Peer pressured badly to switch engines?

[Steel Beast 6Beets]

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.

This is a pretty good point. From what I could gather, it's easier to make non RPG stuff in the newest engines. Seems Enterbrain/whoever is in charge of the programs finally caught up to "the joy of using RPG Maker to make non-RPG games".

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.

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll give it a try and see if it is an improvement.

[DerVVulfman]

Regarding options available... I wonder how many were on the backs of coders that already created them?

And I've used RMXP to make tools... that's stretching its capabilities, is it not?

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

To what specifically did my screenshot confirm?  That I opted to make a game with a 1280x736 viewport, or 40x23 tile area? That was by design.

Do I need to change every viewport?  No. The system already knows the area size I have set for the whole game.  The weather covers the whole screen and outlying borders where effects are generated, and even the fog and panorama planes recognize the custom dimensions set... oh, and this is the setting department:

Code:

module ScrnSize

  # Game Screen Resolution
  Width     = 1280
  Height    = 736

  # Name of Game.Ini
  # (If renamed to match Game.exe... ex:  Fantasia.ini)
  INI_Name  = 'Game.ini'

  # Define speed of game processing
  Graphics.frame_rate = 60 

  # Define shifting map overlays
  Fixed_Panorama  = true
  Fixed_Fog       = true
 
end

I will also point out that while RMXP has a native 640x480, MV has a native 800x600 resolution in which all games start. Ergo, a tweak or effect much like the resolution I employed allows for larger game dimensions. Are the sprites within Fantasia stretched from its native 4:3 dimensions? No. They too have not been altered.


They are merely just larger than the XP sprites to accommodate the larger playing area.

And towards the menus, who would use a 4:3 menu in a 16:9 viewport? Of course they would need to be changed.  That's just common sense. Besides, who wants to use the default menus in the first place?

[kyonides]

I'm still wondering why people defend a product that reached the 1.6.1 milestone. That fact alone speaks of the product's instability and lack of competence of their developers. Did they add so many features as to justify that? The actual answer is NO. Most of them were compatibility issues. Compare it with XP where you reached version 1.0.5 only because they made minor changes to non essential stuff.

When I say non essential I mean they're all about characters you don't use in European languages at all or Steam issues. You could still play the same games using the good old RGSS102E.dll library after quickly editing the Game.rxproj file. This means it's proven to be backwards compatible for sure. You can't say the same about MV at all. If a coder made a plugin for version 1.3 or older, be sure there's a HUGE possibility something stopped working after upgrading the engine to 1.5 or 1.6.

Yes, MV claims to be portable to Android, I guess iOS as well. Not sure if it truly runs on Mac. Even the process of porting the game to Android isn't an easy task. You can finally managed to test it on your phone and notice that its buttons are too large and the message window's contents minuscule. Oh and it lags TERRIBLY! It might be a step in an interesting direction, but it's still quite far from being acceptable, not even satisfying. Then they keep making so called improvements in MV's portability to Android, yet, they break the normal behavior of many components during test runs on PC's. MV has been  buggy for quite some time.

Just a recent example. We all know how a map and the player's character might stutter or jitter every so often, especially visible in MV games. There are people that have tried even 4 jitter fixes and they keep getting the same 1 pixel offset bug while playtesting their demos. One single plugin has inspired 4 or 5 threads that have been opened as a desperate way to try solving such a basic issue one for all.

They only true flaw XP has is that it doesn't offer you more than 4 layers. 4 AREN'T enough!
If XP were as outdated as to make people think it doesn't deserve some extra help or change in their development strategies, why can it be run on mkxp and HiddenChest and mkxp-z and other engines? I'll tell you why! It's because its code base is stable enough as to port it to custom engines. If that weren't the case,  all games they can emulate, actually they RUN them natively, and what really breaks any game there is the Windows specific stuff.

