Rpg Maker Vx Ace How to Make My Game Continuable After the Ending

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Hello RMN community!

It's been many years since I've used any of the RPG Maker Programs. I was around during the earliest translations of RM2K and then RM2K3, and left the scene shortly after RPG Maker XP was released.

I purchased a copy of RPG Maker XP when it came to the states, but lost all my info tied to the purchase, and licensing information(it may just be buried on HD, I'll have to look more).

Either way, I decided to see what was new these days, and came back to the RMN site. I was surprised to see that there are actually two new engines added to the list, VX and VX Ace.

My question is, what are the differences of these? Are they actually better than XP?

Most of my experience was with RM2K and RM2K3, and I remember feeling a bit lost with RMXP with certain things. I've noticed there are a ton of resources for both XP and the VX programs, so not sure there is much of a difference there. I should be able to find scripts and such to accomplish what I need to in either program.

Any input is helpful :)

Thanks.

LockeZ

I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.

6003

VX is probably not even worth considering, as it's worse than VX Ace in every way except for the price.

The main difference between XP and Ace is that XP has much more powerful mapping (three layers instead of two, infinite tilesets of infinite size) but VX Ace is much more friendly with its events (it has many event commands and options that XP is missing). VX Ace took a more streamlined, user-friendly approach to the entire engine that most people generally appreciate, but XP's ability to make more complex maps was sacrificed as a casualty.

Both of these downsides are surpassable; if you're comfortable with scripting then the comparatively crappy event commands in XP don't matter, and if you're comfortable with photoshopping then the comparatively crappy mapping in VX Ace doesn't matter.

In the end my advice is always to decide the details of your game first. Figure out what features you need that you aren't willing to code yourself, and then find scripts that do those things. And then use whichever RPG Maker those scripts are for. Because many scripts have only been made for one engine or the other.

Thanks for your input :)

I wonder why they didn't keep the mapping of XP with VX. I guess it's a minor issue as you said, but it sounds like it would have been the whole package if they left it alone.

I think I had issues setting up events in XP before, because I didn't learn any of the scripting side of things. So, it looks like I'll give VX Ace a shot.

LockeZ

I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.

6003

Same reason they remove the other features they always seem to remove in every new version - they're deemed "too complex" for people who've never used the program before. Plebs can't handle having that much control over tilesets, I guess.

I wonder where they get these ideas from. My sister is almost completely computer illiterate and she had no problem figuring out XP's mapping.

About VX/Ace, though, I demo'd them a while ago, and other than a few auto-complete things like "make treasure chest" I didn't notice much of anything new on the eventing side of things. Did they actually add any new functionalities?

Hell yes they did. You no longer need scripts to mess with things like enemy target rates, healing regeneration per turn, all kinds of character-centric bits and bobs. Also added the region painting ability for maps so that you can specify regions a lot easier. Want one region that spawns rare monster every ten steps? Easy~

Yeah VX Ace is really the shit. Most of the best scripts are for the program as well.

There's a lot of little things I like about Ace. Regions are really neat, but being able to make your own damage formulas more than makes it worth using. At least, for typical RPGs. The only thing I miss from XP is a 3rd map layer. Also since Ace has been around for a while now, XP doesn't have an advantage in scripts anymore.

imo: Ace>>>XP>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>VX

LockeZ

I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.

6003

I could live without a third layer; I would just need about three times as many tiles per tileset. Since instead of just one candle tile, I'd need like twenty candle tiles, each on top of a different desk/table or a different section of a desk/table.

Since some of my tilesets are already breaking the soft limit in RMXP -- 2048 rows of tiles in a single tileset is where the scroll bar stops functioning, but you can have more, you just have to use the arrow keys past that point -- I really can't even imagine how I'd be able to put up with losing the third layer and also being limited to only 288 rows of tiles, and more than half of those being forced to be lower layer only.

...I'm exaggerating the problem a little I guess. I made some decentish maps in RM2K3 with only two layers and far fewer tiles. I just heavily abused events, treating them like a third layer. But that's annoying, time-consuming, and the kind of confusing system that novices really would have trouble with. You'd think events-used-as-a-third-layer would be the kind of user-unfriendly thing Enterbrian would try to kill off.

----------------

But yeah depsite my complaints my main advice is still WORRY ABOUT YOUR SCRIPTS FIRST - LET THE SCRIPTS DECIDE THE ENGINE

I like RMXP for the mapping, but I'm using RMXP for Atoa's Chrono Trigger Battle System.

Ace and XP are the way to go as far as I'm concerned, since they're both quite stream-lined despite their differences and have many ways to be used... and, well, Ace is pretty much a direct improvement of VX so there you go.

UPRC

Exciting, but ultimately pointless.

7376

I could never grow to appreciate XP. It felt clunky and not very user friendly after moving up from 2k3. The mapping was very nice, though.

I skipped VX and went straight to VX Ace, and it's by far the best of the RPG Maker products. The mapping system is a little weird and even 2k3's mapping has a few advantages when it comes to how laying tiles works, but as a whole? VX Ace destroys the competition. It's just so thoroughly complete. It's user friendly, has tons of new features, and the scripting community for it is very large. I mean, how could you say no to that?

unity

You're magical to me.

