How long would it reasonably take to make anything using this shit?
I have 0 programming knowledge or game-making skills, outside of a lifetime of playing games. I know it's mostly about me actually sticking to it, as I'm sure most of the people who buy these never make anything anyways, but, assuming I do stick with it.
For a quick example I'm going to assume most of you are familiar with, if you were to make something as simple as Pokemon Red/Blue, would that take you like years of work?
its really easy
you can make something in a few weeks
>tfw even though you answered my question directly with no bullshit the nature of this site is making me assume you're lying to me to trick me
the type of game you can make is really limited, you have to make shitty 2D JRPGs, and if you draw your own graphics that's not easy but you can make a shit game with stock graphics in a matter of days
Depends on how long you want it to be/how much you want to do with it.
You can actually make more than just JRPGs, though it's not like you can make literally anything ever. Some people have made functioning top down action RPGs for instance.
If your aim is just to make a generic, bog standard JRPG, it's dead simple.
If you want to make something actually worth playing that people won't ignore because it looks like crap though, you will need to make your own assets and learn the scripting language.
start by making a simple 2d rpg just to see how stuff works. just totally mess around and create things. make a town with npcs you can talk to, mess with events, make an npc you can buy stuff from, mess around with monster design and combat and pretty soon you'll be asking yourself "i wonder if i can do ____" and next thing you know a month goes by and you banged out a little game and you'll start wanting to dig into the more advanced stuff.
Don’t bother. Absolutely every game ever made in RPG Maker is dogshit. Every single one.
>But what abou—
Yes, that one’s dogshit, too.
look at all the rpgmaker games. See all those generic rpgs with stock rpgmaker assets? these literally took a week. Nobody who wants to make anything more ambitious makes rpgmaker though, because it is quite restrictive, though i've seen fireemblem likes and actionrpgs in it, aswell as a roguelike.
Check out /vg/ agdg, if you really want to gamedev. Pick up gamemaker, it's almost as easy but you can make actual games with it (e.g. undertale was made with it, risk of rain etc...) or godot (gamemaker but open source and unproven but gaining popularity as of late)
I have no delusions of making anything that will sell well or make me money, this is purely for the fun of it. I honestly think I could make a pretty good game.
True, but your favorite game is dogshit too, so I wouldn't worry about it.
For something actually sort of playable. Maybe a couple of months, a year and a half. Kinda impossibly to say until you actually know what you want to do, how many assets you want to make, how long it's gonna be, how many unique mechanics it's gonna have, how many hours a day you can work on it and so on.
The art and story would take longer, desu.
RPG Maker was on consoles - let that sink in.
youtube.com
It's basically grid and menu based - unless you want to add in custom functions, you won't be programming much
Pokemon would take a long ass time because of the fact it has like 700+ pokemon now. Unless you were to have all the pictures and stuff before
>gamemaker
thanks user, was wondering if i should buy rpg maker since it's on sale, but gamemaker seems like the superior program
basically think of it like this, with rpgmaker you have limited tools, that are very easy to learn, aswell as prebundled assets. It's extremely fucking easy to use.
Gamemaker sacrifices a tiny bit of ease of use aswell as prebundled assets for a vastly better and more versatile set of tools.
So you'll only ever see games that can make do with the inbuilt limitations or even thrive with the assets, like corpse party or to the moon, but something with the smallest bit of out of the box mechanics like for example undertale is already too much for it.
There's a free trial for gamemaker though it's quite restrictive and it's pricing scheme is jewish as fuck, but you'll get tons and tons of tutorials so you can google "gamemaker xyz tutorial" and you'll surely find a 30000 part series on youtube teaching you step by step what to do and possibly even why. And if you can't find it, find similiar things, understand them, and copy over.
the fact that both downwell and undertale were developed using gamemaker makes it seem like something i'd want to learn and use. what if i want to make something with more variety than your standard rpg? rpgs are all about the story and characters, so i might as well write a visual novel or just write instead.
my question is, if you buy the $40 version, can you upgrade later on?
also thanks, i've been wondering if i should buy RPG maker for years now, it's on sale for another 7 hour and i'm like "should i, should i," i tried godot engine but i didn't like it at all. gamemaker seems good
There's also Construct 2 if you want something even easier than GameMaker while still being able to do more varied games. Also, GM only really starts to become usable once you learn to do some basic scripting for it. At least that was my experience.
