RMMZ Rose Engine[Easy 3D Game builder] MV & MZ - Map movement demo available!

[chaucer]

Author:
Chaucer

Introduction:
So I've had this project underway for quite some time now, however I've always been busy with other things, and never really had time to work on this project. The situation hasn't changed much but I'm at a point where I feel comfortable to release a little more info on this!

So what is the Rose engine, and why is it special? Well, it's a simple 3D level editor that's extremely easy to use, and has quite a fair amount of flexibility! It will help you to create your game in full 3D without the complexity of unity, or other similar engines. But that isn't the whole of it, in reality, this plugin is simply a stepping stone to bigger projects. This plugin is only a base, for many unique addons which I have planned including but not limited to.. 3D battle backs( designed by the end user ), a 3D ABS to build a full scale 3D mmo system, a 3D platformer( see below for a video of this ), and some other really unique stuff. If you want to stay up to date with the status of the plugin, you should check out my site as I'll be posting updates there first.

As a fair bit of warning, when it is released it will more than likely be for sale, or accessible by other means of monetization, I do not want to sell it but, in reality, being able to make some sort of income from this would speed up the development process quite a bit, and would aid in creating all the other add-ons I have planned for this.


Version:
-->Map Preview Download<--

Screenshots & Videos:

Here's a couple early gifs of how world building will function( don't mind the purple squares, this is just a default color, you can add your own images( aka textures ), in future versions, in fact it will probably already be done by the time your reading this! )

Spoiler: Quick example map!

Spoiler

A gif of the level editor in use.

Spoiler

And one last thing, a video of what this would end up looking like for the player of the game( also showing off the platformer plugin that's also been under development for some time, and the ability to change gravity direction. ).~

Spoiler

Another video of the editor in action( still a WIP ).

Spoiler

 

[Muk adel heid]

Well. Nice done!. Ill keep an eye on this, looks promising.

 

[Sword_of_Dusk]

Damn, that looks pretty intriguing. Very nicely done!

 

[Eliaquim]

Holy... I'm always impressed with your content. What a nice thing to see!!!

 

[Killuki Zaoldyeck]

This looks very awesome! Don't forget to add MZ Plugins on your list in your webpage.

I want to see more videos like how you add textures etc.
For 3d mapping what I was using in MV is MV3D and I'm getting used of the tags for define the tiles depth etc as you just need to map everything in the editor itself once all the comment tags are placed, no need to do ingame stuff.

However, for 3d content, a combination of both things (can use tags in the tileset db to define quick rules, then edit anything inside the game in "editor mode") would be awesome.

Anyways, I don't want to condition your work since you'll have your own rules, but commenting so you can compare what you're going to make vs something that already exist just to see how further you can improve it.

Keep up the good work, I'll watch your progress closely.

 

[Tsukihime]

Can the maps be loaded in battle?

 

[Killuki Zaoldyeck]

@chaucer Didn't read a thing before because I was at work.
You told about try to sell this, but you shouldn't do that directly.

Entering everything in a spoiler because is a looong post.

Spoiler

As I've seen with other plugin creators, I think that the best thing is make a *******, put the content for free, save the most special things in a separate plugin as "patron-only" features while still updating the core.

"patron-only" features? Well, you may also compatibility patches with other scripts (as long it doesn't contains a reasonable percentaje part of other authors code).

And the most important is bring at least weekly updates at first (photos, videos the most or gifs), and at least a monthly update of the core, and share this activity in social media (YoouTube and Twitter mostly) aswell in this forum by editing the first post with each newer update and the older ones saving them inside spoilers.

Do these steps and, seeing you're really talented, the support will come alone.

Some patreons I know gets 250$/mo since months ago, some others reached 600$/mo in a year, and some others even reached up to 2k$/mo or maybe more (plus youtube revenue) until their retirement, talent calls support, and if by any chance you put your plugin behind a paywall like 50$ one-time payment only for example, sure you can do that, but there's a risk of getting tiny purchases per month (might face some refund requests, also the discounts, fixed price decreases and still not much purchasers), and might increase depending of the sound that purchasers does about this plugin...
....but if there isn't noise, purchases will fall and you'll likely stop its development due still require work full-time, aditionally, the amount of people getting it will be dramatically low.

