Do you like/make RPG Maker games? Let's rap!

[daiko]

i'm a long-time rpg maker community member/developer, and i wanted to invite people to share their projects/talk about their favorite rpg maker games!

i think there's sort of this notion that there was a time for rpg maker, and that time has passed. that's probably sort of true, in comparison to how popular it seemed like, a decade ago. but i still use rpg maker 2003, and my closest friends are people i met in development groups, so i thought it'd be kind of neat to invite people who still use the engine to talk rpg maker development!!

(and if you don't make rpg maker games, that's also cool! tell me about your favorites!!)

here are some gifs of my games

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

i think there's sort of this notion that there was a time for rpg maker, and that time has passed. that's probably sort of true, in comparison to how popular it seemed like, a decade ago. but i still use rpg maker 2003, and my closest friends are people i met in development groups, so i thought it'd be kind of neat to invite people who still use the engine to talk rpg maker development!!

Rather 20 years ago, I'd say. I was active in a german RPG maker community back then - we were one of the smaller ones, there were various. I also preferred 2003, even though XP was still around. But few of the projects I'm aware of ever went over the concept stage, and mine were no exception .

Many of the games made in the german communities were vampire-themed: There were mainly "Unterwegs in Düsterburg" ("Bound for Gloomrock") and "Vampires Dawn" and its sequel; I also remember a parody called "Vampires Deaf" (I think). I replayed "Unterwegs in Düsterburg" not too long ago - it is okay, given that it was developed by some teenager. But I'm honestly not aware of any great RPG maker games, even though I was part of the scene (so to say) - I guess that both the quirks of the tool and the inherent complexity of the genre are giant barriers.

[polychrome]

here are some gifs of my games

HOLY SHIT YOUR GAMES ARE GORGEOUS?????? reminds me of Furcadia's UI a bit!

[CeruleanSnake]

I grew up playing old rpg maker games lol, I enjoy dabbling in them as well. It is a little sad that I haven't seen some fresh ones hit cult status of late but maybe I'm not looking hard enough. The community is still pretty active however and I dabble in it a lot myself. I'm currently planning on creating a full fledged game in MZ soon. I still play a lot of old rpg games and I have a folder so full of gem I barely remember what's in them.

[asahelix]

It's all in the title. Are there any other RPG Maker developers here? If so, what kind of games have you made/are working on? I'm currently working on a game using the engine myself, but I'm not gonna spill too much information about it, but if you ask nicely I might ramble on about it for a minute.   

I've only actually made and published a single RPG Maker game, and it's complete garbage that I made in 7 hours lol. You can check it out here, if you'd like. Just know, it kinda sucks lol. 

[Gnee]

Yes. I haven't made a thread for it yet, as I've been meaning to ask a mod since I feel like it could be considered advertising since the plan is to make it paid, but I have a Steam page for the project my friend and I are working on. We've been working on it for a long time now: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2943990/Eulogy_of_an_Insect/ The game's graphics are pretty much entirely done in chalk pastel and pen. I do the art, he does design and coding.

[asahelix]

Holy crap, I've seen this game before! It was a post on the RPG Maker subreddit showcasing an FPS segment of the game. Impressive work! I know you're not the programmer but I have three questions:

1. How on God's green Earth did you do that??? (The FPS stuff)
2. Which version of RPG Maker are you making this in?
3. How is mapping done?

Sorry I asked questions you probably can't answer! I'll be sure to check out this game once it releases!

[Gnee]

It's okay, these are commonly asked questions I can in fact answer, and I guess maybe saying I just do art isn't completely accurate since I integrate the maps myself and designed an optional dungeon... but I really mostly just do art otherwise, so that's what I tell myself 

1. How on God's green Earth did you do that??? (The FPS stuff)

The answer is raycasting. The game makes use of the same technique that Wolfenstein 3D used with psuedo-3D graphics. It was initially just done using RGSS, and it worked out fine when everything was untextured, but when we added textures in it became unbearably slow. So the raycasting code was ported to C and uses DLLs and VX Ace's Win32 API to modify RGSS bitmaps in memory. The process has changed more over time, but that's where I have difficulty getting into specifics myself. My friend and co-developer, Eblo, is an extremely talented coder/scripter so that's also just kind of how this was even able to happen.