However, with both those programs you will have to do EVERYTHING, by yourself. From the game system, mechanics, art, menus, and so on. If you want to make an RPG, half your time will be spent basically just making already existing RPG Maker features rather than actually making the levels and items and characters and stuff like that.
With all said and done though, really if you want to make a game that's worth playing, you are gonna have to learn a programming language. There's really no way around it. You are gonna spend every hour over every single day fighting against the program with every little thing. Trust me I know, I did that dance for most of my life. However stuff like GameMaker, Construct 2 and especially Skyrim modding were incredibly helpful in getting there for me.
>if you buy the 40$ version, can you upgrade later
isn't it literally written down there that as long as the 40$ sub isn't expired (it's yearly I think? jews like I said) you can upgrade to the 90$ permanent version with the 40$ discounted.
Try out the free trial though. What didn't you like about godot? it's been updated to 3.1 recently so it's very different from how it was like 2 years ago.
for the love of god don't buy rpgmaker, it's garbage.
also other gamemaker games: va11 hall-a, risk of rain, deadbolt etc. so as long as you don't need 3d you're set pretty much.
>RPG Maker was on consoles
what
really
RPG Maker was on SNES.
zoom zoom
i have absolutely no programming knowledge haha. i'm kind of down to finally learn programming in order to make games though
>However, with both those programs you will have to do EVERYTHING, by yourself
like, your own graphics? this is another problem for me because i suck at drawing... am a writer and musician
>Trust me I know, I did that dance for most of my life
you're a game developer?
as i said, i can't draw and i don't know how to program, so i'm kind of interesting in learning new stuff in order to fulfill my childhood dream of making a video game
RMMV is a reasonably powerful engine if you're not a competent programmer.
Please understand though, that the hard part of making games has nothing to do with the engine. It will take a lot of patience and time to master any system, no matter how easy.
You can do quite a lot with it, especially with the js plugins available.
Just pirate fucking GM. Try it for a while, and if you still think you're serious about gamedev and you want to do it in GM, buy it.
yeah i've been aware of rpg maker since maybe 2003
oh cool
will definitely try out the free trial. i just didn't like the look and feel of the program, also i don't like any of the games that has been made with it. i'm sure it's a capable program
>for the love of god don't buy rpgmaker, it's garbage.
cool alright, it's settled, i won't
Just use Unity, dude.
It's not that hard to learn.
this my friend is solid advice
can you not publish games with a pirated version though? also it's only $40 bucks
>deleted
Yikes!
How hard is to make a conversation with character movement?
100% this, OP. I got this program a few weeks ago and I've almost finished a basic little Dragon Quest clone with all the premade graphics and stuff. It's short, it's uncreative, it's unbalanced, but it helped me learn the engine and now I feel like I have enough knowledge to move on to a "real" project
In RPG Maker?
Super easy.
you'll have to make all art yourself unless you use one of the billion free gameart packs online. Or one of the billion pay what you want one's on itch.io or whatever. You WILL have to learn programming for anything though, no way around it. Though you can use "visual programming" in GML which even an imbecile can grasp in an hour.
I accidentally uploaded the screenshot at 4K because I'm a fucking dip
Very easy. You don't need any programming knowledge at all for stuff like that
hm, i used to draw when i was a stoner but i'm not a very good visual artist... not that i can't draw at all, just the look of a game is the most important thing... i need to really consider if this is a path i want to go down, because i'd have to learn to draw and to program in order to make a game.
Even having the party members "pop out" from the MC? Multiple things happening at once for example.
>like, your own graphics?
