Negative points about MV when compared with older RMs?

[AirshipCanon]

My biggest beef is that forsaken 256 x 256 Map Size Max.

I have a world that is identical to the world in my 2K3 project.
The catch, my 2K3 world was a 512x512, and nearly fully fleshed out-- it's 4 times the size of what the BIGGEST map that I can do in MV is.

This is really discouraging me from using a World Map system, which is sad.

 

[KisaiTenshi]

My biggest beef is that forsaken 256 x 256 Map Size Max.

I have a world that is identical to the world in my 2K3 project.

The catch, my 2K3 world was a 512x512, and nearly fully fleshed out-- it's 4 times the size of what the BIGGEST map that I can do in MV is.

This is really discouraging me from using a World Map system, which is sad.

You can set the map size to 999x999 right in the map editor.

 

[Ultima2876]

Used it, worked wonders! I was able to strip my project down to 50 mb!

(Of course, by almost using nothing, i deleted most enemies, tilesets, etc)

But I noticed something. The Title folder still has all Titlescreens. Why is this?

Another thing I noticed, the battlebacks. Where is RPG Maker MV telling the program that i'm using those battlebacks? I see all terrains set to 0, and I don't know where else to check.

Other than that though, really glad about this tool. Thanks!!

Thanks for reporting those! I'll look into that for the next update. It must be referencing them somewhere, but it might be possible to remove unused ones anyway with some smarter detection code (this is what I'm working on for Animations).

 

[pincaviglia86]

-withdrawn-

 

[Grahamguitarman]

I agree with a previous poster about the lack of access to levels in the editor.  I'm pretty sure that in XP I was able to click on the relevant layer and just past tiles into that layer without deleting anything in the other layers.  This situation where everything can get deleted as you paste in an alternative object is getting quite annoying.  I think by trying to make everything automatic, the developers have actually made it a bit harder for us to be creative by clever use of the layer system.

Not so much a complaint as a suggestion of how it could have been better, the auto tiling though good, can only be done on the first level, this means that things like rock formations have to have square edges to avoid gaps in the tile layer.  even with the trick of fading to black at the edges, it creates a very blocky feel to hills and rock formations.

If there had been a second automap layer, just above the first, then auto tiles with rounded edges could have been used, making the maps a lot nicer to look at.  I'm pretty sure the code to do this would have been doable as the auto tiling routine is already written.

Jus a thought you know.

 

[KisaiTenshi]

I have to disagree with you about the character editor being good in mv. I spent hours trying to make four guys for my party that did not look unisex..... And as far as making someone look older than a teenager.... Forget it. In ace you had options like being bald, wearing eye patches and numerous other things to use. Also, hitting the random button "actually produced" characters that looked different ages and with different overall looks. In this one in mv... You could hit the random button 50 times and see some face 10 or 20 times with nothing "really" different except their hair. Speaking of hair.... I'm sorry but coming up with a hair combination that doesn't look unisex is painstakingly hard to do. The minor bugs are not that big of a deal to fix, but they seriously need to rebuild that character editor from the ground up. I would gladly pay money for a plugin that fixed that editor..... And even more for one that replaced it all together.

The Character Generator in MV is fine the way it is as it actually has the capacity to color the sprites. VX Ace's Generator did not have that ability and all the colors were baked into the parts. Now where MV's is a little underwhelming is that it could have came with more base parts, but ask your self how much extra work this requires on the part of the developers. The "age" you're talking about is because ACE had 8 base face shapes for males and 13 for females where as MV has 3, in which there was one "older sunken looking" face (Face08.png for male, Face13.png for female).

Let's take a quick look (M/F):

Faces: Ace 8/13  MV 3/3 (only 4 colors possible in Ace)

Eyes: Ace 10/11 MV 14/13 (only 8 colors possible in Ace)

Eyebrows: Ace 9 (Unisex) MV 11/10 

Ears: Ace 3 (Unisex) MV 2/2 (Not including Animal ears)

Front Hair: Ace 16/16 MV 16/15 (only 8 colors possible in Ace)

Rear Hair: Ace 16/16 MV 17/19 (only 8 colors possible in Ace) (MV has separate left/right parts.)

