What do you find missing in the MZ editor?

[DoubleX]

While it won't happen anytime soon, I'm thinking about learning to write some QML to add some mods to the MZ editor, so now I want to collect some ideas that might be easy, simple and small enough for me to work on.
Although this might overlap with RPG Maker MZ Feedback, I want a single post focused on the MZ editor and nothing else, so I, and those wanting to use QML to mod the editor, can find ideas more effectively and efficiently, therefore I hope that this post won't be too offending to the rules
On a side note: Maybe there are indeed someone else interested in writing QML to mod the editor, and your ideas might be implemented by some of them

P.S.: Changing just the editor is different from changing the whole engine as well, and usually just changing the editor is mainly about the editor UI only, instead of some hardcoded assumptions in MZ.
For instance, letting you type the plugin command name in the plugin command(with autocomplete feature) is just changing the editor, whereas breaking free from the fixed 48 * 48 tile size is actually changing the whole engine.

 

[estriole]

i miss the old mv animation editor .

 

[Kino]

One thing I wish is that you could have different tile map sizes.

 

[Anyone]

• Subcategory Tabs for Actors, Items, Weapons, Common Events, etc. for better management & overview
• Tag references or unqiue key references for all database objects (actors, weapons, etc.) so you can change the position of an object in the database & actually sort the damn thing without every reference breaking, forcing you to go through hundreds of events to reassign everything - or to regex the json file itself via notepad++.
• Subfolders. Subfolders. This thing called subfolders that allows you to actually sort & structure your assets in a logical way.
• Content browser that allows you to use search functions to either search through the main folder & ignore the subfolders or search through all folders contained within. Then you don't have to scroll through hundreds of emotion busts or pictures. You can just, like, enter the name and find it.
• The ability to add parameters to objects (actors, weapons, items, etc.) in addition to notetags, and have add the ability for plugins to link into this to allow users to easily assign parameters to stuff instead of writing complex notetags from memory. Especially to EVENTS, so people don't have to attach notetags and notes to events like madmen.
• The ability to edit & extend the toolset itself, so community extensions can be made & plugin devs have a way to actually make things easier for the user. Right now, if you create plugin parameters where players can create a list things, such as item loot pools, those plugin paramaters cannot be referenced in the plugin commands, since they're never prepped until the game is launched. Giving plugin devs the ability to actually let users reference their customized stuff via plugin commands would make everything easier & simpler.

Just to name a few...

 

[Chaos17]

I miss Rpg Maker XP endless tileset

 

[Kupotepo]

Please QML explain to me what QML language is use for? It would help us non-qml coders get better understanding of its capacity.
The Qt QML module provides both a QML API and a C++ API.
From what I am understand, it is a template for coding and also a library to help a coder type quicker. QML is a child of C++ and Javascript due to syntaxes similarities.

 

[Andar]

@DoubleX I think you should explain the difference between changing the editor and changing the engine. Almost everyone above seems to think this is a wishlist for changing the engine.

As for changing the editor, I agree with those wishes of anyone that deal with better search options in the database.
What should be doable would be a search field between the ID list and the "change Maximum" button that string-filters the name of the given database page. Like if you are on weapons and enter "sword", then only those entries that contain "sword" in their name will remain in the ID-List.
That would help a lot with finding or selecting entries in longer database lists.

 

[DoubleX]

@DoubleX I think you should explain the difference between changing the editor and changing the engine. Almost everyone above seems to think this is a wishlist for changing the engine.

Thanks for your reminder, and I've just added this:

Changing just the editor is different from changing the whole engine as well, and usually just changing the editor is mainly about the editor UI only, instead of some hardcoded assumptions in MZ.
For instance, letting you type the plugin command name in the plugin command(with autocomplete feature) is just changing the editor, whereas breaking free from the fixed 48 * 48 tile size is actually changing the whole engine.

 

[estriole]

i miss the old mv animation editor .

to clarify this is changing the editor (not the engine)... although complex and hard to do...
and we can actually use the MV style animation in MZ engine using plugins now... but what we miss is the built in animation editor itself .

