RPG Maker MV 3D Labyrinth Tool Idea

[sura_tc]

A game engine has to be pretty popular to have lots of 3rd party ready-made assets. In most of game engines, you have to code and then create your own assets. An engine just has to provide basic framework and toolsets which MV does & has.

What MV has in 3rd party ready-made assets are very little compared to what Unity marketplace has. But then Unity is a lot more complex. If you've ever worked with Unity, you will find prices of the extra packs here relatively cheap.

 

[peq42_]

MV is a dragon quest / final fantasy clone engine at its core. If you want it to have functionality for other stuffs you either code it yourself or you can buy graciously made asset packs.
in any other engine is like this, nobody will say that Game Maker is an unfinished engine because it doesn't have a "click and make [insert game genre here] function"

nobody will say that because you can do it without changing the editor or coding and mapping outside the engine.It's RPG Maker, not final fantasy maker, so i should be able to do any RPG i want. I'm PAYING for it.

 

[Lostinthamusic]

I said yes; would be amazing. As long as it's fluid and optimized, I'd drop $20 on it.

 

[Gigglemoo]

Got my start with Unlimited Adventures, a 3D dungeon game creator thingy.

Would be happy to pay for a similar exploration feature. I'd actually prefer one where it uses sprites, but I might be the only person in that camp.

 

[JosephSeraph]

You're aware that "RPG" is probably the vastest genre there is, spanning from final fantasy to baldur's gate to wizardry to valkyrie profile, right?
On gamemaker2 there is GML as much as there is ruby or javascript in rpg maker. And hey, guess what? First Person dungeon crawlers are totally doable in RPG Maker through events as much as a complex RPG is doable through gamemaker's events = )

I'd actually prefer none where it uses sprites, but i might be the only person in that camp.

Actually @Gigglemoo I'd love it too : D
But making 2D tiles for 3D dungeons is surprisingly more time consuming and harder than just slapping textures and letting the program do the scaling for you. so IDK
But makes me think of a nice possibility: Wizardry mode where the game cuts the walking animation and just teleports you from tile to tile with the appropriate sound effect, this would go a long way to making some retro games feel retro XD

 

[bgillisp]

@Gigglemoo : Ha! Me too! I got that engine when it came out in 1993, made 3 modules for it. I still have them on my HD, though no idea if they still work.

@elpeleq42 : No one is stopping you from coding that functionality already. The option to pay for it to get the code already is akin to buying a prebuilt setup in Unity or Gamemaker. In all cases you CAN code it yourself and not pay for it, just like you can here. We're just talking about offering the option to pay for it yourself and save yourself the time of coding the 3D part on your own.

But if you don't want to pay for it, by all means write your own code. The functionality is there. No one is stopping you.

 

[Tai_MT]

I'd be interested in this, provided it handled a few things that I'd like to see.

1. Decent draw distance. In most of these games that I've played in the past, the draw distance has always been... very minimal. We're talking 10 squares at most. I'd like to see the option to have viewing of at least twice that distance. If you could get it to work up to 20 squares away, you could build some pretty impressive sights. Which, leads me to 2.

2. I'd like to see it rendered a little more "3D". While moving on a 2D plane is fine in a 3D environment, it lacks a certain... "awe". If you could get balconies within dungeons to view "down" or even "up", I'd prefer that sort of system. Having such a thing would allow a certain level of "environmental storytelling" as well as other options like possible platforming that we see in games like Ultima Underworld. Yes, I'd even settle for a limitation where to achieve the effect, you have "transparent" ceilings and walls to give the effect of seeing above and below. Just so long as you can see other Z-Levels.

3. I'd be curious if the mode could be used for the entirety of gameplay. From walking around town, to exploring dungeons. I think such a mode would make towns feel more "lived in" and be a bit more immersive.

4. Smooth animations would be a "must". From "turning" to "walking".

5. Ability to customize the assets, or even insert assets into the environment. Chests, paintings, water, lava, switches, bosses, teleports, whatever. Blank walls, or similar looking walls tend to pull players out of the experience and tend to wreck the immersion. I wouldn't mind having to do these myself, I'd just like the option to do it myself, instead of having it be a limitation.
---

All that being said, I'm always interested in new game makers that this website produces. If I can imagine a game I want to make with them, I generally just purchase them regardless of the price. I like the "simplistic style" that the company seems to work with (IE: Easy to understand, easy to code a basic game, mastery of it is more difficult and time consuming).

