RPG Maker MZ, Preview #4: Event List, System Tab Options, New UI, Release Date & Price!

[Shaz]

Even if there were, there's no guarantee they're going to work. If your script call is to do something from a plugin, it definitely won't work at least until the plugins are ported to MZ, and even then you might have to change them. If it isn't anything to do with a plugin, you might still have to rewrite it depending on what it is and if / how much that part of the core code has changed.

 

[Shin Kitsune]

Definitely going to pre-purchase my copy this Friday. Cannot wait to get my hands on a new engine!

There is something I wanted to say though. Maybe I am a bit late since I am not that active around here, and the thread mentioning it is locked. I just noticed the Layer menu thing.
While this is an awesome feature, I say, why not include the layer buttons on the toolbar, pretty much like XP? I think it would be easier to find that way.

 

[Shaz]

I agree. There is a shortcut key though - Control+Tab or something like that, that will be easier than going to the menu, but I'd still prefer a button.

@Touchfuzzy did they also bring back the ability to double-click on an autotile in the palette to open a window with all 48 patterns to select from? (please say yes!)

 

[Touchfuzzy]

I agree. There is a shortcut key though - Control+Tab or something like that, that will be easier than going to the menu, but I'd still prefer a button.

@Touchfuzzy did they also bring back the ability to double-click on an autotile in the palette to open a window with all 48 patterns to select from? (please say yes!)

That feature has not returned.

 

[Shin Kitsune]

It's true. While I saw the Ctrl+Tab shortcut is there, not everyone (especially those new to the engine) will be aware it's even in there. The menus, personally I don't bother much navigating on the menus since most options are in the toolbar. It's pretty much a swiss knife with everything you need.

 

[jonthefox]

Anyone else waiting for Touchfuzzy's post where he said he'd talk more about the battle system or something since we don't have a preview this week?

 

[Dark_Ansem]

Ah so thats why the thread wasn't locked

 

[jonthefox]

honestly, the more i think about it...the new timed battle system might be the biggest selling point of MZ. it offers a whole new world of potential creativity and design for the flow and feel of combat.

 

[Touchfuzzy]

Anyone else waiting for Touchfuzzy's post where he said he'd talk more about the battle system or something since we don't have a preview this week?

I've been really busy this week, unfortunately. Will probably be early next week until I can write it out. Not a lot going out this week other than the preorder, but we have a lot of cool behind the scenes stuff being organized for the future that I have to have my hands on.

 

[chaucer]

@Touchfuzzy I had another question, I decided to go ahead and pre-order the S Bundle( when it comes to the store here, as I'm not particularly fond of steam ), even though I'm on linux. One reason being, even if I can't use the engine, extra assets would be helpful, the second being that as a programmer, I could relatively easily create my own editor UI for linux, incase the default one is not capable of running in linux via wine, and or, we never get official linux support.

So the question I have, would it be legal for me to build my own Game Data Editor UI, if the rpg maker MZ engine itself does not run, after purchasing rpg maker mz? If the game itself runs on nwjs like mv does( I believe this has been confirmed already ), then the game itself would run fine on linux, which means I would only be creating a GUI for editing database data, and a map editor.

 

[BreakerZero]

@Touchfuzzy I had another question, I decided to go ahead and pre-order the S Bundle( when it comes to the store here, as I'm not particularly fond of steam ), even though I'm on linux. One reason being, even if I can't use the engine, extra assets would be helpful, the second being that as a programmer, I could relatively easily create my own editor UI for linux, incase the default one is not capable of running in linux via wine, and or, we never get official linux support.

So the question I have, would it be legal for me to build my own Game Data Editor UI, if the rpg maker MZ engine itself does not run, after purchasing rpg maker mz? If the game itself runs on nwjs like mv does( I believe this has been confirmed already ), then the game itself would run fine on linux, which means I would only be creating a GUI for editing database data, and a map editor.

Sadly that's a reverse-engineer provision which is a legal no-no regardless of intention. You could try running MZ through Wine if necessary, but otherwise you're probably stuck.

 

[chaucer]

incase the default one is not capable of running in linux via wine, and or, we never get official linux support.

I already mentioned about wine ^^ but thanks for the tip, MV worked on wine before the official linux support, however it was very glitchy, and crashed often. So I'd assume that MZ will probably be the same way. Also I am aware of what reverse engineering is, and I know it's against the terms of use.