Yeah. And everything else as well for that matter. The freedom is great, but it can quickly get overwhelming since until you are actually doing it, you don't really realize just how many things a game needs to function and how much we take for granted.
>you're a game developer?
Not professionally no. I've just been doing it(well trying to) as a hobby since I was like 10. But I only took the plunge and finally started learning proper programming a little less than year or so ago. Let's just say in this last year I have done more to create a game than my last 15 years combined. And even then I'm kinda shit and barely scratched the surface of game development and programming. But I'm also pretty damn stupid overall. Making a game is incredibly challenging since it takes a ridiculous amount of time while requiring knowledge in a vast amount of skills. Maybe more so than any other common creative field.
visual programming takes no art skills whatsoever, it's just that instead of writing code, you arrange a weird tree with properties I guess? google it, follow along a tutorial.
As for assets, either learn how to do it yourself, or make do with free assets online (there's a metric shitton) or even commission some. Heck it's totally fine to pirate assets if you aren't going commercial, who's gonna find out?
All of that stuff is doable without programming at all.
Default control for party members is a bit trickier.
Much easier to control NPC events, and player.
I use a custom script to take direct control of party-followers.
>tfw can draw but can't program
Only reason I want to use this is to fuel my giantess fetish and make a short 15-minute game with multiple scenarios, I want to learn it too
Which of these buttons lets you control movement for active party members?
None of them.
Try godot. It's free, open-source, has decent communuty, easier than unity(and smaller) and can build vidya for almost every platform. It's also on steam.
There's different classes for eventing in RM.
You can do a lot with parallel processes, but they can slow down the system if you get too ambitious.
Do not use Godot.
If you're going to spend the time to learn something, go with the thing that's got the biggest community, most support, and widest range of tutorials and projects to pick through.
that's interesting though, it'd make one appreciate all the work that goes into making a video game more.
>I've just been doing it(well trying to) as a hobby since I was like 10
oh cool
>this last year I have done more to create a game than my last 15 years combined
that's awesome! good for you
making a game seems even harder than making a film, which also is a combination of various mediums - music, visual art, writing. but with games it's programming, visual art, music, and writing
i'd probably just learn to draw and make characters in illustrator or something, have been meaning to learn to draw lately. piano, math and drawing are some of the weaknesses i've been working on
It can be done with plugins easily.
The pic I uploaded wasn't meant to demonstrate what I was saying, I guess that's my bad.
For that stuff RPG Maker is great. That or something like Renpy.
Just remember to make the game in at least 720p. I can't fathom how anyone would ever make a porn game this day and age and not at least have 720p. It's fucking ridiculous.
You can't do what OP asked for with default.
Don't mislead them into thinking this shit's easy.
Oooor, you can just make a map clone that contains the exact event you want and the characters you want, interacting the way you want.
>got the biggest community
Godot community is bigger than rpgmaker
>projects to pick through.
Godot has shitton of different sample projects.
Yes, this is an ideal system.
However, it only works if you have fixed NPCs.
In a system wherein you're able to swap party members, but still need them to animate properly for scenes you'll be creating a lot of extraneous event pages (one for each party member possibility).
Less work long-term to just install a party-mover script.
[apologies if I sound like an asshole, I've been trapped in RMVXA for 10 years]
Godot was being compared to Unity, not RM.
RM community is definitely bigger than you know.
>basic movement
>not easy
you literally watch episode 1 of any tutorial and know what to type in to get movement.
I """"use"""" Ace too and to be honest im not an expert but this is one of the few things i actually know of and to be honest i doubt it would be resource heavy if you just made a bunch of event pages for having versitility in this one case of interaction/cutscene, then you can either cut down on the characters or at least use the ones who are relevant during said event in general i'd say its better to have an event management headache than a plugin compatibility one.
I only mentioned Unity because it's where people usually going if RM is not enough for them.
>RM community is definitely bigger than you know.
Where? If we take, for example, reddit, godot has more subscribers than rpgmaker.
Listen, bruh.
Homeboy asked to move party-followers.
You responded
>All of that stuff is doable without programming at all.
