Is it better to upgrade MV or migrate MZ?

[Qingming]

Hello everyone, I need you to give me a suggestion
Let me briefly explain my usage situation,
I use the MZ engine to edit old MV projects;
Compared to MV engines, the effect is good,
However, due to different encryption methods after deployment, it cannot be directly used;
Can only use MV deployment, but doing so is too cumbersome
There are two considerations now
1. Upgrade the pixi and NW.js of the MV, and then directly use the MV engine;
Disadvantages: MV engines are prone to getting stuck editing content, and upgrading Pixi may have unknown bugs
2. Migrate the project to MZ
Disadvantage: There are a large number of plugins that need to be modified
Because I have a high demand for game performance,
Sometimes the same scene may have as many as 1000+events;


//-------------------------------------------------------------------------

After a day of consideration and simple attempts, I gave up the idea of migrating MZ because there were too many modifications to be made and prepared to upgrade NW.js and PIXI.js;
But I have another question. In the upgrade tutorial on the forum, the versions of NW and PIXI are 0.48~0.50 and 4.x~5.x respectively;
The NW.js version downloaded from the official website has reached 0.80, and the PIXI.js version has reached 8.00;
In this case, should I upgrade to the latest or old version

...

 

[Gallas]

I migrated to RPG Maker MZ because MV has too many memory leaks. The issues of MV kept occurring despite updating the Pixi and NW.js.

The only advantage MV has is the unencrypted plugins. However, using FOSSIL I can still use many MV plugins in MZ. While Visustella has its issues, it has integrated many of the core Yanfly issues.

Changing engines in the middle of a project is a very big decision, and it will delay your project. Converting my project to MZ has taken a LONG time... However, it was worth it. The new animations feel fresher, and I can use larger battlers. The game runs better and smoother.

I see MV as a sinking ship. I'm soo happy to have moved to MZ. (And I'm even HAPPIER that I never went to RPGMaker Unite.)

 

[ATT_Turan]

I use the MZ engine to edit old MV projects;
Can only use MV deployment, but doing so is too cumbersome

Why? How frequently do you actually need to deploy your project? It should only take a few seconds to close MZ, go up one file to the MV project file, and open that.

Because I have a high demand for game performance,
Sometimes the same scene may have as many as 1000+events;

Are you sure you're making it in an efficient way? That seems extremely excessive.

Ultimately, anything you're doing in MV can be done in MZ. Some of your plugins may just work, some may work with Project FOSSIL, and anything can be edited if it needs to be.

I migrated to RPG Maker MZ because MV has too many memory leaks.
I see MV as a sinking ship.

I'm not going to try to tell you that you haven't had your experiences. But for the hundreds of people and posts around here from people using MV, including many forum regulars using it for their projects (including myself), I've seen two or three people claiming to have those problems.

I can play my MV game for hours at a time with absolutely no detrimental memory effects.

It is not a typical experience.

 

[bgillisp]

One common MV issue is on 144 MhZ monitors, as the engine tied frame rates to how often the monitor updated. Then monitors got faster.

Some of those issues you have hit might be due to using it on a non-60 MhZ monitor.

There is an unofficial patch, but Ive heard reports of it still having issues in isolated cases.

As for the rest...about any engine will crawl with 1000 events. I'd look closely at the map and see if you can break that up. Even AAA games dont often go that extreme.

 

[TheAM-Dol]

I can play my MV game for hours at a time with absolutely no detrimental memory effects.

And to echo the point, I have done some RAM testing after playing around with the PIXI garbage collection. Perhaps in rare cases a memory leak still occurs for others, but even after actively monitoring RAM utilization I never saw any problems with my installation of the engine nor games.

One common MV issue is on 144 MhZ monitors, as the engine tied frame rates to how often the monitor updated. Then monitors got faster.

Some of those issues you have hit might be due to using it on a non-60 MhZ monitor.

There is an unofficial patch, but Ive heard reports of it still having issues in isolated cases.

