What RPGMaker ISN'T good for

[aozgolo]

First of all, RPGMaker is an incredible program, through the eventing and scripting system you can make it so much more BEYOND what it seems to have out of the box. That being said I've seen my fair share of project ideas that fall flat because hopeful game designers are trying to do things that are simply not a good fit for the RPGMaker Engine and the amount of work it would take through scripting to make it work is a whole project's worth on it's own.

So I thought perhaps it would be helpful to kind of illustrate what game features RPGMaker is NOT good for, not as a dig at the program or meant to intimidate designers but to give perspective on why certain styles of games just don't work very well and usually never really get finished due to the difficulty curve of trying to adapt it. I think also it will help give people an idea of what IS possible by nature of what isn't on this list.

Though I don't want to be the primary contributor here so I will start off with a few examples and hopefully others will add to it.

3D Games

RPGMaker's engine is plain and simple a 2D engine, you can make 3D pre-rendered graphics, but the engine honestly isn't built for handling 3D spaces. You can however create a 1st person false 3D perspective (IE: Lands of Lore) without too much trouble

Online Multiplayer

Creating any kind of decent online connectivity requires an extensive amount of scripting from scratch and a lot of networking knowledge, the amount of work it would take to even make a simple direct connect co-op experience would make the average scripter pull out their hair most likely.

Post your additions and I'll add it to the top post!

 

[wallacethepig]

Getting work done. XD

Seriously though, I would have to go with life sims (like, well, The Sims). While it could be done in theory, the sheer amount of variables (and the common events that regulate them) would result in a serious amount of lag and playtesting headaches. This doesn't mean you can't do it, of course, but it's probably not going to be easy.

Fighting games aren't easy either. Using button combos to do different things? lolwut? Sure, there are scripts for an on-the-map battle system or a side view battle system, but the real draw of a fighting game is the sweet combos.

Racing games. Unless you found a really good script for one. I guess this is encompassed by 3D games, though.

As for things I want to see, can we have a RM/Pac Man crossover please? Ralph would take on the role of Pac Man, and Ulrika, Oscar, Naia and Dalph would be the ghosts. I want this to happen SO much. This would be epic, guys.

-Wallace

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

combo's can be done in RM. you just save the previous inputs etc. also I think Galv has a some kinda duel script that allows you to mimic a 2D fighting thing


I don't see how racing games is encompassed by 3D. there are 2D racing games.


Pac Man? That seems quite easy to do. You gave me an idea for CG.


I'd say RM is not good for making an FPS Game... but then again, it's RPG Maker

 

[Dalph]

The tool is perfect.

And it's called RM for a reason, or else it would be called Game Maker, like that other.

 

[Lars Ulrika]

As for things I want to see, can we have a RM/Pac Man crossover please? Ralph would take on the role of Pac Man, and Ulrika, Oscar, Naia and Dalph would be the ghosts. I want this to happen SO much. This would be epic, guys.

-Wallace

Challenge accepted. 

I have a custom graphics pac-man somewhere in my folders that I did on rpg maker vx ace. I guess I could pull it out with RTP characters instead. I already have some funny ideas

 

[Archeia]

There are tons of PacMan games for RM back in Rm2k/3 days. Totally possible. Adventure Games, Space Shooters, etc. And there were fighting games for RPG Maker. EVEN TALES OF. And that's evented.



(The 'lag' is actually lack of animation for sprite sheets. This is why fighting game animations are usually over 10k cells)

3d and Online playing, definitely not. Why go 3d anyway, use unreal engine. That's like RPG Maker of 3ds complete with rtp.

 

[Dalph]

Challenge accepted.

I have a custom graphics pac-man somewhere in my folders that I did on rpg maker vx ace. I guess I could pull it out with RTP characters instead. I already have some funny ideas

A Ralph-man game? Do that and you'll have my vote.Wallace idea is brilliant, I can definitely be a ghost..because like them I'm everywhere, in multiple forms and I keep chasing Ralph until I kill him.

And when he kills me I always return from the death.

Simply brilliant.

See? RM is good for everything.