Do you need those alternative engines to make a decent game in RMXP? Not really. It has specific limitations, still, you can't count those features that can be implemented by adding new scripts as flaws nor limitations. If scripts weren't good enough to reimplement faces, then yeah baby, XP would suck. But hey! They easily work! What a scripting miracle!

There's something many but many people ignore by default when they actually shouldn't. I'm talking about XP being an inspiration for a generation of gamers and developers and scripters to improve their scripting knowledge and eventually become full fledged programmers. That's something newer engines that aren't RM related skip on purpose? because they only focus on making it visually appealing or easy, I might just say possible instead, to event stuff. Yeah, it can make your project look like that piece of crap called Minecraft. Nonetheless, people are unable to learn anything besides eventing and mapping. Bakin seems to allow it, because they don't suggest you should depend on the use of C#. It's not one of my favorite programming languages, by hte way. Others don't even consider it. Heck, some of them even register ancient and slightly recent petitions to include any scripting language in their code base, and they still refuse to address the issue.

They might be great developers of middle to upper end engines, yet, they are blindfolded by their followers still picking their engines without realizing the great gift and improvement the inclusion of RGSS and other engines' own languages was back in their early days.

Oh and that argument that MV can be used to make Visual Novel games is mere crap. Even RMXP can do that. Just keep using portraits or busts of your favorite characters, make the engine ignore most of its RPG features and you're done. Nope, it's not a monumental task for experienced users and even less for skillful scripters.

And towards the menus, who would use a 4:3 menu in a 16:9 viewport? Of course they would need to be changed.  That's just common sense. Besides, who wants to use the default menus in the first place?

Well, make a list of all of the VX Ace game devs that stick to Ace's default windows for all of their menus.  I've met dozens of them already.

And you know, MV's initial resolution isn't even 800x600 but a few pixels wider and higher / taller than that, meaning they use a non standard resolution for weird reasons. Tile size related but still inconvenient.

[Remi-chan]

No VVulfman. I'm saying the text window and menu are still stuck in the 640x480 trapezoid and will be until you edit all the scripts or make a master resolution script to modify their values.

The fact the text box shows in the upper right corner of the screen confirms this. That's what i mean by it not being dynamic.

My point is, it's a shit ton of work to get it going. Then if you wanna add say, I dunno, a script that provides a window, like say a Skill Tree or Journal, then you also have to adjust that.

In MV, it fluidly changes.

All the RPGmakers start with weird resolutions, yes. But in MV you change two numbers, and everything updates dynamically. This being the norm has also made coders for plugins considerate of the same conventions.

I'm still wondering why people defend a product that reached the 1.6.1 milestone.

My god is this meant to be an argument against MV? Most game engines are patched. Hell, most every piece of software is patched. Where they add new things, or increase viability of various elements. The fact they kept updating the engine instead of letting it stagnate with a rotten interpreter class (which isn't even hard to fix) like they did in XP and VX is a selling point. Not the hard-hitting criticism you daftly seem to think it is.

I'll be fairly brief with you. You've already proven to be a lost cause. Reading through most of your response, it's the epitome of being blind to the problems and just hyping up XP instead of offering any substance. I will just confirm a few things.

The ports for Mac and Linux work fine, as my friends who have those operating systems can attest.

I don't care about making mobile games so I dunno about that stuff.

The issue with lag caused by the above changes was fixed day one by a patch Yanfly made who at the time was basically the official coder for the program.

No one made the MV for visual novel argument because it's stupid. So why even bring it up? Generally speaking I wish western idiots would stop trying to make VNs, they are not good at it.

XP inspired a generation of coders, yes. So did Game Maker, Neverwinter Nights Toolset, Ren'py, WolfRPG and Macromedia Flash. It's not a legacy. It's just happenstance. it means nothing in the present day. That is fully and entirely: Nostalgia. Nothing more.

Talking up that RMXP could integrate into other engines is a bit short-sighted when it can't even port outside of windows like MV can. The fact you see that as a feature and not as some bizarre design flaw brought on by the engines legendary amount of limitations is a tad concerning.

