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Although geared mainly towards RPGs, it can be used to create games in a wide range of genres giving its users the power to customize just about every element of their creations as they go. Honestly though I'm not using it myself, there are no reasons to not just recommend RPGMZ (based on its current state of (updated) features) to newcomers if what you wanna start developing games with is gonna have to be a product of this software-series.RELATED: The Best Games To Play If You Love Pixel Artįirst released almost three decades ago, the package has grown into one of the most prominent and easiest-to-use game design programs on the market. I'm never making up advice based on how much material or effort-skipping code free to copy is out there. So my suggestion obviously is RPGMZ all the way, even more if it ever would get the better autotiles-format back (from 2000/XP), that's one of very few last things missing.
If you still have some time to wait and the following sounds interesting to you, there's a new spinoff-product said to release this year (RPG Maker Unite) that will run as a big plugin inside Unity. Of course, nobody knows for sure yet how it will be. RPG2000 is the most perfectly rounded, well thought out product, but also nothing too special at all. RPG2003, XP and VX are messengers of damnation, especially RPG2003 is a thing for nostalgists and experts only. RPGVXAce and RPGMV are very similar to one another, with the latter being a big technical shift from Ruby to JS. Though it depends on what you are planning to do. I personally would value the 4 mapping layers over the range of plugins, especially for what I am doing with the engine. MZ brought - for me - the option to make pretty maps without too much stress and having to parallax. Given how much time I spend on mapping and creating locations, that is a massive factor, and it gets me to the maps I want faster than with parallaxing and with a lot less fuss when setting up tiles (having to make specific tiles where something is already on a table as I do not have enough layers etc.). Yes, the RTP don't have them as is, but the 4 layers and transparent autotiles make really pretty water setups possible that are a lot of fuzz to make in VX - MV, allow you to use rounded cliffs a lot more easily and so on. Making this map in Ace or MV would have been a pain in the butt and you would either have to create a lot of "special" tiles, use tons of events or utilize plugins, in MZ it was a little editing (or not even that anymore, you can grab the edited thing in my thread) and after that you are all good setting it up in the editor without any needed events. Yeah sure more might be what I want, but is that actually what I need? Plus for plugins you always have to consider the want and need. So yes, VX Ace and MV give you more options off the bat - resources and scripts/plugins - while MZ has some quality of life features that make developing itself more comfortable. Plus something that many people forget is: if you need something to be made or help with, it is usually more likely to find people supporting you on the newest engine. If you choose XP and need a graphic, there might not be that many people around still being able to emulate the style and since there are so few XP users, the graphic would not help many other people besides you. If someone looks for something for MZ, people are more likely to jump in an help for those reasons. If I had to recommend someone what to buy, I would say: Get MZ as main engine for the comfort and be very careful with planning and what plugins you want/need. You might need some support, but maybe you can alter your concept to work with what is there.