5 ms·

EasyRPG

127 points by networked 12y ago

skj 12y ago
Does RPGMaker have an onerous cost associated with using it? Or has it fallen stale and become unmaintained? I've never fooled around with it, so I can't personally say. I'm all for writing open-source tools, but the real contribution of RPGMaker is surely not its source, but the easy design interface that its creators invented to make RPGs. Hopefully the EasyRPG folks have some real innovation to pull EasyRPG away from RPGMaker in some nice way, and all that they clone is the file format used.
- jonnathanson 12y ago
  I've only ever fooled around with RPGMaker; I've never spent a great deal of time with it. But the biggest issue is probably that it's a product of its time, and that was a time long before iOS and Android. RPGMaker executables can be ported to mobile platforms, but the process is wonky, and the total addressable gaming base is very small. And in a lot of ways, the audience was always small, even in RPGMaker's prime. To me, that was the biggest setback. If I was going to pour 100+ hours into making a game, I would have wanted people to play it. Preferably, a lot of people, but even some would have been fine. That just never seemed to be a likely possibility. In theory, this project will make RPGMaker games more easily playable on all platforms, and thus more accessible. So that's a worthy goal. I don't think you'd be able to make modern games on RPGMaker 2000/3. But you could make a respectable, if rustic take on the 16-bit-era RPG. And maybe you could find a small, but passionate userbase for it. I wouldn't labor with RPGMaker under the assumption that you're building the Next Big Game. But if you're doing it to make passion projects or hobby games? Sure.
  - copx 12y ago
    >And in a lot of ways, the audience was always small, even in RPGMaker's prime. To me, that was the biggest setback. If I was going to pour 100+ hours into making a game, I would have wanted people to play it. Preferably, a lot of people, but even some would have been fine. That just never seemed to be a likely possibility. That is no longer true, people even make money selling RPGMaker games (e.g. the Aveyond series [1]). RPGMaker(-style) games are an established "casual games" genre these days. You know mostly aiming for the same market and sold at the same sites [2] as Hidden Object, Match-3, etc. games i.e. the audience is mostly female. If you want to try a modern RPGMaker (VX) game I can recommend Skyborn [2]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aveyond_series http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aveyond_series [2] http://www.bigfishgames.com/download-games/17974/skyborn/index.html http://www.bigfishgames.com/download-games/17974/skyborn/ind...
    - dmpk2k 12y ago
      Isn't To The Moon also made in RPG Maker? That's a fairly high-profile indie game.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
      - NoahTheDuke 12y ago
        Yes it is, but it firmly avoid being an "rpg", instead using it as a story-telling platform.
    - eropple 12y ago
      I'm pretty convinced that the few games making money have a limited life expectancy even there. The Aveyond games are crap compared to pretty much any indie game you care to look at and I think they only had the success they did because they sort of came out before the indie scene was a thing. (Any game that feels the need to highlight "HUMOR!" in their Steam page description is a game that is not funny.) Games like To the Moon and Always Sometimes Monsters have a place, because they don't try to be RPGs (but rather, games just happening to use RPG Maker), but they're few and far between. The "RPG feel" of RPG Maker games pretty much sucks, and there's not a lot you can do to fix that. Skyborn tries, but it still feels-like-an-RPG-Maker-game. I think the future of these is more bespoke titles, like what Zeboyd does (or what I'm--slowly--doing, shameless plug).
      - copx 12y ago
        >I'm pretty convinced that the few games making money have a limited life expectancy even there. They have made money for more than half a decade and new games are released and sold all the time. Dig through the site I linked (Big Fish, which is Steam For Women basically), they have a massive collection with many recent releases. The creator of Aveyond (a truly rare beast: a female game developer!) does not seem to suffer from a lack of business either [1]. >The Aveyond games are crap compared to pretty much any indie game you care to look at Matter of taste issue. Based on the way you express yourself I guess you are a young male.. you are not the target audience. These games are beloved by their fans. [1] http://www.amaranthgames.com http://www.amaranthgames.com
