EasyRPG | Hacker News Reader

EasyRPG

easyrpg.org

439 pointstosh79 comments

I say this as probably one of the most skilled rm2k3 devs (credentials: rpgmaker.net/games/5794/), don't develop using this generation anymore.

I think this project is neat from a preservation perspective, but there are so many limitations to its target engine that you will quickly bump into if you try to make anything that even approaches the quality of a real SNES RPG.

You're much better off using one of the later gen engines that uses JavaScript (probably whatever the very latest is).

What kinds of limitations?

From a programming perspective, the scripting language is at about the level of assembly. Expressions like A*B+C*D have to be manually decomposed into add/multiply instructions with temp variables. To call a "subroutine", arguments are passed through global variables. Many of the inputs to the builtin commands have to be fixed constants, ie. you're very limited in where variables can appear.

Yep, this is the big one! Bonus round:

The "pictures" you're allowed to use (sprites that aren't the map, objects or system UI), must be explicitly set so if you want to render an integer as a picture you need 10 if statements per digit to select the right image. This has been resolved in re-release on Steam/etc, and also originally could be worked around using Cherry's PicPointer patch (which my project would've been impossible without).

All these complaints actually sound like good things to me, actually.

The platform has a very specific goal and it does not attempt to offer you a half-assed way to reach outside of that goal.

Like, what you just described should be accepted as "sprites can't be used to display numbers, that is not a feature of this engine", not "doing X is really hard".

These complaints sound like complaining about the difficulty in making an FPS on the Pico-8, or drawings in Microsoft Word. That's not what it's designed for.

I know the web has gotten us used to the idea that any platform can be hammered into whatever purpose we like, and so a document engine is now the frontend of all applications, but there's something to be said for having a clear, refined, limited purpose.

I've never used this engine, but I used to make ums maps in StarCraft 1. The programming language there was glorified outlook Mail Rules. You had to plan your gameplay around the capabilities of the platform, not the other way around.

The result was a lot of fantastic games that still felt like StarCraft.

Looking at the timelines, kind of surprised you didn't cut your losses and use RPG Maker XP or later w/ ruby as the scripting language, which was released in 2004. I'm estimating that project wasn't started before 2005?

Why did you stick with using that when newer engines were around?

The project was started around 2008 iirc! XP and VX were out at the time, but the larger resolution and mapping limitations were dealbreakers for me. They've since fixed these issues in the more recent engines so I wouldn't choose that again.

Speaking of which, is that FF7 remake ever going to be finished? :)

Probably not :)

The funny thing is that I implemented all the mechanics but burnt out on the pixel art, and I can't see myself wanting to grind that out. The game has 700+ scenes!

Oh if all you're missing is pixel art I currently have some free time each day I could dedicate to it. Any way to contact you outside hacker news?

When EasyRPG Editor will be ready (that's a big "when", of course), it will feature improvements over the original RM2k3.

Most likely this will include other graphics sizes (Ghabry had already made an experimental branch for that) and plugin support (again, there used to be an experimental branch using Ruby by make-cheese already).

In fact, EasyRPG already includes some improvements (Unicode support, modern image formats, etc.), but it's difficult to use them because there is no editor supporting them (well, unless you count R48, but it's not user-friendly).

Shameless plug: I feel a bit sad that my own project rpgplayground.com never makes it into these kinds of discussions.

Although I have some hardcore fans, and I'm pretty happy with my community, there is something about my project that doesn't resonate with existing platforms like HN and others.

I always comfort myself that I have the same demographics as Roblox (more or less), and that was also 'hidden' for a long time ;).

Anyway, if you want to try out a super easy to use, but incomplete RPG making tool, give rpgplayground.com a try! <- another shameless plug ;).

Any feedback or perspective on my project is welcome of course!

Same demographics or same userbase? How many Monthly active users to you have on your platform ?

Demographics. I define my audience as "creative teenagers" (I didn't pick them, they picked me). Roblox is mostly focused on the playing side, while I still focus on the making side. Maybe Minecraft is closer to my userbase.

It's very hard to get into the "mainstream" media or sites when you have a product focused towards teenagers. Unless it's about "this company raised X" or "This company is doing X revenue".

I have around 1K weekly active users. Technically these are 'unique logins', so people who come back after registering. Definitely not in a PMF stage yet, since my retention numbers are really depressing :'(.

I'm quite infatuated with this project. There's a rich history of beloved RPG Maker 2000/2003 games and I'm glad people are putting in the effort to preserve them. Actually, people are still making them to this day!

