Which version of RPG Maker is best?
So you’ve decided to make a game — and you’ve decided to ignore the sneering idiots who turn their noses up at anything made with RPG Maker. Great! Clearly you remember that there are some fantastic games that have been made with RPG Maker over the years — indie classic To The Moon and the original incarnation of horror legend Corpse Party are just two great examples.
But having logged on to Steam you see that there are multiple versions of RPG Maker available, some of which are considerably more expensive than others. Surely the newest, most expensive one is best, yes?
Well, not necessarily. Each incarnation of RPG Maker is, in terms of the number of features and its flexibility, an improvement over the last. But depending on what it is you want to achieve — and how much experience you have with this sort of thing — you may be best off with one of the earlier, cheaper versions. So let’s take a look at all of them and see which one might be right for you!
Oh, before we go on, I know there are console and handheld versions of RPG Maker that date back to the PS1 era. For simplicity’s sake, we’re focusing exclusively on the Windows PC titles in the series today.
RPG Maker 2000
For many people — particularly in Europe, where the PlayStation version of RPG Maker never got a release — this was their first experience with the franchise, thanks to the efforts of a Russian fan translator who went by the name Don Miguel.
RPG Maker 2000 (often referred to online as RM2k) was initially only intended to be distributed in Japan, you see, but Don Miguel recognised that there was interest in the series in English-speaking territories, so he translated it into English… or at the very least a close approximation thereof, which has come to be known by the community as “Donglish”. If you’ve ever come across people referencing things like “YOU WON A COMBAT” and “Safe Tea Boots”, you’ve encountered Donglish.
It took a while for RPG Maker’s original publisher ASCII to discover that Don Miguel was distributing RPG Maker 2000 illegally, but when they did, they immediately threatened legal action and demanded he take down his download links.
He complied, but it was already too late; the program had exploded in popularity, and downloads of it had proliferated all over the Internet — complete with Don Miguel’s custom package of sprites and graphics that added to the standard RPG Maker 2000 “run-time package” with images ripped from commercial software.
RPG Maker 2000 eventually got an official English release via Degica Games in 2015, after RPG Maker XP’s localisation was so well received. You can get it on Steam.
Why use RPG Maker 2000? Simply put: simplicity. RPG Maker 2000 is easy to use but very flexible, allowing you to put together solid RPGs without needing to know anything about programming — the most you need to get your head around is the game’s “Event” system, which is mostly about thinking things through in a logical order, and the “Database”, which stores pretty much everything about your game — character stats and graphics, enemy troops, battle effects, text strings, items, skills and more, all of which can be fully customised or used right away in their default formats.
If you’re new to making RPGs, RPG Maker 2000 is a good place to get started as it won’t overwhelm you with features. There are addons and plugins available, but for the most part you’re best off sticking with it as “stock” and seeing what it can do; you’d be surprised how much you can achieve with it, particularly if you take the time to add some custom graphics, sounds and music.
What are the drawbacks? As an elderly piece of software, RPG Maker 2000 doesn’t play nice with very high resolution displays; the interface is nigh-unusable if you’re running in 4K — 1080p is fine, though. Its games also run in a fixed resolution of 640×480, which suits its pixel-art look well, but can appear fuzzy and stretched on modern displays. The original release of RPG Maker 2000 only supported MIDI music, but the later Value! and Value!+ versions — the latter of which forms the basis for the official English release — added MP3 support.
If you want to extend the engine beyond its basic capabilities, there are ways to do that, but later incarnations of RPG Maker make this process much easier and are much more well-supported, both officially and by the community.
RPG Maker 2000 is best used for straightforward projects, or getting to know how RPG Maker in general does things — the fundamentals haven’t changed all that much over the years.
RPG Maker 2003
RPG Maker 2003 is another installment in the series that initially came west through fan translations — this time via an individual known as RPG Advocate. Its notable additions to RPG Maker 2000 were the fact that it had a side-view “Active Time Battle” combat system a la old-school Final Fantasy, as opposed to RPG Maker 2000’s strictly turn-based Dragon Quest-style first-person combat.
RPG Maker 2003 officially came west alongside RPG Maker 2000 in 2015. Better late than never! You can grab it on Steam.