- the_af 12y ago
  The win of an open source "game making" tool is surely not the low cost, but having access to the source and enabling modifications and porting to different platforms.
  - actsasbuffoon 12y ago
    The core of RPG Maker is closed source, but a surprising amount of it is written in user accessible Ruby.
    - groovy2shoes 12y ago
      As I understand it, this is not true of RPG Maker 2000/2003 (which is what EasyRPG is attempting to target). Ruby support was introduced starting in RPG Maker XP, which was released after 2003.
    - slowmover 12y ago
      See mkxp (https://github.com/Ancurio/mkxp https://github.com/Ancurio/mkxp), an open-source replacement for the RPGMaker engine that was used by "To The Moon" for Linux/Mac support.
nnnnni 12y ago
Does anyone have a list of GOOD RPGS that have been created by RPGMaker? The only one that I know about is "To the Moon". Tools like this are great in theory, but the actual worth is 100% dependent on the quality of the created games.
- eropple 12y ago
  To the Moon, Always Sometimes Monsters, and Barkley Shut Up and Jam Gaiden are the only ones I'd personally bother with (and the latter just because it's genuinely funny). The bar in that community is pretty low.
- derefr 12y ago
  OFF (http://offgame.wikia.com/ http://offgame.wikia.com/) and Yume Nikki (http://yumenikki.wikia.com/ http://yumenikki.wikia.com/) are good examples of things you can do with RPG Maker where the result isn't usually called "an RPG Maker game" (or "an RPG", for that matter.)
  - ANTSANTS 12y ago
    Seconding Yume Nikki. Wikipedia has a better summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yume_Nikki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yume_Nikki
- traspler 12y ago
  As far as I can remember I played Vampires Dawn (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampires_Dawn http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampires_Dawn) and liked it back then. One of the games is also available in English. I never played through Polymorphous Perversity but I think it's also a good RPGMaker example.
- IsaacL 12y ago
  Luke Watcholz' 'The Way' series is, in my opinion, not only the best RPG Maker game, but one of the best RPGs out there, period. And I played a lot of the SNES classics a teenager. http://www.crestfallen.us/download.html http://www.crestfallen.us/download.html The world of the way is not a sphere or a disk, but a singular path. All humans are nomadic wanderers who travel the Way, though some choose to settle down and build towns and cities; however, the 'rolling mists' eventually come crashing down on stragglers. The protagonist, Rhue, at first appears to fit some standard RPG tropes (he has amnesia and is looking for his lost girlfriend), but as the series progresses, more and more layers of mysteries are revealed. I think the fact the game was mostly created by one guy gives the story a creative coherence you don't quite find even in FFVI or Chrono Trigger.
ivan_ah 12y ago
I like the idea of a RPG IDE, but I would prefer to make a game using js. Does anyone have a recommendation (and/or example source) for an RPG game built with one of the js game frameworks? I have a really cool project in mind, but every time I get started I end up with choice anxiety about which framework to use. So far I've tried melon.js and crafty.js and both worked OK, though they are not specifically written for RPGs so I didn't have good examples to start from.
- triptych 12y ago
  Construct 2 is an excellent tool for building 2d games, and I'm sure you could create a decent RPG through Construct 2 - and have it work across many platforms.
- szatkus 12y ago
  As far as I remember RPG Maker developed its own scripting language (not sure in which version, I lost track around 2003).
  - louhike 12y ago
    You can write scripts in Ruby since RPG Maker XP.
    - szatkus 12y ago
      Oh, ok. In that time name "Ruby" was something exotic to me :)
nickporter 12y ago
Man, I'd spend days coding up RPGs with RPGMaker when I was a kid. I hope this project is successful.
slowmover 12y ago
Perhaps it's also worth mentioning mkxp in this thread: https://github.com/Ancurio/mkxp https://github.com/Ancurio/mkxp mkxp is an open source cross-platform runtime engine for RPGMaker games and supports games made with RPGMaker VX. This is the engine they used to make "To The Moon" platform independent. From what I've read it's pretty easy to move games over to mkxp, but you have to be very careful not to use any RPGMaker-licensed assets in your game even if they are royalty-free because they're only licensed for distribution with the genuine RPGMaker engine.