As far as that goes, I would not be recreating the existing UI, I would be building my own. I have no intention of trying to make things exactly the same, just a way to easily edit data variables that are necessary. In reality you don't need a UI to even do this if MZ is still using JSON files to store data, I mean, you can just drop the json files into a text editor and change variables that way, I'd only be building a UI to make the process easier for myself.

I would prefer a clear answer from a staff member, but I do appreciate the input @BreakerZero

 

[Anyone]

@Touchfuzzy I had another question, I decided to go ahead and pre-order the S Bundle( when it comes to the store here, as I'm not particularly fond of steam ), even though I'm on linux. One reason being, even if I can't use the engine, extra assets would be helpful, the second being that as a programmer, I could relatively easily create my own editor UI for linux, incase the default one is not capable of running in linux via wine, and or, we never get official linux support.

Unless you're one hell of a programmer, creating the entire editor yourself is probably gonna involve quite a bit of work?
The game's engine is JS, but as far as I know, the editor is written in something entirely different and is used as GUI to create the maps, databases, etc. in JS format that the RMZ engine can read.

So the question I have, would it be legal for me to build my own Game Data Editor UI, if the rpg maker MZ engine itself does not run, after purchasing rpg maker mz? If the game itself runs on nwjs like mv does( I believe this has been confirmed already ), then the game itself would run fine on linux, which means I would only be creating a GUI for editing database data, and a map editor.

If you directly hack & replicate or alter the code of the RMZ editor, you're guaranteed to be in trouble the moment you publish it or send it to another person. For your own personal use, that point becomes moot, because when no one knows you did it and use it just for yourself, there's no problem.

You can basically do whatever you want, so long as you don't share it with a single person, and you also cannot release guides or info on how it's done.

If you don't reverse engineer, if you create an entirely seperate GUI whose purpose is to create files that are patterned like the DB files & maps, you should be absolutely fine.
In fact, if that was illegal, there'd be a whole lot of scripts & tools that extract and rebuild JSON files in the utilities section of this forum that would break the law.

So if the process is different, and the UI is no carbon copy, and you don't use UI elements from RMZ (like symbols) and you don't replicate their menu structure exactly, but design something similar but visually different & differently coded, there shouldn't be any legal standing.

If you decide to do that, you should probably not just program it for LINUX though, but also ask the community in general, and add a bunch of new features. Lord knows I have a lot of ideas of what the darn editor should be able to do that we won't see any time soon even though they're obvious. (Like the ability to add parameters & values to database objects through the database instead of having to fiddle around with notetags.)

 

[Kaliya]

@Touchfuzzy I had another question, I decided to go ahead and pre-order the S Bundle( when it comes to the store here, as I'm not particularly fond of steam ), even though I'm on linux. One reason being, even if I can't use the engine, extra assets would be helpful, the second being that as a programmer, I could relatively easily create my own editor UI for linux, incase the default one is not capable of running in linux via wine, and or, we never get official linux support.

So the question I have, would it be legal for me to build my own Game Data Editor UI, if the rpg maker MZ engine itself does not run, after purchasing rpg maker mz? If the game itself runs on nwjs like mv does( I believe this has been confirmed already ), then the game itself would run fine on linux, which means I would only be creating a GUI for editing database data, and a map editor.

don't quote me on this but I believe this would also fall under similar legality of the "Made with MV" post, in which case I believe the answer is, No. Since you're not using the MZ editor, you could not use the MZ assets (or any RMW assets that are for RM only for that matter I think). Again don't quote me on that though.

 

[Anyone]

don't quote me on this but I believe this would also fall under similar legality of the "Made with MV" post, in which case I believe the answer is, No. Since you're not using the MZ editor, you could not use the MZ assets (or any RMW assets that are for RM only for that matter I think). Again don't quote me on that though.

Made with RMV/RMZ as a restriction to that degree is bound to be problematic though - and in all likelyhood a legal quagmire.

There's under guarantee a whole bunch of countries where those ToS would violate the law.
Assets are one thing, but if you consider the engine not a plattform but an asset too...let's just say it's fortunately unlikely someone from a hobby community like this is going to put it to a test, because I'm pretty sure there's a good chance this would violate at least EU law.

Also, what about translation engines in the utilities section? Technically they're also extracting RMV json files, changing them and rebuilding them.

In fact, if you go the whole way, every single plugin that's made with a non RMV tool (e.g. sublime, atom, notepad++ etc.) would violate those ToS.
People would have to use the RMV console to create plugins, otherwise they're creating something that utilizes RMV assets.