Why use RPG Maker 2003? It’s like RPG Maker 2000, but better — for the most part. One of the most notable distinguishing features is that its “full-screen” mode is actually borderless windowed, which means you don’t get any of the 640×480 fuzziness from its predecessor, and can keep the lovely crisp edges of your pixel art.
Like RPG Maker 2000, RPG Maker 2003 originally only supported MIDI music, but was subsequently updated to accept MP3s too after widespread demand from the community.
If you prefer the side-view battle system, RPG Maker 2003 is also a good choice — indeed, one of the most popular mods to RPG Maker 2000 back in the day was the implementation of a Final Fantasy-style side-view battle engine. Here, it’s included right from the outset — and while it means you need to create more graphics to get a new original character up and running, many players enjoy seeing their party members on screen during combat.
What are the drawbacks? RPG Maker 2003 has a bug that was never officially addressed, which can cause some problems with the ATB battle system if participants have wildly different agility values. This can be avoided by ensuring everyone’s agility values are broadly similar, but this, of course, negates one of the interesting things about an ATB battle system.
Aside from this, RPG Maker 2003 is another solid choice for those getting started in their own RPG development.
You can even import RPG Maker 2000 projects into RPG Maker 2003 — though note you can’t go back in the other direction!
RPG Maker XP
Once again, RPG Maker XP initially came west through fan translations, once again thanks to the hard work of RPG Advocate. It seems that this was the final straw for publisher Enterbrain, who finally gave up fighting against the demand for an English release of the software, and officially translated it in 2005. Ever since that time, we’ve seen every new version of RPG Maker here in the west — and the community has thrived as a result.
RPG Maker XP was noteworthy for being the first entry in the series to support a scripting language. In this case, it was known as “RGSS”, or the Ruby Game Scripting System, and allowed considerably more flexibility in what the software was capable of — though obviously in order to take full advantage of this, you needed to understand how to program in Ruby, or at the very least, understand how to copy and paste scripts from the community into the right place in your project.
Why use RPG Maker XP? This was a very popular installment in the series, mainly for the addition of RGSS. Even if you don’t know Ruby yourself, if you follow instructions carefully, it is possible to add community-created scripts into your project to customise all manner of different things about the RPG Maker engine.
This allows for much more flexibility than RPG Maker 2000 and 2003 offer without extensive modding — notably, it makes adding things like minigames or non-standard mechanics to your games much easier. And with how long RPG Maker XP’s been around at this point, there is an absolutely obscene number of community scripts out there for you to make use of if you don’t want to — or can’t — program things yourself.
What are the drawbacks? The addition of RGSS naturally adds something of a learning curve to the package as a whole. You can ignore it altogether, of course, but in doing so you’re skipping out on the main thing that makes RPG Maker XP distinct from its predecessors.
This was the first RPG Maker to make use of somewhat higher resolution art and sprites by default; some people prefer the pixel art look of 2000 and 2003 — of course, with custom graphics you can add this “look” back in to XP, but that’s more effort than just using the custom, included material.
Strangely, RPG Maker XP also switched back to using a dedicated 640×480 full screen mode rather than the crisp borderless windowed mode of RPG Maker 2003 — it also runs at the distinctly odd frame rate of 40 frames per second by default, though tweaking the scripts can adjust this value.
RPG Maker VX
Don’t bother. Unless you really want access to the graphical assets you can only get in this version.
RPG Maker VX Ace
Because this exists! RPG Maker VX was a somewhat controversial installment in the series because while it was intended to make life a little easier for newcomers compared to the sometimes complex-feeling RPG Maker XP, it also introduced a lot of limitations — most notably a hard limit on the number of tilesets you could use while mapping, which meant your entire game would be somewhat limited in the number of visual environments it would be able to use.
RPG Maker VX Ace, meanwhile, fixed all the complaints people had about VX while adding a number of new features, including custom formulas for battle actions and items. No longer would it be a complete mystery how your character’s stats related to their damage output — now you could take complete control of it yourself!
Why use RPG Maker VX Ace? RPG Maker VX Ace strikes a good balance between accessibility and flexibility. It’s easy to get a game up and running using just the default functionality, and the addition of RGSS2 means that, like RPG Maker XP, the engine can be extended in a variety of ways as you see fit.
