What do you like about RPG Maker

[Tsukihime]

There's a lot of topics about why RM is terrible or what needs to be improved, but I don't see topics about what RM's good at.


What do you like about RPG Maker?


What does RPG Maker do well?


What does RPG Maker offer that other game development tools do not?


Specify which version as well.


There are literally hundreds of game dev libraries or engines that come with a varying amount of features. Depending on your needs and your skills, even the best programming library may be absolutely useless to you and would therefore may not be as useful as RM.

 

[EternalShadow]

The simplicity - it's easy to just start telling a story rather than having to spend ages fiddling with collision and meshes and displays, etc.

 

[Commotion]

I love rpgmaker since its simple, easy to use but yet powerful enough for coders to feel like they can do what they want. Its an incredible engine despite the rpgmaker "hate"

 

[Nirwanda]

Well, complaining is both cathartic and extremely easy.

Though this is also an easy question:

-Ease of use/no programming knowledge required. Though the option is still available to the knowledgeable user.

-Big community

-Availability of resources.

 

[Dalph]

What I like about RM? Well...

Simple enough for a child; powerful enough for a developer.

^ The quote speaks by itself.

I also like the communities a lot (especially this one), it's full of awesome and helpful people everywhere.

 

[Archeia]

What I like about RM? Well...

Simple enough for a child; powerful enough for a developer.

^ The quote speaks by itself.

I also like the communities a lot (especially this one), it's full of awesome and helpful people everywhere.

This and it's artist-oriented. An artist can pick it up and not flap around to die like a fish. Most of the time why I can't use any other engines is that they're aimed for programmers as a whole or 3D artists. There's rarely any tools that is like RPG Maker. IF they are, they are usually aimed for programmers with their weird event structure and so forth.

 

[Bloodmorphed]

My answer is as pretty much every one elses.

Easy to use. But I will add something.. FUN TO USE! I have used engines that are NOT fun to use, writing my own engine would have been more fun, and I couldn't even do it as I am right now. 

It's just... yummy.

 

[Galenmereth]

The mapping and eventing tools, as well as the community around it and available resources (both paid and free). And RGSS3 of course.

 

[Zalerinian]

I've been using Game Maker recently as well (for a different project for a school club thing), and Game Maker is built using their own custom programming language that is procedural style, not object oriented like Ruby. I like how RPG Maker is object oriented, it's more natural in my mind. It's just easier for me to think about my code when I'm writing

myArray = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]myArry.each{ |elem| puts elem}compared to

myArray[0] = 1;myArray[1] = 2;myArray[2] = 3;myArray[3] = 4;myArray[4] = 5;for(var i = 0; i < array_length_1d(myArry); i++){ trace(myArray)}(and as an added bonus, trace is a separate script I got off the internet to make printing things out easier)

It's just much easier to use RPG Maker and Object-Oriented programming.

Game Maker plz ;-;

 

[Sharm]

Completely agree with Archeia. I'm not a programmer, I will never be a programmer. My head is just not wired to think like a computer and when I try I get an actual headache. But with RPG Maker I don't have to be one to make a game, I just put my art in, tell the story I want and have fun.


I also like that while it's simple it's not treating me like I'm stupid. If I want to change the graphics, I can do that. If I want to use an event to do something unusual, that's not restricted from me. Simple doesn't always have to mean "less choices" it can also mean "straight forward" and it's something that RPG Maker has always done fairly well. At least all the versions I've tried.


I also love that because it exists I can easily find more RPG's to play and don't have to worry about how few of them come out on consoles these days. 3D gaming makes me ill, I like my graphics to be on the stylistic side and not realistic, and I'm not a precision gamer so AAA gaming rarely has anything I want or can play. It's nice to know that there's still a place for me as a gamer in the indy crowd.

 

[Susan]

I agree with practically everything that was mentioned here.

I never had any problem using the different versions, so I will just generalize. The RPG Makers are very easy and fun to use.

Each version just makes the game-making process simpler, especially in terms of scripting.

The default system and scripts allow users to create games easily with minimal fuss, and they are not just of the RPG genre.

More advanced users can change almost everything from the UI to the battle system to the player perspective. It's possibly safe to say that the sky's the limit. ^^

The people in this community here are generally fantastic, friendly and helpful. I would not have joined otherwise. ^^

There are a lot resources available, both free and paid. A lot great and talented artists, composers and scripters frequent this community as well, are available for commissions, and are very friendly and open to suggestions.

There are also quite a few games created using the various RMs that are of great, if not excellent, quality in terms of storyline, gameplay, creativity, innovation and originality.

 

[Tuxedo Leila]

I like that RPG Maker can be used by anyone of any age. It's really nice seeing my little sister make her imagination come to life with the help of RPG Maker (Ace, specifically).

The community is also really supportive, diverse and respectful! I've learnt a lot from the people here.

 

[Sharm]

Oh, I like that too. I've had a lot of fun sharing it with my nieces and nephews. The oldest of my nephews in particular is a big fan, if he lived nearby I think we'd be making a game together right now.

 

[TheoAllen]

• RTP resources. They provide the standard resources to make game. Unlike any other engines, you should provide the resources yourself. Or even they have resource packs, usually not complete as RPG Maker RTP. This is important because not all of people could make their own resources.

Simplicity. I came from non-programmer background. Used RM since 2008. Understanding event systems was easy. And began scripting in early 2013 without problem understanding about programmer's thingy (script editor provide simple functionality)
Communities. RM has a lot of communities spread around. Probably the biggest community over all other game engines. Each country even has their own RPG Maker Communities.
[RMVX/Ace] - Simple mapping system. Unlike RMXP which you need to think about 3 layers system and only 7 autotiles. I'm horrible at mapping, I like simple mapping. At least, representative map is enough.

