RPG Maker without Ruby

[Galenmereth]

Might very well be true, there are limitations after all, still curious tho, what couldn't you have made without scripting?

My spiritwalking ability uses scripts to place an event dynamically; when you hit the spiritwalk key, a copy of the player character (using scripts) is placed where you stood, while the player changes a skin (done through eventing). You can also cancel the spiritwalk at any time using the same key (even when "soul searching" inside another character; you'll be taken back to the "real" world then). Here's a video:

There is no way to do this without scripts. You can't place events dynamically using eventing. Additionally, my game features an event log that logs key events, like seen briefly in this menu video:

It doesn't log them in a predetermined order; it logs them as they happen, using script calls on events that log them in an array that is saved together with the save data, in the order that you trigger it.

Finally, my bag system is impossible to do with only events:

Without scripts, you can't change your game menus and interface that drastically. So if we didn't have scripts, I couldn't have made this game in Ace  Maybe I could've wrestled some of this in through some really intricate eventing, but that would be a ridiculous amount of work, be heavily prone to error, use a lot of static content and really, it wouldn't have worked very well at all.

I'd like to mention that all of what I show here is a combination of eventing and scripting, as I really like the eventing tools. If you're really interested, I explain the bag menu in a recent blog post here.

 

[Tsukihime]

Dynamic content generation is definitely something that would be basically impossible with eventing.


Scripting is powerful, but scripting does not make it easy to actually create your game. It makes it easy to provide functionality, but at some point you need to integrate it with the database and the event editor to actually build the stuff that goes in your project.


I would encourage all scripters to completely understand what kinds of interfaces are available in RM (event editor, animation editor, database editor, etc) because that's what game developers are going to use. As Archeia pointed out, it is a terrible mess to manage your entire database in a configuration file in a script.


The event language supports pretty much all of the logic that you need to do anything, but they just don't have access to things that don't exist.

I prefer Lua for game programming though. Ruby performance is a bit slower than some other interpreter languages. Python is good, but its base library is too large, unless you build your own mini python.

The python library for the program I use (with only the core libraries though) is like 1.5 MB to distribute

I don't know how large is "too large" but the size of an RM demo is 1.5 MB (mainly cause of the DLL)

 

[ShinGamix]

Well that is what ultimately made me move away from RPG Maker 2 for PS2. It has some spectacular features but not scripting and very limited memory.

 

[Dr.Yami]

The python library for the program I use (with only the core libraries though) is like 1.5 MB to distribute

I don't know how large is "too large" but the size of an RM demo is 1.5 MB (mainly cause of the DLL)

Idk much about python 2.7.x because I mainly use python 3.x, last time I tried to embed python 3.3 in C++, it was too big though. Anyway, I'm currently happy with Lua for game programming so nevermind. Python I mainly use for server (prefer threads than event-driven), and ruby is used for some other tasks instead of using shell in most situations 

 

[Necromus]

My spiritwalking ability uses scripts to place an event dynamically; when you hit the spiritwalk key, a copy of the player character (using scripts) is placed where you stood, while the player changes a skin (done through eventing). You can also cancel the spiritwalk at any time using the same key (even when "soul searching" inside another character; you'll be taken back to the "real" world then). Here's a video:

Spoiler

There is no way to do this without scripts. You can't place events dynamically using eventing. Additionally, my game features an event log that logs key events, like seen briefly in this menu video:

It doesn't log them in a predetermined order; it logs them as they happen, using script calls on events that log them in an array that is saved together with the save data, in the order that you trigger it.

Finally, my bag system is impossible to do with only events:

Without scripts, you can't change your game menus and interface that drastically. So if we didn't have scripts, I couldn't have made this game in Ace  Maybe I could've wrestled some of this in through some really intricate eventing, but that would be a ridiculous amount of work, be heavily prone to error, use a lot of static content and really, it wouldn't have worked very well at all.

I'd like to mention that all of what I show here is a combination of eventing and scripting, as I really like the eventing tools. If you're really interested, I explain the bag menu in a recent blog post here.

Some really cool ideas you got there, and while what you describe is impossible to do with just events, the functionality doesn't seem to be impossible without scripting.

I'm pretty sure I'm just not completely understanding what you really do for those features, but just by looking at them, it doesn't look like it would be impossible to recreate them in RM2K.

Maybe some of the features of your menu wouldn't be doable, like the ammount of times saved (not sure if there was a variable for that in RM2K), but everything else doesn't look like something I or others haven't done before really.

Needless to say, you're right about the effort you would need to spend on those menus without scripting, and I made a FF styled menu in RM2K, I know how much effort that takes.

Still, with an updated maker, that is specificly designed to not have scripting anymore, an updated RM2K3 basicly, I don't think you would miss scripting that much.

(Using the most current patched Rm2K3 as a basis for that, that one has some really powerful tools and not much limitations on the ressource side anymore.)

But yea, looking really good what you're doing there, keep at it

 

[TroyZ]

RM2k/3 doesn't have ruby or what so programming language to be customized for, but that RM version were so popular (just at that moment, i dunno if still there are some who will use RM2k/3)

Ruby in XP/VX/VXAce is a great feature who will help the developer a lot. with those things we can customized the entire engine. without ruby, xp/vx/vxace are no more better than RM2k/3

If that really happens, be prepared for eventing tricks a lot

Anyway, i vote YES. i'll still use it cause of the graphics are looking more smooth than RM2k/3, even do the customized system will be more in eventing

 

[Navest]

hmm.. I want to use it, if it have many features in it, or if we can make all system just by eventing..

 

[TroyZ]

hmm.. I want to use it, if it have many features in it, or if we can make all system just by eventing..

well the only things that make the XP/VX/VXAce powerful was the ruby programming language. without it, the system would be more like RM2k/3