Peer pressured badly to switch engines?

[kyonides]

Has any of you been peer pressured badly for sticking to a specific engine instead of updating to the latest iteration of the RM series?
Does it happen in other engines as well?  
Or is it exclusive of the RM series?

[Remi-chan]

Has any of you been peer pressured badly for sticking to a specific engine instead of updating to the latest iteration of the RM series?
Does it happen in other engines as well?  
Or is it exclusive of the RM series?

Generally speaking, MV is the strongest and most efficient engine, with its only downgrade and it is a slight downgrade, being the map editor from XP.

People who stubbornly cling to outdated primitive engines are yes, generally shamed for it. Though if it makes you feel better, MZ isn't very popular either due to its... lackluster release and how badly it was rushed. I'm also not remotely excited for Unite. As someone who used Unity for two years and came out hating it, I don't agree with the direction. Unity sucks. It's just got a good business model.

It's not exclusive, either. Being outdated for sake of nostalgia rather than any real reason is generally seen as an idiot thing. Some here, I understand. Like, mapping advanced, makes their brain feel happy? I get that. But some who use it and never release a game and I'm just like 'okay but why though?'

Oh and, just to rip this whole 'Remi picks on me for religious reasons' BS into shreds... It's nothing religious. I'm agnostic. I pick on you because you're a man-child. It's really that simple. I don't pick on you for using XP, I pick on you for being a man-child. I don't pick on you for being from Costa-Rica, I pick on you for being a man-child... Are you getting what I'm putting down?

Edit: Deleted video recording after realizing this isn't What's up RM-ers

[Steel Beast 6Beets]

Another round of the same ol' song and dance.

According to you, what would be an '''''actual'''' reason for sticking to outdated engines? Me, I simply believe that if it ain't broken, don't fix it. XP works for me and it'll continue to work. And like that I mentioned before, I simply dislike the direction RPG Maker took after XP.

Of course, if you feel like you hit a wall with the engine and decide to port your project to a newer entry then more power to you. In fact, this is what happened to a certain project I follow. It started as a XP game although it used a modified version of the engine to the point the only thing in common with the vanilla program was the interface. Then they arrived to the conclusion that XP had ran its course and opted for the herculean task of porting to project to Game Maker as they felt no other RM could do what they sought after.

Another good example I know of is Dark Kyu's Rakenzarn Tales. Originally a XP project, it was later ported to Ace when Kyu decided to revamp the game to make it more in line with the other spinoffs he was working on.

[Remi-chan]

You're one of the fellas I understand Steel. You love the map editor. I don't blame you for that. Especially if you never really plan to release a game.

I mean XP does have a lot of issues that MV doesn't, But VX was worse without much contest.

Rpg Maker XP
Pros:
- Good Mapping
- Nice Tilesets
- Tall sprites

Cons:
- The earliest and buggiest version of RGSS.
- Maximum 640x480 resolution.
- Ratio locked at 4:3.
- No support for faces.
- While the RTP is nice, its nice painterly style is then harshly contrasted by 1990's pop art looking battlers. This is only a problem if you're using the RTP, but it is worth mentioning as VX and onwards (until MZ) don't share in this problem.
- The least optimized of the rpgmaker engines, with just 20 events on a map being able to cause memory leaks on low-end PCs. Doing anything like am evented bullet hell is basically impossible.
-Parallaxes not visible in editor.
- No support for playing movies.

There might be other things I forgot about. But that's a pretty big list.

Rpg Maker MV
Pros:
- Capable of many variable resolutions.
- Tilesize can be altered. meaning you can make a 16px tile grid, a 32px tilegrid, or larger and any size in between.
- Can play movies in WEBM format.
- Has facial support.
- Ratio isn't locked.
- Can see parallaxes while in the editor.
- One of if not the best run-time packages ever. With a veritable dearth of free DLC to expand it even more.
- Huge sweeping upgrades to optimization. Bullet-hells more than possible.
- Uses javascript, which is basically a more intermediate system that takes more knowledge to work with, but the upside is it can do so much more, espeically with the addition of the pixi.js functionality.

Cons:
- Chibi sprites
- Map Editor not as advanced as XP
- Tilesets have less room. Or rather, they are somewhat limited. That said, parralax mapping is far easier due to being able to see parralaxes in editor.

So you see these lists which basically diametrically oppose the other, and you'll probably notice its no... not for any silly reason I like MV. It just outside of a few small things, is blatantly better.

it's kinda hard not to see people who cling to a program so outdated as XP in the kind of light I do. it makes no sense for anyone to still use it.

[Steel Beast 6Beets]

As somebody who has been using XP for nearly a decade, I'm well aware of the program's... eccentricities, so to speak. Eventually, anyway. I actually started with RM2000 until I lost all of my projects after my old computer went kaput.

So to me, XP was an all around upgrade, some baffling omissions notwithstanding (the lack of support of facesets as mentioned by you). Fortunately, I learnt there were always scripts for getting back some old features. With that said, as time and development went by, I became more and more acquainted with the program's fickleness that caused me no small amount of grief. The proverbial growing pains as it were.

As you cons, there are scripts for (most of) them but that doesn't take away the fact the it fell on users to bring features that should be in the program by default. All in all... Yeah, I must admit that MV is indeed the superior product as expected. I'll still cling to XP tho mostly because it's how it always been. That and I learned when I tried to play your demo that my PC is just too old to run MV. I should have mentioned that first.

