HalcyonDaze
I assume you don't know about his other channel?

Ha! I'm a dummy. I saw his alt channel earlier and when I clicked on it, it said "This channel doesn't have any content", so I figured it was just a placeholder for something and I moved on. Just went back and clicked "videos" and everything is there. Thank you!

 

[Rogue Milk]

You have my curiosity.

 

[MikePjr]

We probably won't get it, but I would definitely like to see a more retro / classic /pixelated RPG look to the sprites and art. I find the Chibi look way too bright / HD / goofy for a serious JRPG.

My hope was tileset size options.. another software from Kadokawa.. i can't say the name of it here.. but another software they've made lets you choose what tile size your project uses from a settings section for said project.
I'd like to see something like that.. even if it's just a thing you change with plugins..
Like, you can go into a plugin, change the size to 16X16 and the software looks at that number, and just knows on it's own to adjust and allow it.
Then I could go back to the style of graphics 2K and 2k3 used.
I'm still really good at making original sprites based on those styles.

 

[AsuranFish]

There’s a lot of opportunity on the character generator. I’d like to see the following...

1) Greatly expand on the number of poses generated for both battles and map sprites. Facial expressions for shocked, angry, happy, sad, laughing, etc... actions like jumping, climbing, crouching, and so forth.

2) More poses for battlers. Left and right hand attacks, jumps, spins, kicks, uppercuts, flips, throws, casting animations, a variety of sword motions for different slash styles, thrusts, and so on. Also, dual wield support for weapon animations so dual wielding doesn’t look like two attacks with the same hand.

3) Armor that changes your character’s appearance if equipped, though this may be too memory intensive. (I realize this is possible through plugins right now, but not to the extent you can mix and match say an armor and a helmet).

 

[Goldschuss]

Let me guess: It'll be RPG Maker MV Ace, which is basically the same but slightly improved?

 

[T34KEN]

There’s a lot of opportunity on the character generator. I’d like to see the following...

1) Greatly expand on the number of poses generated for both battles and map sprites. Facial expressions for shocked, angry, happy, sad, laughing, etc... actions like jumping, climbing, crouching, and so forth.

2) More poses for battlers. Left and right hand attacks, jumps, spins, kicks, uppercuts, flips, throws, casting animations, a variety of sword motions for different slash styles, thrusts, and so on. Also, dual wield support for weapon animations so dual wielding doesn’t look like two attacks with the same hand.

3) Armor that changes your character’s appearance if equipped, though this may be too memory intensive. (I realize this is possible through plugins right now, but not to the extent you can mix and match say an armor and a helmet).

4) Normal sized heads, my brother laughs at it and says its hydrocephalus

 

[K2loid]

There’s a lot of opportunity on the character generator. I’d like to see the following...

1) Greatly expand on the number of poses generated for both battles and map sprites. Facial expressions for shocked, angry, happy, sad, laughing, etc... actions like jumping, climbing, crouching, and so forth.

2) More poses for battlers. Left and right hand attacks, jumps, spins, kicks, uppercuts, flips, throws, casting animations, a variety of sword motions for different slash styles, thrusts, and so on. Also, dual wield support for weapon animations so dual wielding doesn’t look like two attacks with the same hand.

3) Armor that changes your character’s appearance if equipped, though this may be too memory intensive. (I realize this is possible through plugins right now, but not to the extent you can mix and match say an armor and a helmet).

Sprite overlay function where you can assign a spritesheet overlay to items + animation calls where you can overlay a character's facial expression onto their spriteSpeculation is a hell of a drug there's too many thoughts on QoL improvements for a big release. thursday come faster

 

[Bastrophian]

New legends will likely rise ^^

O_O .... run to cape closet! Oh boy, I hope I'll be a good legend!

 

[JosephSeraph]

If 80% of your users request and use a "Quest Journal" plugin... INDUSTRY STANDARD.