I'd have coded a 3D RPG in Unity if the program felt any sort of "user friendly" to me and stock assets weren't all "mainstream". But, a 3D dungeon crawling experience in a regular RPG Maker game would be kind of cool or neat in my opinion. Especially if you can tinker with it as much as you can the Vanilla products.

Heck, depending on how well such a feature is made and supported, I'd honestly be willing to drop $120 USD on it. Especially if you could recreate something close to the old FPSRPG styles. I bet I could find a game I'd want to build with it.

Now... if only we could get an Isometric RPG Maker....

 

[Marquise*]

Hey... I remember early 3D Hired Gun type of mazes... I am thinking that it would be great with a smooth in the move instead of square of map by square of map. Just a thought like that!

 

[peq42_]

@elpeleq42 : No one is stopping you from coding that functionality already. The option to pay for it to get the code already is akin to buying a prebuilt setup in Unity or Gamemaker. In all cases you CAN code it yourself and not pay for it, just like you can here. We're just talking about offering the option to pay for it yourself and save yourself the time of coding the 3D part on your own.

But if you don't want to pay for it, by all means write your own code. The functionality is there. No one is stopping you.

I mean, i would love the tool, but i really think that it should come for free, since it would be really really hard to do without buying(different from other tools, that make easier something that's already simple, and possible to do using other tools in the web that are also easy to use).

I mean, common... it's not like kodakawa is in need of more money. If we take the brazilian-Steam price(wich for some reason, is A LOT cheaper than europe/american price, like almost HALF the price), they got over U$5 Million only with MV(thats only MV, only in steam, not talking about other tools, resource packs and MV being sold in RPG Maker Web/A Japanese website that i don't know.And yes, U$5 million if counting with promotions, without it would be around U$8 million) and with time, it's probably going to grow even more.

 

[Sharm]

Even if your estimate is correct, exactly how much money do you think it costs to make the next engine along with all the other costs that come with running a multinational business? Sales does not equal profit, not even slightly.

 

[jayray]

You know, you can build a first person labyrinth style game easily with nothing but events... and just a couple of javascript evals, if you can use one sheet of graph paper to figure out what goes where.. AND if you want even have placeholder event graphics... I mean, you have the ability to show up to 100 pictures on the screen at any one time. 3 spaces for the immediate foreground, 5 for the next layer "away", then 9, then 13 (if needed) then just check for something like regionID (if going that route, or TileID if going that route on each box that's in front of you, depending on what direction you're facing. I know it sounds cheap but Bards Tale and Tons of Dungoens and Dragons games did this exact idea way before 3d. was actually 3d. Yes, you'd have to draw the blocks for each section, or render them or whatever, but... if you know how wide each box should be, you should easily be able to set specific points for your show picture, to change the pictures shown in each view, even embellish them further with ceiling pieces, floor pieces and more, all from the awesomeness that is Show Pictures.

No 3d needed... just a lot of art and drawing... You can even do that smooth transition thing you were talking about, where when you move... the pictures zoom and move to their relative new positions on the map.
I started an idea for that when I realized that really, you can't do multilevels justice in the old FPLE by MCG.

Let me know if anyone was able to do that.

 

[Tai_MT]

@jayray

For the same token, anyone can learn to code in C++ or any other programming language. There's no need to buy an RPG Maker Engine. Or a Unity Engine. Or whatever else. You can just program it from scratch! Just requires some time, talent, and willingness to learn.

On the other hand... Most of us on this website aren't really "artists". Or, we are, but not the "I can draw in a computer program" kind. Many of us would rather just have a simplified engine to handle the "heavy lifting" like an engine like RPG Maker does.

In a world where I can't draw in real life and my skills suffer significantly more the moment I try to draw with something as fickle and imprecise as a stylus or a mouse... I'd rather just buy the assets someone else made than try to figure out the long way around to making them myself. I'd rather pay someone else to provide what I want/need than try to procure it on my own and waste my own time doing so.

Honestly, that's what the post is about, basically. Does anyone want this, if so, how much are they willing to pay? I'm willing to pay $120 for a significantly better version than what they're talking about... that offers at the very least some faux 3D where you can look up and down Z levels, among other things.

