Ruby to C# -> Unity

[Shaz]

Many people mistakenly refer to RPG Maker as a game. If they mean it in the context of a fun thing to use to pass time - ie, a hobby - yes, it is a game - to some people. Others see it more as a tool.


I cringe when I see people call it a "game" - but I figure they are just looking for something to play with, or they really just don't understand what it's actually all about.

 

[BadMinotaur]

Non-Viable as a platform

RPG maker is a toy. There are no two ways around that. Its exporting is crippled to a single platform, there are no real methods for deployment, and network inter-op is gimped. The ruby engine is a great idea, but poorly written and implemented. When ruby is not wielded properly by a rubyist, it makes a mess.

There's very little real extensibility, and as a professional platform it just doesn't have the juice. The storage system is a convoluted marshal system, and database support is non-existent.

Unity and Game Maker are far more powerful in this regard.

I find it mind-boggling that you have the ability to "trivially" reverse-engineer RPG Maker, but find that it just making an .exe is an insurmountable problem for deployment. If you're well-worn enough to reverse-engineer closed source systems, surely you could come up with a script that makes deployment much easier? (and then sell it to the community, why not?)

And I'm a little baffled at the "network inter-op" comment. Do you mean you have to write your own netcode? I mean... yes, you do, but it's not that difficult a problem to solve, is it? Did you also consider the Sega Genesis a terrible platform because you had to write your own synth for the Z80?

I'm not saying RPG Maker is perfect or anything; it certainly has its problems, and my goodness yes they are huge. 640x480 resolution, with really bad scaling, the inability to load plugins to mod the UI, Windows-only executables, stuff like that is pretty un-cool. But despite all its flaws, to say it's just a toy when multiple small companies have used it to successfully turn a profit (and even a living, I believe?) is a bit off-the-mark, isn't it? You don't see people making a living off Project Spark or LittleBig Planet, for instance.

 

[AwesomeCool]

I hate when people say rpg maker is a "game" overall.  Perhaps to some it might be, but to others it is not.

Any engine can be considered a "game", using fun as the reason for it being a game.

@Lemur - calling it non-viable as a platform due to it being pc only is stupid.  A game can be successful being released on one platform (and lots of indie games are pc only).

 

[Galenmereth]

The interesting part about the limited resolution and simplistic nature of the rendering engine means that actually making it work on, say, OSX and Linux, is a breeze. While wrapping the game in a self-contained Windows emulated environment (Wine, which is legal, open source and free) to make a native executable for OSX and Linux systems isn't a native port, the end user won't notice; I've released my game in its own standalone executable for OSX, and it will run on a setup akin to a toaster with almost no overhead. And I've had nothing but positive feedback on it.

So the limitations we do have in terms of porting is, of course, that we can't easily export to consoles and mobile devices. But this is being worked on too from what I can tell.

It's true that the script system is far from optimal, and it's true that closed-source is not ideal. But if it's so easy to pull off software like this that meets these lofty ideals, why isn't anyone else doing it? Why is GameMaker an absolute usability nightmare, for instance? The answer is that we voefully underestimate the amount of work it takes to make something this usable for this widespread of an audience. Credit where credit is due. That makes up for a lot of its technical shortcomings in my book. A platform isn't just the software, it's also the community around it that can and will use it.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

Unity and Game Maker are far more powerful in this regard.

Of course they are, nobody said RM was more powerful than those... This isn't about power and whatsoever, a lot of people use RM because simply it's easier to use.

 

[Lemur]

The do point me to these successful small companies. Note how few of them there are. The tool is severely limited in the context of professional development.


Why aren't there more tools like this? Because most of them are designed as internal tools that will never see the light of day. RPG Maker takes the beginners spot, with some potential for progression. Any further and you end up in engines and library packs while busting out a full IDE or whatever your company has made.


...and yes, I said trivially. Reverse engineering most of it would not be a difficult task, merely time consuming. The problem is by far not difficulty for me, it's interest. On a point of reference, I'm a professional software dev / network engineer, and I've done things that are substantially more difficult than that.


My point is that comparatively speaking to the professional sphere, RPG Maker is a toy meant to teach how to program. Sure, some can make a living, but what percentage of the user base do you figure that is?

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

Sure, some can make a living, but what percentage of the user base do you figure that is?