This is one of the most well-supported RPG Maker titles from over the years, too, so you can likely find a script to do pretty much anything you can think of, ranging from simple changes to the messaging system to full-on changes of visual perspective. There’s also a ton of official DLC out there, making it very easy to add new graphics, sounds, music and engine features without needing to manually mod things in.
What are the drawbacks? The addition of RGSS2 plus the huge variety of community scripts and DLC out there means that it can be very easy to get overambitious and try to throw everything into your game before you’re comfortable with the basic principles of solid design. If you find yourself getting easily distracted, you’re best off deliberately limiting yourself with RPG Maker 2000 or 2003, then graduating to XP and beyond once you’re comfortable and confident with the software’s basic functions.
Full-screen mode in this is 640×480 again, though you can tweak this with scripting — at least it runs at 60fps by default this time around. And once again, the higher resolution sprites and tilesets are an acquired taste; if you want an easy way to make an authentically “retro-looking” game, you might be best off sticking to the earlier incarnations of RPG Maker.
RPG Maker MV
RPG Maker MV added something noteworthy and remarkable to RPG Maker: cross-platform play.
By making your game into an HTML5 application rather than a proprietary format, it became possible to export RPG Maker MV projects to a variety of formats, including mobile. This is a big deal for those who want to distribute their work more widely — or who just want the satisfaction of seeing their game running on something other than the device they created it on.
RPG Maker MV also switched from Ruby to JavaScript for its scripting language and simplified the addition of plugins to the engine — now you can simply “install” them rather than needing to copy and paste scripts into the right place.
Why use RPG Maker MV? Like VX Ace, this is one of the more well-supported RPG Maker installments out there; around its original launch in 2015, a lot of people held fire on jumping into it because VX Ace had so many excellent scripts available for it, but at this point it’s a mature engine with lots of plugins available for, again, pretty much any addition to RPG Maker’s basic functionality you’d care to think of.
Once again, there’s an absolute ton of official DLC available, too, covering graphics, music, sounds and official add-on tools — and there are some excellent included tools in the base package for creating new character sprites without needing any pixel art talent of your own.
The switch to HTML5 output means that we’ve also finally got elegant resolution scaling — though by default on Windows you can only maximise the game window rather than making it truly borderless. There are ways around that, though for those who understand what a “manifest” is.
What are the drawbacks? The sheer flexibility of MV’s plugin system makes it easy to get overwhelmed with possibilities and never actually get anywhere. And once again, if you prefer the chunky pixel art look of 2000 and 2003, be prepared to add this back in manually through DLC or community contributions.
Aside from this, however, this is one of the very best installments in the RPG Maker series — and it frequently goes on sale, meaning you can often pick it up for a very nice price indeed.
RPG Maker MZ
The latest installment in the RPG Maker series at the time of writing, RPG Maker MZ feels like it is somewhat yet to prove itself — but then the same happened with MV back when it was first released. As the community gets to grips with its new features, doubtless it, too, will enjoy the strong support past entries in the series have had.
RPG Maker MV also adds some nice quality of life features such as greater control over facial features in the character editor, the ability to see movement paths while creating events, a revamped spell effect animation system that allows you to use free software Effekseer to create your own particle effects, an autosave system for games and an in-game interface that is friendly to mouse and touch controls.
Why use RPG Maker MZ? Pretty much everything I just described; the new features are very nice indeed…
What are the drawbacks? …but the package has come in for some criticism by people who think it’s just a little too similar to MV to be worth an upgrade.
It’s also still a little unproven compared to its predecessors — though if you’re just getting started with development with the software’s built-in features this may not be an issue for you.
Conclusion
If you’re new to RPG Maker, consider how likely you are to get distracted by tons of potential addons and plugins — this is a very real problem for a lot of people. If you think that sounds like you, give the earlier installments in the series a go — RPG Maker 2003 works most reliably on modern systems with its lovely borderless windowed runtime.
If you’re willing to pay a little more and are interested in extending the possibilities of the engine right from the outset, VX Ace and MV are your best bets at the time of writing. Each has its fans — as does XP, for that matter — but I tend to come down on the side of MV; the plugin system makes extending the engine easy, even if you don’t know much about programming, and there’s a lot of great support available both from the developers and the community.