12399

I went from XP to Ace also. While I thought XP was pretty great, yeah, Ace is just hands-down better in every way except mapping. I've had to jump some hoops to get the tilesets to work the way I want, but I'll gladly take that with all the great improvements.

As LockeZ said, the best way to go about it is to figure out the assets that your game needs and then use the Maker that fits it best. All things being equal, though, VX Ace is my favorite maker.

LockeZ

I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.

6003

Personally, all the new built-in features in VX Ace are things I could script in under an hour in XP. Though 99% of them you wouldn't even need to, because other people have already made scripts that do those things. You can just go download the scripts to do those things if you need them.

XP doesn't have looping panoramas? No big deal, just plug in the Endless Panoramas script. Now it does, and it has more control over them than VX Ace.

XP doesn't have vehicles? No problems, grab any of the thirty different Airship/Vehicle scripts, many of which are customizable with built-in options to do popular things from various games, like pressing Esc to enter the cockpit, having limited gas, or being able to tow a different vehicle.

I frankly don't even know why they made VX and Ace, since by the time they were released, every single feature they put in them had already been put in XP by the users. I understand why people use Ace now - almost all the scripters eventually moved over to Ace. But I don't understand why those scripters moved over to Ace. Or why anyone other than newbies used it at release.

unity

You're magical to me.

12399

A lot of what I like in Ace are time-saving measures. Notetags on characters, items, monsters, skills etc allow you to easily utilize scripts with them without having to go into the scripts database every time. Having the damage formulas right next to the skills makes things quicker, and things like that. Yeah, you can do all of that in XP, it just takes a little more time. It's really a matter of preference, I think.

I'm also not fond of the Ace chibi charaset characters. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around why I don't like them, because I had no problem with similar overworld character styles in the early Final Fantasies, but I just find the XP characters a lot more appealing. Luckily, you can use XP characters in Ace pretty easily.

There also seems to be some bias against XP with some users and players. Not sure the details, but something about framerates and the RTP tilesets being blah and ugly. *shrugs *

Wow. Thanks for all the great feedback everyone, it's much appreciated :)

I like the sound of VX Ace. I'm more interested in something that is fast/easy to use, and I'm not really hung up on mapping. Most of my experience was with RM2K and RM2K3, so I'm used to having the two layers to work with. I remember the events in XP being a bit confusing.

Anyways, maybe I will tinker with both for a month. Work on a small project in each, and see which one is more suited overall.

I'm just excited to jump in and get my hands dirty. It feels nostalgic to be working with these programs again, after almost 10 years of being away.

author=unity
There also seems to be some bias against XP with some users and players. Not sure the details, but something about framerates and the RTP tilesets being blah and ugly. *shrugs *

This is probably a mix of how RMXP's default frame rate is 40FPS which can be adjusted by a script (Graphics.frame_rate = 60, I do this in every XP game I play because fuck 40FPS) and how RM VXP aren't hardware accelerated and instead rendered entirely in software which isn't as fast and can cause performance issues. XP's predecessors, 2k(3) didn't have either of these issues (but DirectDraw seems to be having legacy issues on Windows 8) and the weaker computers of the day compounded the software rendering problem and there was a frame rate / smoothness problem with XP compared to 2k(3).

The taller and more detailed character style of the RTP while still only having three frames of animation probably didn't help smoothness perceptions either.

author=joeybob
Anyways, maybe I will tinker with both for a month. Work on a small project in each, and see which one is more suited overall.

This is a good idea, both have 30 day free trials (last I checked which has been a while). I would recommend trying Ace first though, it's currently 75% off ($70 -> $17.50) on Steam for the next 45 hours (as of writing this post). If you do want Ace that's a pretty good deal!

author=GreatRedSpirit
it's currently 75% off ($70 -> $17.50) on Steamfor the next 45 hours (as of writing this post). If you do want Ace that's a pretty good deal!

Dang! Thanks so much for the heads up GreatRedSpirit! For under $20, I don't see any reason not to grab a full copy today.

author=GreatRedSpirit
RM VXP aren't hardware accelerated and instead rendered entirely in software which isn't as fast and can cause performance issues. XP's predecessors, 2k(3) didn't have either of these issues (but DirectDraw seems to be having legacy issues on Windows 8) and the weaker computers of the day compounded the software rendering problem and there was a frame rate / smoothness problem with XP compared to 2k(3).

Oh, so this is why all VX Ace games run like crap on my 9 year old laptop!

Be careful with those 30 day trials, though - they start the moment you download the setup file! I thought I could just install it at my leisure and demo it from there, and ended up only being able to demo Ace for like, two days. Probably why I didn't notice all this apparently cool and awesome new stuff.

Also, just wanna say, XP RTP music > all other RM's except the Super Famicom one (if that even counts). Like, a lot of commercial RPGs don't even have compositions that good!

Thanks for the heads up about the trial.

I'll have to spend some time and check out XP's tracks, now that you mention it.

Yeah, XP has the best soundtrack of the lot. Probably the reason I used it in my RM Venture entry. XD

larsenspoes1969.blogspot.com

Source: https://rpgmaker.net/forums/topics/14898/

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