I am so tired of tech super-literate people with shitton of free time saying that everything is obsolete, because an open source/illegal alternative does exist.
ひげ
@LukeAlmighty i'd rather use photoshop than anything else. and the shittiest video editor, corel videostudio, just because it has one feature that saves me a fuck load of time that nothing else does. and rpg maker, because i've put so much time into it that i know it like the back of my hand and learning anything else will take too much time from actually creating everything i want to.
@beardalaxy @LukeAlmighty I think RPG Maker switching to Unity as a back-end is a good enough excuse to switch, since Unity is now owned by an Israeli spyware company.
My next game is going to use SFML as a back-end because MonoGame is C# which is Microsoft controlled.
@beardalaxy I looked at RPG Maker Unite. If they really want to make it an "alternate version" while taking advantage of Unity, I think they should've given users the ability to make 3D games (for the first time?). Using a 3D engine for 2D games never made sense to me.
@xianc78 honestly i think it's mainly for being able to do extra unity stuff and also to be able to port to whatever you want instead of only being able to build for pc and mobile. i don't know tooooo much about unity but i guess you could add 3D elements into your game, particle effects, etc.
it pretty much just gives you an easier to understand base and then you can do extra stuff with it that's already been made for unity.
rpg maker 1-3 on ps2 were 3D rpg makers, i'd love to see them do something else like that but for PC so we can do a bit more with it. rpg maker has always been the easiest engine to use and those 3D ones are no different. the only things that really hold them back are that you have to use a controller to make the game (which sucks ass) and that you can't import your own stuff.
rpg maker MZ has 3D particle effects for the animations now by default, so that's pretty cool. there are also some really talented people that have made plugins so you can use rpg maker to make a 3D game, which is really interesting. i've thought about doing it for whatever game i work on next, i'll just have to see what the options are when i get to that point.
@beardalaxy RPG Maker MZ seems to be HTML5 based since it uses JavaScript as a scripting language, and I assume that they use something like Electron to make standalone desktop applications. That should allow easy porting to consoles. Construct is also HTML5 based and allows porting to Xbox One via UWP.
It seems like the Switch doesn't support HTML5 though which is probably why Unite is being made. It's kind of weird because the Wii U had an HTML5 framework for indie developers to port their HTML5 games. I'm surprised that the Switch doesn't even though their eShop is apparently a web-application running on WebKit (Apple's browser engine for Safari).
>there are also some really talented people that have made plugins so you can use rpg maker to make a 3D game
Okay, this looks pretty impressive, but still using 2D character sprites is somewhat of a turn off for me (it makes it difficult to judge angles). Their walking animations look really choppy. Plus the whole thing is still running on JavaScript which may call performance issues, unless they can convert it to WebAssembly.
@xianc78 yup, it's definitely impressive but things like that are why I'm hesitant to use it for the time being unless I wanted to do something super specific. I haven't looked into it much yet, but I would consider using it for certain sections of a game, for instance, something that went first person for a bit.
RPG maker itself is written in either c++ or c#, but the games all run on html5. At least that's what the last two do. Rmxp-rmvxa all used ruby for the game itself, and before then I believe it was all just C but you couldn't edit any scripts, everything had to be done in the engine itself.
@beardalaxy
>for instance, something that went first person for a bit.
You mean like first person dungeons like in the original Phantasy Star. You can use fake 3D for that. Phantasy Star just used sprites to represent the room but they created additional animations to make it look like you are actually moving. The only drawback to this approach is that you can only have narrow corridors for dungeons.
https://www.spriters-resource.com/master_system/phanstar/sheet/169744/
You could also try a raycasting engine like what Wolfenstein 3D used. In memory, everything is running as if it was 2D (no Z axis being calculated) but the camera object casts a ray and draws the objects hitting that ray in order to draw them based on the distance. This allows more expansive rooms, but it doesn't allow for varying heights on walls. (Though advanced raycasting algorithms can let you do so) If you compare Wolfenstein 3D to Doom you can see the difference.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_casting#Ray_casting_in_early_computer_games
Doom uses binary-space partitioning which is much more complex and is hard for me to describe. You probably don't need to go that far. If you have a more advanced raycasting algorithm then you don't need it. Rise of The Triad uses the Wolfenstein 3D engine but feels like it's running on the Doom engine (it has varying heights for walls and stairs), showing that raycasting is good enough in most cases.
The only case where you would want to have full 3D is if you want rooms on top of rooms without loading a different map in between. Neither raycasting nor binary space partitioning is able to do that.
>RPG maker itself is written in either c++ or c#, but the games all run on html5.
It makes sense for editors to be written in C++ or C#. C# in particular is really useful for quickly created GUI applications which is why a lot of editors use it. Even C++ engines like Unreal use C# for their editors.
>before then I believe it was all just C but you couldn't edit any scripts
RPG Maker seems to been around since 1988 for the PC-8801 and the MSX. You even had ports for the GameBoy Color and Super Famicom. Those were probably written in Assembly.
@xianc78 oh yeah i'm just talkin about the windows versions haha. but it could have still been written in assembly then, idk, just assumed it was C because that makes sense.
but yeah i'd be using the same plugin, which does render stuff in 3D, but it would kind of be like the phantasy star thing, just more detail. without thinking about it too much, my first thought would be like in the horror game i'll be making, some chase or hiding sequences that briefly go into first person to make things tense. something along those lines.
@xianc78 it's weird, rpg maker unite isn't really the next version of rpg maker, it's like an alternate version. at least, that's how i understand it. they are still developing MZ and will probably continue to make standalone software. i was excited for it originally, but after all the unity shit that's happened recently i definitely don't want to use it anymore.