My signature. Not sure if that is the "unofficial patch" that you are talking about.
After whatever update to the core script (I think 1.4) in MV, the logic and the game speed were separated. So, as long as the core script is above that update (1.4 afaik), the game cannot run faster than 60fps. I mean it can, but things won't be moving at double speed. The only time this becomes a problem is because folks often just put in Yanfly's FPS Synch plugin which is part of the free package. I don't think they read what that plugin does actually, and likely they are using a 60hz monitor and are unaware by adding the plugin it will cause problems for anyone else not on 60hz monitor. I think many people just see is as a free "performance plugin" and chuck it in without much thought, but honestly it causes a lot of problems.

Now, as someone who uses a 144hz monitor and since applying the patch linked in my sig, there are no problems. Of course I cannot speak for everyone, but I do believe that the patch without FPS Synch will solve most users problems related to high refresh rate monitors.
The editor, occasionally does funny things, but nothing that crashes the editor itself, such as the frame rate within the editor getting weirdly choppy for a very brief moment. I assume this is related to my monitors refresh rate, but I honestly can't say for sure, considering choppy in this case is "Dropping from 144hz to 60hz" (or feels like it - it's not like there is an FPS counter for software)

Legitimate concerns over MV would be that both NWJS and PIXI can only be updated so far before things start to break. However, I really wonder how much FPS you really gain by updating these. I think beyond a certain version, you begin to have diminishing returns on performance. I'm not saying there is none, but your biggest (and most impactful) performance gains are going to be from plugins and eventing. I'd argue a project using a healthy amount of VS plugins would likely undo any performance gained from using updated libraries.

 

[bgillisp]

Yeah that was it. Though I've seen some projects update with it and people occasionally still report some issues, but its more isolated. Probably some off fringe case we'd need more info to address. Or maybe the project used another plugin that messed up yours a little? Dunno.

Either way personally I'd actually figure out how to redesign things so you don't got 1000+ events at once, as that will do a lot more for performance than MV or MZ will.

 

[TheAM-Dol]

Though I've seen some projects update with it and people occasionally still report some issues, but its more isolated. Probably some off fringe case we'd need more info to address. Or maybe the project used another plugin that messed up yours a little?

Unfortunately I didn't write the plugin, I'm a bit too dumb when it comes to that kind of stuff. Hardware utilization I understand. Compiling an array and a for loop and you can just sit me in the dunce corner. However, yes, it would be nice if people would report their problems. I may not be able to create the patch myself, but there may be others who can and might be willing to. Or if not, I might even ask my own programmer to fix it. But it's hard to tell him what to fix if I don't know what it is, and I haven't experienced any errors personally.

Either way personally I'd actually figure out how to redesign things so you don't got 1000+ events at once, as that will do a lot more for performance than MV or MZ will.

But definitely this. To reiterate my final point in my previous message:

your biggest (and most impactful) performance gains are going to be from plugins and eventing.

 

[Qingming]

I migrated to RPG Maker MZ because MV has too many memory leaks. The issues of MV kept occurring despite updating the Pixi and NW.js.

The only advantage MV has is the unencrypted plugins. However, using FOSSIL I can still use many MV plugins in MZ. While Visustella has its issues, it has integrated many of the core Yanfly issues.

Changing engines in the middle of a project is a very big decision, and it will delay your project. Converting my project to MZ has taken a LONG time... However, it was worth it. The new animations feel fresher, and I can use larger battlers. The game runs better and smoother.

I see MV as a sinking ship. I'm soo happy to have moved to MZ. (And I'm even HAPPIER that I never went to RPGMaker Unite.)

Will it be difficult for MV plugins to be compatible with MZ? I haven't seen the core plugins of MZ

Why? How frequently do you actually need to deploy your project? It should only take a few seconds to close MZ, go up one file to the MV project file, and open that.


Are you sure you're making it in an efficient way? That seems extremely excessive.

