windows phone

[Shion Kreth]

I was just curious if anyone had a windows smart phone that they are able play rpgmaker games on?

 

[Uzuki]

Sorry, but rpg maker games aren't playable on anything, but PCs.

 

[NoahB]

Sorry, but rpg maker games aren't playable on anything, but PCs.

There's an RMXP player for Android. Works pretty well, too.

 

[Shion Kreth]

Sorry, but rpg maker games aren't playable on anything, but PCs.

Do you know this for a fact? Because a windows phone, like a windows tablet, to the extent of my knowledge, is running windows 8 same as a laptop or desktop pc.

 

[seita]

windows phone, windows RT and windows 8 share the same kernel which makes porting extremely easy. Regardless, some work still needs to be done to port one to another.

Look up "Doom & Destiny" on windows phone or tablet.

 

[orochii]

Porting... porting porting... The niche is calling for porting since the beginning of time.

 

[whitesphere]

If they were going to port RPG Maker, personally, I think it should be written in Java, because Java is very cross-platform, by definition.  Even the GUI components are cross-platform.

But, it's such a huge amount of work, I'm not sure it'll be done anytime soon, if ever.  I can't imagine the amount of coding and testing needed to make a working, say, RPG Maker YZ Ace?

Rewriting a role playing engine in a completely different language is difficult, to say the very least.  Then, there's testing and, oh by the way, all of the nifty scripts for RPG VX Ace?  They're gone, must be re-implemented in Java...  Your existing game data?  Probably won't work either...

I'm sure it would support VX Ace format tilesets and sound, but that's only a small part of the difficulty.

 

[Solistra]

They could use JRuby for the game's scripting language if they used Java for the underlying engine. This is actually insanely easy to do -- I've been working with both a lot lately.


And by the way, rewriting the entire engine in Java really doesn't strike me as being all that difficult, all things considered. It would also more or less force the developers to abandon the extremely old (as in from the 16-bit era of Windows 3) GDI+ API that they're using for graphics processing and actually adopt OpenGL, which would be a great step up from what we currently have.

 

[Shion Kreth]

Alright, looks like I will need to gather some first hand data on the topic myself, as pages I've looked at say, at least for tablets, that a windows 8 tablet runs programs compatible with windows 8, which rpgmaker is, and new windows phones claim to be running windows 8(I'm not talking about windows RT devices), so I would feel rather deceived if it wasn't the case(not that it'd be the first time it happened with microsoft). I was just hoping someone would be able to say: yes I have one you can/can't.

 

[Solistra]

It's just not quite that simple. It particularly depends on the processor architecture of the device being used, so there's really no clear "yes" or "no" answer, but an impressive assortment of things which could be "well, maybe."


I'd also give you a more clear answer myself if I could, but I honestly know little to nothing about Windows Phone and don't generally pay attention to Microsoft at all -- I'm on the other side of that fence.

 

[whitesphere]

They could use JRuby for the game's scripting language if they used Java for the underlying engine. This is actually insanely easy to do -- I've been working with both a lot lately.

And by the way, rewriting the entire engine in Java really doesn't strike me as being all that difficult, all things considered. It would also more or less force the developers to abandon the extremely old (as in from the 16-bit era of Windows 3) GDI+ API that they're using for graphics processing and actually adopt OpenGL, which would be a great step up from what we currently have.

If OpenGL required going to 3-D, that would completely invalidate every existing tileset, so I don't think that's likely.  

But I agree, at least using Java's much more modern graphics API, even for 2-D would definitely be a big help.  Theoretically RPG maker could then scale its display resolution and tilesets accordingly.

And I know modern versions of Java actually perform quite well, probably better than Ruby, and they are the native Android app language, although I'm sure the graphics APIs are different for Android (never written such an app myself).

I like the idea, but don't know how likely it is to actually be done.

 

[Solistra]

The graphics APIs really aren't all that different depending on the library used. Personally, I use libGDX, which allows the use of 2D or 3D OpenGL graphics and OpenAL audio which is completely cross-platform -- thus my mentioning of RPG Maker finally dropping the stale GDI+ API and adopting something that actually makes sense.


And yes, modern versions of JRuby outperform MRI Ruby (the original interpreter) itself.


Edit: By the way, OpenGL is incredibly useful for 2D graphics programming and far more performant than GDI+. I wasn't insinuating that RPG Maker should go 3D -- that's an entirely different demographic than what the series has targeted, and I, personally, don't want to write 3D games.

 

[Shion Kreth]

An unfortunate testament to how well the windows phone is doing..

I have an android device myself; I have never been especially impressed with them.

 

[whitesphere]

To answer the original question, I think a Windows 8 tablet, running the full PC version of Windows 8 or 8.1, should run RPG Maker just fine, since they are meant to run all PC applications.

But, Windows 8 phone is a different beast.  I don't think I've seen many Windows phones in the past 10 years, either.  If I had to guess, I really doubt a Windows smartphone would run the PC version of RPG Maker, unless the smartphone has a "Virtual XP" mode where it emulates a Windows XP PC. Then RPG Maker might run in the emulated PC.

 

[whitesphere]

The graphics APIs really aren't all that different depending on the library used. Personally, I use libGDX, which allows the use of 2D or 3D OpenGL graphics and OpenAL audio which is completely cross-platform -- thus my mentioning of RPG Maker finally dropping the stale GDI+ API and adopting something that actually makes sense.

And yes, modern versions of JRuby outperform MRI Ruby (the original interpreter) itself.

Edit: By the way, OpenGL is incredibly useful for 2D graphics programming and far more performant than GDI+. I wasn't insinuating that RPG Maker should go 3D -- that's an entirely different demographic than what the series has targeted, and I, personally, don't want to write 3D games.

I agree with the idea here.  Modernizing the underlying machinery dramatically and putting RPG Maker on a constantly evolving platform (Java) would definitely make RPG Maker much more useful, and cross-platform RPG Maker games far more likely.

I definitely think a smartphone would be an ideal place to run an RPG Maker game, since the games aren't normally CPU intensive and are perfectly suited for casual gaming.

 

[Shion Kreth]

To answer the original question, I think a Windows 8 tablet, running the full PC version of Windows 8 or 8.1, should run RPG Maker just fine, since they are meant to run all PC applications.

But, Windows 8 phone is a different beast.  I don't think I've seen many Windows phones in the past 10 years, either.  If I had to guess, I really doubt a Windows smartphone would run the PC version of RPG Maker, unless the smartphone has a "Virtual XP" mode where it emulates a Windows XP PC. Then RPG Maker might run in the emulated PC.

Yeah, I see now they say WIndows 8, but then in the small print it's 'windows 8 phone' so i'm becoming skeptical.

I wonder if they noticed it's literally 1 letter off from windows 8 phony. 

 

I agree with the idea here.  Modernizing the underlying machinery dramatically and putting RPG Maker on a constantly evolving platform (Java) would definitely make RPG Maker much more useful, and cross-platform RPG Maker games far more likely.

I definitely think a smartphone would be an ideal place to run an RPG Maker game, since the games aren't normally CPU intensive and are perfectly suited for casual gaming.

 

I second both those sentiments.

 

[doncht]

I think the biggest problem with playing RPG on a phone is controls. So far, I can't think of any solution yet. But maybe in the future, who knows. 

 

[Shaz]

There's a lot of deviation from the OP's question happening here. Please stick to the topic.