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RPG Architect: what does the Codex think about it?

Habichtswalder

Learned
Joined
Aug 30, 2023
Messages
228
It's extremely promising. I bought it some months or a year ago ago and tried it. Was already good back then but I didn't have the time to start a real project. Nowadays there are more features and especially tutorials.
I think it is basically RPG Maker with all the customizable stuff that Maker is lacking. I will return to Architect in the future when I find time for a real project.

The dev is also quite communicative and implemented a feature that I suggested.
 

n0wh3r3

Educated
Joined
May 7, 2023
Messages
289
It's extremely promising. I bought it some months or a year ago ago and tried it. Was already good back then but I didn't have the time to start a real project. Nowadays there are more features and especially tutorials.
I think it is basically RPG Maker with all the customizable stuff that Maker is lacking. I will return to Architect in the future when I find time for a real project.

The dev is also quite communicative and implemented a feature that I suggested.
At the current state of things, would you choose it over RPG Maker MZ in case you'd want to develop a game?
 

Zanzoken

Arcane
Joined
Dec 16, 2014
Messages
4,119
Looks a lot like RPG Maker to me. I would only use it if:

- you just want to make a standard Final Fantasy style JRPG
- all of the features you want are currently built in to the engine
- you don't care about having a more holistic knowledge of how to make games outside of this very specific niche

If you have any hesitation whatsoever about any of these, then I'd say avoid this and spend your time learning a more general purpose engine. Personal opinion but right now I think Unreal engine is pretty tough to beat. You can take the $50 you were planning to spend on this engine and buy 3 or 4 courses on Udemy that will give you hours and hours of instruction on how to use Unreal.

Pinging Tyranicon since I know he is a professional gamedev who uses RPG Maker with extensive customizations and I'm sure can give better insight on the pros and cons of this type of tool.
 

Tyranicon

A Memory of Eternity
Developer
Joined
Oct 7, 2019
Messages
8,145
Unfortunately I can't give any opinions on this since I haven't used it.

At surface level it seems to be competitive to RPGMaker with 3D built in and easier UI customization, which are two common pain points for devs familiar with RPGM.

Are the new features enough for people to leave the reliability and familiarity of RPGMaker? I dunno.
 

Habichtswalder

Learned
Joined
Aug 30, 2023
Messages
228
Unfortunately I can't give any opinions on this since I haven't used it.

At surface level it seems to be competitive to RPGMaker with 3D built in and easier UI customization, which are two common pain points for devs familiar with RPGM.

Are the new features enough for people to leave the reliability and familiarity of RPGMaker? I dunno.
The features that differentiate it from RPG Maker are*

- is a MonoGame fork, therefore the performance is much better
- UI fully customizable
- Battle System fully customizable (there were no tutorials on how to da that back when I used it, so I can't say how complicated it is to do sth. extraordinary)
- Pixel Perfect movement and off-grid mapping available by default (and if you aim for grid-based-movement it is possible to set the grid to whatever you want)
- also some 3D stuff but I never used it.

There are also some other features. I think the approach is to create a more advanced RPG Maker that is more customizable without the need for any plugins.

*Last time I used it was 6 months ago and it's early access. So maybe my impressions are not totally up to date.

It's extremely promising. I bought it some months or a year ago ago and tried it. Was already good back then but I didn't have the time to start a real project. Nowadays there are more features and especially tutorials.
I think it is basically RPG Maker with all the customizable stuff that Maker is lacking. I will return to Architect in the future when I find time for a real project.

The dev is also quite communicative and implemented a feature that I suggested.
At the current state of things, would you choose it over RPG Maker MZ in case you'd want to develop a game?

If you want to create a standard RPG Maker game, use RPG Maker because thats a finished product with a big community and tons of tutorials. If you are unhappy with the amount of customization options try Architect instead.
 

beardalaxy

Educated
Joined
Jun 10, 2023
Messages
119
I've been using various RPG Makers for nearly 20 years. I've tried to use different engines over and over again but none have really stuck as much as RPG Maker does, I just really love the software and it almost feels like it's become a part of my metaphysical being at this point.

Just picked up RPG Architect about a month ago or so. It's really good, and the developer is super responsive and always adds features. I had a particularly odd bug crop up trying to do something weird with the engine and although it took a bit of communicating back and forth to prove it was really an engine bug and not on my end, the dev was able to patch it up!