MV has tools it can use as well. I don't use them because bluntly put: I'm a competent gamedev who doesn't need training wheels. But this does kinda derail your entire hype-train.

The jitter is only an issue on low end PCs. I never have had that. The reason scripting can't fix it is because it's a hardware issue, not an engine inbuilt one.

Also XP has loads of flaws which I already listed. But this is why I'm choosing to mostly disregard you. You aren't being reasonable, you're just being a simp.

The fervor some show for XP is honestly tragic. You are a good example of what I mean, Kyo.

Steel is reasonable. He knows what he likes and why he likes it, but can at least agree with some of my points.

You aren't. You're trying to blanket all of XP's wrongs with pointless platitudes, which makes you basically pointless to debate this with.

[JayRay]

I'm still wondering why people defend a product that reached the 1.6.1 milestone.

Didn't Ubuntu just start version 18.4.0 a while back?

Didn't Unity just begin 5.6.6?

Isn't Unreal Engine nearing 5.2

Godot just received an update making it's version 3.2.2

Let's see, any other dev systems and OS things we need to go over? The version number doesn't even matter, considering the only MAJOR change to MV was when it passed the 1.5 threshold, and while that WAS a bit harsh on plugin developers that made some of their code for the then deprecated versions below 1.5, most of the codes still worked...

You do understand that version numbers are just that, right? just versions of either a stable build or a fork of that build. Show me ANY major github master list that went "Welp, that's it, coded it all, no need to revise, no forks needed... We're stopping at 0.01 alpha - Best version EVER...

Now granted, I'm a Smileboom guy all the way, I support Smile Game Builder and RPG Developer Bakin, and even I know that there is ALWAYS room for improvements - this is NOT a bad thing... this is an evolving dynamic thing. Smileboom finds a bug, squishes it, adds a few more features, waits for the feedback, and makes their product better.

[JayRay]

Also.. not to toot the MV horn. but can you natively run a HiddenChest in a webpage? or an MKXP? in a web browser? MV deploys to web with a mouse click, deploys to Steam with customizeable DRM setup easily. Also, there are tons of articles on why Android doesn't inately use Canvas or WebGL, and thus deployment to Android devices rarely works positively. But it DOES deploy... 

Not to play the devil's advocate here, but people who talk about 'custom rare engine emulation' remind me of that one dude with the turtleneck and the beret in the one corner of the coffee shop, and it gives me the same creepy vibes. If more than 50% of a game dev's time is devoted to how many ultra rare deployments one can do with their game, rather than making the story OF their game, I think..... maybe one is doing gamedev for all the wrong reasons.

Yay, you got your 30 map game to fit onto a Tamagochi screen.. not impressed. Your fitbit watch has a game with 60 FPS? yawn. You got a great storyline that kept me entertained from start to finish with vibrant environments, descriptions, and personality, a battle system that I can understand and feel good about playing, interactions that immerse me into the story? YAY! Yes, more of that please... mmmMMMmm... and another cup of Machado for the guy in the beret in the corner.

They only true flaw XP has is that it doesn't offer you more than 4 layers. 4 AREN'T enough! 

Technically, XP offers 7 layers. 

- Parallax (always below)
- Three Tile Layers
- Event layer with Y  increments. (Player level)
- Event layers with ALWAYS Above (Above Players but below Fog)
- Fog Layer (Above Above ALL)

And MV takes that a slight step further. 

- Parallax (visible in editor, a plus)
- A1-A5 for one layer, with specific tiles being above to overlap the A2 and A1 tilesets for two layers there. 
- B,C,D, and E for doodads layers with automatic 2-layer overlapping if desired.  
- Events that automatically stay below character, at character level with the same Y incremental overlaps, and event layers always above characters.
- Weather Layer, and Fog Layer.

Granted the 'weather layer' is limited without plugins but that's still 10 layers in engine without plugins or scripts.

