If I'm really being honest I think the thing I really want is an open source RPG Maker. The community has always been pushing the software forward with tutorials and plugins, at times circumventing the baked in options of the editor in general. It would be nice if there was an option that was RPG Maker but was built from the ground up using something like FNA or Monogame. Lowering the barrier to entry, not being tied to a company, and having more options than ever before. RPG Maker always had that homebrew feel, made by talented creators. I would love to see that accessibility go to the next level.
There's always the possibility of forking an open source engine like Godot. That would allow for easier publishing on multiple platforms, and cleaner integration into things like the app store, and support for 3d graphics.
Several companies are trying to grab as much as they can from their customers to recoup what they lost during the pandemic instead of Big Corpa just eating the loss, which they financially could easily do. It reminds me of a quote from Star Wars: A New Hope, where Leia says "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." I'd love to see a bunch of Big Corpa actually go under and have the rest realize they have to actually provide for the customer, rather than their bottom line. Monopolies are never a good thing either, and ideally the market helps to regulate a sustainable number of Big Corpa, and Smol Corpa going forward.
I'm unsure of whether or not they'll go under but I think we are definitely seeing what you're describing play out with Unity right now. On the point of corporations actually having to provide for the customer and not their bottom lines, I couldn't agree more with you. A lot of these corporations need to realize that sooner rather than later, or they might see themselves in Unity's shoes. Maybe not, but I'd like to hope that's the case. Senseless greed shouldn't be rewarded like it continues to be in some cases.
I am with you on all of these points. I think the biggest thing with this is this showed how complicated licensing can get as well as how much harder it is to use and maintain a software product that is so dependent on another piece of software you don't control. I have used several JS based engines, and in general I like them. What I don't like is how many 3rd party large frameworks you often have to use to get the functionality you want. I feel like this is very comparable to the situation with Unite on Unity. Comparing MZ and MV one can see how many things that were plugin controlled became default to the engine. This was a huge improvement. They have done more of that as they have iterated and updated MZ as well. VX and VX/ACE did something similar. I think this is the ticket forward. I hope the developers pick a language and runtime (JS and HTML5 is fine but I would do a snoopy dance for Lua and Vulcan) and build an engine that is iterated consistently. Multiple small releases as needed over the course of a few years then a big dlc that adds new features that people can buy or not. Rinse, repeat. If people felt like there is going to be consistency then more teams will feel comfortable doing long term projects which is good for everyone. "RPG Maker's interface is home". That is a good way to put it. The community is huge and growing. I believe RPG Maker has the 3rd or fourth most games made on itch with over 6000 completed projects. Yes they vary in quality but it still shows there is an enormous market. I hope this is a learning experience and not a shot to the heart.
This is so well put, I agree with everything you've said here. Particularly the point about consistency being good for everyone and bringing about a more willing reliance on the engine. Well spoken as always my friend.
I think they'll look at the sales numbers and see Unity as the issue, especially given the massive debacle. They'll probably either make the next one standalone, or rework their idea for another engine. Probably the one that benefited the most from Unity's downfall. If they do that, they'll probably call it RPG Maker Go.
I'd like to see 2 things since they have been updating our RPG Maker M Z Maybe they could add a A 3D battle system and. A really cool idea would be to have a portrait generator
The initial announcement of Unite had me fairly excited, even though I had already invested quite a bit of time and money in MZ... But as the initial projected release drew closer, I couldn't help but think that everything they were showing us still looked really bad, and since I don't know squat about ANY kind of actual programming, I was pretty nervous about jumping into Unity. I began looking around at tutorials and courses on places like Humble Bundle and Udemy, but thankfully I never decided to fork over any money on those... Because after seeing the reactions to Unite's initial launch, I've fully decided that MZ will continue to be my home for a while. And I can only hope that whichever company that continues to own the engine doesn't suffer too much from Unity's awful decisions, because I'd hate to see any of their difficulties trickle down towards affecting us old engine users. I'm still in disbelief over the fat that this whole debacle actually happened... Seems like half the world has gone into an "every man for himself" mentality ever since the Covid lockdowns, but they're going to have to learn that a greedy, scarcity-based attitude will end up manifesting the very situations that they're trying to avoid. Generosity is still king.
OK, some changes were made to the Unity thing. The new billing rule will only apply to the next LTS version, which isn't out yet, so it's safe to play and make games for RPG Maker Unite... But there won't probably be a RPG Unite 2, because it would be pointless with so many ppl going to Godot.
For now. The underlying issue with the Unity policy changes is they thought that was acceptable in the first place. I think the trust is gone and it wouldn't surprise me if they tried to do something like this again in the future. If they were willing to apply it retroactively this time, it's not unrealistic to think they might try again. That's why you're seeing a lot of studios shifting gears. You're definitely right on a sequel to Unite. I'm curious to see where they pivot after this current version.