Lastly, you're pretty much spot regarding the XP RTP graphics. There IS some dissonance between the cartoony battlers and the more subdued, down-to-earth tilesets. Future entries do feature a more cohesive art, I'll admit that much.

Ha, thinking about it, no wonder why Nanamura's more realistic battlers are so widely used.

[Remi-chan]

I respect your decision for using XP because even if flawed, I understand your reasoning. You're also willing to admit its flaws and still work with them. That shows to me that you genuinely enjoy the product, and I'd never seek to take that away from you.

I started with VX so every maker past and before that one, including XP, was an upgrade. But MV was the upgradiest upgrade of them all! So I stuck with it.

[DerVVulfman]

Flawed, misguided... I hear that regularly.  However it was RPGMaker XP that broke away with the ability to alter underlying code and allowed scripting itself. Was it as complete as other makers?  No.  The history of the product line has always been:  Give them these features, but remove those.  And insofar as kyonides's inquiry of being pressured to use a specific engine, I receive it too.

But towards being the so-called stated 'buggiest version' of RGSS? The only actual recognized flaw within the system's code lay within the Interpreter class when it comes to receiving 'FalseClass' input. Reports on the so-stated F12 issue lay with scripters improper use of the alias class where they merely need to add an additional protective statement. But Ruby scripting was new, and no documentation on the subject was given. I personally learned merely by studying other's RMXP scripts alone.

As suggested, XP is 'locked' towards a 640x480 resolution and locked at a 4:3 ratio.  That is pretty much the same thing, yet I used some scripts to make a map... Parallax no less... only just recently... with RMXP. 


Familiar... isn't it?

My esteemed colleague, Mr. 6Beets, already remarked about the usage of scripts to handle Faces and replacing RTP graphics. But then again, many suggest not to use the RTP, let alone the default battlers which would identify a game as using stock content? RPGMaker RTPs are themselves free downloads to play games when the designer of 'any' RPGMaker product requires them.

The least optimized?  Granted. But also the eldest of the RPGMaker scripted line. Who would suggest newer executables were less optimized than its progenitors? However, the use of 20 events causing slowdown, I must protest. I already know, with my Lycan ABS, that I have had well over fifty active enemy events running with no lag... this stated in Discord. And that without the use of an anti-lag system. Dependent upon which anti-lag is used and how it is implemented, I have pushed maps up to the 999 event maximum, with roughly 200+ events in the visible window alone.

And while the RPGMaker XP editor may not allow for '3' lines in the default Show Choice command, it does allow 4-line entry elsewhere.  But who cares?  The editor itself... for the past two decades of my use... has never crashed.  The editor itself is solid, not buggy or prone to having critical failures during game production.  Can one say that of the recent Javascript editions?  Not one in this discussion, I know.

And even RPGMakerWeb states: "RPG Maker™ XP gives you the power to create your own original RPG on Windows. Its popular and user-friendly interface has been carried over from RPG MAKER 2000. It is an older, but very loved RPG Maker."   Very loved, and with good reason.

[Steel Beast 6Beets]

I share esteemed Mr. DerVVulfman's experience with XP's stability. All the crashes I suffered were due to my general ignorance regarding compatibility issues between custom scripts. I got better at this.

As for the lag, I do have issues but that's on my PC not being up to the task. None whatsoever on my spare laptop. Now, on this subject, I'm currently using Near Fantastica's anti-lag script. Is there a better script or should I stick with it?

[Remi-chan]

I did forget about MV's crashing, but that might happen on XP with large and ambitious enough games, as well. I should mention, crashing never ocurred much during PFCs development. I only remember one or two times.

A game like Fantasia just wouldn't be possible in XP. XP like VX and Ace is built with only RPGs in mind, and trying to stretch the makers beyond that capacity can be done, but its hard to make it work well. In MV, there's a lot more optimization.

I also shall say what Steel6 said earlier, that expecting the community to supply scripts for features that should be baseline is not an excuse in the engine's favor.

I'm comparing RTPs for the general use of it, I never personally use the RTP so that doesn't effect me in the slightest.

There was a noticeable downgrade in VX, especially in the music and sounds from XP, but then a noticable visual upgrade in MV where they finally ditched that ugly purple shading technique. Also the music in MV is fire.

We don't really talk about MZ. It's the VX of the Javascript engines.

XP was impressive for its time. It isn't anymore.

As for the resolution thing. yeah you can upscale it like that. but are you really gonna go and do that for every window and viewport? As you might notice, it appears the text window is overlaying Aluxes. But realistically, that's just as far as the the default resolution takes it. nothing was dynamic back in this day and age. The screen size and view port have changed, but the resolution of the windows hasn't. Your own screenshot confirms this.

Meanwhile in MV, it reads the resolution typed in and auto-resizes everything to scale with the resolution entered. because of this, every plugin or script created does so as well. The comparison is blazay and in your own words DerVVulfman, misguided and flawed.

[Melana]

As for the lag, I do have issues but that's on my PC not being up to the task. None whatsoever on my spare laptop. Now, on this subject, I'm currently using Near Fantastica's anti-lag script. Is there a better script or should I stick with it?

I would suggest Zeriab's Anti Lag System. Together with MKXP/HiddenChest I can run 600x600 maps with 10.000+ events in my game without any lag.