Instead of a too much gambling paywall, try get enough monthly support for free with extras for as tiny as 1$ (early access to patrons can work too!), you'll reach a point that even will consider change to a part-time job (or even make this development your new full-time job), because some big persons will give even more than 100$/mo.
"Sell cheaper, get much more, sell expensiver, get cobwebs."

Also, remember that even with the huge improvements of RPG MV (and now begining with MZ), incredibly many people still see the engine as "meh dat game's sh* cuz rpg maker is cra*" at the point that I can't be surprised if any rpg maker game developer even hides the fact to have used this engine to don't get a big "nay" from corporations/customers.

If you contribute with your awesome work at bringing new and fantastic features to our rpg community for nearly free and make it accessible to those wanting to test it, you'll be known, and the engine will get much better fame at the same time, is a win-win loop that gets bigger overtime.

Also, this is good, imagine you decide a paywall of 30$~50$+, someone purchases it, gets lots of compatibility errors with other plugins, finds he need remove many of them, requests money back because it doesn't work, gives a bad comment and you say you can't make a patch for it, you loss money due the refund and chance of get customers because casually that incompatibility comes from a commonly used plugin, the time between you make a fix or not, potential purchasers are lost.

VS

You put it for free (except certain minor but really exclusive features), people download it, no compatible? No worry, money wasn't invested there so you don't lose anything, the contrary, you got a tester and a bug report to improve it further. It's a patron-exclusive error? Fine, in most case, you'll fix the error in a month as much, because 95% of patrons are people that really are paying to support the work, in rare cases you'll lose more than as tiny as 1$ but for the next month, no need to refund.

You have the success guaranteed, there is no better content than provide 3d/lightning/net/etc in a simple rpg engine, without wanting to disrespect other coders work, other kind of "less complex" plugins doesn't get enough support because they seem "easy, tiny" from those who know nothing about coding, but 3d mapping? "Woah, this guy is a f**king legend, gonna give 300 bucks a month, just like that".

Best luck of all!
Hope to see you living by doing what you love soon!

 

[chaucer]

@Killuki Zaoldyeck

I am not comparing my work to anyone else's, I have never tried MV3D, but I've heard good things about it, as I said before I had this idea planned for quite some time, however, my time has been pretty scarce, so the time I've spent working on it is quite small, as I'm constantly working on commissions for others, or busy with other things in general. The whole purpose of my plugin is simple, give a high level of freedom/customization, with as small of a learning curve as possible, and I believe this can and will fullfil that end goal.

This engine is not meant to design unreal level of detail in your games, it's a very simple 3D renderer, with basic shadows/lighting, and some other small features to help create games remanescente N64, PS1, era of games, by the time I'm done it should be fully capable of building something similar to Octopath Traveler. However, this is still a relatively early build of the plugin, It's possible an early release of the plugin will be ready for testing in the very near future, as There's only a handful of issues remaining, then I need to add events, and it should be pretty much good.



On the topic of monetization, thanks for the information, however I think I am going to avoid a ******* release, the reason being that I've had a *******, and a ko-fi account for several years now, but it's been very unsuccessful.

I've only had a total of 3 patrons in the time it's existed, I do not blame anyone but myself for it's lack of patrons, I am not a social person, I don't publicize myself as I probably should with something like *******, the reason being that I feel it's a waste of time. I would much rather use my time to write code than write a blog of what I did last week.

The ******* route may work for some but for me, it has been unsuccessful due to my lack of putting my name out there, and I'm fine with that.

Granted I may alternatively do a ******* supported version, as well as a paid version, the ******* would only be for those who wish to help further the development of the plugin, but yeah, again, I'm not the kind of person to get on social media and promote myself. ^^


@Tsukihime
It is planned, but is not currently implemented.


With that said! I have a preview of the updates to the engine! Hope you enjoy~

In the video you can see, there's still these bugs to be fixed...
*Making a new map requires a restart
*A Tiles are not displaying/working correctly yet
*Copy button does not properly work yet
*No event support
*Add more predefined shapes
*Some artifacting occurs for certain tiles
*Overlapping tiles causes some flickering
*Notification on how to change the layer is not implemented yet.
*Delete has some minor quirks still.