I think it has massive potential. It's definitely more complicated than RPG Maker is, but adds a lot of functionality to it. The dev's main philosophy for the engine is to make a version of RPG Maker that doesn't require plugins to do stuff that lots of users want to do with the engine. So it is super customizable. The layout and everything feels right at home as someone who has used RPG Maker for so long, but it does have way more things you can do with it.

The major downside compared to RPG Maker at the moment is that you cannot actually add your own stuff via plugins. Technically, MV and MZ are more robust if you're going to kit them out. However, it might cost you a bit more. The 3D settings being included by default is already a huge benefit and it is easier to make 3D games with it than RPG Maker. If you're REALLY looking into 3D as a feature though it might be better to check out something like RPG Developer Bakin.
There is also the fact that the engine, although it comes with default assets, they aren't as plentiful and varied as what RPG Maker contains. That includes not only music and sprites and things of that nature, but also pre-made skills, elements, items, formulas, menus, and all of that to help you get into making your game much more quickly. RPG Maker literally comes with everything you need to make an RPG right out of the box whereas RPG Architect has much more customizability and requires you to make everything from scratch. However, if you're going for custom stuff anyway, it's much easier to do with Architect and it's all in-engine.

If you're looking into game dev as more of a hobby or just starting out, then picking up RPG Maker MV when it goes on sale (which is pretty often) is going to be your best bet. If you have a bit more experience, and are cool with doing more stuff from scratch, then RPG Architect is a good one to go to. With the money you save, you can probably go out and grab some resources from Itch.io to help flesh out the assets. In its current state, I'd say you could make a full RPG with it and probably anything else you'd be able to do with RPG Maker as well. As time goes by it's only going to get better with more features. I think the dev is actually working on getting 3D model support in at the moment, so that's pretty cool! I've seen a lot of people in the Discord working with full 3D stuff and it looks pretty cool.

Another alternative, in addition to RPG Developer Bakin, would be RPG In A Box. It's made with Godot and you can actually export your games back to Godot. It mainly uses voxel graphics and you can actually create all of your voxel models/textures in the engine itself which is really awesome. It's pretty intuitive. They are releasing a new version soon (tm) that adds support for creating simple polygon graphics in the editor as well so that'll be cool to check out once it releases!

If anyone wants to know anything specific as far as comparisons go, feel free to ask! I've got a lot of RPG Maker experience and I'm learning how to use RPG Architect right now, working on a remake of an old horror game I made 11 years ago. I'm hoping I'll be able to use it for my future horror project and maybe even my next game after that! Locke, the developer, has talked about wanting to add a tactics battle system as one of the options, so as long as that's out within the next few years I'd be super happy to keep working with it.
 

MarathonGuy1337

Educated
Joined
Aug 27, 2022
Messages
160
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2158670/RPG_Architect/

So, what is your opinion on this engine? Many reviewers have been enthusiastic about it.
To be honest this is the first time I've seen it, but checking out the steam page and the user reviews I'm semi-curious about the game engine, it seems similar on the surface to RPGMaker though I did find the Isometric Camera of Fallout a little unique plus the fact it seems to combined DRPG, CRPG and JRPG features under one package from the steam trailer.
 
Developer
Joined
Oct 26, 2016
Messages
2,440
Does it support isometric? If I recall the older ones, do not. Or rather they support a kind of weird isometric projection, which looks a bit odd to me.
 

Habichtswalder

Learned
Joined
Aug 30, 2023
Messages
228
Does it support isometric? If I recall the older ones, do not. Or rather they support a kind of weird isometric projection, which looks a bit odd to me.
I think it should be possible if you have fitting isometric graphics (there are none included by default). Because unlike RPG Maker this offers grid-less movement and you can use every image as map graphic instead of just grid-based tilesets.
 

beardalaxy

Educated
Joined
Jun 10, 2023
Messages
119
Does it support isometric? If I recall the older ones, do not. Or rather they support a kind of weird isometric projection, which looks a bit odd to me.
RPG Maker supports isometric games and, with plugins/scripts, pixel movement. You just need the correct resources to do this.

RPG Architect can turn normal RPG Maker styled assets into 3D shapes, then you can use an orthographic camera turned at an angle to get an isometric look. In this situation, you don't need the correct isometric graphics or a plugin, and you also get the benefit of having manipulation over the camera's rotation and height instead of it just being locked in the same place.

The only real downside is that you won't be able to use resources MEANT for isometric 2D games if you're also trying to utilize 3D. RPG Architect doesn't work like that.
 

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