What about tools that compress or protect projects made with RMV? Technically the creation with another tool of the final product supersedes the creating in RMV, making them not RMV products especially if functionality is added.

No one's gonna waste their time & effort to test it, but if a customer protection agency decided that's a lot of liberties taken, I wouldn't want to be in Degica's shoes. xD

But yeah, if Degica decides to block the creation of an improved editor as free tool to make better games, I doubt chaucer will release one.

Which...honestly doesn't reflect well on Degica. :/

 

[chaucer]

Unless you're one hell of a programmer, creating the entire editor yourself is probably gonna involve quite a bit of work?
The game's engine is JS, but as far as I know, the editor is written in something entirely different and is used as GUI to create the maps, databases, etc. in JS format that the RMZ engine can read.

If you directly hack & replicate or alter the code of the RMZ editor, you're guaranteed to be in trouble the moment you publish it or send it to another person. For your own personal use, that point becomes moot, because when no one knows you did it and use it just for yourself, there's no problem.

You can basically do whatever you want, so long as you don't share it with a single person, and you also cannot release guides or info on how it's done.

If you don't reverse engineer, if you create an entirely seperate GUI whose purpose is to create files that are patterned like the DB files & maps, you should be absolutely fine.
In fact, if that was illegal, there'd be a whole lot of scripts & tools that extract and rebuild JSON files in the utilities section of this forum that would break the law.

So if the process is different, and the UI is no carbon copy, and you don't use UI elements from RMZ (like symbols) and you don't replicate their menu structure exactly, but design something similar but visually different & differently coded, there shouldn't be any legal standing.

If you decide to do that, you should probably not just program it for LINUX though, but also ask the community in general, and add a bunch of new features. Lord knows I have a lot of ideas of what the darn editor should be able to do that we won't see any time soon even though they're obvious. (Like the ability to add parameters & values to database objects through the database instead of having to fiddle around with notetags.)

Why thank you, yes I am one hell of a programmer! xD Only joking, but the task would not be as hard as one would assume, given that the variables already exist I just need to add a pretty wrapper to access said variables. The hardest part would be the map editor, the rest would be relatively cake.

Also you are correct, the game engine is utilizing nwjs( and uses javascript ), the editor itself uses QT, which I am pretty familiar with, however, if I were to build my own UI I'd probably use something like GTK, personal preference.

I have no intention of reverse engineering, profiting from, or sharing the editor( the last one because I could easily end up supporting piracy which I would not want to do ), I only would be building a simple GUI to quickly edit database entries instead of having to navigate through the json files for everything( again only assuming the default editor does not run in wine, wine has made quite a lot of improvements in the last 4 years, so this whole topic may end up being invalid anyways lol ), as I may be a programmer, but that does not mean I want to spend the entirety of my time in my text editor. D:

Again, the process would be quite different I have no intention of just straight up cloning MZ's UI, I would only create the bare basics required for my needs. As stated before, I'd end up using GTK, not QT, I don't intend to mimic the UI in any way, only give myself the means to edit the game files easily( if the default editor don't work ).

I would absolutely love to do a cross platform UI and add in tons of features( god knows I have a lot of ideas for it! ) GTK+ is easy to make cross platform, however I think at that point this would again, fall back to what i said before, I would end up supporting piracy, as anyone would be able to download my engine, and start building a rpg maker MZ game, which is not my intention, the only logical way I see that happening, would be if I were to coordinate with kadokawa and or degica directly and have the custom UI as some sort of a dlc type thing, in order to ensure only honest people used it, alas, I only want to be able to use rpg maker MZ to build games with, this is my only goal.

For your own personal use, that point becomes moot, because when no one knows you did it and use it just for yourself, there's no problem.
So if the process is different, and the UI is no carbon copy, and you don't use UI elements from RMZ (like symbols) and you don't replicate their menu structure exactly, but design something similar but visually different & differently coded, there shouldn't be any legal standing.

Can anyone staff confirm this is true? if so then that is pretty much my intention lol.

don't quote me on this but I believe this would also fall under similar legality of the "Made with MV" post, in which case I believe the answer is, No. Since you're not using the MZ editor, you could not use the MZ assets (or any RMW assets that are for RM only for that matter I think). Again don't quote me on that though.

