RPG Maker has gotten progressively worse since XP

[Son_Rukiri]

RPG Maker XP was released in 2004 coming off the hype train that was RPG Maker 2003 (which was my favorite RPG Maker prior to being able to code) but it removed a few things from 2k/3 mainly facesets.  Now, this really isn't a problem considering XP was shooting for a higher resolution and was probably expecting a bubble message system similar to the Final Fantasy series (just a guess).  

XP was very much like 2k/3, a lot if not all event code was able to be ported over if someone just wanted to upgrade to XP from 2K/3 back in the day and introduced Ruby which I believe was using 1.8.2 and possibly 1.8.3 in the final updated release (someone quote me on this).   This was a first for RPG Maker and brought in a lot of possibilities that were not possible for 2k/3, but I'm going to shatter anyone's dreams if they expect to make an A-RPG with XP or RPG Maker in generall.  The sad thing is the first thing that much be gutted is how collisions are handled and moved over to a collision collider system and to use a circles not squares!  This makes moving against half or triangle tiles pretty easy.  

The next thing is nobody seemed to want to actually clone or implement the knockback function that all a-rpgs generally share and it's pretty easy math, haven't used rgss or even ruby in almost 3 years now so I'm rusty and the code below is not ruby but lua.

Code:

local spd = 2
local degree = -1
local dir = degree
local herox = 0
local heroy = 10
local enemyx = 0
local enemyy = 20
x = herox
y = heroy
degree = math.deg(math.atan2(heroy - enemyy, enemyx - herox)) -- radians to degrees and simple x / y placements of hero and enemy
x = x + math.cos(degree) * spd -- lua does not have a += operator  
y = y + math.sin(degree) * spd -- lua does not have a += operator
print(x) -0.8961472322583403
print(y) 8.212006672798884

 

This is just plain lua, not linked to any game engine just a simple example of how A-RPGs handled knockbacks when getting hit.  

But, that's enough of me talking about A-RPGs with RPG Maker and sadly MV is a total unoptimized mess and I would not touch it or waste time with it at all...
There's still tons of bugs that prior engines did not have because they were native desktop applications, at least shaders are easier to implement so that's a big +...

Once VX was released a lot of familiar things came back which was cool but... the mapping system was slammed dunked by MJ into the unholy garbage bin!  
They continued with the same system and still claim people prefer it (prefer it my ass they do, even the Japanese despise that mapping system!) they simply do not listen to their customer base, also enterbrain isn't involved anymore don't blame them.

Pixel Game Maker MV is next in the line of the Maker series, it does bring back 4 layer mapping so XP mapping is back but I did not see anything for auto tiles, you will likely have to hand draw those bits... still better than the MV mapping system right?

Now, they knew they f. up so they created a TileD plugin which basically brings back XP mapping to MV but as I've stated earlier, MV is a unoptimized mess.

i7-6700k @4.8ghz
32gb ram ddr 3GHZ
GTX 1080 EVGA FTW at 2.1GHZ
1.5TB of disk space (I rely on a lot of online storage services... like one drive and google drive)

So, should I have issues with my PC? No not a chance, I actually skoffed and told them it's not the hardware but bad programming which laughably is FIXED by a plugin.
Imagine that.

It seems Kadakowa or even Degica don't care anymore and the magic RPG Maker had back in the day is just gone...dead gone!  I did move to Game Maker over the years but even so I'm planning on switching again to something like Defold because well lua... And it uses a proper collider system, I have no problem with custom collisions as I've basically worked out a perfect top-down movement and collision system based on mana/zelda for a-rpgs but I've just been getting bored of GML and I could go to Godot and use C#.. yea no it's broken and not 100% supported by the dev team, it's still semi beta but gdscript is nice but also a "fake language" just semi better.

Anyways, that's enough ranting on how I felt RPG Maker went down the tubes over the years, XP2 or VX-Ace (as that is basically what VX was supposed to be minus it's still awful mapping system) could have been amazing and an actual contender against game maker but that obvious didn't happen and MV technologically is very behind Game Maker.  XP was actually pretty good for it's time, actually could compete against game maker if you can script well that is.  