127 points by networked 12y ago

skj 12y ago

Does RPGMaker have an onerous cost associated with using it? Or has it fallen stale and become unmaintained? I've never fooled around with it, so I can't personally say. I'm all for writing open-source tools, but the real contribution of RPGMaker is surely not its source, but the easy design interface that its creators invented to make RPGs. Hopefully the EasyRPG folks have some real innovation to pull EasyRPG away from RPGMaker in some nice way, and all that they clone is the file format used.

jonnathanson 12y ago
I've only ever fooled around with RPGMaker; I've never spent a great deal of time with it. But the biggest issue is probably that it's a product of its time, and that was a time long before iOS and Android. RPGMaker executables can be ported to mobile platforms, but the process is wonky, and the total addressable gaming base is very small. And in a lot of ways, the audience was always small, even in RPGMaker's prime. To me, that was the biggest setback. If I was going to pour 100+ hours into making a game, I would have wanted people to play it. Preferably, a lot of people, but even some would have been fine. That just never seemed to be a likely possibility. In theory, this project will make RPGMaker games more easily playable on all platforms, and thus more accessible. So that's a worthy goal. I don't think you'd be able to make modern games on RPGMaker 2000/3. But you could make a respectable, if rustic take on the 16-bit-era RPG. And maybe you could find a small, but passionate userbase for it. I wouldn't labor with RPGMaker under the assumption that you're building the Next Big Game. But if you're doing it to make passion projects or hobby games? Sure.
- copx 12y ago
  >And in a lot of ways, the audience was always small, even in RPGMaker's prime. To me, that was the biggest setback. If I was going to pour 100+ hours into making a game, I would have wanted people to play it. Preferably, a lot of people, but even some would have been fine. That just never seemed to be a likely possibility. That is no longer true, people even make money selling RPGMaker games (e.g. the Aveyond series [1]). RPGMaker(-style) games are an established "casual games" genre these days. You know mostly aiming for the same market and sold at the same sites [2] as Hidden Object, Match-3, etc. games i.e. the audience is mostly female. If you want to try a modern RPGMaker (VX) game I can recommend Skyborn [2]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aveyond_series http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aveyond_series [2] http://www.bigfishgames.com/download-games/17974/skyborn/index.html http://www.bigfishgames.com/download-games/17974/skyborn/ind...
  - dmpk2k 12y ago
    Isn't To The Moon also made in RPG Maker? That's a fairly high-profile indie game.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - NoahTheDuke 12y ago
      Yes it is, but it firmly avoid being an "rpg", instead using it as a story-telling platform.
  - eropple 12y ago
    I'm pretty convinced that the few games making money have a limited life expectancy even there. The Aveyond games are crap compared to pretty much any indie game you care to look at and I think they only had the success they did because they sort of came out before the indie scene was a thing. (Any game that feels the need to highlight "HUMOR!" in their Steam page description is a game that is not funny.) Games like To the Moon and Always Sometimes Monsters have a place, because they don't try to be RPGs (but rather, games just happening to use RPG Maker), but they're few and far between. The "RPG feel" of RPG Maker games pretty much sucks, and there's not a lot you can do to fix that. Skyborn tries, but it still feels-like-an-RPG-Maker-game. I think the future of these is more bespoke titles, like what Zeboyd does (or what I'm--slowly--doing, shameless plug).
    - copx 12y ago
      >I'm pretty convinced that the few games making money have a limited life expectancy even there. They have made money for more than half a decade and new games are released and sold all the time. Dig through the site I linked (Big Fish, which is Steam For Women basically), they have a massive collection with many recent releases. The creator of Aveyond (a truly rare beast: a female game developer!) does not seem to suffer from a lack of business either [1]. >The Aveyond games are crap compared to pretty much any indie game you care to look at Matter of taste issue. Based on the way you express yourself I guess you are a young male.. you are not the target audience. These games are beloved by their fans. [1] http://www.amaranthgames.com http://www.amaranthgames.com
the_af 12y ago
The win of an open source "game making" tool is surely not the low cost, but having access to the source and enabling modifications and porting to different platforms.
- actsasbuffoon 12y ago
  The core of RPG Maker is closed source, but a surprising amount of it is written in user accessible Ruby.
  - groovy2shoes 12y ago
    As I understand it, this is not true of RPG Maker 2000/2003 (which is what EasyRPG is attempting to target). Ruby support was introduced starting in RPG Maker XP, which was released after 2003.
  - slowmover 12y ago
    See mkxp (https://github.com/Ancurio/mkxp https://github.com/Ancurio/mkxp), an open-source replacement for the RPGMaker engine that was used by "To The Moon" for Linux/Mac support.