Can you point me to any engine that's more out-of-the-box feature rich than RPG Maker? Because I honestly don't know. The "industry standard" afaik isn't to force-integrate a quest system in every new project, but rather to strip most features and only cover baseline routines like displaying graphics and playing audio. (Unity, Unreal, GameMaker, Love, Construct2/3, etc etc etc)

ATB is definitely not used by nowhere near 80% of the user base, considering how popular the CTB and Press Turn systems are. It's insane to consider adding it as default functionality. We'd have to think about an engine that supports DTB, CTB, ATB, Press Turn, all out of the box written within the same context and all cross-compatible. We'd have to force every plugin creator to accomodate these systems when developing new things, as well. That's... Far from industry standard. And every genre-maker I know of is a lot less feature rich than RPG Maker.

If it's just an overhaul of that stuff, then I expect it to be an update to the existing program rather than an entirely new paid product.

As has been stated several times in this thread, this is impossible. The engine HAS been written from scratch, with knowledge carried over from the previous iteration; or at least that's what has happened every time since. You can't keep patching a program forever, you have to scrap and rebuild at some point.

It is simply asinine to create a product that is a "slight improvement" over the last one and try to sell it at "full price". Though, I guess there are enough stupid customers that companies like Apple can get away with it year after year.

A complete rebuild of the framework is not a "slight improvement".

 

[VisitorsFromDreams]

Bloat is a failure of the developer, not a failure of the engine.

I can't believe anyone would ever think otherwise.

 

[rue669]

One thing that I find interesting is that people who did spend money on dlc for tilesets (I have basically all of them) won’t have spend their money needlessly. That’s great news to hear. It may mean that future dlc for this new rm could also be easily transferred/used in RMMV. That works for me!

I also highly doubt this rpg maker will include a tactics battle system or action battle system, but I’d love it if they tackled that Genre of game in a different engine all together like they did with Visual Novel maker.

 

[Andar]

Bloat is a failure of the developer, not a failure of the engine.

I can't believe anyone would ever think otherwise.

exactly - the people here just don't think it through.

bloat happens when the developer adds too many options to any engine, so that is what the failure is - refusing to stop adding more features.
But that is exactly what some people here demand: to add features that would cause bloat if the developer agrees to add them.
They just each hope that their own wishes would not add to that bloat, but that hope is often false.
The only way for the developer to prevent bloat is to plan a set of functions from the beginning, and refuse to add too much to that set.

 

[Parallax Panda]

Fancy features aside, what the devs really need to do is give us the tools to set our own tile grid size, screen resolutions and check a box to have the game start in fullscreen. Then improve the tools to allow for better mapping and tileset setup etc.

Those things would not be bloat at all. In fact not adding them would be lazy and at this point (after so many iterations of the engine), almost be insulting to the user base to refuse to include this.

But I have a feeling at least some of it will be in the next RM. It makes sense that it should.

 

[Cyberhawk]

ATB is definitely not used by nowhere near 80% of the user base, considering how popular the CTB and Press Turn systems are. It's insane to consider adding it as default functionality. We'd have to think about an engine that supports DTB, CTB, ATB, Press Turn, all out of the box written within the same context and all cross-compatible. We'd have to force every plugin creator to accomodate these systems when developing new things, as well. That's... Far from industry standard. And every genre-maker I know of is a lot less feature rich than RPG Maker.

You say press turn but i've yet to see one in MV. Despite press turn being peak JRPG battle system for me, I'm not an adept programer lol. I only seen one from VXAce and that one costed money.

 

[Andar]

the tools to set our own tile grid size

you're right, this would not bloat the code - the problem is on another side.

multiple grid sizes would either require multiple RTP for each size, or they would require a resize algorithm that would always loose quality compared to the default grid size.
Just look up the many topics from people who tried (and failed) to resize Ace-tiles to MV without too much quality loss.

If they allow multiple grid sizes by default, they would get that mess multiplied and there would be many people getting problems with that.

