RPG Maker MZ, Preview #2: Graphics, Mapping, Eventing!

[MechScapeZH]

Wow! This is great!

Honestly, the 2 features here I'm most excited about are the elimination of .m4a files and the souped-up picture commands- the first is just a great QoL thing, and I think I could do a lot with the second.

The sheer amount of resources in the RTP is staggering as well. I love the monsters. The only thing I'd personally say- and this is a personal, minor thing- is: the sci-fi actions don't look... that sci-fi to me? When I think "sci-fi" my mind usually goes to Star Trek/Star Wars/etc. etc. rather than these more mundane, modern character designs... But of course that's my opinion, haha.

It's looking great! I'm just waiting for the price at this point, haha.

 

[Prescott]

Some super good improvements here! I am very happy about the layered map system as well as the movement route preview. Other QOL things I'm happy about are the button press conditional branch clauses and the ability to get location info for not only players but events as well! That simplifies eventing systems a lot.

 

[Winshifter]

Well, seems they have made huge improvements to Eventing and that preview for move route would really be helpful, I always had to have a copy in paint or photoshop to calculate movements.
While I try to use very little from RTP assets, music and SFX would be very welcome, specially sfx, because sometimes getting the correct ones is quite difficult and having more options is better. I just hope the BGS is not the same as the previous RPG Makers, at least bring something new, or mostly new.


I still believe not everything about eventing has been shown.

The only thing I'd personally say- and this is a personal, minor thing- is: the sci-fi actions don't look... that sci-fi to me? When I think "sci-fi" my mind usually goes to Star Trek/Star Wars/etc. etc. rather than these more mundane, modern character designs... But of course that's my opinion, haha.

Yeah! I don't know from which point of view is the sci-fi art suppoused to be taken. I would say that it's not sci-fi, it's modern. Unless they are taking the sci-fi from a medieval point of view. From someone in medieval times, heck, even 200 years ago, our current era would be considered sci-fi.

 

[Niten Ichi Ryu]

So what I got so far, correct me if i'm wrong.

120 busts and full art.

Touchfuzzy said there were 1-1 to 3-8 actors, duped into fantasy and modern so we can hope for 24 actors, time 2 it's already 48 out of 120. Now what will probably be people 1-1 to 2-8 may follow the same pattern, so 16x2 32.

Most probably 2 monster sheets for another 16 busts.

96 busts here, 24 to go.

I'm speculating, I'll try to read back the thread or check the vid for info

 

[Sharm]

If you can use the A tiles on any layer, and autotiles still work the same, doesn't that mean that the A tiles are suddenly a LOT more flexible in how they can be used? For example, could I have an animated flower autotile with transparency that can layer over any type of ground?

 

[Niten Ichi Ryu]

So yeah, what adds up:

Character Busts: 120
Character Full Art: 120
Face Graphic Sheets: 15 x 8 - 120

It matches and all face graphic have a bust and full art. We know as well some will be duplicated in version fantasy/modern
We may assume they all have a Sprite.

Character Sprites Sheets: 44 ×8 352
120 should have a face.

That's a lot of sprites. They include as well actors, people, doors but also large monsters and monsters with sprites, some may have face graphics. Then will be a few of lever, chest and vehicles.



Actors 1-1 3-8 for scifi and fantasy = 48
Character SV Battlers: 40. something doesn't add up with 48 actors.

At least 1 people 1-8, seen in the video.

Enemy Battlers: 105
Enemy SV Battlers: 105
wonder how much have faces?

 

[MechScapeZH]

Well, seems they have made huge improvements to Eventing and that preview for move route would really be helpful, I always had to have a copy in paint or photoshop to calculate movements.
While I try to use very little from RTP assets, music and SFX would be very welcome, specially sfx, because sometimes getting the correct ones is quite difficult and having more options is better. I just hope the BGS is not the same as the previous RPG Makers, at least bring something new, or mostly new.


I still believe not everything about eventing has been shown.



Yeah! I don't know from which point of view is the sci-fi art suppoused to be taken. I would say that it's not sci-fi, it's modern. Unless they are taking the sci-fi from a medieval point of view. From someone in medieval times, heck, even 200 years ago, our current era would be considered sci-fi.

That may very well be the case, in comparison to the fantasy assets- you brought up a very good point here! Again, I don't think these assets are bad, they are in fact very good- I just wouldn't think of them as sci-fi.

 

[Lion Blade Soler]

That may very well be the case, in comparison to the fantasy assets- you brought up a very good point here! Again, I don't think these assets are bad, they are in fact very good- I just wouldn't think of them as sci-fi.

Unless I'm mistaken, they aren't Sci-fi; they are from the Modern theme. Unlike MV, it appears that MZ will have Fantasy and Modern as the default themes. I'm hoping that the other six themes that were on MV Trinity (Dark Fantasy, Sci-fi, Arabian, Japanese, Chinese, and Steampunk) will also appear on MZ, but for now, I will admit that MZ looks to be way better than MV and am planning to get MZ.

 

[Sopo201]

You had me at “preview move route”

 

[Makeratore]

Now I'm wowed!

What's the button set, though? Does it mean that we'll be able to make custom buttons to press or what?

 

[Tamina]

I must be getting old. Everything in those map screens looks cluttered because of the inconsistent way the tiles are rendered. They look at once dated and extremely busy. I dunno. I think I like MV's tilesets better in terms of cohesion. Maybe I'm just seeing it wrong since everyone else seems to like them. And given I can just use MV's tiles I guess it doesn't matter.