If nothing else, I think it would just be another option to play around with, to test the limits of, to explore in programming a bit more.

 

[jayray]

I get you there... I'd be willing to pay $30 dollars for an RMMV equivalent to the QUEST engine... where you DO have a upper and lower layer, and the ability to transition between the two, as well as the ability to have it on a per map basis, not as a complete FP RPG only. I'd love to be able to go First Person and Default view depending on the maps.

I'd also definitely pay for an RMMV isometric engine too, a fully scripted and realized one... that works.

 

[Astrea]

I'm probably more than a little late to the party here but this seems like a really neat idea!

However, I'd honestly really prefer to see some bugfixes first, yeah? MV has this awful problem with loading large animations during battle,
and it'd be nice to see some kind of fix for that first.

Either way, it's good to know that the devs are still working hard!

 

[Nightblade50]

Really great. I'd pay a lot for this - maybe even $30.

 

[Shin Kitsune]

 

[Kanzlerino]

Man it's been a couple of months only but im still checking this thread every single day
for updates. Man if they at least could say ANYTHING.
I'm just too .. uhm .. impatient, hehe

 

[JosephSeraph]

You know, you can build a first person labyrinth style game easily with nothing but events... and just a couple of javascript evals, if you can use one sheet of graph paper to figure out what goes where.. AND if you want even have placeholder event graphics... I mean, you have the ability to show up to 100 pictures on the screen at any one time. 3 spaces for the immediate foreground, 5 for the next layer "away", then 9, then 13 (if needed) then just check for something like regionID (if going that route, or TileID if going that route on each box that's in front of you, depending on what direction you're facing. I know it sounds cheap but Bards Tale and Tons of Dungoens and Dragons games did this exact idea way before 3d. was actually 3d. Yes, you'd have to draw the blocks for each section, or render them or whatever, but... if you know how wide each box should be, you should easily be able to set specific points for your show picture, to change the pictures shown in each view, even embellish them further with ceiling pieces, floor pieces and more, all from the awesomeness that is Show Pictures.

No 3d needed... just a lot of art and drawing... You can even do that smooth transition thing you were talking about, where when you move... the pictures zoom and move to their relative new positions on the map.
I started an idea for that when I realized that really, you can't do multilevels justice in the old FPLE by MCG.

Let me know if anyone was able to do that.

I had done it (scroll up for the link), but came to a halt because i realized stuff like making the game know which direction to draw events would be a pain -- doable, but a pain -- so i scrapped it before programming the other directions
as for animating the transition between tiles, it wouldnt be just zooming (unless you could Transform a picture through all its 4 corners, but then you'd really just need 1 picture per tile and no perspective variants, which is likely easy to do on ace / 2k3)
anyway, zooming doesnt conform to perspective, so you'd have to make several frames for every tile (and for every possible position that tile could be in relation to the camera...) not a very fun thing to do, and very taxing artwise
(an artist would have an easier time learning programming than doing that lmaoooooooo)


anyway hyped for this plugin

 

[jayray]

Bards Tale and Tons of Dungoens and Dragons games did this exact idea way before 3d.

For reference, I would probably suggest doing some math and rendering some low poly items that you can trace over at different camera spots.

But, i digress.... Here's what I'D like to see in a tool like this....

BASEMENT & ATTICS - The ability to have the same angles and such for the layer beneath, and the layer above, so that if I want to go up a flight of stairs I can. (We can use illusion to portray what's ON that upper floor, but just being able to go to it, excellent)

ANGLED ROOFS - ALA "Quest" - would like to see a tapered roof concept, so we can better showcase houses or variations between a BLOCK ceiling and a HOUSE roof.

NOT JUST PARALLAX BKG- but SKYBOX - The ability to have six pics of the background, north, south, east, west, up, and down, so that if you turn left, so does your backdrop.

FATHEADS! - Wall Decals, Ceiling Decals, and Floor Decals.

WINDOWS/TRANSPARENT WALLS - While it might be taxing on memory resources. having walls that you can see what's on the other side could be VERY awesome.

MINIMAP on screen + MINIMAP scene with FOG of War for blocks not seen yet

 

[Saneterre]

I'd be interested in that kind of tool, but it would have to be very well done. In terms of money, I can't see myself spending more than 10$ for it though. (It could cost more, I would just wait for sales).
I'm thinking etrian odyssey