You cannot do what OP asked, without a modicum of programming.
One thing I can recommend is instead of jumping straight into making your own games. Learn how to make mods. These days it's an incredible undervalued thing since well, making a mod is not as "prestigious" as making your own game. But it's an amazing way to learn a varied set of skills. And it's how I did it. You can just kinda slowly introduce yourself to for example programming and 3D modeling as you go along rather than jumping straight in doing everything at once. Skyrim's scripting system Papyrus is the sole reason I was able to learn how to program. Since any other time I tried just jumping right into it my retarded brain would just go "too hard" and give up.
It's not a resource heavy thing, no.
Only one page is ever active at a time.
It's the time it takes manually opening and setting sprites.
Makes it hard to fix things, and it's just a pain in the ass.
Yeah.
The right answer largely depends on scale.
Yeah i kinda got distracted and went a different route. But like i said, its better to have a painful event than to make sure all plugins are happy with each other, not to mention how you can brag about doing something with events alone.
Tell us your core mechanic - the one thing that gets you excited to do something different from everything else you've seen; and we'll tell you how difficult it will be to do that in RPG Maker.
All pre-made engines have limitations, however so long as it's not critical to your core gameplay loop you can accomodate. If it is, then don't pull the trigger.
The more limited in scope your game dev framework/engine is, the likelier it is to be easy to develop for. Of course, the tradeoff is that it'll be very hard or impossible to make something out of the 2d top down rpg mold.
get gamemaker instead
its been doing great for me so far desu and is pretty easy to learn
>bragging about doing something with events alone.
My man.
Can you make first person dungeon crawlers with it?
modding seems like a great way to learn the internal mechanisms of a game. as someone with no knowledge or experience with game design or programming, even modding and rom hacking seem cool to me. i'm definitely only interested in 2D games hahah, so that'd make it easier for me
gamasutra.com
skimmed this article, apparently the guy who made downwell did this and it's a good way to learn. i think i'm going to get into this, i've made a ton of music lately and it's getting me nowhere so it's time to try and learn something new, and i can always use my music as the soundtrack for my games
I would not attempt this with RM.
It can be done, but it's not the right engine.
speaking of GMS/GM
anyone know if its possible to make a daggerfall-esque 'first person' game
Can stealth be done with MV or VX Ace? Also wondering how you can make it so that when you attack an enemy from behind, you get an advantage in a fight.
Holy shit is this like what i mentioned or something else entirely?
That's just me taking up 26 event pages for a single chair event with different NPCs sitting in it with different states.
Also, a few pages for player-only sitting in chair with contextual stuff from player action.
Also, a page for controlling the transition of player exiting chair with just an arrow-press.
Yes!
I currently use a script that allows me to detect player proximity to an event square. You can also use some more complex conditionals to pattern NPC "facing" if you wanted to let the player pass freely behind them (but get caught in front/side).
There's other methods of doing stealth, but this would provide the best gamefeel. (It's also the most complex to implement)
You can do it more simply with designating areas via the "region painter" tool. However, then there's likely a fixed path that the player can follow without any room for variance (less game, more puzzle).
So its like a bunch of characters that appear in that same places in different parts of the game huh? yeah i can see it. I wish i was this dedicated and actually do some work
Nice. I'll see what I can do later today without a massive pile of Yanfly scripts.
Uh, no.
Much more stupid/complex than that.
When the player goes to sit in the chair opposite this chair, your party member will walk to the other chair and sit down - activating special conversation.
Oh wow, that does sound complex indeed, especially if there are many joinable party members. Is this a Dragon's Dogma refference?
>without a massive pile of Yanfly scripts.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
There have been some pretty good horror games coming out of RPG maker.
Witch's house comes to mind.
Since those types are underrepresented, I'd recommend those rather than just a poor mans RPG.
Never played Dragon's Dogma.
My whole game is wholly complex to an unnecessary level, but I live for that level of immersion. It's that level of work that's allowed me to differentiate my game from the standard RM chaff.