Hopefully the next RPG Maker actually incorporates a TileD like level editor, they really need to stop giving excuses as to why variable tile sizes are a bad idea when just about everyone else is doing just THAT!  They can set the defaults to what they want, and let users decide, or even just force 8x8, 16x16, 32x32, and 64x64 and call it a day.  There excuse is in the RTP and I get that, but that does not mean you have to create resources for all those sizes at all!   I mean, Pixel Game Maker is doing just this and everything seems to be 16x16 or 32x32 so I see no reason for excuses here.

I would even take a ported XP map system over what MV has and maybe even upgrade it a bit but it was pretty close to being perfect now that I look back in level editors.  

[Mel]

You are absolutely right.

RPG Maker XP still is the peak for me and since then they get worse. Although VX Ace was better than VX, the mapping was the same mess and you are almost forced to do parallax mapping if you want good looking maps.
And now we have MV, which again is inferior to the older versions in many points. The editor is full of bugs and has a terrible performance. It doesn't make much fun to create stuff with it.
They promised to improve the mapping but even with it's theoretically "endless layers" it's still bad since you can't edit anything without rebuilding half of your map. When I tested it I wanted to change the ground of a room so I had delete all of the furniture...

I don't understand why they just don't go back to RMXP mapping or even improve it with 5 or 6 actual layers.

But I think we have to accept how RPG Maker has changed. RPG Maker MV and VX Ace are the most successfull and popular RPG Makers so far so they will keep following that path.
Beside a small group of people of the old generation of RPG Maker nobody actually cares about RMXP anymore. There is a gigantic amount of new casual users who came with VX Ace and MV who don't even know something like RMXP exists. And for that audience the new RPG Makers are made. You can literally see that based on the graphic style of the newer RTPs, More childish and simple.

I don't have much hope that we will ever see a worthy successor of RPG Maker XP...atleast not from Kadokawa.
That's why I'm still looking forward to ReGaL. An improved and modern RPG Maker XP with tons of new features and a stronger engine.
I hope it won't get abandoned.

[Siletrea]

YES! more people are agreeing to the same conclusion! XP rocks! I honestly looked at all the RPGmaker products beforehand before buying and I concluded I liked XP best for its large tilesets and use of taller more detailed sprites! along with the biggest script support I've found to date!

xp is the most stylistic and free in my eyes and thats why I love it!

although if ReGaL turns out to be better I'd be willing to jump ship to it!

[Son_Rukiri]

YES! more people are agreeing to the same conclusion! XP rocks! I honestly looked at all the RPGmaker products beforehand before buying and I concluded I liked XP best for its large tilesets and use of taller more detailed sprites! along with the biggest script support I've found to date!

xp is the most stylistic and free in my eyes and thats why I love it!

although if ReGaL turns out to be better I'd be willing to jump ship to it!

I will say this, Ace > Xp but mapping(XP) > Ace.
This is because of RGSS3, FPS limit is 120 (can be unlocked), and generally spot on for eventing.
However, I don't think any one of the RPG Makers that use RGSS3 are better or worse than each other (except VX... that was just a bad engine) and you can backport scripts or upgrade the engine to use the newest version of rgss.  This causes problems because when you upgrade your XP scripts need to be upgraded as well...

XP isn't a perfect thing either, it's seriously outdated so shader effects probably aren't a thing (prove me wrong).
I did read that XP just simply used ruby, there was no mod of any kind to the scripting system, apparently there was in later versions.

Now, you can actually use the ace engine in XP but takes a bit of work so XP with RGSS3 is probably the best RPG Maker version.

[kyonides]

Well, mkxp try to emulate what you could find in XP, but it runs smoothly thanks to Ruby 2.1. The only basic syntax that has changed between 1.8 and 2.1 was the case statement, there you can no longer write when value : something but when value then something. The rest is pretty much the same, except it includes stuff like a new hash syntax in case you use symbols as keys. Plus mkxp has mouse support... The version I know it's fully functional is the Linux version, the one for Windows still needs some fixes...