 

[Tsukihime]

Alright. If you add support for rendering the 3D in battle, I could probably toss my grid battle on top using the specifications for row, column, and height. The editor could be used to generate the battlefield itself and could just look the way it looks now

 

[??????]

This looks like a really neat project!!! Keep it up!! Cant wait to see where it goes!

 

[cyelis1224]

This is amazing! I've been watching this thread but I just wanted to say this is really awesom. can you actually show the maps working in game or is that not a thing yet? Seeing the functions of the editor is really cool but seeing it in use is another thing. @Tsukihime honestly it would probably be easier to make your grid battle system work on the map directly than it would be to try to load the map in the battle scene, and also make it easier for some really cool scripted events mid battle to be set up.

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@chaucer I'd gladly pay for this even in an alpha stage once it's a little more functional. I've always dreamed of making a ps1 era RPG. There is something to be said about the aesthetics of games from that time.

 

[chaucer]

@cyelis1224
Unfortunately, I'm still in the process of building the level designer, all my focus will go on this first, everything is planned out though already, so it should be a smooth process. ^^; I have several small things to fix before I will begin writing the code to build the in-game map scene. But on the bright side, I should have a very basic map scene with movement probably before the end of the week But, there is the 2.5D platformer video if that's anything to go off of , unfortunately that's only in the form of well, a side scroller.

As for the whole battles on map thing, well, vs a 3D battle scene, well, I already planned to make a 3D battle scene, so i wouldn't really be going out of my scene, but I'd be more than happy to assist hime in porting the grid battle system if necessary as well, it'd be cool to see I think!

I am planning to keep grid based movement, at least for now, it will eventually have a free range movement add-on in the future though. But I'd like to offer it as a choice, not a standard, as I know some would prefer grid based movement for certain things, I'd rather not force it onto the player.

The map scene will work very similar to the default rpg maker MV maps, however I would not hold my breath on expecting a map related plugin will work on the scene( unless it's a hud or something of that nature ). Because I want things to work in real 3D I may end up breaking things, but I will do my best to keep things as close to the source code as possible.

That said I forgot to mention, if I do end up selling it, it'd probably only be 15~20 dollars.

Also might as well throw this update out there, the copy button now works, and I've fixed some of the artifacting that occured with transparent tiles.

As for what the copy button does, well if you hover over a cursor over an object you've already created on the map, and click copy, it will do exactly as it says, and copy that object you created, so that when you lay a new object, it will be an exactly the same as the object you copied. Not that anyone asked but just thought i'd explain it xD

Edit: also thought I might mention, that by ps1 era games, I mean games with similar styles as star ocean, final fantasy tactics, tales of eternia etc.. 2D characters in a 3D world.

While I DO plan to add support for rigged models, It's going to be much further down the road.

 

[cyelis1224]

@cyelis1224
Unfortunately, I'm still in the process of building the level designer, all my focus will go on this first, everything is planned out though already, so it should be a smooth process. ^^; I have several small things to fix before I will begin writing the code to build the in-game map scene. But on the bright side, I should have a very basic map scene with movement probably before the end of the week But, there is the 2.5D platformer video if that's anything to go off of , unfortunately that's only in the form of well, a side scroller.

As for the whole battles on map thing, well, vs a 3D battle scene, well, I already planned to make a 3D battle scene, so i wouldn't really be going out of my scene, but I'd be more than happy to assist hime in porting the grid battle system if necessary as well, it'd be cool to see I think!

I am planning to keep grid based movement, at least for now, it will eventually have a free range movement add-on in the future though. But I'd like to offer it as a choice, not a standard, as I know some would prefer grid based movement for certain things, I'd rather not force it onto the player.

The map scene will work very similar to the default rpg maker MV maps, however I would not hold my breath on expecting a map related plugin will work on the scene( unless it's a hud or something of that nature ). Because I want things to work in real 3D I may end up breaking things, but I will do my best to keep things as close to the source code as possible.

That said I forgot to mention, if I do end up selling it, it'd probably only be 15~20 dollars.

Also might as well throw this update out there, the copy button now works, and I've fixed some of the artifacting that occured with transparent tiles.