What they could do is something like they did with the Patch-EULA for RM2K - giving options while clearly stating that those options are not supported.
In this case, giving only one size of RTP and having all projects default to that grid size, but allowing the editor to use other grid sizes through unsupported changes (like requiring a manual edit of an inifile, but not giving the option in the editor itself).

That is the only way how they could make such an option available without causing more support problems than anything else.

 

[VisitorsFromDreams]

you're right, this would not bloat the code - the problem is on another side.

multiple grid sizes would either require multiple RTP for each size, or they would require a resize algorithm that would always loose quality compared to the default grid size.
Just look up the many topics from people who tried (and failed) to resize Ace-tiles to MV without too much quality loss.

If they allow multiple grid sizes by default, they would get that mess multiplied and there would be many people getting problems with that.

What they could do is something like they did with the Patch-EULA for RM2K - giving options while clearly stating that those options are not supported.
In this case, giving only one size of RTP and having all projects default to that grid size, but allowing the editor to use other grid sizes through unsupported changes (like requiring a manual edit of an inifile, but not giving the option in the editor itself).

That is the only way how they could make such an option available without causing more support problems than anything else.

I would hope it would just use pixel scaling like GMS, Godot & Unity do. Then it wouldn't matter what size the tileset assets are.

 

[MikePjr]

It's not an impossible thing to have something scalable for tile sizes.. as for the assets themselves.. they've already got plenty of assets from older RPG Makers that can be used..
I'm noticing a lot of other engines being mentioned by name...
So i'll mention the engine i'm talking about..
Pixel Game Maker MV which is considered a sister engine to RPG Maker by Kadowkawa... BTW beyond me mentioning this stuff.. be aware that it's published in the west by a different publisher.. so i can't talk in great detail of it here.
But in that engine there is tile size options from 8x8 to 64x64

If they could do it.. i don't see why the team working on RPG Maker can't.
It's not a competing software to RPG maker.. so mentioning it a little should be okay..
Just don't start asking about the software here..

Honestly, if this going to be a thing in the maker.. i hope it's the first thing we learn.. that way i can start working on or converting assets from older makers over.. it'd give me something to do.

 

[Parallax Panda]

What @MikePjr said is exactly my thinking. I own and use Pixel Game Maker as well as RPG maker and if you can have tile size options in there (as well as option to set screen resolution, divide your own tilesets however you want etc), why not in RM made by the same company?
I'm very convinced that Kadokawa would take some of what they learned by making PGM and put that into the next RM. It would probably not be exactly the same, nor should it, but it would be crazy to not port those features over. Make the next RM engine feel "modern".

@Andar
I'm well aware that scaling pixel art is a crap solution. And of course they shouldn't make different RTP for different tile sizes. That would be stupid as we would get less quantity for each size and it would cost them more money as well, so no, I don't expect that to happen.

But like you said yourself, they could allow for more grid sizes and just have a default size that their RTP is based on. It really is a feature I'd expect to be in an engine to comes out in 2020.
RM has also used 32x32 tiles in the past, so allowing us to use different sizes suddenly would make old VX/VxAce era DLC (and old RM engines RTP) relevant again. I think they could actually make more money if they supported it.

And apart from auto-tiles it's possible to make tiles that can be used in different grids as longs as you keep dividing by something even and design the tiles to work with it from the start. I'll not say it's easy or that it does not have it's problems. It can be incredibly tricky to design. But I have used MV RTP on a 24x24 grid many times, and while it's painful because I need a plugin and the built-in mapping doesn't support it, the result is actually a game that feels way better in my opinion. Allowing the player to get closer to objects and for you to set more precise passabillity if you use something like Yanfly's region restrictions.

In short. I'd not say it's a valid excuse to say that RM can't support more than one grid size because they have RTP. Pixel Game Maker (the engine we shouldn't talk too much about), also has RTP...

I'd also hope they include that checkbox for "full-screen on startup" and custom screen resolutions, but I think I've mentioned that several times in this thread already. But I can't help myself because it's really the most basic of the basic features you can think of and I think it's about time we got them.