Suggestions for the next RPG Maker

[Mike]

1000th post TAKEN!

Edit: Now something to put here. .-.

Need more API for Graphics. I'm coding a map script based on Graphic & $data_map for auto-zoom in/out, but it takes plenty amount of memory to produce the desired result. Would be nice if the next RM would have that option as build-in API.

 

[Tsukihime]

APNG is preferable over GIF due to the fact that it's true-color and therefore there is no loss of quality (in terms of palette). For simple images (ie: >= 256 colors) there is no difference to me because all pixels can be represented losslessly. Sprites can usually pull this off cause they're small anyways. For more complex images, it doesn't really work and will be very noticeable. Therefore, I only consider those cases if I were to consider APNG.


The problem is that the file size is huge as a result, especially if there are essentially duplicate frames or duplicate objects in a frame.


You are better off just composing an animation from different pieces even if it takes more time.


Of course if filesize does not matter to you and you have really complex animations that would take too much effort to try to reproduce in an optimal way, you might as well just stick to your APNG's or GIF's.

 

[Zoltor]

APNG is preferable over GIF due to the fact that it's true-color and therefore there is no loss of quality (in terms of palette). For simple images (ie: >= 256 colors) there is no difference to me because all pixels can be represented losslessly. Sprites can usually pull this off cause they're small anyways. For more complex images, it doesn't really work and will be very noticeable. Therefore, I only consider those cases if I were to consider APNG.

The problem is that the file size is huge as a result, especially if there are essentially duplicate frames or duplicate objects in a frame.

You are better off just composing an animation from different pieces even if it takes more time.

Of course if filesize does not matter to you and you have really complex animations that would take too much effort to try to reproduce in an optimal way, you might as well just stick to your APNG's or GIF's.

You seem to forget, PC monitors use the POS flat screen tech, they're incapable of displaying true color anyway sigh, so yea APNG is pointless, and if the files are that big, it makes it even worse, so yea we're better off just making animations the old way.

 

[Selchar]

Suggestion: A script box for enemy action conditions under Action Patterns.  The current way is rather limited(just 1 condition if any, and no custom).  It's easy enough to add custom formulas through notetags at least.

On top of that, target conditions, the missing half of enemy ai control.  It's currently left up the individual skill at the time of use, so isn't taken into consideration when generating usable skills in the first place

Edit: Tho I suppose part of target conditions can be done through a formula for action patterns.

 

[Zoltor]

Suggestion: A script box for enemy action conditions under Action Patterns.  The current way is rather limited(just 1 condition if any, and no custom).  It's easy enough to add custom formulas through notetags at least.

On top of that, target conditions, the missing half of enemy ai control.  It's currently left up the individual skill at the time of use, so isn't taken into consideration when generating usable skills in the 1st place.

I never understood why there's only 1 condition allowed for them, same with Common events. Every kind of event(normal, battle or Common) should have 6-8  blank condition slots, so we can put in what ever conditions we want(even normal events are very limited, because we're told how many of what kind of condition we can have)..

 

[Tsukihime]

You seem to forget, PC monitors use the POS flat screen tech, they're incapable of displaying true color anyway sigh, so yea APNG is pointless, and if the files are that big, it makes it even worse, so yea we're better off just making animations the old way.

True color refers to 24 bits-per-pixel. No monitors support this?

 

[Zoltor]

True color refers to 24 bits-per-pixel. No monitors support this?

When color is washed out or otherwise displayed differently then what the color is suppose to be, It's not true color.

 

[Tsukihime]

When color is washed out or otherwise displayed differently then what the color is suppose to be, It's not true color.

It's still true color, as opposed to what GIF supports, which is usually only 256-color.


It doesn't matter whether you think it's "true" color or not.


However, from this page it seems like that assumption is false and GIF specs does support true color http://phil.ipal.org/tc.html


If that is the case then I don't see the point of APNG beyond the fact that it is based on PNG.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

@selchar - yes, we need those.

 

[amerk]

Suggestion: A script box for enemy action conditions under Action Patterns.  The current way is rather limited(just 1 condition if any, and no custom).  It's easy enough to add custom formulas through notetags at least.

On top of that, target conditions, the missing half of enemy ai control.  It's currently left up the individual skill at the time of use, so isn't taken into consideration when generating usable skills in the first place

Edit: Tho I suppose part of target conditions can be done through a formula for action patterns.

