Is RPG Maker XP still a viable option?

[JayRay]

I'm going to go ahead and weigh in on this myself....


In my opinion, XP is awesome. With tilesets restricted only by the size of a tileset sheet that you want to have for your games, scripts to adjust the amount of maps, resource hacks to allow to go beyond the limits for things like items, elements, and moreso, XP is awesome. Also, groups, much like this one, still devote their time to cranking out awesome scripts for XP...

With that being said... XP has its limitations. 640x480 unless you have a tilemap script, resolution script, and frustration on setting everything up, an old (neutered) version of Ruby, and options that have to be scripted in or gone without.

Myself, I bought the bullet and purchased MV about 6 months ago, and am completely pleased with it. With graphical interfaces, automated mouse support, automatic side-view battle systems, more event options, AND the ability to actually have 3 layers like XP used to do (Tile A for first layer, and 2 layers of B-E respectively), MV is by far a better beast than XP could have ever been.

It's not so much the age of the engine, I mean... I guess it all depends on the niche. If you're comfortable with, like you said, an ever decreasing pool of XP scripts and lackluster performance, then RMXP is still a sturdy engine. However, if you want all the bells and whistles, the ability to create a game for Web, Android, and last I heard over 80 different formats with a couple of plugins, have immediate mouse support and the ability to install a plug-in-play plugin for touchscreen support, have access to all the hidden classes in a scripting language like Javascript, then you really should go ahead and go with MV. In fact, many of the mainstream scripters that have had their scripts become mainstays in thousands of games, like Atelier(Moghunter), Yanfly, Mr.Trivel, and Zeriab have begun working exclusively in MV and that engine. so for any NEW projects, I would definitely encourage you to go ahead and get with RPG Maker MV.

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Now, for the DOWNSIDE of updating your project to MV... recoding the whole thing. it's not just an issue of drag and drop anymore, and as MV is a completely new engine with a completely new programming language, you may be hardpressed to convert all your maps over. Depending on the amount of work you've already put in your project, that could potentially be hundreds of events, region types, tileset passabilities, weapons, armor, items, and more that you wwould need to convert. Luckily for you, while I don't know of any tool that just does it for you, you at least can have XP and MV side by side and can sorta copy and paste text, and see all your settings that you had for each item.

But the scripting, eventing, and map setting is only the half of it. Remember that nice tileset you had? the XP one? MV uses a different tiling system of course, and their tiles are 48x48, which are actually 1 and a half times bigger than the current 32x32 pixel tiles. While some optimizers can enlarge your images in a way that doesn't blur, most of those work much better when converted 2x (64px x 64px) so some dithering can occur.

So in short, or if you TL;DR - for new projects, definitely look into MV - but for your projects you already have, it's probably best not to try to change horses midstream.