beard ひげ @beardalaxy@gameliberty.club

@BlinkRape gotcha gotcha games is trying to get a version off the ground that's basically just a unity template that helps you make an rpg maker game with unity, so you can take advantage of all of unity's stuff as well, so that's cool if people are into it. unless there is some tool that lets you convert existing rpg maker games to that format though (strictly for making porting to console easy) i probably won't end up using it, just because i don't really want to deal with unity as a business. it's not like most people are going to be playing an rpg maker game on their ps5 anyway. mobile is a good target to have, but base MV/MZ already support that anyway (kind of, you do have to go through some extra hoops because it unfortunately doesn't just generate an APK for you, i think it might be a library licensing issue or something).

@BlinkRape one problem with rpg maker is that it has actually swapped hands a lot of times. it's remained surprisingly similar despite all of that but yeah a lot of features have been moved around and removed and such. it went from ASCII, to Enterbrain (who had it for a long time), to Degica, then to Gotcha Gotcha Games where it is now. iirc GGG got it like halfway through MV and some of the original team still worked on it, i don't think anyone really knows the specifics but that's what i can ascertain from the devs who are active on the forums.

the major one of note was the layers system for mapping that was present in RPG Maker XP. everybody loved that and they took it away for VX and then made VX Ace very soon after that was quite literally just VX but better. i think the idea was to make the mapping more simple, because layers definitely were a little bit hard to use, especially for someone like a kid just learning how to get into the software. there were a lot of things like that in VX that caused a lot of the community to never actually begin using it, i remember probably the majority of people sticking with XP.

when MV came around it drastically expanded the engine, even though layers were still not present, so it was enough to warrant upgrading. layers are actually present, just not manually selectable, so you do have to kind of take an approach where the first thing you put down is the bottom layer, then you can put something else on top of it, etc. It was clear soon after they had created it though that users REALLY wanted the system, so some devs made a (technically unofficial, but basically sanctioned) sister program called TileD that expanded the mapping editor with unlimited layers and the ability to change your tile size from the default 48x48. this was particularly nice for the older engine devs that wanted to bring their maps over since they use 32x32.

when MZ was announced, and the engine switched hands again, they actually asked the community directly what features they wanted to be added. everyone was allowed to request one feature. most people said map layers, but there were also things like auto save and custom resolutions being built directly into the engine instead of needing plugins to work. lo and behold, they actually did a great job of adding as many of these commonly requested features to the engine as possible and i think they did a pretty dang good job with it. you can now switch between the easier no-layer map editing and the layered one when you need it.

the only thing i can really think of that is missing from MZ is XP's super simple way of making elemental strengths/weaknesses, but that was never very customizable so it's not really a loss and the new way of doing it is still really easy anyway.

i've been using rpg maker for 15+ years now. pretty crazy. i really love the way it is put together; the UI is just second to none. trying to get into unreal or unity is something i'm sure i could do given enough time, but there are just so many damn menus it gets overwhelming really fast and learning how to work with all of that is precious time i could be using to make the games i have stored up in my noggin.

one thing i'm still holding out hope for one day is some PC version of RPG Maker 3 on the PS2 where we can import our own assets instead of using the ones that come with it and add plugins. that will probably never happen but a man can dream xD mouse and keyboard control for that + assets/plugins would be the PERFECT tool for me.

when i finish my current game i'm going to do a little bit of research into godot and construct, because they both seem fairly similar to RPG Maker in terms of user-friendliness but are very clearly excelling in pushing their own boundaries farther all the time, whereas RPG Maker is definitely a little stuck in the realm of small (but very useful) improvements. i'm 100% okay continuing to use it because i do love it, but hey if there's something better that i can understand relatively quickly i'm down for that too.