Mouth: 8/10 MV 10/10

Nose: 10/11 MV 10/10

Beard: 3/0 MV 5/0

Clothing/Accessories

Glasses: Ace 6 MV 4/3 (Unisex, 8 colors only for Ace)

Animal Ears: Ace 5 MV 1/1 (Unisex, 8 colors only for Ace)

Facial mark/Tattoo: Ace 5 MV 3/2 (Unisex, 8 colors only for Ace)

Accessory 1: Ace 5, MV 6/5 (3 separate colors available for MV for each part, only 8 single colors for Ace, unisex for Ace)

Accessory 2: Ace 10, MV 5/7 (4 separate colors available for MV for each part, only 8 single colors for Ace, unisex for Ace) 

Clothing:  Ace 16/16 MV 18/19

Not to mention that each part has 16 or 24 colors that it can be switched to in MV where as Ace could only ever use the 8 baked in colors for the parts. Add in all the Side-View assets and MV's generator is far more flexible than Ace's.

Now... what I don't really like about the generator is that the "beast ears" don't look right on any head due no ability to hide the human ears, and the "cat/dog" type ears look like a headband behind the hair fringe in the portrait while the sprites has them all over the place. That's really my bone to pick with how it generates portraits.  

A better nitpick is what came stock for outfits. Seriously? Every SF_Actor outfit is the same? There's 3 unique outfits reused for all 7, compared to the 11 fantasy outfits which are all unique. The female version is even worse, the only difference between any of the outfits is the "tights/socks" in the sprites vs the males where their shirts changed but their pants didn't. Like what? 

Like maybe the SF_Actor sprites are meant to be a school, and that would fit maybe, but it seems more like a shortcut to me. (Yes tiny differences do exist, but the point was that in the character generator, those differences are barely anything.)

One could completely come up with a new generator set if they replace all the artwork. Is it worth it? No, not really. If you don't like the "3/4" faces, then you're just going to have to pay someone to make something else. The developers included enough sprite pieces in MV that you can create 22,230,000 unique characters of one gender before you include colors, clothing and accessories. 

 

[Ultima2876]

For those who prefer the style of VX/Ace assets (or want to use their old DLC for new projects) I've made a tool to convert older assets to MV more nicely than can be done with regular Photoshop. Topic here: http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/48830-mvfu-like-king-fu-nice-conversion-for-vxace-assets/

 

[jay_are]

The main things that bother me are the Battle Weapons, and how they're no longer simply the icons (I was planning on making a ton of different ones.)

And there's no moving platforms yet. Now that wasn't in any of the older ones either I think, but there were scripts for it. (I guess I'll have to hope and wait for that)

And as said a few times above here, the character style is too cartoony, even the evil and monster characters look huggable.

You know, the only way im gonna get around this is by making a battler sprite with the weapon attached to it, programmed to be changed to it depending on what weapon is equipped.

*sigh* yeah, painful.

I've updated the opening post with my thoughts and thanks to some users here!

KisaiTenshi:

Do you mean we can set the map to 999x999, in RPG Maker MV?

 

[pincaviglia86]

At the risk of being chastised for posting In The wrong place and encountering the wrath of the blue squirrel..I. would like to say what is wrong. With this software and this forum. I see a virtual plethora of bugs talked about on this forum. Yet, no one has mentioned one very important reason swfor so many of those bugs getting through in the first place. The fact they had like 30 beta testers. I find it unbelievable that they actually talked like this was a good thing. 30 people??!! As powerful as this software is, and only 30 people are testing it??!! When I read this yesterday, it all became clear why so many people are reporting things.... So little beta testing is a disaster waiting to happen. There are games on steam that beta test for years and sometimes with thousands of beta testers. Now for the forum. It is always the poster or his hardware that is to blame, and never their rushed and under beta tested software. Also woe be unto anyone who puts down their effort to fix anything. It is " it has only been out for a month, then only two months, next only 3 months, then only 4 and so on and so on. Other developers say things like" we will be putting out something next week or next month to fix things. Here it is always" we are working on it" or we plan to release those missing graphics that had offensive pics but also a lot of non offensive stuff too. When? None of your business" or " if the bug is not considered a bug over in Japan...to Hell with fixing it. Finally...this would have been ok even with the other bugs if we had enough face graphhics like ace did so we did not have to rely on that god awful character generator that is unisex and cannot make a character that looks over 10. Years old.

 

[FlameEX]

Why are you complaining? If you have a problem with MV use another engine.