Of course, with plugins, that number of layers increase exponentially; Galv's Layers, Yanfly's Grid Free Doodads, Tor Domain's Bind Pictures to map (There's potentially 100 more layers if needed)

[DerVVulfman]

Yeah, it can make your project look like that piece of crap called Minecraft.

RUDE!!!

No VVulfman. I'm saying the text window and menu are still stuck in the 640x480 trapezoid and will be until you edit all the scripts or make a master resolution script to modify their values.

Ah, the Menu windows, not the main window itself.  Well, by that reckoning, one would assume that simple scaling values and settings were introduced into RMMV's script mechanics. Please, I could take care of that with my eyes closed.

Word of warning... an improper setting in Yanfly's plugins can screw your screen up... your bitmap pictures do 'not' scale, though the movies do.  This, I believe, can be fixed if...  snicker snicker snicker... I played with the plugins...

Of course, to adapt to what I suggested above would have a slight learning curve.  But that would be just slight, just as it would be for one who codes Ruby script to learn Java OR visa versa. One learns to adapt.

My god is this meant to be an argument against MV?

No.  However, you do wish to promote it to the extend of all else and do question or argue against any other.


Towards Kyonides's original argument...

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?

... that argument is an absolute yes. Mainly to go either with Bakin or with RMMV.  I need not say by whom.


When you suggested the RTP as one of the flaws, that was ... who cares? Yes, RTPs are training wheels, but all of the RM line holds their own RTP, be it RPG2000, RMMZ or ... RPGXPAce2025.

This isn't platitudes towards XP.  However, attacks against the engine highlights how kyonides asked if there was anyone pressured to switch from an engine to another...

[kyonides]

Saying that versioning doesn't really matter is as naive as omitting the fact that there are doodads for XP as well and they have been around for quite some time. You gotta know by now that there are two kinds of versioning systems, the one tools like git and subversion use based on every small change to the code and the semantic versioning. True, there are lots of devs of many applications that mistreat that feature. I've seen it a lot, sadly, but every single part of the version number has purpose.

Did MV use a year based version or name like Ubuntu? Nope, they tried using the semantic versioning thing the old fashion way and really fail to really reflect the real changes made to the core plugins for bugs that truly existed and are still documented, and probably some GUI modifications were included as well. I have nothing against improving the GUI for good or practical reasons. I would ignore MV's failures if they had used a date or some other custom versioning system. Then it would have been demonstrated how they cared about marketing and not so much about quality. And did you forget what I said about the persisting jitter issue? Your memory gotta be getting bad, conveniently unreliable. 

I won't count the parallax as a glorious layer because it's just a large sprite, nothing else. I focused on those layers with events and tiles.

MV offers more layers because they separate weather and fog in separate coats. Good, i won't complain about that. Yet, I can't say it's a reason why anybody would or should move to MV or any later versions available out there.

Now I even have to agree on a point made by childish Remi. The tileset system sucks in MV. It might be slightly improved compared to VX Ace because of the tile dimensions but I wonder how many people go back to 16 or 32. If you've seen them, let me know about them. I might even love playing their games. Even so you can't add more stuff like you can do in XP, the installment that didn't mess with tilesets as much as other versions did.

OK, there's another feature I'd have loved to see in XP, the regions. That would have made XP look great from a core system perspective. I don't know if I'd accept other changes. Vehicles? It's optional in my opinion. Not all games might need it but it they had added the feature, I wouldn't have complained about that.

Nope, HiddenChest or mkxp won't run on web browsers. Is it impossible to achieve? Well, one would obviously need to look for recent alternatives that now exist. MRuby was a nice concept, but it doesn't include any Marshalling at all, a great downside. Wait a second! People have managed to run mkxp-z on a portable device. It's just a project in early stages anyway. Oh but there's WASM out there and Ruby devs are working on taking advantage of its online capabilities so there's a hope for several Ruby projects.