I am sorry, but i quoted you D; don't hate me hehe. Also that's a bummer, I would just like to be able to use the engine to build games, write plugins for the community without getting into any issues with Degica/Kadokawa. :x

 

[Anyone]

Can anyone staff confirm this is true? if so then that is pretty much my intention lol.

They probably can't, but where there's no victim, there's no accuser. You could rename the RMZ editor "The Game Maker 2.3" or code bunny ears into your files. If no one knows, no one will sue you.
If your db files at the end are identical to ones build in RPG Maker, no one can or will be inclined to tell the difference.

But you obviously would have to make it just for yourself. No sharing, no announcing, no nothing. Just to be on the safe side, because you never know if someone wants to test the legality of personal modification - and while it might be perfectly legal, or legal at least in your country, you yourself are probably not gonna be an eager volunteer for a legal battleground that tests that.

Given that this is a japanese company, though, and given japanese industry standards & business practices...don't expect any of the japanese team to roll out the red carpet or welcome that.
Restrictions are a japanese virtue.

Absolute honesty here, I think Kaliya is right - in so far as it's very unlikely that the japanese dev team will encourage or condone something that might encroach on their monopoly (which is what such platform restrictions are).

Because your potential ability to improve and enhance the capabilities of their project, whether real or imagined, is very unlikely to be viewed favorable.
It might make you, in their eyes, a possible competitor - or, even worse, someone who demonstrates that a lot of the improvements people have been demanding for years are, in fact, very easily and quickly implemented - but haven't been for more than just financial reasons (in that it'd cost too much to hire someone to add them) but more for business reasons (ensuring improvement margins remain for the next generation of the product so a new sale can be done in 3-5 years)

That last possibility, while not necessarily true, is bound to be something a japanese publisher is very unlikely to view kindly.

 

[Touchfuzzy]

I will say that as far as for public release, there would definitely be an issue.

For private use if you never shared it with anyone else... can't really say anything because that gets more into like "is it legal" which is beyond my expertise. It also gets pretty theoretical since if the files produced are identical, how would anyone even know.

 

[BreakerZero]

I would also suggest reading this thread for additional details on the legal aspect. It's very well written (and of course I'm no lawyer myself) but it should more than cover the various possible legal situations to watch out for.

 

[Anyone]

I will say that as far as for public release, there would definitely be an issue.

For private use if you never shared it with anyone else... can't really say anything because that gets more into like "is it legal" which is beyond my expertise. It also gets pretty theoretical since if the files produced are identical, how would anyone even know.

@chaucer
That's probably the best reply you're gonna get.

I'm gonna lean out of the window and speculate that for any actual, official reply, Touchfuzzy would have to go through the japanese dev team, contact the publisher, who'd have to contact the legal department.

The legal department wouldn't so much think about "what does the law say" but more in a "what do we want that person to do"?

There's no benefit, legally, financially, or in any other way for Degica if they'd allow that liberty for you (and others creating stuff like it)
(It'd be insanely useful for the RMV/RMZ community, but that's not a part of that calculation)

Because the legal team probably doesn't have lawyers for your country on retainer.

Corporations often make ToS or restrictions that actually aren't applicable in a country/region and would be void - or even force the publisher to stop selling in those countries, if they'd try to enforce them.
They ultimately rely on the fact that the average joe won't test the rules on whether they're actually legal binding (and, you probably don't want to be the joe that has to go through the court nonsense in case it gets tested).

As unfortunate as it may be, but the chances of Degica officially allowing for a port/modded version of the editor is practically zero.

-----------------------------------------------
Though TECHNICALLY you could make an editor that only builds map & database files, and to actually create the game you'd still have to use a windows PC, put all those files into the folders of an RMZ project & deploy the game.

That would be 100% legal, actually, because your editor doesn't build the game.
It only builds JS files.
Distribution is still done via RMZ which does not replace any of their engine files. (Though you'd need to write plugins that can access whatever you add to your editor as object parameters & stuff, but you'd have to do that anyway.)

By going through RMZ as the game creator you turn your editor into something akin to a tool like photoshop.

Just like you can take a RMZ character picture and edit it - you're taking an RMZ js file and editing it.
You're not building the game or replacing the requirement of RMV as product creator.

So if you don't replace the RMZ editor entirely, and you ensure that you're just loading preexisting js files or creating them, and final deployment of a game still happens in RMZ as an RMZ game...
Then it's no different than editing js files with sublime or atom, or editing pictures with gimp or photoshop.

But if you do ever get an official message from Degica, they're not gonna tell you that.