I think the release of Unite was a disaster waiting to happen. Given how differently RPGMaker does things, it is near impossible to get the integration you want, esp with how foundational JS is to how RPGMaker operates. I may be an oddball in this comment section, but I really do hope Unite is able to be successful. It would allow for a better active battle system without needing to mess around with plug-ins. You wouldn't need to use more esoteric approaches to problem solving. Having a version of RPGMaker integrated into another game engine would eliminate 80% of my struggles with RPGMaker. Once you start getting into the very advanced features (like attempting to get different plug-ins to crosstalk, esp if you want multiple menu features to work together from different core engines), it honestly feels more difficult than anything I could do in Unity. Hence, why I hope Unite is successful. I do get that it is a major contrast from previous versions, and with the shit Unity pulled, Hannah Montana would call it the, "Worst of Both Worlds".
I think they ahould lartner woth Gadot or Unreal engine. Since Unitys debacle, Gadot has grown tremendously and it would make sense but i feel like they would benefit most from Unreal as the Blueprint system would work very well with them.
Just take RPG maker XP and pimp it out with tons of features, like adaptive window resolutions, selectable tile size, modular customizable battle systems, pixel movement, proper mouse interactive UI and tons of new event functions. Nobody cares about mobile this or that, if it's on unity or not, actor and chara customization (even tho it's cool). Nobody is making their rpg maker game playable in a browser. They're trying too hard to make rpg maker a professional development tool, when the whole purpose was to make game dev easy and fun. I miss enterbrain dawg
Thank you so much. Very nice video. nyou did pull it off if you were wondering. I hope you are noit one hundy right about the UNITE future, hoping things get sorted before it hits steam.
I really do hope they're able to pull off some miracle with the Steam version of Unite, but I can't say I truly expect that. My interest has already sorta moved on to whatever version is after Unite, provided they learned something valuable from this experience and improved on it.
RPG Maker G is the next one then :p I completely understand rpg maker stop being it's own thing. Previous versions had been hard to be ported to other consoles or platforms outside of PC. Requirements changed since the old days in where making indie games was hard and almost no one did, or where people made PC only games, usually free. The panorama changed so rpg maker had to change. I completely agree it should still be interested into other platforms, goodie, unreal out when still unity. Even thou they decided to retract in this silly polices, and the trust was broken forever, doubt unity well stop being a de facto engine, as it's the thing teach in universities and everywhere. If you wanna switch the panorama out of unity, you'll have to do years of hard work educating new people in new technologies until unity loses relevance
You raise a lot of good points here. Considering Unity's trajectory even up to the point before the policy changes were announced I still have a hunch they might fade in popularity a few years down the road even if it is being taught in universities. While you're also right with games being made in previous RM versions being hard to port, I'm not sure why it has to be that way and we can't see improvements to a standalone engine rather than it piggybacking off something else for that functionality. A key point of information I'd like to know is how GG (RM devs) are doing financially, maybe the decision to become integrated with Unity was based around that. That way they could borrow a lot of those built in features without having to create that themselves in their own engine.
I get your point, but I don't think Unity will go under. If there is too much blowback and sales suffer, they will be forced to change their licensing. They are a publicly traded company and are turning a profit, they can't afford not to. All just personal opinion here. I really hope this asset gets worked on because one of the setbacks of me completing anything with the RPG Maker application is that the skills are not transferable, and the (best) assets that you can purchase on the RPGMaker store are only licensed for that application. At least with Unity implementation, I expect they transferred the asset licenses to be compatible with this version (or will in the future), and allows you access to a massive variety of assets on the Unity store. It also makes customizing things like UI and building to mobile much simpler. Just my two cents, I don't own the asset yet. Unity assets are upgraded all the time and are very simple to upgrade, I hope this asset would be the same.
I don't know if you know this but Unite sucked before Unity made their announcement, so I don't know understand why you're sad about Unite not getting it's chance, when it already shit the bed.
Unity may have pushed the pricing model to the next version, but all that does is gives devs a little longer to plan an exit from the platform. The decisions made by Unity serve only to highlight how vulnerable devs are to random decisions by the company. Trust is lost at this point, and unfortunately RPG Unite is tied to the fate of Unity. For me personally Unity is dead at this point and sadly by extension so is RPG Unite.
If I'm really being honest I think the thing I really want is an open source RPG Maker.
The community has always been pushing the software forward with tutorials and plugins, at times circumventing the baked in options of the editor in general. It would be nice if there was an option that was RPG Maker but was built from the ground up using something like FNA or Monogame. Lowering the barrier to entry, not being tied to a company, and having more options than ever before.
RPG Maker always had that homebrew feel, made by talented creators. I would love to see that accessibility go to the next level.