 

[whitesphere]

The biggest thing I liked was how VX Ace could keep the RTP in a separate folder from the game specific assets.  This would keep the default game ZIP size to around 23 MB, depending mainly on audio files, because VX Ace would load the RTP at runtime.  It also meant creating a new project was far quicker because it didn't have to copy the entire RTP into each project at creation time.  So, a default MV project with nothing in it weighs in at a whopping 400 MB, before doing anything. That is my biggest dislike about MV.

I'd much rather have MV use the RTP and external resources while debugging and running from the editor, then only add in the RTP when exporting.

Also, I don't like that MV changed the tile size from 32x32 to 48x48 because this made every single VX Ace resource unusable out of the box.  My guess is this was merely to render the same number of tiles while expanding screen resolution.  I think that was too drastic a change to get a bigger screen resolution.

I like a lot of other things that MV does, like having a completely open engine, built-in side view battles, a more robust character generator, mobile export, Region IDs that can be painted like any other tile, the new plug-in API which is easy to develop for and use as an end-user, particularly using JavaScript which is more widely known than Ruby.  But those two are my biggest negatives about RPG Maker MV.

Granted, Ultima2876 has made 2 very helpful tools, one of which does a great job at pruning out unused assets, the other goes quite a ways to addressing the "larger tile size" problem.  But not every tileset and sprite expands elegantly through the tool, and it still needs an extra step that MV added.

 

[pincaviglia86]

Why are you complaining? If you have a problem with MV use another engine.

Because they sent me emails touting that it was the best thing since sliced bread, and I transferred my database, anticipating my new project. Also because when sequels are made in software, where the company actually cares about their loyal customer base...they do not leave out the basics that made the original what it was in the first place. Finally, most forums (a) do not gang up on newbies, and try to talk down to them ( tell their customers that if the 

exalted ones in Japan don't think a bug is a damn bug...that they ain't gonna fix it, and ©don't make their users have to go through forums to hunt for updates...they are where they should be...posted on their WEBSITE,

and when they are posted, they at least give an estimate of when they will fix things...even if it is wrong., and finally...most people who are "Advanced Members" have better answers on all forums I have seen...except this one.

 

[pincaviglia86]

For those who prefer the style of VX/Ace assets (or want to use their old DLC for new projects) I've made a tool to convert older assets to MV more nicely than can be done with regular Photoshop. Topic here: http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/48830-mvfu-like-king-fu-nice-conversion-for-vxace-assets/

I haven't tried your tool yet, but I applaud what you are doing. I will go there now and give it a try. Thank you very much for the effort you have put forth. I just wish someone out there would find a way to import the character maker from ace to replace the piece of crap in MV. You know, if they would have given us the amount of faces that vx got right off the bat...we  would not have to use those silly unisex things spit out by the mv character maker. It's funny, but the only place in MV that has characters that actually look over 10 years old are in the few face sets that they did manage to put in MV. How sad is that?! Anyway, good work there.

 

[pincaviglia86]

You know, the only way im gonna get around this is by making a battler sprite with the weapon attached to it, programmed to be changed to it depending on what weapon is equipped.

*sigh* yeah, painful.

I've updated the opening post with my thoughts and thanks to some users here!

KisaiTenshi:

Do you mean we can set the map to 999x999, in RPG Maker MV?

Amen, brother...not only are they cartoony, but the character editor cannot make a character that looks like an adult. I heard someone somewhere on this forum say that they produced a character that looked like a baby with a beard. They banned half of the graphics that were promised to us pre-order people because of girls with expanded chests. At least they looked more like grown-ups...and what an excuse.....offensive to the little ones??!! give me a break!! Ever heard of the TV show "Southpark , there, Japan??!! what about the other assets that were not offensive, that were thrown out with the bundle...like faces, monsters, etc. why dump everything and to Hell with what your customers think about it. what? you are thinking about putting them up for private download (or however it was stated....I forget). If you want to put up a private download, how about another bug fixing update? Oh, I forgot...you're working on it. I look forward to hearing that again 4 or 5 months from now. It is music to my ears.

 

[pincaviglia86]

The Character Generator in MV is fine the way it is as it actually has the capacity to color the sprites. VX Ace's Generator did not have that ability and all the colors were baked into the parts. Now where MV's is a little underwhelming is that it could have came with more base parts, but ask your self how much extra work this requires on the part of the developers. The "age" you're talking about is because ACE had 8 base face shapes for males and 13 for females where as MV has 3, in which there was one "older sunken looking" face (Face08.png for male, Face13.png for female).

