VX versus XP. Your view upon the two engines.
12-28-2008, 10:20 PM
You might have seen it before: RPG Maker VX vs. RPG Maker XP discussions. They're a bit overdone, maybe. But I'm still interested what you think.
What engine do you prefer and why?
And also: How much does the way of mapping influence your choice?
My point of view:
I often see people preferring XP over VX because of the way you create the maps. I was no different before, but I got to thinking.
Why do I prefer XP? Because of the mapping engine? Sure, it does have multiple layers and allows far more tiles than VX does by default. But is that the only thing that matters here?
When using XP, I often got frustrated. Mapping was slow and hard to pull off for me. I was most active in a Dutch community with a lot of XP users and I loved the way they created maps. But I couldn't rival their maps. I lacked the patience to spend several hours on a map that's just 50x50 tiles. Not just that, I also had a lot of trouble with using scripts. A lot of scripts were incompatible with eachother, designed for the (illegal) Postality Knights edition or required the SDK (which some other scripts didn't like).
I got tired of it.
Now I've (almost?) fully switched to RPG Maker VX. Mapping took a little getting used to. But I got the hang of it and started to create a few testing games in which I mapped and fiddled with the database.
Finally, I decided to start working on my current game, Walking The Plank. I used Mack's alternative tilesets for the maps and soon I had a good-looking base for my game (as I mapped a lot of stuff before starting to work on events and other systems). I liked this way of working. The translated KGC scripts gave me a nice base to work on, the Takentai sideview battlesystem was perfect for me and all other scripts which I threw in never clashed with the others. Mapping also took FAR LESS time.
My conclusion? XP isn't worthless, but it does ask a lot of your patience if you can't script well. I prefer VX because I don't like clashing scripts and the mapping system isn't bad at all.
What engine do you prefer and why?
And also: How much does the way of mapping influence your choice?
My point of view:
I often see people preferring XP over VX because of the way you create the maps. I was no different before, but I got to thinking.
Why do I prefer XP? Because of the mapping engine? Sure, it does have multiple layers and allows far more tiles than VX does by default. But is that the only thing that matters here?
When using XP, I often got frustrated. Mapping was slow and hard to pull off for me. I was most active in a Dutch community with a lot of XP users and I loved the way they created maps. But I couldn't rival their maps. I lacked the patience to spend several hours on a map that's just 50x50 tiles. Not just that, I also had a lot of trouble with using scripts. A lot of scripts were incompatible with eachother, designed for the (illegal) Postality Knights edition or required the SDK (which some other scripts didn't like).
I got tired of it.
Now I've (almost?) fully switched to RPG Maker VX. Mapping took a little getting used to. But I got the hang of it and started to create a few testing games in which I mapped and fiddled with the database.
Finally, I decided to start working on my current game, Walking The Plank. I used Mack's alternative tilesets for the maps and soon I had a good-looking base for my game (as I mapped a lot of stuff before starting to work on events and other systems). I liked this way of working. The translated KGC scripts gave me a nice base to work on, the Takentai sideview battlesystem was perfect for me and all other scripts which I threw in never clashed with the others. Mapping also took FAR LESS time.
My conclusion? XP isn't worthless, but it does ask a lot of your patience if you can't script well. I prefer VX because I don't like clashing scripts and the mapping system isn't bad at all.