Ultimately, anything you're doing in MV can be done in MZ. Some of your plugins may just work, some may work with Project FOSSIL, and anything can be edited if it needs to be.


I'm not going to try to tell you that you haven't had your experiences. But for the hundreds of people and posts around here from people using MV, including many forum regulars using it for their projects (including myself), I've seen two or three people claiming to have those problems.

I can play my MV game for hours at a time with absolutely no detrimental memory effects.

It is not a typical experience.

When deployment is difficult, due to the encryption issue I designed, each deployment is much longer than normal time
There are many events and there is no way to do so because the settings are like that, and the events are randomly generated using plugins

One common MV issue is on 144 MhZ monitors, as the engine tied frame rates to how often the monitor updated. Then monitors got faster.

Some of those issues you have hit might be due to using it on a non-60 MhZ monitor.

There is an unofficial patch, but Ive heard reports of it still having issues in isolated cases.

As for the rest...about any engine will crawl with 1000 events. I'd look closely at the map and see if you can break that up. Even AAA games dont often go that extreme.

It's not a refresh rate issue, of course, if the MV exceeds 60fps, it will indeed cause problems, such as acceleration and time calculation, but these can be fixed with a short piece of code
As for the event, I have already carried out extreme optimization, and it can stabilize at 60fps during operation, but
The effect on the mobile end is not as good

Your method is easier to use than Yanfly's FPS Synch plugin!

 

[Sword_of_Dusk]

@Qingming Gonna just warn you to not be shocked if you get a notification from a mod, as we aren't supposed to double post (or quadruple post in this case). Just use the multi-quote function if you gotta quote several people.

 

[werzaque]

I don't think it's ever a good idea to change "devkits" mid-development... unless there are critical bugs for which there is no workaround.

Sometimes the same scene may have as many as 1000+events;

I hope you are exaggerating because this does not sound like something that you would want to do in the editor anyway.

In addition to what @Sword_of_Dusk says, you can also ✎EDIT your post to add another quote if you notice another response after you've posted the reply.

 

[Gallas]

Will it be difficult for MV plugins to be compatible with MZ? I haven't seen the core plugins of MZ

It depends on the plugin. However, nearly anything MV had plugins to do, MZ also has them. The only main difference is that Yanfly's MZ stuff (Visustella Engine) in encrypted which prevents some non-Visustella MZ plugins to be written to be compatible with it. But many MV plugins never updated their plugins to be compatible with Yanfly's stuff anyway.

What are the necessary plugins your game uses? I bet they're in MZ already.

You can literally copy and paste your project from MV into MZ and it will work. The only thing that has to be redone are the plugins and how they are executed. That's it. Initially, I was bummed out that MZ lost the 2d animation that MV had, but they added that to MZ too!

A dedicated RPG Maker developer is going to own all the engines regardless (to cannibalize their assets, etc.) I think it is worth a try. If it doesn't work, the assets obtained from MZ more than will suffice. Most people who tried this found that MZ handled their game like a champ and don't want to go back to MV.

How much longer will it take to complete your game? MZ might be three years old, but MV is already EIGHT YEARS OLD.

MV was RPG Maker moving to Javascript. MV had a rocky start and needed many necessary patches (which did include memory leaks). The point is that MV has always been a patched up mess.

MZ is designed to be a further sophistication of the platform. There's a reason why MZ was made to succeed MV and wasn't just another MV patch. It's not unlike VX Ace was to VX. I have no idea why anyone would be using MV today (unless they're finishing up a project).

Legitimate concerns over MV would be that both NWJS and PIXI can only be updated so far before things start to break. However, I really wonder how much FPS you really gain by updating these. I think beyond a certain version, you begin to have diminishing returns on performance. I'm not saying there is none, but your biggest (and most impactful) performance gains are going to be from plugins and eventing. I'd argue a project using a healthy amount of VS plugins would likely undo any performance gained from using updated libraries.

Plugins and eventing obviously impact performance. You obviously cannot have many parallel events running. Lighting plugins also are notoriously guilty for performance drops.

