6 ms·

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 person

by 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.

by skj 12y ago

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.