IIRC: There's a similar project for XP as well

Ps. I think a lot of people are getting the wrong idea. An editor IS in progress but it isn't ready yet and most of the focus is currently on compatibility.

RM2K, BYOND, and Zelda Classic were essential early 2000s internet culture. They got me hooked on software engineering.

This is such a great project. I hope we'll see these become more accessible and live on for a long time.

I didn't use or play Zelda Classic but I was a young kid and later teenager trying to make games in Qbasic, RM2K/3, GameMaker, BYOND, MUD makers, and so on. It was a huge part of my life and inspired a life and passion in IT.

I miss the forums and communities from back then. Gaming World aka gamingw.net was my old haunt. Rival GamingGroundZero was another popular community at the same time. Late 90s early 00s. I had a lot of really close friends that I may never talk to again. That's life though.

Wow, didn’t think I’d see a reference to old RPGMaker forums from way back! What was your old username on GamingW? I’m still in touch with quite a few GW people there via Discord.

>Zelda Classic

but did they have a license to make an unauthorized zelda story?

I do mean this as constructive criticism, not an insult.

Jokes are supposed to be funny.

So many fond memories of playing weird DBZ games on BYOND!

Looks to be approx. a decade old project (first commits late 2013). Last release appears to be approx. 1 year ago. For those who have used this or are familiar, how far along are they to the goal of making a full clone of rpgmaker? How usable is this for someone getting started new?

EDIT: Looks like that is when the git history started, but from the responses here it sounds like this started more towards mid-2000s

I've used EasyRPG Player, to play quite well known (at least in the community/scene) RPG Maker games just fine. That in itself is a major success in my book. I played through a few titles I used to play.

That’s a great idea! I think I have a CD-R lying around with plenty of RPG Maker 2000/2003 games. Let’s see if I can find it…

Still have that game "database" link bookmarked: https://mega.nz/folder/1cpnHBKT#6EGB88UNm5O2K5TRpNJ2Qw (not created by me)

EDIT: I am not sure how many non-English or non-German games this contains.

Thank you for that link! At first sight I couldn’t find any Spanish games, but could recognize some other non-Spanish titles (Kindred Saga and Velsarbor). Regardless, great resource.

I once played a Spanish RPG Maker game, to improve my Spanish : ) Was good fun! Unfortunately I found out it was only a demo ^^ I think, if I had been more into the Spanish scene back then, I would have played many more Spanish RPG Maker games. Can you recommend any?

The vast majority of Spanish RPG Maker games were either unfinished or tech demos, but I can recommend “La Leyenda Heroen” (https://rpgmaker.net/games/5750/) and “La Cicatriz de Dhux” (https://rpgmaker.net/games/1492/). Apparently, both have English translations.

Thanks for this! I've also been learning Spanish (for a while now) so I'm always on the lookout for input/practice material. I have a lot of nostalgia for RM2K/2K3 and the 16-bit era of RPGs, so it would be cool to check these out sometime.

It’s much older than that. I was part of the Hispanic RPG Maker community and, if I recall correctly, the project started there in the early to mid 2000s. I’m surprised and glad to see it has come such a long way!

That’s RPG Maker though, this is about EasyRPG which is more recent.

No, the grand poster was right about this being created in the mid 2000s, and he didn't confuse EasyRPG with RPG Maker. If you had just clicked on the "Blog" link of the official page, you'd seen that the blog was created in 2010.

Searching the web, I found the old forge (same project name, same first developer name) at Google Code Archive. The oldest commit is dated 2006-01-16, so it's at least that old.

No, I meant the EasyRPG project. The 0.1 release is from 2013, but work on the interpreter started much earlier and I remember watching development threads at least six or seven years before that.

EDIT: I found an interview from 2008 with the project creator (https://comunidad.rpgmaker.es/d/8745-entrevista-a-delapipol-..., in Spanish) where he states that “it was around 2005 that we thought of making a free alternative to Enterbrain’s RPG Maker”.

Members of the project team have posted to the forums answering questions within the last few weeks, so while it seems to be a small team they're still active.

It's being used to host old RPG Maker games like Yume Nikki on NicoNico Douga, which is a significant Japanese content hoster, so I would say it's come pretty far along.

https://game.nicovideo.jp/atsumaru/games/gm20856

Anecdotally, I've used it to play a few RPG Maker 2003 titles to completion on a Raspberry Pi.

Fun fact: NicoNico owner is KADOKAWA. The same corporation that currently owns RPG Maker.

It's funny that the Official owners also uses this fanmade app on one of their products.

It's worth noting that it's user content rather than direct usage by NicoNico/KADOKAWA, so the lineage is less direct.