Performance goes well beyond FPS. I'm not sure what jank was in RPG Maker MV, but I had the problem of the editor doing surprise crashes on me on different computers. Never had that issue happen to me with MZ. MZ is simply a better designed Javascript RPG Maker platform. It was made by the same developers who made MV and is intended as a successor to MV. There is no controversy in saying that.

As for the Visustella performance, it depends on how you use those plugins of course. But my performance gains were so large, I could implement things I couldn't in MV such as much larger battlers. My big delay with going from MV to MZ wasn't the porting but taking advantage of the horsepower MZ offers.

I suggest the OP try copy and pasting his project into MZ and see how it runs. If it runs well, then port the plugins over. If not, you got a bunch of extra assets via MZ.

If MZ used a different programming language (outside of Javascript), I could understand the hesitation. But this isn't the case. MZ is MV 2.0

 

[ATT_Turan]

You can literally copy and paste your project from MV into MZ and it will work.

That's what the OP said they were doing in their first post.

I have no idea why anyone would be using MV today

Because it works fine and I have zero interest in rewriting the plugins I own to be compatible with MZ.

If it runs well, then port the plugins over.

This is not necessarily a simple and trivial thing. There are still handfuls of plugins that haven't been reproduced in MZ, so unless the OP is skilled at JavaScript or is willing to shell out additional money to commission someone, this isn't a casual step to just throw out there.

 

[Gallas]

That's what the OP said they were doing in their first post.

Fair enough.

Because it works fine and I have zero interest in rewriting the plugins I own to be compatible with MZ.

Thank God VX Ace plugin writers weren't of that persuasion for MV plugins.

This is not necessarily a simple and trivial thing. There are still handfuls of plugins that haven't been reproduced in MZ, so unless the OP is skilled at JavaScript or is willing to shell out additional money to commission someone, this isn't a casual step to just throw out there.

OP is talking about encryption element he designed for deployment. It sounds like he knows the advantages of MZ, but the encryption issue keeps him using MV.

I don't think OP would have started this thread unless he had legitimate choice in the matter. I'm interpreting the OP as saying there is this huge, but not insurmountable issue, keeping him from transferring to MZ. Is it worth it the hassle?

Absolutely. Unless it hits getting your game out in a timely manner, why wouldn't you use a better version of the engine? I think MV users who use MZ to add 'layers' to the map and all will be surprised at the additional horsepower MZ has.

MV is already 8 years old and not getting any younger. It's hard enough to sell people a RPG Maker game, let alone one with an ancient engine. There are many like myself that won't even LOOK at a VX Ace game today. As for MV games, I give some leeway if development took a long time on it. But I'm mostly done looking at MV games. I know I'm not the only one.

It could've been worse. The OP could have been using Unity.

 

[ATT_Turan]

It's hard enough to sell people a RPG Maker game, let alone one with an ancient engine. There are many like myself that won't even LOOK at a VX Ace game today.

This seems a bit silly. Going back to the VX series you can see if there's an atypically small game window or something like that. But how on Earth are you claiming you can visually tell the difference between an MV and an MZ game, presuming they've altered the default graphical assets?

No one's telling you that you (or anyone else) shouldn't be using MZ for your project. But you going on about how decrepit and bad MV is frankly comes across as a bit absurd.

 

[TRIDIUM]

Yeah, gonna jump in here and agree with @ATT_Turan.
I can smell an Ace game a mile away (and it's a good smell, IMO), but I can't tell the difference between MV and MZ unless it's using the RTP, which is interchangeable anyway.
Also, it doesn't matter how old a program is, as long as it's good, that's what counts.

 

[hiddenone]

@Qingming, please avoid double posting, as it is against the forum rules. You can use the "Edit" function on your posts to add additional information you've forgotten or respond to multiple people. You can review our forum rules here. Thank you.

If you want to quote a bunch of people at once, you can also use the '+Quote' option in the lower right of their posts.