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Pete Davison
Pete is Rice Digital’s editor, and a proud champion of any and all games involving pretty girls hanging out, saving the world or both. His first waifu was Rit from Rod Land.
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RPG Maker RTP-Only Jam! October 2022
This jam is now over.
It ran from 2022-10-01 04:00:00 to 2022-11-01 04:00:00. View 5 entries
Welcome to Heavy Pepper’s RPG Maker Game Jam!
This is a low intensity, month-long game jam where you’ll finish and submit a short RPG maker project using ONLY the base assets and features included with whatever version of RPG Maker you use. That means no custom sprites or tilesets, no custom music, and no plugins. While you have a month to do it, I encourage you to think of this as a weekend project. The month-long duration is simply to ensure we get as many submissions as possible.
There will be two modest prizes given out, one based on judge or contributor voting and one based on Heavy Pepper’s choice. Details are TBD.
Who can submit?
Anyone is welcome! While this is made to be beginner-friendly, RPG Maker veterans are encouraged to participate.
What engine?
Any version of RPG Maker you can legally obtain and submit an entry with.
You must submit a version that can somehow be played on a modern Windows PC (whether it’s stand-alone or HTML), so that the host and other judges/contributors can actually play it.
How long?
Aim for a 30-60 minute game to ensure that the host and judges can actually review it. This is a soft rule, as playtime can very depending on the player. If you find that you’ve made a 15 minute game but it still feels «complete» to you, submit it!
What has to be in it?
There are no formal content requirements for this jam other than it being RTP/base engine-only and no plugins or scripts, and a game you make for this jam specifically. If you want a little more of a prompt to spark your creativity, you can optionally try for a Spooky game with at least 1 «town» and 1 «dungeon», however you want to interpret these words. There are no restrictions on graphic or adult content, but please provide some content warnings if you get particularly dark, gross or crass.
Please do not submit hateful content.
When do we submit?
While the deadline is October 31st, I highly recommend you submit early and then revise. Get the broad strokes of your game down with the minimum amount of work necessary to put it in a playable state, then revise after. You can always update your submission afterward. Please note that each participant should only submit one game.
What happens after?
After the October 31st deadline there will be a 10 day window during which Heavy Pepper will play every game and write up feedback for each entry. Depending on the number of submissions, we may get some volunteers involved to play some and provide additional feedback. Contributors will also be able to vote on their favorite entry during this time, which will win one of the two prizes.
What are the prizes?
These are a secret, which really means they have not been determined yet.
They will be pretty modest. The real prize will ultimately be finishing an RPG Maker project and getting some feedback!
Any flexibility on RTP?
If you happened to buy an asset pack on Steam or something, and are unsure what’s considered RTP, don’t worry about it. The point of these limitations is to discourage people from worrying about custom assets, not to force you to spend a bunch of time checking your database. Just use your best efforts to stick primarily to RPG Maker’s base tools and assets, that’s all we ask.
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Crash-land
A short puzzle adventure game about a crashed space man
ohshidead
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Lokator Studio — Should I switch from RPG Maker MV to RPG Maker MZ?
So far this question remains open for us.
But I think it’s more likely than not. Although, there are still some doubts, and I’ll think about it.
Earlier I already wrote about the release of a new designer of the notorious series RPG Maker . It was more of a review-announcement with the main differences of the new editor. Now that it’s out, I can definitely write about these changes. Unfortunately, they described everything much more colorfully than it actually came out.
A new icon, by the way… so-so.
Whatever one may say, this is a new version of RPG Maker MV . Those who were waiting for a fundamentally new game designer and RPG Maker of the new generation were very disappointed. In fact, the editor is clearly made on the basis of RPG Maker MV and looks like a twin brother! This is a modified, updated, optimized and improved MV . Even from the name it is quite clear!
Moreover, all projects made on RPG Maker MV run on RPG Maker MZ!
Not even a project converter is needed, as was the case with the transition from ACE to MV .