 

[Selchar]

It's easy to use, and fun to use.  Far more straight forward than anything else I've tried.  I've only completed a single game in all the time I have been using it, but it was enough to show me what I can do when I am really set on it.  I've admittedly got sidetracked with the scripting/learning ruby portion of the maker since then.  I enjoy trying to add different mechanics just to see if I can.  Then I go over it and see if I can do better.

I just like how Rpg Maker(Ace) is setup.

 

[whitesphere]

The simplicity is a prime thing.  Even though I'm a good programmer, I love being able to open RPG Maker and just start building a game world without having to write a line of code.  I can focus on the story, not get completely, utterly lost in "How do I pass events around?"

The incredible ease of debugging while the game is running, expanded even more dramatically with some debug scripts.  It's very easy to see exactly what the game is doing in terms of switches/variables/etc, which really helps in fixing problems.

The built-in resources are also an excellent starting point, giving everything a beginning game maker needs to make a complete game.  So I don't need to hunt down game themes, sound effects, battlers, tilesets and assemble them into a coherent package --- RPG Maker comes with one right out of the box.

The inexpensive custom resources available at the store.  For only $30 (or less) per pack, I can get graphics resources to tell a huge variety of stories, music and sound effects galore.  Basically for the cost of a night out, I get whole new toolkits with which I can build completely different worlds. 

The extensibility --- there are literally thousands of scripts available to do everything from complete battle system rewrites to item crafting, weather, game time.  And if I want, I can roll my own, for free using Ruby (which itself is freely available).  Most of these scripts are "drop it in and go" as well.  And all of this builds on the entire existing framework so I don't need to re-implement Events, for example.  So I'm not just limited to what RPG Maker can do out of the box.  Some people have written entire mini-games for their game, using custom scripts.

Also, having a very active, supportive user community is a HUGE thing.  I'm sure many of us would have been stopped dead in our tracks at some point or other, including me, if we didn't have literally thousands of people in an active, quite civil forum who were willing to help each other in a wide variety of ways --- from "Here's how to make events do this" to "Here's how to create autotiles" or "Here's a custom character portrait"  

A fair amount of otherwise impressive open source tools have died on the vine because they couldn't grow a community large enough to be self-supporting, and RPG Maker doesn't have that problem, which is probably a good part of the reason why it's still around after over, what, 20 years?

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

XP - I really like how mapping in XP was done compared to the others


Ace - I like how intensive the database could be and I also find RGSS3 more powerful yet easier to learn than the previous ones.


General - I like how easily you can do something on it (of course depending on the complexity of what you want).

 

[Marquise*]

When something is that simple and that much compatible and gives that many assets, have a great community to feed those said assets freely.  Well, I guess I just have to rest a bit and concentrate upon doing a good game while once in a while learning a new trick or two or be myself spriting

 

[Heretic86]

What I like about the entire RPG Maker series is that it is easy enough to use that most people can pick it up easily, yet robust enough that it can allow for nearly professional quality game development.  The level of flexibility is also highly important.  If there is an aspect that I want to change, be it graphical, musical, or programmatic, it can be changed.  The graphics dont require users to have an advanced knowlede of things like HLSL (High Level Shader Language), nor are limited to working only with 3D Meshes.  Audio can be quite easily imported and used nearly immediately.  The User Interface has a nice solid set of tools that cover most aspects of what can be done, but the User Interface for the most part does not impose limits that prevent adding new features.  Scripting allows us to modify most aspects of the engine to suit our desires.

Sure there are things that could be improved upon, but this will always be the case.  If Enterbrain is around in 2050 and still making RPG Maker programs, you can bet your Spritesets that there will be things even in that version of RPG Maker that can be improved.  There is always room for improvement, even in the most advanced programs.

I think a good way to consider what we like about RPG Maker is to compare it to other Editors intended for AAA Titles.  The Unreal Engine is incredibly powerful.  The drawback is that it has such a learning curve that it can not be picked up and used immediately.  If you wanted to create a game in the Unreal Engine, even a cheesy one, it would most likely take a team of developers who are very skilled in the use of the Engine at least several months.  If you wanted to expand the functionality of the Unreal Engine, you will literally need to know very advanced programming.  Other Game Editors that are not quite as robust as the Unreal Editor are exceptionally difficult to make changes to in comparison to the RPG Editor.  Try the Serious Sam Engine, the earliest versions, will also require 200+ IQs to do anything that is impressive.  The mods for Serious Sam, like we can do with Scripts, is pretty much left for programmers.  Serious Sam mods require compiling new .dll files  The RPG Maker series with access to scripts does not require us to use any form of a Compiler to make changes.  The Serious Sam Engine also failed in its User Interface to allow "Scripts" to be run.  The User Interface had "hard limits" that could not be altered without recompiling the editor itself.  Scripters can work around our Limits in the RPG Maker User Interface by adding a Comment or Note.  Again, try making an entire game in the Serious Sam Editor as compared to the RPG Maker Editors.  RPG Maker takes a couple hours to pick up and understand, but the Serious Sam Editor will still take months and an exeptionally high skill level as well as a team of developers, programmers, mappers, and artists.

The RPG Maker enthusiasts enjoy the benefits of being able to achieve just about anything they want to achieve by themselves in a very short time.  We have a huge resource base to allow our games to be unique.  We have easy access to change what we want to be changed.  And these things all help us to do what we enjoy doing, as hobbyists or enthusiasts, which is to create games we think others will enjoy playing.

 

[Marquise*]

I started mapping in Unreal in the past.  Cant tell how many invisible craters my main player was killed off XD