Yep, I've said that a number of times through this thread. It's easy enough to do things with troops, but much more tedious with each individual monster. So if you want a monster to behave various ways each time they are encountered that's not allowed in their current conditions box, you'll have to either use scripts, or set up their conditions for each troop they appear in. Sure, there are work-arounds, like using switches or variables that will trigger common events, but it still gets tiring trying to get them to work for each troop when it could have been designed just once in their individual monster box.

In fact, if there could only be one new feature for the next maker, I'd place this at the top of my "want" list.

 

[Caustic]

Completely off-the-wall: Moar heavy metal/techno music for sci-fi games

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

I personally think that we should have a different thread for "Suggestions for the Next RPG Maker's RTP"

 

[Alexander Amnell]

In fact, if there could only be one new feature for the next maker, I'd place this at the top of my "want" list.

   Are you aware that Tsukihime did this in one of his/her scripts? It's really easy to use as well, and Yanfly has one as well that lets you choose a troop event to be used in every battle that make customizing gameplay so much easier. I have a hard time understanding why people want so badly for these simple things to be in the next maker when they come into existence as needed and are mostly completely compatible. I can understand on some of the bigger things (like back with vx when people whined about needing more tilesets even after Bulletext made his wonderful little tile system, that while wonderful, was just such a hassle to implement because it was an entire external system, and because of this it's compatibility record was also horrible.) But why worry about the little knit-picky things when they can and are so easily rectified?

 

[Caustic]

   Are you aware that Tsukihime did this in one of his/her scripts? It's really easy to use as well, and Yanfly has one as well that lets you choose a troop event to be used in every battle that make customizing gameplay so much easier. I have a hard time understanding why people want so badly for these simple things to be in the next maker when they come into existence as needed and are mostly completely compatible. I can understand on some of the bigger things (like back with vx when people whined about needing more tilesets even after Bulletext made his wonderful little tile system, that while wonderful, was just such a hassle to implement because it was an entire external system, and because of this it's compatibility record was also horrible.) But why worry about the little knit-picky things when they can and are so easily rectified?

Because they'd rather have them built into the game than have to go through setting up scripts and whatnot?

I can understand that. Even with it being "easy", it can take quite a bit of effort to get things in their place and working right. And if something borks, then you have to figure out if it's the script you just used, or one of the OTHER scripts, sometimes one of dozens, that you have set up.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

Well, I for one think that it should have been there (using script line conditions for enemy actions) by default...

 

[Alexander Amnell]

@Shana I'll agree that it should have been there, I just don't feel it's that big a deal that it wasn't considering how simple it is to rectify it right now.

@Caustic I'll cede that when talking about the enemy targeting conditions and what not, since AI scripts are all inherently complex from what I've seen. As I said I understand that logic for the more complicated things, but just having troop events that happen for single enemies or having events occur in every battle are both basically plug and play scripts which should have few if any compatibility issues to them. This particular example has to do with something that actually probably should be in there, but a lot of times when I see suggestions for simple things they are user preference ideas that many wouldn't find a use for anyway. I guess I kind of just like the way the maker is now, if you don't like something for the most part you can just open up the script editor and change it. Even if you aren't willing to take that step there are a lot of competent individuals out there who will do it for you (again, the simple stuff) I like it better that way than having a base system crammed full of features that some will want and others might not find a use for (hell even as is I've edited the system to remove features I didn't want from being there.)

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

it's not a big deal, the discussion is only about things we "want" to see on the next maker

 

[Tsukihime]

You want a game made for you. You want maps made for you. You want more resources. Those are pretty common examples of what people "want".

I think at some point, people should focus on what would make the engine more extensible, and not just asking them to re-implement something that could be easily done with note-tags because they want a dropdown box or a text box.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

what most people want is to do more things with less time. Most tech right now focuses on that, allowing people to do more while spending less time and effort. Doing that, we can devote more time into developing more complex things.


and remember that it's for the NEXT maker, yes right now we can do this using scripts and note-tags, but are we assured that we can still do those or use those methods on the next maker? No, we don't have that kind of assurance. As much as it seems illogical to me not to build upon the strong points of the existing ones, there is still that possiblity. So unless we can be assured of that, these suggestions are valid and makes total sense.

 

[Tsukihime]

If they made it so that scripting and note-tagging was no longer available in the next maker then the next maker would be pretty junk unless they provided an equally manageable way to maintain data.

You can of course store everything in external text files or in your scripts, but that's not manage-able.

But who knows, pretty much every other game engine out there does not have these kinds of features, and they are doing very well, so maybe scripting and note-boxes are not that big of a deal anyways.