However, given that RPG Maker 2k/2k3 games often have compatibility issues running on modern Windows, it would make a certain sense if KADOKAWA used EasyRPG as a way of extending compatibility. Then too, I'm not really aware of their relationship to the games produced with their tools (even ones that could be considered historically significant, such as Yume Nikki), so I don't know how likely this outcome would be overall.

> How usable is this for someone getting started new?

Answering my own question - it appears from the top response here that the editor component is not yet ready

https://community.easyrpg.org/t/how-do-i-make-a-game/1060

I recently learned of a similar thing that I’ll be trying out with my kids. It’s not open source though, and they’re currently running a crowd funding thing to raise money for further development:

https://www.rpginabox.com/

Oh hey, that was the project that was based on the Godot game engine!

It's nice to see more projects out there in the wild built on top of it, tools as well not just games, showing off some of its capabilities.

Yeah, they were a pretty early adopter from what I recall. I think it might have been as early as 1.1!

There is also https://rpgplayground.com/

Whew! I was concerned there for a moment. I thought this was the "Report Program Generator" language, one of the more odious inventions in IT.

In 3rd grade at my school library there was a book called something like 20 Computer Games that was just pages filled with BASIC programs you had to type out. I assume now it was for Commodore 64, which I didn't have and was already obsolete, but I was able to convert a lot of those games to QBasic and had a blast with it. Imagine how happy I was when I saw a book about my favorite game genre at our city library, RPG Programming! That was rather disappointing.

LOL. I had the exact same experience w the RPG book in my public library when I was a kid

I too was momentarily astray... and then became curious.

There's a 2022 What's New [1] for... err... ILE RPG in IBM i 7.5 ? Aka RPG IV Technology Release 7 ? Aka... sigh. The current state of RPG. It includes: new operation code DATA-GEN generates a structured document, such as JSON or CSV, from an RPG variable; the OVERLOAD keyword is used in a call operation, the compiler uses the parameters that are specified for the call to determine which of the candidate prototypes to call; ... .

Current language reference[2]. If there's a modern open source compiler, I didn't quickly find it.

[1] https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/i/7.5?topic=wn-whats-new-in-75-1 [2] https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/i/7.5?topic=languages-rpg

Don't beat yourself up, I was thinking it was going to be about DIY antitank grenade launchers.

Me too! We had RPG lessons in school.

Wow, seeing that warrior sprite on the home page filled me with memories. RPGMaker was my first introduction to game dev when I was around 10 years old (even if I never wrote any actual code). My home computer was Linux so I had to go to a friends’ house to play around with the tool, and we had a lot of fun just making dumb things that were never seen by anyone but ourselves.

Also, one of my earliest computer game memories is of an RPG Maker game that retold the story of Dragon Ball Z. That was the coolest thing I had ever seen at the time, and I think this is my first time thinking about it in 15 years. Thank you for this post.

This is a really cool project. I've been looking for a way to create storytelling-focused games like some I've played, stuff that's more like a VN made in RPG Maker, but RPG Maker proper is a little expensive for a tool I'm not sure I'd use that much. This would be perfect for trying it out, definitely keeping my eye on this!

RPG Maker goes on sale often especially older versions.

I am doing something close to "storytelling-focused games like some I've played, stuff that's more like a VN". And to do that I am only using HTML and CSS. The result is a webcomic of an unusual kind illustrated with pixel art designed for RPGs.

This way it does not require programming and hence I can focus on the story. You can check out one of my stories here : https://drdru.github.io/twc/twc_save_aryn/01_intro.html (it's in Japanese, click on 次 at the bottom to go to the next page and get a feel for it).

There are also Javascript framewrok that allow you to create RPGs in the browser. You might want to check them out.

This reminds me of an old web comic called Kid Radd (https://www.bgreco.net/kidradd/)

It used a bunch of animation and pixel work to tell a massive story (although it takes a while to get there)

Old versions of RPGMaker go on sale quite often at Steam, I got mine for like a dollar or two. It's old but just to tell a story works :P If I wanted to customize every aspect I'd be better off with a game engine.

Oh, thanks for the tip! I must've been looking at the wrong version, which ones are the best bet if I'm looking for something good but don't need the latest and greatest?

Depends if you prefer Ruby or JavaScript for (if) scripting. RPGMaker XP uses Ruby and RPGMaker MV uses JavaScript. MV is a bit newer but both are quite old and really cheap in offers.

If you want you can always wait for an offer and get the latest, which uses JavaScript, although the price difference is quite steep.