As for what the copy button does, well if you hover over a cursor over an object you've already created on the map, and click copy, it will do exactly as it says, and copy that object you created, so that when you lay a new object, it will be an exactly the same as the object you copied. Not that anyone asked but just thought i'd explain it xD

Edit: also thought I might mention, that by ps1 era games, I mean games with similar styles as star ocean, final fantasy tactics, tales of eternia etc.. 2D characters in a 3D world.

While I DO plan to add support for rigged models, It's going to be much further down the road.

That's exactly what I meant when I said ps1 era games as well. Star ocean FFt etc etc. I saw mog hunter is actually working on a star ocean battle system for mz. Would be really awesome to use your plugins in tandem.
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My idea for how to use this engine would be along the lines of Breath of Fire 4. 3d exploration but a 45 degree camera angle for the battles that makes it feel 3d but the camera only pans and zooms, no need for rotation. That's not to say other people wouldn't use the function of rotation of you did it and it would be awesome if it was there. Again, amazing work man!

 

[JosephSeraph]

This is so insanely cool! I'm so excited, you can be 1000% sure i'm buying it when you make it EA, and i'd pay $30 for it lol (or $50 if it was REALLY good and sturdy)

regarding monetization, which is really not the topic here, as a fellow content creator i find that a work that you release and that gives you little to no revenue on a whole year might sell surprisingly well out of the blue on the next year, or you can get into a good bundle and end up with a healthy amount of money AND newly interested customers. but this project seems like a very very heavy time investment, something that would likely be in production for 1-2 years minimum, in which case this sort of approach is very unsustainable from a financial standpoint -- and i think this new era of RPG MAKER is THE moment for us to really focus on financial sustainability, quality and professionalism like never before. trying to do too much, too cheap, will just end up with a burned out content creator that has to quit in order to feed themselves elsewhere, and that applies in all areas of life.

Anyway, I'm aboard the hype train, and am especially looking forward to Elfkisser integration and 3D battles. Think about how beautiful it would be, in the stablest rpg maker yet (since 2003), fully 3d battles with such a great, fully fledged particle system as that.

star ocean, final fantasy tactics, tales of eternia

As an ending note, I find these examples to be somewhat odd because out of the three, only one had real 3D maps, with the other two being pre-rendered, and I don't think Rose Engine will be able to pull off a real-time version of a ps1 pre-rendered map very soon, but maybe i'm wrong lol

 

[Tsukihime]

As for the whole battles on map thing, well, vs a 3D battle scene, well, I already planned to make a 3D battle scene, so i wouldn't really be going out of my scene, but I'd be more than happy to assist hime in porting the grid battle system if necessary as well, it'd be cool to see I think!

That makes sense. A lot of extra logic would be needed to load and manage 3D map, so it might be easier to take an already working 3D map scene and adding battle logic to it, rather than having to duplicate the 3D rendering logic for the battle scene.

My experience with on-map battle is, for 2D at least, it takes me one minute to just copy the map code and paste it into the battle scene to include the tilemap and events, but this is because it's just simple 2D sprites.

 

[cyelis1224]

Like I was saying a tactical battle system like final fantasy tactics is the only case I see this can be useful for battle. but I still think this would be great for exploration as it adds a level of depth in which developers can hide secret items and really make scenes in the game have more of a scale in the size of the world. if you haven't seen or played breath of fire 4 I highly suggest you look it up. That game is a masterpiece.

 

[fizzly]

Outstanding...... this looks AWESOME! Take my money! If you'll set this for sale, will definitely buy it!

 

[Lance of Longinus]

This looks like really impressive.
Will you bring out the 3d action battle system addon somewhere around the time of the release of the main plugin itself, or is it more of a thing for the far future?

 

[cyelis1224]

Hey just as a quick thought, would it be possible to make it where as terrain loads in the distance when you are approaching it, it rises into position as you get closer, creating the effect of it being on the edge of the horizon and making it feel like you can see the curvature of the world? Might be a pipe dream due to the complexity of trying to make it look right as well as the system resources it would take to render a map that big as well as something that far away but if it was possible I think the effect would look really cool.

 

[jcruise]

This looks insanely cool, my friend. You have my full support. I would gladly pay $50 for this upon release. I can see myself using this for my next game.