Hello people!
I’m an old RPG Maker 2003 user, and I would like to know in which state is this project at the moment. Is it progressing? I found this project very interesting years ago, but it seems it hasn’t advanced too much since then.
Have you ever though on a crowdfunding campaign? It’s hard to develop a free open source complex project like this without full-time coding and some money supporting the developers.
Regards!
Hey Dani! Glad to see you here.
Well, project advances are not reported too often in the project blog, however the best way to monitor updates is by tracking the Git source code tree on GitHub.
This is the EasyRPG Player network tree: github.com/EasyRPG/Player/network
There are multiple branches in development:
I invite you to check yourself by getting 0.1.1 player binaries from easy-rpg.org/jenkins/ to check current project development status.
In a nutshell, most map event commands are implemented except a few with partial implementations or buggy.
Battle scene is work in progress and battle events are not implemented yet. Map areas are not implemented (I guess).
Battle animations are partially implemented (missing some flashing and miscellaneous related implementations).
Tone/flashing is partially implemented, for sprites, hue and screen tone are not implemented yet.
All window/scenes are implemented, some of them have minor bugs.
RPG Maker 2000/2003 file format reading status:
RPG_RT.ldb: 100% (maybe 1 or 2 unknown chunks)
Map_XXXX.lmu: 100%
RPG_RT.lmt: 100%
SaveXX.lsd: 75-80%, there are about 60 unknown chunks yet, we will need some help with this (people can help by using LCF2XML tool).
You can learn more about bugs and missing implementation in the EasyRPG Player issue tracker on GitHub: github.com/EasyRPG/Player/issues
About the crowdfunding part: we should have a full standalone product to make it more attractive: to have editor and basic RTP materials, at least for minimum replacement, and this part is still far yet. I believe a plain portable RPG_RT.exe replacement has a more limited end user scope yet, but we’re open for better coordination to get this up and clarify where to put effort and funding.
Cheers!
Hi Dani, i’m MarianoGNU, one of the developpers.
i think fdelapena said most of good stuff, but if you want to talk directly with developpers for more details you can enter to our IRC channed from here:
webchat.freenode.net/?channels=easyrpg
and if you want to see our lasts conversations on the IRC you can see the logs here:
easy-rpg.org/irc/log/easyrpg/
there’re logs since 2010, so you wont lose anything(?)
See you. 
Ok, people, thanks for the info.
Of course, you’ll need a more solid/complete product in order to attract backers in a supposed crowdfunding campaign. Also, how could you reward backers if this is a free open source project? It’s complicated.
The RTP doesn’t need to have a huge amount of stuff just from start, in my opinion. Anyway, graphics are quite important in a project like this, and that’s where almost all funding should go. Maybe you should limit the amount of initial official graphic stuff, having, for example, 8 main characters (8 charsets, 8 facesets, 8 battle charsets x N poses, etc.), 16 monsters, etc., and then also include all the unofficial resources made by contributors. But for the official stuff I would prefer original character design, instead of simple RPG Maker edits.
Me and my brother have experience creating and managing graphic assets for game projects, a hard task, and that’s similar to what EasyRPG needs. Creating all the graphic assets needs a lot of time. And even much more if you’re looking for quality and homogeneous results. We’re busy at the moment, we can’t handle that for free, but we can contribute with some of the custom charsets we did time ago (I’ll open a post later).
Is there any place where I could get some information about the graphics you guys need for a basic EasyRPG release? Do you have any list of required assets? Are you planning to replace the whole RPG Maker 2003 RTP?
Regards!
Yeah, rewards seems harder to define with open source projects, but because the software is a service, rewards could be something like make ready more ports (iOS, Android, etc.), custom assets, custom features, official customer support, etc.
Mailpile is a good example of a recently successful open source project funding: indiegogo.com/projects/mailp … -mail-back (note the custom themes reward by $2k)
The player interpreter RTP point of view is to make RPG Maker games playable without installing non-free original RTP and this whould require some RTP-compatible assets with similar descriptions, eg. some NPC mentions in games physical features about some RTP character… “it’s a magician with a X color hat”, we should have some support for this. Another thing to take in care is to keep some RTP style because most games which use RTP assets have they own custom materials mixed, and a very custom RTP replacement might look ugly if they are very different from used game assets. An example of RTP Chara1.png made by MarinaNT is here: raw.github.com/EasyRPG/TestGame … Chara1.png
Current installed replacements are in TestGame project folders: github.com/EasyRPG/TestGame/tre … tGame-2000
Critical assets are: ChipSet/Basis.png (flat ugly placeholder), CharSet/Chara1.png, GameOver/GameOver.png, Title/Title*.png, System/System.png
Missing critical assets: Vehicle.png (vehicles are not implemented yet)
Critical 2003-specific assets: BattleWeapon/BattleWeapon.png (not implemented, there is 1 material at the wiki)
Missing critical 2003-specific assets: System2/System2*.png (partially implemented?)
Because replacing 465* material files is a huge amount of work (*original 2000 RTP number of assets), the game interpreter could have an asset replacement system for limited materials, allowing to replace multiple names with a common asset. This does not make a rich experience in games but at least might make more games RTP independent. I’ve made a list of shareable 2000-2003 monster assets and other miscellaneous tables here:
easy-rpg.org/wiki/development/r … -2000-2003
Some kind of monsters are similar, and while most materials are far to have a replacement, a possible solution is to classify by type and make them in groups to show the same common replacement. Currently, EasyRPG Player has a 2000 RTP table with Japanese-English equivalcene to play Japanese RPG Maker games with English RTPs (2000 Don Miguel’s RTP and 2003 RPG Advocate’s RTP for now), so, similar equivalence tables might be adjusted to fit multiple assets from the same. I have a RTP backup with original filenames UTF8 compatible here (warning: original Enterbrain’s RPG Maker RTP materials, don’t spread this link).
However, I agree a fresh custom style with a small amount of homogeneous materials might be very good, for a complete suite with a game editor. Or rebase some arts from the Liberated Pixel Cup assets (however, they have RMXP-like resolution).
Because the project is very limited with graphic resources, it would be worth a character generator based on partial chara assets (hair, face, etc.) allowing hue adjust, like VX Ace but for 2k/3 materials, charas-project like.
Anyways there are lacking of organization and proposals around RTP solutions, most documented work and proposals are in the EasyRPG wiki and some forum debate. Feel free to consider how to handle this based on current info or rewrite current ideas and proposals.
Greets!
Uuumm, ok, I think I understand what’s the main goal of EasyRPG at the moment. But why not center efforts on making EasyRPG a standalone alternative to RPG Maker first? And then work on compatibility later. That way you could define a short limited set of assets for the basic EasyRPG RTP (much more affordable for disinterested artists, composers, etc), and focus on make the software (player and editor) work. With the software working, I think you could start an interesting crowdfunding campaign to fund the rest of the project, RTP and compatibility features. Also note that EasyRPG could encourage people to make/use their own assets or search the Internet for compatible resources (there are a lot) instead of trying to provide a huge RTP.
If you guys limit the RTP required assets, maybe we (and some other people) could help you a bit. Think about it.
Regards!