MVs tilesets are fine, it's just extremely underrated in this community because people have seen it for 9999999th time, even in projects that's not suitable for chibi style graphics. Eventually it received less recognization than it deserves.

 

[Shaz]

Does this mean we can ditch the auto-tiles that usually take up A2 - A4 and replace them with regular tiles like the B-E types? (In addition to having B-E)

Being able to mix and match tile types with more freedom is a definite plus! I was really hoping for this so I could use those slots taken up by auto-tiles that I don't use!

Guys, that isn't what Touch is saying at all. The new layering system means you can put A tiles on the top layers, and B-E tiles on the ground layer, when drawing your maps, if that's where you want to draw them. It doesn't mean the A slots have been done away with and that you can have 7 slots all with B-E sheets in them. The A tile slots are still for A tiles, and will be drawn as autotiles if you use them. You can just use them on any layer. Unless something is stated otherwise, I believe the slots on the Tilesets tab will be exactly the same as those in Ace and MV - 5 for A tiles, and 4 for B-E tiles. @Touchfuzzy can you please confirm that?

Btw, pardon my ignorance about the layering system, but does it impact how passability works?

For example, in this promo shot:

If you are on the first floor can you go through the circled area? And if you are in the second floor you would walk above it?

The layering system is only for drawing maps. It doesn't mean the player moves "up" or "down" layers as they walk around. Passability will likely work the same way it does now - the game will look at all the tiles drawn on that spot, from the highest to the lowest, and will stop when it finds one with specified passage settings, and use those settings. So if you put an impassable tile on a lower layer, and a passable tile on a higher layer, that spot will be passable. If you put a passable tile on a lower layer, and an impassable tile on a higher layer, that spot will be impassable.

It would be nice to bring back the priority system from XP as well, which allowed you to be behind a tile or in front of it, depending on where you were standing, but the reference to the star tile makes me think that's not the case. That means we'll probably still have cut-off heads due to the 48x48 sprites being drawn a few tiles up from the grid.

If you can use the A tiles on any layer, and autotiles still work the same, doesn't that mean that the A tiles are suddenly a LOT more flexible in how they can be used? For example, could I have an animated flower autotile with transparency that can layer over any type of ground?

That's exactly what it means You and I experimented with this way back before MV 1.3, where the next MV rewrote those methods and broke the plugin I was working on. Unless there are more animated tiles though, the A1 was the only one that could have animation, and that was all water, which had inbuilt passage settings for vehicles, so that might have some unwanted implications on what you're hoping to do. Will be interesting to see if the same logic is used for the A1 tiles. Wouldn't be hard to write a plugin to override those though.

 

[Kich]

I'm glad to see the layers are back.

But... What about priorities? We know the editor grid is still fixed on 48x48 (which is very frustrating, I must say), but the tile priority also remains as a single ☆ like in MV? RMXP got up to 5☆.

With that much priority stacks, I'm able to make the character stand in front of a tile and behind it depending on the character's y position:

In MV, this kind of arrangement is not possible because the single priority ☆ apparently doesn't rely on the character position, it only makes the starred tile to be displayed above everything. Beyond that, MV's single priority ☆ is located in the same tab as passage, which extra limits the options.

Ultimately, MV's poor priority feature forces you to make a whole 48x48 block unpassable, which makes encounters with thinner objects look odd since it leaves quite a lot of spare ground blocked either:

Plus, if your character is taller than 2 standard tiles and you're right below a tall object with stars set up at the top, the priority will invariably bug once that single ☆ always displays the starred tile above everything, without taking the character position into account.

I suspect this priority downgrade is why all RPG Maker engines since RMXP had standard chibi characters put into 1:1 squares (each MV character frame is 48x48, with a standard 48x48 map grid), unlike the better proportioned characters of RMXP (each XP character frame is 32x48, with a standard 32x32 map grid).

So, has there been a change in MZ's tileset priorities compared to MV's?

EDIT: Good timing. I second @Shaz, it would be nice to bring back the priority system from XP.

 

[Hudell]

So, has there been a change in MZ's tileset priorities compared to MV's?

It's better to use events for that kind of large objects. Adding support for XP style priorities would probably cause performance to take a heavy hit if the engine works the same way as MV.

 

[Rogue Milk]

I think this is by far the most improvement we've had on a new version of Rpg Maker compared to the previous one, both in terms of functionalities and resources.

 

[Javo]

Greetings...

I guess that this might be a common question, but I don't know where to get this RMMZ feature; do the characters/npc's pixel resolution in MZ has been officially announced? will it still be 48x48 or it will scale to 64x64?

Thanks for the help..

 

[Hudell]

Greetings...

I guess that this might be a common question, but I don't know where to get this RMMZ feature; do the characters/npc's pixel resolution in MZ has been officially announced? will it still be 48x48 or it will scale to 64x64?

Thanks for the help..

It'll be compatible with MV, so 48x48.

 

[Sal-O-Mac]

Guys, that isn't what Touch is saying at all. The new layering system means you can put A tiles on the top layers, and B-E tiles on the ground layer, when drawing your maps, if that's where you want to draw them. It doesn't mean the A slots have been done away with and that you can have 7 slots all with B-E sheets in them. The A tile slots are still for A tiles, and will be drawn as autotiles if you use them. You can just use them on any layer. Unless something is stated otherwise, I believe the slots on the Tilesets tab will be exactly the same as those in Ace and MV - 5 for A tiles, and 4 for B-E tiles. @Touchfuzzy can you please confirm that?

Oooh okay. That's less impressive but I'll take it. It's worded in a way that I misread it, so that's my bad.

 

[Jenova]

Wow​

 

[Resurrection Games]

When will I be able to preorder this?