Any tips for reverse engineering an RGSS script?

[KB]

Pokemon Essentials allows a user to create a desktop version of a Pokemon game. It gives RPG Maker XP all of the functionality needed to create a decent monster-catching game, including monster inventories, custom view battlers, etc. The problem, though, is it is not for commercial use, and it borrows heavily from the Pokemon games so much so that Nintendo actually had a very helpful web page showing how to use the program taken down.

Is there a practical way to look through the pages of code, pick out exactly what I want my game to do, and use only that to write my own code so that I don't get in trouble with the creators of the scripts? Would this be less practical than just finding free scripts to do what I want the program to do?

 

[Andar]

Pokemon Essentials was (and is) completely illegal, because the resources were stolen from the original games. That is why Nintendo was able to take it down - it wasn't made to be similar, it was actually stolen resources.

That said, reverse-engineering such a complex script is actually more difficult than to write your own.
Because programs are not "mix-and-match", you would have to replace any missing parts between copied code with your own, and would have to completely understand those parts of code you selected.

And for even asking such a question I have to assume that you are rather a beginner in programming, because otherwise you would know better.

and unfortunately, because Pokemon Essentials are illegal and this is an official company forum (which needs to follow corporate law, not civil law like a fan-website) you cannot get any help or support for that from here.

We can only help you if you decide to write something similar from scratch without using Pokemon essentials.
And that has been tried before, but the people who tried never finished their projects.

 

[KB]

Where and how can I learn to manipulate RGSS code? Are there any tutorials available?

 

[Andar]

RGSS stands for "Ruby Game System Script".
The "learning RGSS" section of this forum should have several topics that link to internet courses where you can learn to program in Ruby, and after that you can read and modify RGSS scripts as they use mostly the same language (only some sections of Ruby have been removed, and gaming-specific functions added.

If you have no previous knowledge of programming, expect several months of work to learn Ruby.
If you have the basics of programming, learning new programming languages is easy and done in days or weeks, but the first programming language is always hard.

 

[bgillisp]

Also since you are using XP you want RGSS1, VX uses RGSS2 and VXACe uses RGSS3, which will have differences.

 

[KB]

Could you include a link to the tutorials for XP?

 

[bgillisp]

Sadly I don't know of any. If there are any it would be under the tutorials section for XP or under the programming section.

 

[Traverse]

Pokemon Essentials was (and is) completely illegal, because the resources were stolen from the original games. That is why Nintendo was able to take it down - it wasn't made to be similar, it was actually stolen resources.

Thing is, if you replaced all of the illegally infringing resources, are the scripts themselves in Essentials actually infringing on anything?

So far as I am aware, the scripts in Essentials themselves are basically just reverse-engineered Pokemon game functionality in RGSS for RPGMaker. Removing all the dependencies on the illegal resources might be a chore, but after doing that I don't see how the leftovers would have any issues, unless the original coders never gave permission for users to modify their work (which, given what it was meant to be used for, I can't imagine they wouldn't have).

 

[KB]

Thing is, if you replaced all of the illegally infringing resources, are the scripts themselves in Essentials actually infringing on anything?

So far as I am aware, the scripts in Essentials themselves are basically just reverse-engineered Pokemon game functionality in RGSS for RPGMaker. Removing all the dependencies on the illegal resources might be a chore, but after doing that I don't see how the leftovers would have any issues, unless the original coders never gave permission for users to modify their work (which, given what it was meant to be used for, I can't imagine they wouldn't have).

It's not for commercial use. I even asked and got information from the creator of it, and, no, I don't have permission to use it for anything commercial. Plus, the game I make may be too close to Pokemon to be called an original work since Nintendo even had a legal dispute with it.

What makes it illegal may be the tilesets and sprites that it comes with, though. They look just like the Pokemon Fire Red games. Why would it be against the law to dissect the scripts to get a better understanding of the program, though?

I guess I should have done more research before picking a game maker. I saw a video of someone using RPG Maker XP with Pokemon Essentials, and it all looked great. Of course, I may not have been thinking about making anything commercial at that time.

I may go back to something with more flexibility, like Game Maker Studio.

 

[Traverse]

It's not for commercial use. I even asked and got information from the creator of it, and, no, I don't have permission to use it for anything commercial. Plus, the game I make may be too close to Pokemon to be called an original work since Nintendo even had a legal dispute with it.
...
Why would it be against the law to dissect the scripts to get a better understanding of the program, though?

Oh, well if they didn't give permission for it to be used in the way you need, that's a different story. You'd need to find some other set of scripts or code it yourself.

There's nothing wrong with just looking at other scripts to learn from them, the only issue is that if you do, you also open yourself to the possibility of the creators of your "study material" arguing that whatever you ended up coding plagiarized the stuff that you looked at (whether unconsciously copying or otherwise). Especially if you admit that you had been studying it.

As far as I am aware, the way least likely to get you into trouble is if you wrote the all code yourself from scratch without looking at anything similar, purely based on your own knowledge/guesswork of how the original functionality was meant to work. Which is going to take about the same amount of effort, no matter what engine or programming language you decide to use.

Well, unless there's some other specific monster-catching game engine out there that has already replicated the bulk of what you're looking for.