Holy crap what a great take! I would LOVE to see this 😍
Hear Hear
There's always the possibility of forking an open source engine like Godot. That would allow for easier publishing on multiple platforms, and cleaner integration into things like the app store, and support for 3d graphics.
Afaik that's what the folks over at EasyRPG are trying to build. I think they're making some good progress
Several companies are trying to grab as much as they can from their customers to recoup what they lost during the pandemic instead of Big Corpa just eating the loss, which they financially could easily do. It reminds me of a quote from Star Wars: A New Hope, where Leia says "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."
I'd love to see a bunch of Big Corpa actually go under and have the rest realize they have to actually provide for the customer, rather than their bottom line. Monopolies are never a good thing either, and ideally the market helps to regulate a sustainable number of Big Corpa, and Smol Corpa going forward.
I'm unsure of whether or not they'll go under but I think we are definitely seeing what you're describing play out with Unity right now. On the point of corporations actually having to provide for the customer and not their bottom lines, I couldn't agree more with you. A lot of these corporations need to realize that sooner rather than later, or they might see themselves in Unity's shoes. Maybe not, but I'd like to hope that's the case. Senseless greed shouldn't be rewarded like it continues to be in some cases.
I am with you on all of these points. I think the biggest thing with this is this showed how complicated licensing can get as well as how much harder it is to use and maintain a software product that is so dependent on another piece of software you don't control. I have used several JS based engines, and in general I like them. What I don't like is how many 3rd party large frameworks you often have to use to get the functionality you want. I feel like this is very comparable to the situation with Unite on Unity.
Comparing MZ and MV one can see how many things that were plugin controlled became default to the engine. This was a huge improvement. They have done more of that as they have iterated and updated MZ as well. VX and VX/ACE did something similar. I think this is the ticket forward. I hope the developers pick a language and runtime (JS and HTML5 is fine but I would do a snoopy dance for Lua and Vulcan) and build an engine that is iterated consistently. Multiple small releases as needed over the course of a few years then a big dlc that adds new features that people can buy or not. Rinse, repeat. If people felt like there is going to be consistency then more teams will feel comfortable doing long term projects which is good for everyone.
"RPG Maker's interface is home". That is a good way to put it. The community is huge and growing. I believe RPG Maker has the 3rd or fourth most games made on itch with over 6000 completed projects. Yes they vary in quality but it still shows there is an enormous market. I hope this is a learning experience and not a shot to the heart.
This is so well put, I agree with everything you've said here. Particularly the point about consistency being good for everyone and bringing about a more willing reliance on the engine. Well spoken as always my friend.
There has been a lot of companies intentinally sinking their companies.
Why?
To make it easier to sell them to certain groups.
I think they'll look at the sales numbers and see Unity as the issue, especially given the massive debacle. They'll probably either make the next one standalone, or rework their idea for another engine. Probably the one that benefited the most from Unity's downfall. If they do that, they'll probably call it RPG Maker Go.
I'd like to see 2 things since they have been updating our RPG Maker M Z Maybe they could add a A 3D battle system and. A really cool idea would be to have a portrait generator
The initial announcement of Unite had me fairly excited, even though I had already invested quite a bit of time and money in MZ... But as the initial projected release drew closer, I couldn't help but think that everything they were showing us still looked really bad, and since I don't know squat about ANY kind of actual programming, I was pretty nervous about jumping into Unity. I began looking around at tutorials and courses on places like Humble Bundle and Udemy, but thankfully I never decided to fork over any money on those... Because after seeing the reactions to Unite's initial launch, I've fully decided that MZ will continue to be my home for a while. And I can only hope that whichever company that continues to own the engine doesn't suffer too much from Unity's awful decisions, because I'd hate to see any of their difficulties trickle down towards affecting us old engine users. I'm still in disbelief over the fat that this whole debacle actually happened... Seems like half the world has gone into an "every man for himself" mentality ever since the Covid lockdowns, but they're going to have to learn that a greedy, scarcity-based attitude will end up manifesting the very situations that they're trying to avoid. Generosity is still king.
OK, some changes were made to the Unity thing. The new billing rule will only apply to the next LTS version, which isn't out yet, so it's safe to play and make games for RPG Maker Unite... But there won't probably be a RPG Unite 2, because it would be pointless with so many ppl going to Godot.
For now. The underlying issue with the Unity policy changes is they thought that was acceptable in the first place. I think the trust is gone and it wouldn't surprise me if they tried to do something like this again in the future. If they were willing to apply it retroactively this time, it's not unrealistic to think they might try again. That's why you're seeing a lot of studios shifting gears. You're definitely right on a sequel to Unite. I'm curious to see where they pivot after this current version.
I think the release of Unite was a disaster waiting to happen. Given how differently RPGMaker does things, it is near impossible to get the integration you want, esp with how foundational JS is to how RPGMaker operates.