What would you expect from a tool that costs $70 compared to those that costs $1000+... Also the fact that most of us here use RM alone, while those that use commercial engines usually have at least a small team?


And how many people do even touch RM with the plans of commercializing, especially at the start? A lot of us here are just here to make games as a hobby to share to the world for free, not to make games as professionals. So judging RM from the amount of how many people have successfully commercialized games from it is not really a nice gauge.


It's far from professional tools out there, but to say that it's a toy is simply taking it far too far. But then again, we hobbyists might seem like toddlers to a professional like you.

 

[Lemur]

Everyone learns somewhere at some time. I'm just saying it's not a commercially viable platform. It's a learning tool for the most part. There's nothing wrong with that.


The simple fact of the matter is this: if you're serious about game development in a commercial regard, rpg maker is not the right tool. If you want to learn the basics and get your hands wet with some scripting, it's great. Really, it's how I started to learn a long time ago, somewhere around 2002 with the initial releases.

 

[BadMinotaur]

I feel the need to point out that I didn't put "trivially" in quotes to try and be sarcastic; what you're saying is totally possible and yes, kind of easy if you know how to probe. It's just, it feels like if you could do that, the rest of its problems are also kind of trivial. It felt like you were complaining about things that couldn't be easily done when, I mean, just a few sentences ago you said you could reverse engineer the whole thing. Do you see where I get the mixed signals now?

I also feel like you're unnecessarily showing off a little by throwing out your professional title and all; I wasn't trying to destroy your credibility or anything, I was just kind of pointing out things that didn't make sense to me. But, now I will actually be a little snarky, if you're so bloody intelligent and capable, why are you not using your ability to develop software and solutions to the multitude of problems RPG Maker's users have, and then selling these solutions? Like, as part of a resource pack? People would drop mad dollars on anything substantial you'd produce, and I sort of wonder if you're snubbing your nose at a great opportunity out of the impression that RPG Maker is beneath you. It's not like it would take someone as supposedly skilled as you any large amount of time to do; seems like a great weekend project for generating essentially free money.

EDIT: After some thought, here's the message I'm trying to get across (and failing, probably): I'm not trying to be antagonistic towards you (even in the snarky part of the message above), I just wanted to point out that your original quoted post had some inconsistencies.

 

[Galenmereth]

The simple fact of the matter is this: if you're serious about game development in a commercial regard, rpg maker is not the right tool.

Well that depends though. Commercial doesn't mean multiplatform and grand AAA-scale games. It means a game sold for monetary compensation.

I'm doing that right now with Ace, and a publisher to help me with the publishing part of the process as well as custom resources. Just because I'm not making the Next Big Thing doesn't mean I'm not serious

I'm sure I said it before, but again: I've made my own engines. I've used Unreal Engine and I've taken GameMaker for a test drive. For a whole bunch of games of varying scopes those would all be vastly better tools for the job. But for this game, and this style I am going for, Ace is the better tool.

Shipping a game isn't as easy as taking the most versatile tool out there; it's about using what fits your MVP and lets you polish it efficiently up to a viable product. Dismissing all the assets and the community that produces them feels to me like just looking at the very first step in the process, while forgetting the rest of the journey entirely.

 

[whitesphere]

I would have assumed RPG Maker developers would be highly interested in being able to port their game to unity, which would then allow them to port it to almost every major platform.

Unless the RPG Maker developer either crowdfunds completely custom resources they legally can't re-use the RPG Maker game assets, such as music, tilesets, etc anyways.  That is, unless they purchase the "non RPG Maker" license for ALL of those resources. 

And, if they did all of that, how would they then re-use all of their events, and so on?  And any RPG Maker scripts, such as say Yanfly's battle engine?  These simply wouldn't run unless there was a flawless emulation layer that, on the fly or via some back-end "compiler", translated the Ruby code to make the correct back-end calls to the underlying Unity objects representing the NPCs, game world, map, etc.

So, in one way or another, they would be re-implementing their entire game in Unity, from the ground up.     

I think if that's their end goal, they shouldn't be using RPG Maker because they'll be creating the exact same game twice.  It's better just to create it in Unity from day 1.  TheoAllen's friend has the best idea --- make Unity's editor act like RPG Maker's editor.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

The simple fact of the matter is this: if you're serious about game development in a commercial regard, rpg maker is not the right tool.