Neither XP nor mkxp based engines are top notch like Unreal and others. I gotta admit that calling MV total crap would be a lie. It's just crappy but it seems there are features that people like you love. Good for you, but I aint buying your MV is ultra kind of propaganda. You even admitted that Android ports suck. Oh yeah, mkxp-z already achieved the same goal. At the end they're no such a terribly great gap between Ruby and JS based engines.

Yeah, the advent of WebGL and other projects seem to be an advantage for JS stuff... for the time being. I hope they truly take full advantage of its capabilities. Time will tell. Again, not against any good project that might become a playable and replayable (RPG) classic like many AAA games.

Am I blind? Nope, it's just that I won't admit it's even barely nostalgia what makes me use any of the RGSS based engines. There's some but it's the developer / company and the publishers the ones to be blamed for that. Truly, they could exploit the benefits of selling them even for another decade or so. Instead, they want them to silently disappear. That only demonstrate to people like all of us here that they hate their own products. That should baffle people's minds for many years to come.

Just as a side note, I'm not asking any of you to use XP or VX Ace just because. I don't mind if you keep using, I dunno, Renpy or any other. You gotta have your own reasons, do whatever it pleases you. My point has always been this hypocrite move from certain people to disregard the old versions for not good enough reasons, especially those that arrived later on at this tarmac of game making. For those that were there ever since RM2K or later editions, I suspect many did it just by thinking they would become more successful for making or remaking it in a later version. Fine, yet, that doesn't mean they've got the right to push people like me for not making many plugins. That happened to me ever since MV was a mere rumor.

If somebody loves parallax mapping, keep doing it. I know that's not for me, I'd rarely rely on them unless I simply need some sunset or the like for very specific reasons.

Anyway, would should anybody change their engine based on the belief that the newer version is the right version for their games and even mine? If I have an useful tool, why can't people stick to it and fully exploit it? XP isn't buggy except for what Wulfo already mentioned regarding the false return value while evaluating scripts or script calls. Probably there are other minor issues but it's hard to find a total crash or even a overwritten project that ends up corrupting a large enough portion of the game as to make it unusable, uneditable. MV has done this, even recently.

[JayRay]

Saying that versioning doesn't really matter is as naive as omitting the fact that there are doodads for XP as well and they have been around for quite some time. You gotta know by now that there are two kinds of versioning systems, the one tools like git and subversion use based on every small change to the code and the semantic versioning. True, there are lots of devs of many applications that mistreat that feature. I've seen it a lot, sadly, but every single part of the version number has purpose.

As far as there being Doodads for XP, I know... I'm the co-author of an XP script for them. (ELSA) -

It's totally not naive to say versioning doesn't matter in most systems. Yes, there is PURPOSE in versioning numbers, but not some earth-shattering Old Testament/New Testament transition. 

As most systems don't destroy their base functionality when they add something and add a +0.01 to their version number when showing the update. If systems would do that, people would be SO pissed, and rightfully so. MV 1.61 works just as well as 1.62... the world didn't collapse when people upgraded from 1.61 to 1.62

For instance, Bakin had a recent update to 1.1.2.3. Did it destroy all the work we did with our games when it was 1.2.2? NO - did it add a few new features and dynamically fix bugs so things worked better? Yep. On a whole did people have to re-do what they already had in their game. nope.... Now, if Bakin came out and said ("we're getting rid of our tilesystem for voxels...") It'd be a pretty big change, and I'm sure the versioning number would be a heck of a lot more than a +0.01...

[DerVVulfman]

I wish to get back to the established query made.

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?

The obvious answer whether peer pressure exists can be readily be seen here.  The answer is yes.

Does it happen in other engines or exclusive to RM?  There have been people suggesting to use Unity, or Unreal, or virtually anything that fits in with what THEY prefer, not what suits the individual pressured.

This thread proves that such pressure exists, if only that the very first response was to pressure the reader towards a specific engine instead of answering if they themselves were pressured.

If you like what you are using, be happy with it. But to continually thrust a system upon others despite what they prefer is discourteous.