I may be an oddball in this comment section, but I really do hope Unite is able to be successful. It would allow for a better active battle system without needing to mess around with plug-ins. You wouldn't need to use more esoteric approaches to problem solving. Having a version of RPGMaker integrated into another game engine would eliminate 80% of my struggles with RPGMaker. Once you start getting into the very advanced features (like attempting to get different plug-ins to crosstalk, esp if you want multiple menu features to work together from different core engines), it honestly feels more difficult than anything I could do in Unity. Hence, why I hope Unite is successful.
I do get that it is a major contrast from previous versions, and with the shit Unity pulled, Hannah Montana would call it the, "Worst of Both Worlds".
I think they ahould lartner woth Gadot or Unreal engine. Since Unitys debacle, Gadot has grown tremendously and it would make sense but i feel like they would benefit most from Unreal as the Blueprint system would work very well with them.
I hope rpg maker goes back to stand alone
Just take RPG maker XP and pimp it out with tons of features, like adaptive window resolutions, selectable tile size, modular customizable battle systems, pixel movement, proper mouse interactive UI and tons of new event functions. Nobody cares about mobile this or that, if it's on unity or not, actor and chara customization (even tho it's cool). Nobody is making their rpg maker game playable in a browser. They're trying too hard to make rpg maker a professional development tool, when the whole purpose was to make game dev easy and fun. I miss enterbrain dawg
Well Unite has been taken down from the steam store
YIKES
Thank you so much. Very nice video. nyou did pull it off if you were wondering. I hope you are noit one hundy right about the UNITE future, hoping things get sorted before it hits steam.
I really do hope they're able to pull off some miracle with the Steam version of Unite, but I can't say I truly expect that. My interest has already sorta moved on to whatever version is after Unite, provided they learned something valuable from this experience and improved on it.
I hope rpg maker goes back to standalone i will use rpg maker mz untill they fuck that up too....
RPG Maker G is the next one then :p
I completely understand rpg maker stop being it's own thing. Previous versions had been hard to be ported to other consoles or platforms outside of PC.
Requirements changed since the old days in where making indie games was hard and almost no one did, or where people made PC only games, usually free.
The panorama changed so rpg maker had to change.
I completely agree it should still be interested into other platforms, goodie, unreal out when still unity.
Even thou they decided to retract in this silly polices, and the trust was broken forever, doubt unity well stop being a de facto engine, as it's the thing teach in universities and everywhere.
If you wanna switch the panorama out of unity, you'll have to do years of hard work educating new people in new technologies until unity loses relevance
You raise a lot of good points here. Considering Unity's trajectory even up to the point before the policy changes were announced I still have a hunch they might fade in popularity a few years down the road even if it is being taught in universities. While you're also right with games being made in previous RM versions being hard to port, I'm not sure why it has to be that way and we can't see improvements to a standalone engine rather than it piggybacking off something else for that functionality. A key point of information I'd like to know is how GG (RM devs) are doing financially, maybe the decision to become integrated with Unity was based around that. That way they could borrow a lot of those built in features without having to create that themselves in their own engine.
I won't update to unite. Will be waiting for "Rpg Maker Godot" :)
its such a shame, I was looking forward to it, but then unity made that.
maybe they could remake it for unreal?
With unity being bad situation,Rpgm will be back to his own engine again just hope new version than MZ
Let's hope so 🤞
I get your point, but I don't think Unity will go under. If there is too much blowback and sales suffer, they will be forced to change their licensing. They are a publicly traded company and are turning a profit, they can't afford not to. All just personal opinion here. I really hope this asset gets worked on because one of the setbacks of me completing anything with the RPG Maker application is that the skills are not transferable, and the (best) assets that you can purchase on the RPGMaker store are only licensed for that application. At least with Unity implementation, I expect they transferred the asset licenses to be compatible with this version (or will in the future), and allows you access to a massive variety of assets on the Unity store. It also makes customizing things like UI and building to mobile much simpler. Just my two cents, I don't own the asset yet. Unity assets are upgraded all the time and are very simple to upgrade, I hope this asset would be the same.
That's something interesting that I hadn't thought about. I wonder if those assets for RMU are licensed for general use within Unity as a whole 🤔
rpgmaker unite is straight-up just gone from steam now, so I think (and hope) they are shifting focus to something else 😅
they removed unite from steam already
Big sad 😔
I don't know if you know this but Unite sucked before Unity made their announcement, so I don't know understand why you're sad about Unite not getting it's chance, when it already shit the bed.
Unity may have pushed the pricing model to the next version, but all that does is gives devs a little longer to plan an exit from the platform. The decisions made by Unity serve only to highlight how vulnerable devs are to random decisions by the company. Trust is lost at this point, and unfortunately RPG Unite is tied to the fate of Unity. For me personally Unity is dead at this point and sadly by extension so is RPG Unite.
This summarizes my feelings very succinctly. Well said.
❤