Suggestions for the next RPG Maker

[Dark Lord]

Well everyone, from what i read on the recent postings,quite a few people are wanting to head down the road of scripting. It can be very daunting to say the least when ya first start out...but my one question is why do people use a certain Engine(s)  to make it compatible just for that one Engine,i know there are a few scripts for Yanfly's engines and yami's,surely if scripting came into this order then people would use them as standalone but most won't allow it...scripting can be hard,depending on what your doing...but i do wish if it is an extremely excellent script that works surely it could be made for the basic setup more or less as standalone really....or at east give that option to people in the forums...

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

You mean a script that needs another script? Mostly it happens when some parts that a script has, is already present in another script... so to avoid having the same part twice, you simply make it require the other script... also, that way, changes done in the required script will reflect onto the new script...


though that is something I think that isn't part of what this thread is about...

 

[Caustic]

@2d_quest: Some good additions there. 

I know there's some people that like to do their own portraits and such (I plan on doing that if I can convince my cousin to help; even at my best my people-drawings would mentally scar people from their horribleness, and I haven't practiced in years >->; , but additional options both should be rather easy to add and shouldn't drive the cost up a whole lot.

@Pushes: (from last page) Maybe if they were added as optional downloads? (which I guess they are already, but I mean officially)

Anyone know if Enterbrain is planning on making any of their own add-on scripts for sale? Just a thought :3 

 

[2d_quest]

@2d_quest: Some good additions there. 

I know there's some people that like to do their own portraits and such (I plan on doing that if I can convince my cousin to help; even at my best my people-drawings would mentally scar people from their horribleness, and I haven't practiced in years >->

I'm good at drawing, but even so, if you want portraits for every single (or even a forth) of the characters you talk to in the game, it gets time consuming.  I might make my own portraits for the main characters in the party.  The problem is that the portrait should still somewhat match the character sprite and making a new sprite would usually require animation.  The character sprite animation is much harder than a single portrait.

Also there's one more thing the Character Generator could use.  More clothing (Cloth) choices for the character since there's only 2 choices now. Possibly additions like rich (kingly robe) and poor (muddy and torn) clothes would help for story purposes by telling where a character comes from.  It would be a useful plot device.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

what 2 choices??? There are more than 10 clothes for the generator...

 

[Caustic]

Was thinking the same... (though I've noticed the 5-o'clock shadow doesn't show up in [male] character portraits @_@)

If anything, there needs to be more tattoos/scars. Can't ever have enough scars

 

[2d_quest]

2 Needed Conditional Branches
 

facing event

-checks whether the player or event is facing the other selected event

-continues to be true until its not facing toward it

next to event

-checks whether the player or event is in a space next to the other selected event regardless of what direction the player or

event is facing.

-different than event touch because event touch only is true the first time an event moves into the space next to you.

Using these 2 in a parallel process event would allow multiple types of interaction at once in one event page without coding.  

P.S. to Engr. Shana

I meant in the Cloth catagory between Neck and Cloak in the Character Generator.

 

[Caustic]

@2d_quest: You mean in that it ONLY has those two additional options? 

To be honest I'm not sure they could cram much more on there without going to MACK-sized sprites, which would require larger (or even more) tiling. Honestly I think it's a decent balance; cram too much on there and the character just ends up as a colored blob. You just kinda have to play around with it until you get the look that closest matches what you want.

Or, y'know, edit it yourself if you think you're up to it

That being said, having more options under Cloth would be nice (that and I wish the sprites were larger than 642). Twenty options seems like a lot... until you flip through them :\

EDIT: Captain Engrish, awaaaay~! ( how the hell I missed that grammatical goof is beyond me @__@ )

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

You mean that it only has Type and Color? I don't really think it needs more options... unless you wanna separate each equipment part, like upper, lower etc... which in the case of the generator's 32x32 sprites, is not really a useful idea...


about those events, you can actually do workarounds for it right now... it's not much of a hassle really...

 

[Rukiri]

I personally think in this day and age the user should set what he wants their sprite sizes to be, tile size, and so on.  IGM sort of got this right that it allowed you pick 8x8/16x16/32x32, and sprite sizes wasn't a limitation as long as they were formatted correctly.

RGSS/3 is good, however the map engine really does limit on how complex you want to make an action battle system, and those are the types of battle systems I prefer to code.  