The structure of the projects is almost completely identical with the exception of very small changes. Help is built right into the RPG Maker MZ editor itself, which tells you which files you need to copy from your project to the newly created project on RPG Maker MZ for the transition. Or you can do the opposite — replace the project file from RPG Maker MV to RPG Maker MZ and even that will be enough to launch the project right there! Only in a good way, of course, you still need to replace different js-files with handles, copying from the project to MZ . Otherwise, a full-fledged transfer will not take place, because the engine code itself will not be replaced.
Yes, most of the plug-ins really went to hell. But quite a large part of them is corrected by one or three lines! If you know and understand what you are doing, then it is quite possible to adjust our 60-odd plugins to the new engine.
Today, in half a day, we, together with a programmer, have already taught about 5 plug-ins to work in new conditions!
We changed three lines in the lighting plugin and it worked!
After all, when a project is on a newer version of technology, it means more durability in the long run and better optimization. The engine has switched to a new version of the pixi library. js.
RPG Maker MV seems to be deprecated, but RPG Maker MZ is still quite actively supported. And this is perhaps the main reason why it is worth switching, in my opinion. The rest of all these ruffles are so-so.
Yes, I had a very unpleasant discovery that the new version RPG Maker does not run on 32-bit operating systems. My old computer is just like that. But when I conducted a survey among friends and realized that there are only a few such people. And this is clearly not a reason to abandon the new in favor of the old.
Moreover, the same maps can also be run on RPG Maker MV , and if necessary, I think it will be possible to edit them there too, if you need to log in from an old computer. Well, or reinstall the OS, which, frankly, would be long overdue.
Yes, indeed, now you can run the game in any screen resolution, as the author of the game wishes. This is edited in the project settings in the database under the « System » tab. However, a fly in the ointment is also hidden right there — as before, the player is not allowed to change the resolution of the game on his own in the settings … only if with the help of special plug-ins. Which I haven’t seen yet.
The «System 2» tab has appeared (you can see an enlarged screenshot by clicking)
Also in the «System 2» tab there is now another setting for fonts, instead of the gamefont.css file in the fonts folder. Well, this somehow makes me feel like a drum, only it has become more difficult to convert the old project from this.
Yup, the feature from RPG Maker XP is back. There are more layers. Do you know how much more!? On one layer! Yes, you heard right! There were a maximum of 3, now here are 4. Can you imagine what a breakthrough!? Well, in general!
Sometimes tiles automatically fall on a certain layer
In fact, yes, there have been more opportunities, well, it’s hardly perceptible. Moreover, the layers themselves still work in an unusual manner for a beginner, sometimes only confusing a person.
I am glad, of course, that the structure of the cards was not disturbed. From the project on RPG Maker MV , you can directly download the map from there, and add another piece of wood there, which used to be an event on top. That’s all epic.
Oh yes, route editor! A great thing, but that’s bad luck — it turns out that he is in a separate window. What a surprise, friends! This is to see if the NPCs collide, for example, you will first have to open one, then remember and open the other.
Well, «great»! Still, of course, it’s better than nothing at all.
But somehow … a bummer anyway!
The picture is clickable and enlarges. A window opens with a route to the «Preview» button
Well, I won’t stop about new graphic resources, because we use our own in our project anyway. Let’s just say, they are not for everyone.
Well, here’s the declared offset in the character editor, yes — there really is! And you can even move the object by 8 pixels! A maximum of 8. And nothing further — the arrow becomes gray and that’s it. Here is such an imaginary freedom.
I got the faces on the new editor of the characters
Military animations also do not particularly differ from MV
These are the such chibiki on the new RPG MAKER MZ 9000
RPG editor.
I’ve always been mad about fights when time is running out and you have to hurry so as not to screw up.
And just like that they added it! Although, that was back in 2003 RPG Maker. Well, again, I don’t care about this, because I’m transferring an already finished project.
Animations are now loaded from Effekseer. Indeed, you can make very cool and beautiful animations that will add liveliness to the game.
But here’s the catch — if you already have your own animation in the old project on RPG Maker MV that you are going to transfer, then it will not be displayed in the base of the new editor.
The Animations.json files for RPG Maker MV and RPG Maker MZ have a different structure. In fact, if you copy this file from the Data folder from the old project, the new constructor will even pick them up as if nothing had happened, and they will even work in the game. However, you will have to add new ones through base RPG Maker MV . It also follows from this that it will not be possible to combine old and new animations.