It's funny that you word it like that. "Something that's more VN than RPG, but more RPG than VN" is exactly the game I'm making (it's called Firmament). I didn't find anything that was exactly what I wanted when building the game (there are Unity plugins for the dialogue system, but usually with tradeoffs that favored features I didn't want in the first place).

I ended up writing an engine to do this concurrently with the game itself. Here's a picture of a scene opened in the engine: https://i.imgur.com/jEhw1QR.png

Here's a link to the Discord server where my friends and I who make games hang out. If you're interested in these kind of half-VN hybrids, then you should come say hi: https://discord.gg/pbX9tVuW

Ren'Py is better for making VNs than RPG Maker and is free.

RpgMaker is the reason why I'm a software dev today (but I don't make videogames, dodged that bullet). My love for programming started with it.

I'm definitely going to expose my children to it!

Suggest checking out the community to see how things are progressing: https://community.easyrpg.org/

Their twitter account also has lots of recent activity: https://twitter.com/EasyRPG

I buried so. much. time. into RPGMaker2000 about 20 years ago as the name suggests. Maybe 15? What a great toy / development platform.

Anyone have any insights on this vs Godot for 2D games? I imagine Godot is more powerful, but when would you want to use this engine?

Don't know too much about Godot but I'd imagine something like this is more suitable for making an RPG simply because its got all the tools you'd need in an RPG game (stuff like dialogue etc) so the developer can just focus on making an RPG rather than having to worry about the specifics of how dialogues are displayed, and stuff like that. Whereas I think Godot is more just for making any type of game, and in that sense will be more powerful but will lack the tools for building a specific type of game like EasyRPG appears to provide.

I don't know about this tool specifically, but rpg maker was good at making rpg maker's style of rpg (ie. traditional 2d JRPGs), not every kind of rpg.

Going toward action rpgs like Zelda III wasn't impossible, but quite difficult.

Going towards things such as baldur's gate or diablo was pretty much out of the question.

Yeah, that doesn't surprise me actually. I'm not really into RPGs but I imagine a one size fits all approach won't work that well.

The value here is primarily in the editor. It is a drag and drop scripting engine, asset editor, and visual story workflow editor. You can build your own SNES JRPG FFVI type game with this out of the box and learn what minimal coding skills are required, or beg a friend to code the hard parts for you.

This is very much focused on making a top-down, turn-based, snes-era-style rpg. If you want to make exactly that it will be a lot easier in RPGMaker/EasyRPG, but the further you want to diverge from a basic RPG the harder it will get.

This has a lot of systems like dialogue, menus, inventory, party management, combat, etc built in and specifically tailored for RPGs.

edit: Forgot to mention, RPG Maker also has a lot of assets built in so you can get straight to making a game without worrying about art, which was incredibly helpful for me when I was 12.

Thanks. I've been watching Heartbeat's video on Godot for 2d games and have been itching to use a game engine. I'm going to see how this works and see if I like it compared to Godot.

What I'd say is, choose based on your goal. If you are an experienced game developer who wants to get an RPG game out there fast then use specialised tools like this. For general purpose game development, Godot will give you better mileage than these special tools.

Some nostalgic disappointment on realizing that the title didn't relate to RPG the old programming language.

Not to detract from this project, which clearly has a robust following, but what would the best tools be for a first time attempt at making an SNES-level RPG? With a focus on ease-of-development.

I'm an experienced programmer and RPG player, but have never used any of the DIY tools.

RPG Maker: https://www.rpgmakerweb.com/

You can get it on Steam. The latest one (RPG Maker MZ) is currently $49. But you can get one of the older ones, which are a lot cheaper, they go as cheap as $2.

They are all on sale for the next...12 hours. Although they seem to go on sale quite often, they're also in a lot of game bundles.

My understanding is RPGMaker is the de-facto standard, and I know a lot of games have been made in it. And this project seems to be a reimplementation of an old RPGMaker in open-source.

Currently some number of versions are also on humble bundle: https://www.humblebundle.com/software

The docs are super old school, and I love them! Trying to spin up the sample game as I begin work - this might be a bad idea!

Would this be okay enough for a Ultima VII-ish RPG, or are the usual JRPG-tropes too built-in (zoomy fight screens etc.)?

RPG Maker XP and later are very flexible because you can actually use code and modify major parts of the game engine (you're limited mostly by the actual editor). But yes, in RM2K/2K3 your ability to break away from the standard JRPG framework is much more limited. Regardless, I've been surprised in the past with what people have been able to achieve within those limitations. I haven't played Ultima VII but I can't imagine it's completely out of the question, it just might require quite a lot of "innovation".

I thought it was about RPG the programming language :D

Reply on news.ycombinator.com