 

[ATT_Turan]

Also, it doesn't matter how old a program is, as long as it's good, that's what counts.

This.

People who are going to go for the newest graphic and physics engines and stuff like that are never going to touch any RPG Maker game with a 10-foot pole to begin with.

 

[AquaEcho]

Clearly everyone should be using Unite because newer is better

 

[ATT_Turan]

Clearly everyone should be using Unite because newer is better

At least there you can legitimately see the visual difference between an MV game and a Unite game.

The MV game is playable.

 

[Qingming]

@Qingming Gonna just warn you to not be shocked if you get a notification from a mod, as we aren't supposed to double post (or quadruple post in this case). Just use the multi-quote function if you gotta quote several people.

[dpost]@Qingming[/dpost] If you want to quote a bunch of people at once, you can also use the '+Quote' option in the lower right of their posts.

I'm sorry, strictly speaking, this is my first time replying to multiple people. Thank you for telling me the rules

I don't think it's ever a good idea to change "devkits" mid-development... unless there are critical bugs for which there is no workaround.

I hope you are exaggerating because this does not sound like something that you would want to do in the editor anyway.

In addition to what @Sword_of_Dusk says, you can also ✎EDIT your post to add another quote if you notice another response after you've posted the reply.

There is no exaggeration, as events are randomly generated. In fact, I have tested generating 3000 events at once, and the frame rate will drop to 40-50. Of course, normal games do not need to be so extreme

It depends on the plugin. However, nearly anything MV had plugins to do, MZ also has them. The only main difference is that Yanfly's MZ stuff (Visustella Engine) in encrypted which prevents some non-Visustella MZ plugins to be written to be compatible with it. But many MV plugins never updated their plugins to be compatible with Yanfly's stuff anyway.

What are the necessary plugins your game uses? I bet they're in MZ already.

You can literally copy and paste your project from MV into MZ and it will work. The only thing that has to be redone are the plugins and how they are executed. That's it. Initially, I was bummed out that MZ lost the 2d animation that MV had, but they added that to MZ too!

A dedicated RPG Maker developer is going to own all the engines regardless (to cannibalize their assets, etc.) I think it is worth a try. If it doesn't work, the assets obtained from MZ more than will suffice. Most people who tried this found that MZ handled their game like a champ and don't want to go back to MV.

How much longer will it take to complete your game? MZ might be three years old, but MV is already EIGHT YEARS OLD.

MV was RPG Maker moving to Javascript. MV had a rocky start and needed many necessary patches (which did include memory leaks). The point is that MV has always been a patched up mess.

MZ is designed to be a further sophistication of the platform. There's a reason why MZ was made to succeed MV and wasn't just another MV patch. It's not unlike VX Ace was to VX. I have no idea why anyone would be using MV today (unless they're finishing up a project).


Plugins and eventing obviously impact performance. You obviously cannot have many parallel events running. Lighting plugins also are notoriously guilty for performance drops.

Performance goes well beyond FPS. I'm not sure what jank was in RPG Maker MV, but I had the problem of the editor doing surprise crashes on me on different computers. Never had that issue happen to me with MZ. MZ is simply a better designed Javascript RPG Maker platform. It was made by the same developers who made MV and is intended as a successor to MV. There is no controversy in saying that.

As for the Visustella performance, it depends on how you use those plugins of course. But my performance gains were so large, I could implement things I couldn't in MV such as much larger battlers. My big delay with going from MV to MZ wasn't the porting but taking advantage of the horsepower MZ offers.

I suggest the OP try copy and pasting his project into MZ and see how it runs. If it runs well, then port the plugins over. If not, you got a bunch of extra assets via MZ.

If MZ used a different programming language (outside of Javascript), I could understand the hesitation. But this isn't the case. MZ is MV 2.0

What I am more concerned about is whether Yanfly's battle plugin series, keel plugin, and NPR's animation plugin can work properly in MZ, or just need simple compatibility