 

[Animebryan]

Would it be possible to remove/expand the map size limit past 256x256?
I miss Ace's 500x500 map size

 

[PixelMister]

I'm not sure where it would fall, if its an editor or engine change.

An X and Y indicator for Picture Placement would be incredibly useful.

 

[Andar]

Would it be possible to remove/expand the map size limit past 256x256?
I miss Ace's 500x500 map size

yes and no.
The main problems of the 256 limit are caused by the editor, the engine can already handle that mapsize.
So it could be changed that way, it would only require minor changes to the limit setting in the map properties.

However in a different topic Archeia mentioned that the Qt-Engine behind the editor can't handle the data for the larger maps (in addition to the problems a large map causes for mobile devices), so this part of the larger maps might need more changes - I don't know where the limit for the editor would be if that is changed.

 

[Aesica]

It sure would be nice if tilesheet sizes weren't fixed height wo we could add new rows to them like we can with icon sets.

 

[Andar]

@Aesica that is not an editor change, that requires an engine change to use the new tiles.
Otherwise you could use them in the editor for mapping and they would vanish on playtest because the engine can't handle the additional tiles.

And even for the editor it would be a non-trivial change, because you need to change the data structure of the map to handle that - for example the current B-E tilesets add up to 1024 different tiles, that is exactly 10 Bit of numbers. If you want to add more tiles, the map needs more than 10 bits to store the Tile-ID for that type of tile. So the map data becomes incompatible if you suddenly need 11 or 12 bits for the Tile-ID.

 

[Dio_Brando]

I find it a major downgrade that maker had disabled the use of using images or spritesheets as animations so i feel like it could be brought back as an option. Though I do like the default animations. They look 60 fps at best.

 

[Beregon]

I find it a major downgrade that maker had disabled the use of using images or spritesheets as animations so i feel like it could be brought back as an option. Though I do like the default animations. They look 60 fps at best.

You can use spritesheet animations in MZ by setting them up in Effekseer. Or you can just set them up in the MV animation editor, then import them to MZ with the help of the AnimationMV plugin that comes with the software.

 

[orochii]

• Simplify the APK build process. You'll always need to install Android Studio by yourself, I guess (because Google), but at least making sure that all dependencies are installed. Mostly for newbies so they don't get confused, maybe the process can be simplified. But also for non-newbs that just want to gain some time back from repetitive tasks.
• Being able to resize and move panels. The editor has always been too rigid since RM95. Let the user scale the database window, the event window, even the text message window. And even dock/undock and move panels like the tileset selector, map list, etc.

And... hmmm yeah that's it. I like some of the proposals from others here. Especially the folders! The extra-parameter support also sounds good but might get tricky since it depends on engine-support, I guess? Unless it just sort of attaches new parameters, considering JSON is kind of free-form. IDK.

The "custom data" might be cool too, like adding new categories of data. But this then involves some heavy design to make it accomodate to most kinds of situations. A potential can of worms. And might also need a layer of compatibility for the engine to work with it.

 

[Celestrium]

You can use spritesheet animations in MZ by setting them up in Effekseer. Or you can just set them up in the MV animation editor, then import them to MZ with the help of the AnimationMV plugin that comes with the software.

I wasn't aware of this, although I saw the plugin. Thank you for bringing this up it helps a lot!

 

[Aesica]

@Aesica that is not an editor change, that requires an engine change to use the new tiles.
Otherwise you could use them in the editor for mapping and they would vanish on playtest because the engine can't handle the additional tiles.

And even for the editor it would be a non-trivial change, because you need to change the data structure of the map to handle that - for example the current B-E tilesets add up to 1024 different tiles, that is exactly 10 Bit of numbers. If you want to add more tiles, the map needs more than 10 bits to store the Tile-ID for that type of tile. So the map data becomes incompatible if you suddenly need 11 or 12 bits for the Tile-ID.

Luckily, Javascript integers are 53 bits so there's a fair amount of room for growth there.

 

[Nekohime1989]

The freaking RTP. THe mv rtp was amazing.
The mz rtp is hit or miss all over the place.