Let's take a quick look (M/F):

Faces: Ace 8/13  MV 3/3 (only 4 colors possible in Ace)

Eyes: Ace 10/11 MV 14/13 (only 8 colors possible in Ace)

Eyebrows: Ace 9 (Unisex) MV 11/10 

Ears: Ace 3 (Unisex) MV 2/2 (Not including Animal ears)

Front Hair: Ace 16/16 MV 16/15 (only 8 colors possible in Ace)

Rear Hair: Ace 16/16 MV 17/19 (only 8 colors possible in Ace) (MV has separate left/right parts.)

Mouth: 8/10 MV 10/10

Nose: 10/11 MV 10/10

Beard: 3/0 MV 5/0

Clothing/Accessories

Glasses: Ace 6 MV 4/3 (Unisex, 8 colors only for Ace)

Animal Ears: Ace 5 MV 1/1 (Unisex, 8 colors only for Ace)

Facial mark/Tattoo: Ace 5 MV 3/2 (Unisex, 8 colors only for Ace)

Accessory 1: Ace 5, MV 6/5 (3 separate colors available for MV for each part, only 8 single colors for Ace, unisex for Ace)

Accessory 2: Ace 10, MV 5/7 (4 separate colors available for MV for each part, only 8 single colors for Ace, unisex for Ace) 

Clothing:  Ace 16/16 MV 18/19

Not to mention that each part has 16 or 24 colors that it can be switched to in MV where as Ace could only ever use the 8 baked in colors for the parts. Add in all the Side-View assets and MV's generator is far more flexible than Ace's.

Now... what I don't really like about the generator is that the "beast ears" don't look right on any head due no ability to hide the human ears, and the "cat/dog" type ears look like a headband behind the hair fringe in the portrait while the sprites has them all over the place. That's really my bone to pick with how it generates portraits.  

A better nitpick is what came stock for outfits. Seriously? Every SF_Actor outfit is the same? There's 3 unique outfits reused for all 7, compared to the 11 fantasy outfits which are all unique. The female version is even worse, the only difference between any of the outfits is the "tights/socks" in the sprites vs the males where their shirts changed but their pants didn't. Like what? 

Like maybe the SF_Actor sprites are meant to be a school, and that would fit maybe, but it seems more like a shortcut to me. (Yes tiny differences do exist, but the point was that in the character generator, those differences are barely anything.)

One could completely come up with a new generator set if they replace all the artwork. Is it worth it? No, not really. If you don't like the "3/4" faces, then you're just going to have to pay someone to make something else. The developers included enough sprite pieces in MV that you can create 22,230,000 unique characters of one gender before you include colors, clothing and accessories. 

I appreciate the effort you put into comparing the two character editors. However, even if the MV editor had 50 more of each asset...the one thing that sets it apart is that every character I ever made in vx ace that was supposed to look like a "male" looked like a "male" and every character that looked like a "female" looked like a "female" whether they had beast ears, a ten foot nose, or whatever else. That is the bottom line here...VX ace "WAS NOT" unisex, and MV "IS". that is it in a nutshell. one last thing...I made a game with VX that took months to make and had a play-time of over 15 hours...and I never once....not one single time...ever use a stock character. I made them all (male, female, old, young) with that character editor. I just said this in a post below, but I saw on this forum somewhere where someone told the absolute truth when they said that they made an old man with mv's editor and it looked like a baby with a beard. I'm sorry, but the truth is the truth. If you can use that editor, and make one character that actually looks like an old man.....no, just a young adult...and show it to me, I will publically go on this forum and declare that you are 50 times better than all of the moderators put together. I admire your effort to make a comparison...I really do, and you may very well be the nicest person on this forum, but it is more than obvious that political correctness trumps common sense these days, and I really should not be surprised that, if the software makers caved in on pics of girls eating popsicles, when shows like Southpark make things like that look like disney movies...then going unisex like Ronald(?) McDonald is to be expected. What ever happened to the old-fashioned concept of men being men and women being women, without fear of offending somebody? More importantly...what ever happened to being old fashioned period. Thanks for your reply, and good luck on any new project you may undertake.