There is nothing wrong with tile based mapping but tile based collisions is pretty old school  and was actually just an easy way of doing collisions without creating custom collisions for every object and character on the screen.  That's actually something I really enjoyed in the recent release of Unity3D!  I think RPG Maker should stay 2D but should allow some sort of 3D build into the engine and could be toggled without cookie cutting it with RGSS.

I also think the way charsets and sprites in general is outdated, it was fine with 2k/3 back in the day but when you want to do really complex animations you're limited unless you write a script for it, the editor should allow you to create your own animations and just call them.  You can even have basic pre-settings like idl, walk, and the user can add run, fly, jump, punch, kick, and so on.

I quit using RPG Maker for my projects a long time ago due to these limitations, now these limitations are mainly for action based rpg's where a character will have more than just 2 walking frames, he could have as much as 8! That's actually easy to script but I think the user should be able to create his animations directly in the editor and it solves "do I have to edit this again for it to be smooth?".   RPG Maker is a fantastic little program but it's pretty limited, IGM would be nice with even RPG Makers event system and RGSS but without it's map limitations, sprite limitations"without scripting", and would allow the user to create the action based rpg he or she would like. 

IGM was a neat idea but it failed mainly because you really couldn't code and that was my gripe with it, would have been neat to actually script!  JS, Boo, Ruby, and Lua would be fine for 2D games but I really think Lua is a much better option for 2D as it's basic but also complex at the same time! 

RPG Maker does get the basics down, can do more with scripting and personal touches but I would actually like those features added to IGM, and an actual event system would have been great! IGM really just felt like a rushed product to compete with Game Maker which it sadly does not.

Game Maker is actually pretty "perfect" in the sense the user creates the game from scratch using the Game Maker language which just feels like a cookie cutter version of delphi but that's besides the point, the editor is basic but it's all that's really needed for 2d games, unity3d goes over the top but it's mainly a 3D engine but recently 2D tools were added which are awesome!

Ease of use is one thing, that's fine if the editor is easy to use but doing so actually causes limitations, create the commands, let the user decide how he wants the game to look and play, have a powerful event system, let the user have the power of code, and you should have a winner.  Look at Game Maker, and Unity3d "with it's 2D tools", that's what the next IGM/RPG Maker should be going towards. 

 

[ShinGamix]

Be nice to use the character inside the project so the player could make thier own character.

 

[Rukiri]

Be nice to use the character inside the project so the player could make thier own character.

That sounds like a limitation, unless you're working on an MMO or if the equipt items change the appearance I don't see a use for this feature which already technically exists in rpg maker.

 

[Caustic]

That sounds like a limitation, unless you're working on an MMO or if the equipt items change the appearance I don't see a use for this feature which already technically exists in rpg maker.

I believe (s)he meant allowing the game creator to add a link to RMVXA's built-in character creation tool ( which in all honesty would need more options as well if you were to do that :< ) so that players could do that part of the process themselves. Which is actually a great idea, I think.

Also, what exactly do you mean by "stay 2D but should allow some sort of 3D build into the engine"?

And honestly, the RGSS3 system built into VX Ace is quite robust and versatile for what it is - an engine that emulates old-school 2D RPGs. But it can be turned into an action game, a strategy title, graphic novels, etc, depending upon what the creator wishes to do. And for what you can't get done with Eventing alone (if you look hard enough I'm sure you'll see the ridiculous amount of things that are available w/o touching raw code), there's always scripts that can be written. And most eventing just takes practice and knowing how to structure things correctly to get the end result.

However, I'm sort of with you on the tiling gripe. It would be nice if you could determine how many frame steps a character takes per walk cycle without touching scripts. And the default "64x64" design for everything is a pain in the ass, especially for stuff that simply WON'T fit in that range! However, I guess that's where human ingenuity comes into play, and RPG Makers force their creators and artists to get quite creative with their work-arounds.

However, keep in mind that the more complex and difficult features are to implement, the more expensive our beloved product becomes, and (in general) the fewer people will be drawn to try it out, let alone buy it. I think the current version struck a rather balanced between simplicity and power. Really, you need to spend some more time looking around rather than just writing it off as "oh this system is outdated and crap, I don't want to use it". I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by just how much can be accomplished. :3

EDIT: I know I've griped before, but in all honesty, if anything could be changed easily without wasting huge amounts of cash and adding quite a bit to the price: friggin' window size. I know it can be changed via scripts and such, but we live in the age of HD monitors reaching ridiculous sizes and computers that can finally run Crysis without massive overheating failure. I think the option to scale up to 1024x800 or higher without affecting the game's playability is perfectly acceptable. This was apparently possible in earlier, Japan-only versions of RPG Maker, so why not now?