If you have Ruby 2.x installed on your PC, ypu can run openrgss or rgss3 (open source version).

[Steel Beast 6Beets]

Toss me with the people that claim that RM peaked with XP.

Of course, maybe I'm biased because XP is the one maker I have the most experience with (I dabbled a bit with RM2000 but didn't go far due to losing my old computer to the ravages of time).

For what I could gather, though, I'm not missing a lot of stuff by not trying the newer entries. Specially for someone whose strength is map making.

[KDC]

Toss me with the people that claim that RM peaked with XP.

Toss me in there too, though RPG Maker XP was the very first RPG Maker I tried.

[Son_Rukiri]

Toss me with the people that claim that RM peaked with XP.

Of course, maybe I'm biased because XP is the one maker I have the most experience with (I dabbled a bit with RM2000 but didn't go far due to losing my old computer to the ravages of time).

For what I could gather, though, I'm not missing a lot of stuff by not trying the newer entries. Specially for someone whose strength is map making.

Is that because of mapping? If that's the only reason than MV does have a tiled plugin, now I haven't really had much experience with it and you have to use a tile_resize script as well.
There is a movement script that does bring over polygon collisions which is great if you're working on a zelda style game as you do have diagonal tiles you can walk against.

But, it still baffles me because even recently people still port over the ace engine to XP!   I haven't looked at Ruby RGSS code in ages and would have no idea in how to do zelda style tile collisions, I know the math just not the method for rgss.

You do have to own both Ace and XP for that to work,  but this does bring over ruby 1.9 and 2.0 functionality :) 
The cool editor stuff that was added to ace will have to be done by script sadly..   But ace is still a good rpg engine to use, just feels better with XP with it's better mapping system though, is a shame you do lose the cool event nodes...  

If Regal does become a thing, allow for users to honestly start from scratch IF they want to as that's my main issue with RPG Maker especially considering I mainly only work on A-RPGs which is why I find Game Maker a superior tool for that genre (it is really, not even a question about it) GMS2 made mapping heavenly and is even more advanced than XPs system!  However, tile based collisions are a bit messy, it's still best to go with sprite based collisions (this is what I'm doing) but I do expect some slowdown but not enough for games to not be over 60fps.  

[KDC]

I'm going to admit this. I did like the layer mapping from RPG Maker 2000 to RPG Maker XP. In my opinion RPG Maker VX to RPG Maker MV's was... Pretty much confusing at times. Wish they bring the layer mapping From RPG Maker XP back in the next RPG Maker... If there's a next release.

[Son_Rukiri]

MV is pretty popular right now, mapping has been sorted out with TileD which honestly is fine but an in editor tile editor is a better solution, game maker got it down but they say it's "too much", I usually reply, so your audience can't handle the concept of layers?

Like VX I do believe MV will have an Ace which will basically be what MV should have been to begin with.

If Pixel Game Maker MV is as popuilar as I think it'll be than honestly they should really use Pixel's core and make an RPG Maker out of it "but please for the love of god leave the tile editor alone!! The VX mapping madness has to stop!"

When you can make a game similar to Hyper Light Drifter in RPG Maker call me because while it technically can, the amount of absolute reprogramming is pretty high due to it being an active map based battle system. You can clone the battle system in an afternoon in Game Maker (the tool it was made in), granted cloning battle systems and making them production ready is a different story...

XPs core is very out dated, and while I don't think you need a lot for an RPG but modern engines are better in many ways and ease of use has been vastly improved upon even in later entries to rpg maker. I would love to see a modern XP using C# or Lua, Ruby for games has always been a y tho thought to me... C# is beautiful and isn't hard to learn at all, lua is even simpler and widely used.

Also hope to see more of regal, but um... a flat dark theme would be better as the dark red is kinda eye jarring imho...