 

[Lars Ulrika]

Yup, I guess I'll do that on my spare time ^^.

 

[Mouser]

You can twist and turn and torture the engine six ways from Sunday to get it do almost anything.

3D games?  All 3D games are rendered in 2D. Unless you've got a monitor you can stick your hand into, it's a flat (more or less) 2 dimensional surface. If you really, really wanted to, you could code a 3D game space, cook all the numbers up, project the vectors on to a 2D plane, then render that with the RPG Maker engine. Would it be worth it? Not even a little bit, for two reasons (without even looking at the complexity of the code required): one, the detail on the graphics isn't good enough. Let's say you can live with that though and want an old school game like Descent. I don't think the engine could keep up, performance wise. Equal parts RPG Maker and Ruby on that one. Figuring out collision detection and how to handle all the sprite graphics objects vs backgrounds would be a *****, too.

Online/Multiplayer? Hell no. I've looked at it. Seriously looked at it. Trying to get a socket class working is a mountain of a job (it is possible), but all that gives you is the ability to send a stream of text to another computer. Even if they did an update and put the socket class into RGSS 3, you still have to code what to do with that stream of text as it comes and goes. Very not worth it.

OTOH, you have the ability to play movies. I haven't seen many games that really take advantage of that, but there's a whole world waiting to be opened up when someone really embraces that feature (and I'm sure it's been done, and someone here will kindly point me to the game ). Between that and parallaxing you should be able to do a decent point and click HOPA or at least a non-combat adventure game. It wouldn't be Syberia (although with the High Fantasy pack it could be, if you commission them to do the original eight frame animation for you), but it could be close to Dire Grove. You could also use it during combat to give a very different feel than the <enter> <enter> <enter>, attack, attack, attack most games have now (my project is very guilty of that as it stands now). Think FF X-2 and the dress sphere changes for just one application.

The one the I'm actually curious about, especially after skimming Knuth's volume 4A on binary decision making (see my blog), is AI. How much can Ruby, and by extension RGSS. really handle before it starts to choke. Can you balance combat to account for that without the ability to position party members? Take a very simple decision: if one enemy lands a critical hit that drops an actor below 50% health, all other enemies immediately switch targets and pile on that actor until it either rises above 50% health by being healed, or dies. If the actor is healed by magic, the caster now becomes the new group target. Skills like taunts and mezzes would suddenly become much more valuable then they are now.

My advice to anyone planning to begin a game project is to spend time - a lot of time - researching different game engines, learn their strengths and weaknesses, whether their licensing terms are compatible with what you want to do, and then pick the engine the best fits your game concept. I can (and have) named a half dozen good, solid engines that can be used to make indie games. Some require more of this, others more of that, but for a lot of games RPG maker isn't the best choice. Nothing wrong with that - the 'big boys' of gaming spend a lot of time on this same question before they begin development. The list of engines they consider may be different, but it's the same principle of choosing the right tool for the job.

This is an engine designed to make 'old school' 16-bit console era RPG style games. The early Final Fantasy's. Dragon Warriors (primarily), Lufia, and a bunch of other so-so games I've long since forgotten. A few "modern" GBA and DS titles (I think Radiant Historia could work, been a while since I've played that). The further you get away from that model, the more likely there will be a better tool available for what you're trying to do.

If you want to make commercial games though - there's not a whole lot else out there that will let you in for as little as this does. Most 3D engines don't come with a heap of assets, which means unless you're a great modeller or know someone who is, Daz 3D just became your new best friend - welcome to platinum club, enjoy your stay. All of Daz's tools are available for free now, which helps a lot, but there's still a much steeper learning curve and you have to buy the base assets (how Daz stays in business - razor and blades).

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

As much as you can make "3D", I think the sheer amount of calculations that it need to run per frame will cause lag spikes in RM...

 

[Tsukihime]

RM is not limited to the emulator that they provide.


You can simply write your own emulator that uses the RM editor for your game development.


The library they provide is limited, but the editor is quite useful for a number of things (such as the event system)

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

I believe somebody was trying to make his own RGSS3 player some time ago, I wonder what happened to that project...