If I bought a copy of RM95 on eBay, could I use its RTP in later makers?

[Romanticist]

Title says it all
Thanks!

 

[Kes]

[move]Product Discussion and Support[/move]
What does the EULA say?

 

[Romanticist]

[move]Product Discussion and Support[/move]
What does the EULA say?

I have no idea lol. It was never (officially) released in English.

 

[Shaz]

Then you would be using a pirated version, so no.

 

[Prescott]

Then you would be using a pirated version, so no.

Is it a pirated version if you buy an actual copy of it from eBay? Not a burned disc or something obviously. I think what Romanticist is referring to is that it was only released in Japanese, so they don't know what the EULA says because it's in Japanese.

If it's anything like the rest of the RPG Maker series, you can use its RTP in another RPG Maker engine. Don't know that for sure though.

 

[JosephSeraph]

Then you would be using a pirated version, so no.

"If I bought a copy of RM95 on eBay, could I use its RTP in later makers?"



@Romanticist I think the only way you can know that is to find the RM95 EULA, scour the web for someone who has bought it or buy it yourself. Then you'd need to be able to read the EULA; machine translation is faulty but there's plenty of people in the community that can translate, and I think answering this question is to the greater interest of the community.
I don't know the extent of support that RM95 got, RM2000 Value+ never stopped being supported by whomever owned the engine (iirc first ASCII then Enterbrain then Kadokawa) so its EULA is in theory very modern while RM95 was written with, well, 1995 in mind. Who knows if they even had other RPG Makers planned by then. I'll check out and if I find any info I'll ping back here.

EDIT1: Here's a japanese FAQ that has pages for several discontinued and legacy installments of RPG Maker. Interestingly enough, it lists RPGTsukuuruDante98 and Dante98II as "free", which I'm guessing is "Free Download"; it doesn't mention an EULA anywhere, nor does it in the RPG Maker 95 section. Dante98 and its sequel are RPG Makers released on the NEC PC-98, which have a very interesting visual style.
You can download the ROM and emulator to use them on your own computer! Presumably you should be able to (noncommercially) release the games made with them, too. Actually, I'm going to download it and see if any sort of License comes with the files; even if it doesn't it's still a nice download for learning and archival purposes (editGaiden: nope it didn't, just an instruction readme. WHERE ARE ALL THE LICENSES FREE SOFTWARE NEEDS LICENSES)
I'm guessing one good shot would be contacting the japanese Kadokawa(Enterbrain? I still don't know lol) RPG Maker team which should have contact info in the japanese RPG Maker site. Since these installments have nothing to do with Degica, I don't think any of the official forum staff could help you. I'll still look further into this.

EDIT2: I was able to download and extract, from the official website, the update to RM95VALUE!1.23 (obviously it can't update anything as I don't have the actual engine in my PC) and the closest thing I could find in it is an instruction readme :/ no relevant info so far.

EDIT3: AHA! I may be onto something. https://tkool.jp/support/guideline

EDIT4: (Machine translation, very inaccurate and would welcome a proper translator)

Well if "Love Simulation Maker 2" (heh) of all things can be used to make RPG Maker VX games, as long as you own both... It's safe to assume RPG Maker 95 is, since they're listed together in the guideline page. WE DO NEED A PROPER TRANSLATION FOR THIS TO BE CONFIRMED THOUGH, as well as probably further confirmation from official forum staff.

 

[Kes]

@Touchfuzzy ?

 

[Shaz]

Ah, if it's a Japanese copy you're buying, then I'm not sure. I assumed you meant an English copy, which would be the pirated ones.

 

[Restart]

Yes, all RPG Maker editor projects (along with a couple of others from Kadokawa) are license-compatible, they have given official permission to mix and match assets on the japanese website (which has been linked above in this thread, and earlier on this forum)

https://tkool.jp/support/guideline

Note that 『アクションゲームツクールMV』 is Pixel Game Maker MV, google will translate it as action game maker instead.

Variations on this question have come up several times before, and it should probably be in a stickied FAQ thread at this point.

 

[Andar]

@Restart if you had read the post a bit higher that translated the link you gave, you would have learned that it requires a regular registration of the engine to allow that mix and match. And we still don't know how to register the japanese copy as that most likely requires sending an email to a japanese adress. So no one can give a general OK yet.

 

[Parallax Panda]

That's an interesting question. I'd like to know as well, just for the sake of knowing.

 

[Restart]

@Restart if you had read the post a bit higher that translated the link you gave, you would have learned that it requires a regular registration of the engine to allow that mix and match. And we still don't know how to register the japanese copy as that most likely requires sending an email to a japanese adress. So no one can give a general OK yet.

If you had read my post, you would have seen that I explicitly acknowledged the mention earlier in the thread. Are you trying for some kind of ironic thing there, or are you just being a jerk for no reason?

Anyway, to rerail the thread in a constructive direction, registration has been necessary to use every version of RPG Maker software on its own, even without trying to do anything with cross-compatible assets. Every copy sold comes with information on how to register it.

Now, oldschool registration was originally done by sending a postcard to a provided address, and personally I doubt they're still doing business at the same place they were 20 years ago (though the explicit letter of the registration terms just asks you to send the postcard to the provided address, the ball is in their court from then on, and if they didn't arrange a proper mail forwarding process that's their problem).

Alternatively, according to multiple different people who have tried registering out-of-support products, contacting Kadokawa about registration through the official contact form has worked:

https://ebssl.jp/tkool/cs/02/q.php

 

[Andar]

If you had read my post, you would have seen that I explicitly acknowledged the mention earlier in the thread. Are you trying for some kind of ironic thing there, or are you just being a jerk for no reason?

no - you edited in that part a bit later and I had this topic open from your original post and answered to that, never having read your edit.

 

[Touchfuzzy]

As long as you own legal copies, there is no problem with mixing and matching materials from any of the RMs.

 

[JosephSeraph]

This is beautiful! Time to start collecting and importing Japanese-only RMs lol.
I never thought that would be the case. They aren't even that expensive except for the fact you need to import overseas. And soo valuable

 

[VideoWizard]

It looks like RPG Maker 98 and earlier is abandonware, RPG Maker 95 can still be imported, and RPG Maker 2000 and up can be bought from Steam. So I can import RPG Maker 95 after all and use that creepy eye lizard @RavenBlueIndigo .

I wonder if this includes RPG Maker I, II and III on the PSX and PS2 systems? It ought to, since RPG Maker DS (+) and Fes are included.

 

[Romanticist]

This is beautiful! Time to start collecting and importing Japanese-only RMs lol.
I never thought that would be the case. They aren't even that expensive except for the fact you need to import overseas. And soo valuable

My thoughts exactly, haha.
I love the music and sound effects from 95 so I will be happy to add them into my project and know that I can still promote my game commercially
And it'll be fun to collect older RPG Maker RTPs in general

Thanks for the answer, Touchfuzzy!