Define serious and commercial? Look at Amaranth's Aveyond and the games by Aldorlea, those are all RM games, commercialized and on what you could say successful too.


Now if you mean BIG $$$, on a AAA level, that could be a different story.


Also, a tool is a tool. What you produce with a tool still depends on your own capabilities.


And as Galenmerth said, it also depends on what you want to achieve. If I want to make 3D games for example, I'd go back to using Unreal or maybe try Unity. But as long as I want 2D, I'd probably stick with RM because it gets the job done, and makes it quicker than if I ever try to implement all the stuff that I want in Unreal or Unity.


@White - that's why we want to have an official porting mechanism: it should work correctly for anything that would be added via RGSS3 and also since it's an official porting mechanism, the RM license would apply.

 

[Lemur]

But, now I will actually be a little snarky, if you're so bloody intelligent and capable, why are you not using your ability to develop software and solutions to the multitude of problems RPG Maker's users have, and then selling these solutions? Like, as part of a resource pack? People would drop mad dollars on anything substantial you'd produce, and I sort of wonder if you're snubbing your nose at a great opportunity out of the impression that RPG Maker is beneath you. It's not like it would take someone as supposedly skilled as you any large amount of time to do; seems like a great weekend project for generating essentially free money.

You mean like this?: http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/34937-rgss-improvements/


The problem is it's locked enough as a platform that the effort required far exceeds any potential gains on it.

 

[BadMinotaur]

No, not like that at all.

 

[Lemur]

No, not like that at all.

Then you miss the point of me pretty well laying groundwork for how to make RM more viable as a platform. Read that topic, and realize that the amount of effort to do that in RM is just not worth the time as it is today.


I said it wouldn't be hard to reverse engineer and remake something similar. Problem is I have no reason to do it other than for the sake of posturing and 'I told you so's


I see no real reason that I should not mention I'm a professional. It's a statement of fact, and one that gives more proper context as far as where I'm coming from. What I've done so far for a living is creating generative code bases, macro and meta programming if you will.


Given some of my previous experiences with engineering citywide wireless systems with collision detection and predictive analysis, this type of thing would not be an incredible feat to make. Heck, most of my jobs so far have been automating the creation and deployment of code. I know what makes the difference between a good system and one that needs a lot of work.


Certainly you can cut down a tree with an axe, given enough time, but when a chainsaw is available it may be wise to rethink the situation. For small trees you're fine, but try anything bigger and you'll have a rather interesting time.


As an aside, I've been working in a bit of Scala to simulate the battle systems of Fire Emblem for jollies. Could I, given enough time, build that out into a generator? Probably. Do I get paid substantially more to do other work? Without a doubt.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

this gets me thinking why you're even here on the first place... Seems like you have so many more fruitful things to do. :3

 

[Lemur]

this gets me thinking why you're even here on the first place... Seems like you have so many more fruitful things to do. :3

Call it nostalgia and wanting to help out newer programmers where I can. If you read up you'll notice that RM was probably where I first learned programming.

 

[BadMinotaur]

I don't believe I miss the point, I believe we are just not on the same page, communication-wise.

If you want to help out newer programmers, then may I suggest lightening your tone? At least to me, in just the text I'm able to see, you come across as kind of stand-offish in your posts, and I think this is why you're getting the negative response here when your aim is to help rather than to denigrate.

 

[Spirographic]

I've found at least some place for RM in a game development process, though it is limited use.

RM is fantastic at quickly and easily pumping out content. If you have a mechanic to test or want to explore game development concepts in a space while taking minimal effort and time, it's fantastic.

But I will admit; even if your overall plan is to make an RPG game, RM is a deeply flawed tool when it comes to the commercial sphere. I'm not going to pretend that RM is comparable to a more mature production like Unity or GM.

Mind, I'm not saying it will never be comparable. With the strides forward in the form of RGSS3 and a commercial asset store, I can see RPG Maker becoming far more viable in the near future if Enterbrain continues to go in this direction. But as it stands with VXA, RM is not a powerful enough tool to reliably make viable commercial products - while it can be done, the restrictions are simply too great.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

Can people please explain the meaning of viable commercial product? I just don't get why people say that it's not viable when there are RM games out there commercially and they do sell. Not all of course, but still that means you can still make commercially viable products.