2. Which version of RPG Maker are you making this in?

As I mentioned, we use RPG Maker VX Ace, but that's not the full picture. We use an open-source fork named mk-xp, hence us just sometimes saying we use a "modified" version of VXA. Mk-xp allows us to do some really nice things like make the game widescreen instead of the default 4:3. (This was done mid-development though, so a lot of the oldest maps are still 4:3 and you get black bars on either side of the screen) Mk-xp really lets Eblo go crazy and do a lot more things in general than stock VXA.

3. How is mapping done?

Firstly, maps are blocked out in RM with default RTP tilesets. Then these layouts are adapted into the game's style, and I interpret the layouts (usually done by Eblo, but I've made some) with pen and chalk pastel on regular printer paper. I'll do the line work of an area, then go in with chalk pastel, and apply hairspray to the piece to help it dry and settle because otherwise chalk pastel is insanely dusty. Then I'll scan them in and insert them into the game as a parallax after making any necessary tweaks digitally. Eblo created a script so that parallaxes scroll in the direction and speed the player moves, giving the illusion of actually traversing the map. Within RM, I use dummy transparent tiles to define where players can and can't go on the drawing. I guess if I were to name a downside with this, it's hard to always get precise and match the tileset collision that RM makes use of, so some areas can be perceived as a little odd with where you can and can't walk, but I try my best to avoid or alleviate those issues, sometimes artistically (I'll fill a sloped/angled corner with something like furniture for example). One thing that helps greatly is we use per-pixel movement (again, another Eblo script) instead of the default tile-based movement to make moving just feel more natural and granular.

I hope that answers your questions! Thank you for the interest 

[asahelix]

Thanks for answering my questions! This is very interesting to me and really reminds me of how much advanced stuff this community is capable of doing regarding the RPG Maker engines. Very curious about mk-xp since I have looked into it before and didn't realize it was capable of doing this level of customization to RPG Maker games.


As I said before, I am working on my own game using RPG Maker. I have settled on using MV to create my game, mainly due to the plugin support. The game still has an extremely long way to go, and a few factors contribute to this. I am the only person working on this game. Everything except for the music and a few character designs is being done by myself. I am also not very impressed with my artistic skills as of right now and want to improve on them more. It also doesn't help that I'm pretty lazy and enjoy loafing around in my free time... I have been working on the concept of this game since 2023. The plot and characters have changed drastically since. A few months ago I actually finished the first draft of the script for the game, which I plan on rewriting soon! Hopefully I'll get to a point where working on the game doesn't seem so overwhelming!!!

I have considered using parallax mapping for my own game, too. Here's a prototype of what that looks like! I don't think I'll follow up with this idea since it just seems like too much trouble... 

[Gnee]

Yeah, it can't be stated enough how much extra work parallax mapping is... I think it's worth it to make your game stand out, because as flexible rpg maker is, default assets make people glaze right past a project. Of course, you could just do custom tilesets too.

[asahelix]

Yeah, I'm just gonna do custom tilesets. Seems easier. 

And was my thread moved and merged into another one??? Weird, lol.

[virtualpet2001]

i've been wanting to play around with rpg maker 2003 but have absolutely NO ideaas that dont seem too daunting T_T and in general ive been wanting to play more rpg maker games, ive only really played yume 2kki and heisei pistol show... I have both VX Ace and XP on steam but ive never done much with them either, apart from play with that pokemon fangame template one time. i do think making something in rpg maker at some point though would be really fun

[asahelix]

If I were you, I'd fool around with VX Ace as opposed to 2003. I find the engine to be much more user-friendly and less quirky to use. There are a bunch of good resources for the engine, and I'll link you a few too at the bottom of this reply! If you want to use XP, I would literally only use it for Pokémon Essentials and nothing else. I personally do not like XP much at all lol. But if you REALLY only want to use 2003 as your engine, go ahead! I find that the best way to learn is to just mess around with the engine to see how certain things/functions work. Take this piece of advice with you: PLEASE use Common Events, they're like magic!

An archive of Yanfly's VX Ace scripts
RPG Maker 2003 Maniacs patch