Do you have an itchio page or somewhere we can follow development? it sounds interesting
Godot is free, RPG Maker is expensive.
Depends on how long you want your game to be in first place.
This engine is pretty good if what you want to do is a 2D Turn-Based RPG, think about Final Fantasy VI.
The base features may be lacking at times, pic related will be your new God whenever you need more or just an easier way to do some things.
Sorry, no.
Game will be out next year.
It's a sequel.
Link to the first?
In this game, there's places where you can sit down with a party member and tell them what to generally do while adventuring, like be cautious or risky etc.
Since im a talentless hack myself i actually hold no prejudice against even the most generic RM projects made with RTP alone, unless they're low effort garbage of course but surely seeing something more advanced is always welcome and an eye-opener for us inferior """devs"""
RPG maker MX or ACE.
Ive seen a ton of pros and cons for each, but it all seems to stem from fanboys of that specific version.
MX doesn't exist.
MV is just VX Ace but better.
my bad.
Use MV
Do not get into ACE today.
It's got tons of hacks for it, but MV is much better.
Also, porting Ruby (VX Ace) to console/mobile was a nightmare.
At least it's feasible with MV.
Gotcha, gotcha.
Mine's more like... "Let's sit and talk about life and other bullshit."
More like Persona than anything else, I guess?
That's probably the best explanation.
Sorry, no.
I'd get in trouble.
Oh i see, thats certainly immersive and can see why it would take loads of event pages, isnt 999 the max tho?
Is there a good site to download decent fanmade tilesets?
I want to make a more modern world RPG, but cant seem to find shit on it outside of their one paid one
Pirate the DLCs.
I see. So your game's not real, then.
rpgmaker is not made for people who can program
the vast majority of people who use it cannot
it actually layers a bunch of junk on top of the programming that makes it irritating and gimps the shit out of you if you use its editor
unironically better off demarshalling the gamedata and using a text editor at that point
do not use MV, that makes you a webdev
which is for shitters
>though it's not like you can make literally anything ever
the thing is, actually you can, at least in VX ace
ruby's kernel library is exposed, you can load .dlls
it's only a question of
>is doing so a good idea
and
>at what point do i stop making things purposefully more difficult for myself
couldn't care less about MV though, i highly doubt there's an equivalent lib
plus javascript is just a garbage language
Thats the issue. I cant find em.
Most of my sites only have the barebones game
Yah.
Thankfully I don't have 900 characters.
(yet)
>He doesn't know
Pokemon Essentials has birthed a metric fuckton of Pokemon RPGmaker fangames. Everything's already programmed in, including Mega Evolutions and shit, and there's even add-on packs that replace the sprites with the 3D models from the 3DS games.
You can get some decent mileage out of the tileset packs, but I wholly recommend using them for placeholder/blocking, then doing proper parallax maps in your favorite art program.
Brother, I wish...
with that kind of time you could have learned advanced c++ and finished a game engine of your own by now
or learned a better engine and made a game in it
>implying I don't also make weird VR shit in Unity
Damn.
I like the horror games. And by "the horror games" I just mean the most popular ones.
Ib, Mad Father, Witch's House and Yume Nikki.
why the fuck would you spend almost 2 years using rpgmaker when you know how to program
rpgmaker is gimped to fuck by its editor and ruby's lack of consistent syntax and duck/dynamic typing is also bad
So it's not a game you made? Or it is, and it's well-known enough that you'd be breaking NDA or something?
Give us a hint :O
So, this will sound insane...
I've made more money off my RM stuff than Unity.
I definitely get more respect from my peers for my Unity work, but RM pays my bills very well.
>666 days playing RPG maker
now that's dedication
>tfw I want to make a game, have the skills to make a game (aside from art, but I can pay people for that), bought some cheap asset packs to make a game, but can't talk about what I want to make yet because I'm afraid someone will steal my idea before I get to it
suffering, really.
for some odd reason my gut feeling is that sounds rather plausible
i wonder if people are fatigued by the dearth of unity games and just instinctively avoid them
There's enough hints in this thread already.