nnnnni 12y ago

Does anyone have a list of GOOD RPGS that have been created by RPGMaker? The only one that I know about is "To the Moon". Tools like this are great in theory, but the actual worth is 100% dependent on the quality of the created games.

eropple 12y ago
To the Moon, Always Sometimes Monsters, and Barkley Shut Up and Jam Gaiden are the only ones I'd personally bother with (and the latter just because it's genuinely funny). The bar in that community is pretty low.
derefr 12y ago
OFF (http://offgame.wikia.com/ http://offgame.wikia.com/) and Yume Nikki (http://yumenikki.wikia.com/ http://yumenikki.wikia.com/) are good examples of things you can do with RPG Maker where the result isn't usually called "an RPG Maker game" (or "an RPG", for that matter.)
- ANTSANTS 12y ago
  Seconding Yume Nikki. Wikipedia has a better summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yume_Nikki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yume_Nikki
traspler 12y ago
As far as I can remember I played Vampires Dawn (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampires_Dawn http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampires_Dawn) and liked it back then. One of the games is also available in English. I never played through Polymorphous Perversity but I think it's also a good RPGMaker example.
IsaacL 12y ago
Luke Watcholz' 'The Way' series is, in my opinion, not only the best RPG Maker game, but one of the best RPGs out there, period. And I played a lot of the SNES classics a teenager. http://www.crestfallen.us/download.html http://www.crestfallen.us/download.html The world of the way is not a sphere or a disk, but a singular path. All humans are nomadic wanderers who travel the Way, though some choose to settle down and build towns and cities; however, the 'rolling mists' eventually come crashing down on stragglers. The protagonist, Rhue, at first appears to fit some standard RPG tropes (he has amnesia and is looking for his lost girlfriend), but as the series progresses, more and more layers of mysteries are revealed. I think the fact the game was mostly created by one guy gives the story a creative coherence you don't quite find even in FFVI or Chrono Trigger.

ivan_ah 12y ago

I like the idea of a RPG IDE, but I would prefer to make a game using js. Does anyone have a recommendation (and/or example source) for an RPG game built with one of the js game frameworks? I have a really cool project in mind, but every time I get started I end up with choice anxiety about which framework to use. So far I've tried melon.js and crafty.js and both worked OK, though they are not specifically written for RPGs so I didn't have good examples to start from.

triptych 12y ago
Construct 2 is an excellent tool for building 2d games, and I'm sure you could create a decent RPG through Construct 2 - and have it work across many platforms.
szatkus 12y ago
As far as I remember RPG Maker developed its own scripting language (not sure in which version, I lost track around 2003).
- louhike 12y ago
  You can write scripts in Ruby since RPG Maker XP.
  - szatkus 12y ago
    Oh, ok. In that time name "Ruby" was something exotic to me :)

nickporter 12y ago

Man, I'd spend days coding up RPGs with RPGMaker when I was a kid. I hope this project is successful.

slowmover 12y ago

Perhaps it's also worth mentioning mkxp in this thread: https://github.com/Ancurio/mkxp https://github.com/Ancurio/mkxp mkxp is an open source cross-platform runtime engine for RPGMaker games and supports games made with RPGMaker VX. This is the engine they used to make "To The Moon" platform independent. From what I've read it's pretty easy to move games over to mkxp, but you have to be very careful not to use any RPGMaker-licensed assets in your game even if they are royalty-free because they're only licensed for distribution with the genuine RPGMaker engine.