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

@Rukiri - Sprite size is not limited, you can use any sprite size that you want... tile size however is yes, limited to the 64x64 tiles...


Also as you said most of those limitations concern making Action Battle systems, which are by default not the battle system that RM was made for...

Game Maker is actually pretty "perfect" in the sense the user creates the game from scratch using the Game Maker language

And basically, the idea of RM is the complete opposite of that... XD... The purpose of RM was so that you don't need to build "from scratch"...


And IMHO, RM should improve but keep it's own touches intact... else, it will just be another program that looks totally like Game Maker... and after all, the main point of RM as I said was so that you don't need to build from scratch...


if you take time to look at the userbase of RM, a lot of them are not scripters/coders, and as such, RM becomes a compelling tool for them to try.


Plus GM is already there and as you said "perfect", so why would RM try to compete with that by doing exactly what GM does, when RM can go another way and be successful on it?

 

[West Mains]

Anything that makes the required rtp smaller in size. 200mb has put a lot of people off downloading my game.

 

[Helladen]

Anything that makes the required rtp smaller in size. 200mb has put a lot of people off downloading my game.

Most games nowadays consist of like GBs of download. You can make the download smaller by only including files you want to use in the RTP and not making a download with RTP. For example, import RTP over the existing graphics which will turn their name red. This will allow you to use RTP and be a much smaller download size, but the RTP may have other requirements included that I am not aware of, so I could be wrong.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

Anything that makes the required rtp smaller in size. 200mb has put a lot of people off downloading my game.

That will probably mean removing things from it...


and oh well:


The RTP can be removed as a requirement by removing the RTP line from game.ini (your game won't be looking for it anymore)... that will remove all RTP resources that aren't imported, so you will need to import the ones ur using if you need RTP files...


though of course, if your game is highly RTP dependant, then even if you did this, your game will still have a high file size...

 

[Caustic]

EDIT: ^^Both of ^Those, yeah.

Considering that even non-triple-A titles can easily eat up a half-GB or more in hard drive space, the fact that more people are buying and installing 500GB/1TB+ drives as their prices drop, and that Internet connections are steadily growing by the year (but of course not fast enough, especially here in the States ~.~)... I'm not sure a 200mb download is really all that much of a put-off. I've downloaded a few Shockwave & Flash games larger than that

If you can locate what resources your game uses from the RTP then you can just pull those and have only those resources in your files, instead of dragging the whole she-bang along for the ride. As for the stuff in the Database (and the edits you make to it), I wouldn't worry about that; I believe every new project you start comes with that already added, and any changes made are made to the project copy so it's not a big problem for all but the laziest of people.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

@Caustic - for people like me who has quite not have those things, 200MB is still a lot... if it's used up, it's fine... but on his case, it's 200MB of unused resources... so there's really no point in having them...


the Database is reset for every project btw...

 

[Rukiri]

@Rukiri - Sprite size is not limited, you can use any sprite size that you want... tile size however is yes, limited to the 64x64 tiles...

Also as you said most of those limitations concern making Action Battle systems, which are by default not the battle system that RM was made for...

And basically, the idea of RM is the complete opposite of that... XD... The purpose of RM was so that you don't need to build "from scratch"...

And IMHO, RM should improve but keep it's own touches intact... else, it will just be another program that looks totally like Game Maker... and after all, the main point of RM as I said was so that you don't need to build from scratch...

if you take time to look at the userbase of RM, a lot of them are not scripters/coders, and as such, RM becomes a compelling tool for them to try.

Plus GM is already there and as you said "perfect", so why would RM try to compete with that by doing exactly what GM does, when RM can go another way and be successful on it?

I'm not saying I can't go and script an ABS "I just don't like what's already been shown, xas/blizz", now for something that's sort of basic like Zelda I can script that in maybe a few weeks time of course just the basics not a full game.

Maybe it's just my math but I've never been able to actually get my diagonal collisions working.   Pixel movement really isn't an issue, I've created scripts for that purpose, but it's basic to the point it should be asked when creating the game..

Oh yea, my diagonal math code, maybe I don't know ruby as well well as I think I do.

degree = radtodeg(arctan2(vec1.y - vec2.y, vec2.x - vec1.x));Vec1 being the hero and Vec2 being the enemy, the code basically either pushes you straight or diagonally left/right like the old school a-rpgs.