No NDA, just like being private.
(posting here is wildly uncharacteristic for me, but I felt connected to OP and clearly obsess on engine)
Jesus... Where did the time go?
So, my Unity stuff is very *out there* and wholly noncommercial. Like, I can't even figure out a way to sell it yet. It's not very product-oriented.
I think, having been constrained by RM for so long, when I finally stepped out of the hyperbolic time chamber and started using an engine with actual freedom, I was waaaaaay too eager to push the limits to an absurd level.
What I eventually made just can't be sold. It does very well at festivals and shows and parties, but that's all it's really good for.
If I can figure out a way to package the insanity a little better, and make it less hacky, there could be a decent chunk of change in there.
Until then, I'll enjoy the fact that I know I can do incredible things with code while still artificially truncating myself in a shit engine that demands I give it zen-like patience and attention to pay the bills.
MV. If only for the fact that it can do higher resolutions without being a pain in the ass about it.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This been a good thread.
Thanks, all.
Gamedev threads are the best Yea Forums threads.
It's like AGDG without the elitism, pretentiousness and forced memes.
>There's enough hints in this thread already.
god I hate all this cryptic shit on v and Yea Forums in general, either tells us or not
Not.
Clearly, not.
good for you I guess? I mean I feel the need to question a game dev who actively tries to take attention from their projects
OP here. I've been wagecucking for the last two and a half hours and I won't be done until the thread 404s unless it's up literally the entire day.
Right now I don't have any ideas, but I know I can come up with stuff because I have "made" lots of tabletop pen and paper games and board games like a loser. I made the thread as a spur of the moment thing because I was browsing steam before work and saw the latest rpg maker was only 20 dollars.
However, trying to think of how I could make a cool and interesting RPG would really make the next seven hours pass real fucking easy. On my lunch break if the threads still up I'll definitely post any ideas I have. One immediate question I have is, how possible is a monster catching/training game? I'm not married to the idea but, if it's doable I might go that route.
Just letting you guys know I'm gonna read all this even though I haven't posted in a long time.
>first game: Splatoon
If you ever get the spotlight on yourself, you'll understand why some don't like it.
The amount of sales I'd make shilling myself here are negligible to the psychological cost.
Pokemon is doable, but I wouldn't recommend for your first try.
If you can, try to imagine something that doesn't even use most of the standard systems.
Start with a concept for a simple scene. Movement, talking, choices, that kinda shit.
You can get that kind of thing playable in a day, see some progress, and feel like you're capable of taking another step. Go for much more than that during orientation, and you'll get overwhelmed and/or frustrated while seeing very little/slow progress.
Actually now that I think about it for a bit that sounds fucking impossible as a one man test project. I'd have to create an entire bestiary with stats and all that shit and if I'm not copying directly from another game that would be impossible to make work, I don't even have any artists to draw monsters for me anyways.
I'll just stick with traditional weapons and magic shit.
Yah, exactly.
Too much, all at once.
Don't be afraid of placeholder art, though.
Just make everything to scale, and hotswap with final files once you're established enough to convince some artist you're worth investing time into.
There's plenty to do with the default combat system already. However, I really do recommend skipping that on your first day in-engine.
don't use that garbage and learn to make something using unity instead
>if you were to make something as simple as Pokemon Red/Blue
that's not simple
if you wanted to make some shit game in rpg maker it'd likely take you less than a week
MV is the easiest one to work with, they're designed so that even someone with zero knowledge about programming could use it, or at least going somewhere with it.
You need to just plop shit somewhere and that's it.
You could even use someone's script to make your game prettier and look less samey with premade shit, since MV is using Javascript for individual script it's even easier to add/remove stuff.
This is how I'm gonna approach things. I just grabbed an asset pack from somewhere and I'll be using that in lieu of actual artwork while I get the game started. Once(if) I get some traction and potentially income I'll start paying people to draw the art I want.
what are the best RPG Maker games on Steam?
if you want to make money of an rpgmaker game, you have to be the 0.1%