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Contact Me

Comments go to my E-Mail address, I won't really answer them here

E-Mail: wolfcoder (at) dreamincode.net
Dream.in.code: http://www.dreamincode.net/
AIM: wolfcoder
Yahoo: umbracoder
MSN: wolfcoder (at) dreamincode.net
20XX Irc: irc.esper.net #20xx

Installation: Delete RPG_RT.exe and paste this program where it used to be. There you go.

Introduction

To address the old-age and technology of RPG Maker 2003's RPG Runtime engine, a replacement will be written that implements more modern features. This is intended to work both as a 1-1 replacement for the RPG_RT.exe executable and as an extender to allow features which would be cumbersome to implement conventionally as event scripts.

There are also a long string of bugs and feature requests that will be addressed with this engine, especially the more commonly known battle bugs and speed/agility problems.

This is not a patch, it is a ground-up open-source engine that plays RPG Maker 2k/3 games. There are others out there, but usually for systems like the GP32X, PSP, and DS so that you could play RPG Maker 2003 games on those systems.

This technology enables you to create something new with something old, comfortable, and most importantly, fun. The G.E.C.K. for example, still sports that Win95 look but uses the next-gen engine you actually play. After all, it's this engine that your users will actually see and not your tools.

Participants

Thanks to the following people who submitted games for me to test against:

Kentona (Hero's Realm)
Drakonais (Tiamat Sacrament)
J-Man (Phantasia 5)
Ocean (Paradise Blue)

These participants will decide the engine's current level of compatibility with the original system.

Features

Features that 20XX will extend onto your project:
- Fixes the hit list of bugs and annoyances with the original engine
- Many more supported image and sound/music formats
- 32 bit color with alpha images
- Bitmapped fonts let you draw your own font pixel-to-pixel (also 32-bit alpha possible)

Tell me what you want and I'll implement them depending on how annoying/frequent you are at asking for them.

Specs and Stats

License: LGPL
System: SDL / Win32
Video: DirectX 9 3D
Audio: FMOD Ex
Libraries Used:
- SDL (system)
- DirectX (graphics)
- FMOD Ex (sound)
- SDL_image (loading many different image formats)

Latest Blog

Cancelled

Cancelled

I have lots of scientific study and work to do, so my time is pretty limited. I've been thinking this engine was a bad idea three months in, but I wanted to finish it anyway. Almost a couple years later, it's become apparent that this project is dragging itself out. I'm not sure I'll even be finishing normal games either, this is the end of posting in-progress projects. Any further announcements of projects I'm working on will be after it has already been completed.

Bad Idea?

The idea of using any of the RPG-Maker series of engines, in retrospect, is a bad idea. They already exist as a suite to satisfy your curiosity and boredom. For the more ambitious game authors, I recommend you just pick up GameMaker, Acknex, or any of the other higher quality toolkits out there for lower prices or free. People claiming to be from the Terraria staff are planning an independent RPG Maker, you should be supporting those projects. Regardless of what you use, it always takes great effort to make a fun game- there are many better engines (in all use cases) than this one to make your game with. Hence, I've been trying to finish something I feel was a mistake for about a year now.

Hell, if I didn't already have a job, I'd ask the "Producer of Terraria" if they could use me in making an independent RPG Maker- something like that I feel is the true solution. Do it right from the ground up and discard the nonsensical Enterbrain designs altogether.

What Now?

RPG Maker 20XX is missing the cookie cutter battle system. It can be used to make games, but the optimal use will happen when the source code is modified to fit whatever game is being made. Yes, this is identical to editing the ruby scripts of XP/VX to match your game. This requires a few coders to make different flavors of 20XX and the rest of the consumers to make various games. It's not pretty, but I have to point out that I left behind some pretty usable materials.

I will leave Feld here to manage any newcomers to produce the different flavors of 20XX, and I will add anyone working with the code to the project staff. I will continue to respond to questions and comments via E-Mail, if you use anything other than E-Mail, your message will go unanswered. I recommend you e-mail me especially if you want to work with the code since the code is heavily commented but also very messy.

Conclusion

20XX was just a curiosity of mine, and I thought I might be able to help the community. There's only so much I can do, and I am sure I will no longer be capable of providing adequate support for 20XX by myself, and therefore it will not be enough to serve you well. I may release games in the future, but you will only see them here when they are finished. That means they're probably not going to be RPGs (I have finished games a long time ago, but they weren't RPGs).

Other programmers are welcome to take the source code (everything available from the SVN) and branch off in an attempt to adapt or modify the engine.

Posts

One nice thing to have would be the ability to show more than one battle animation at the same time. Normally, if you try to show two, it simply skips the first and shows only the second.
author=NicoB
One nice thing to have would be the ability to show more than one battle animation at the same time. Normally, if you try to show two, it simply skips the first and shows only the second.

building on this suggestion, the ability for battle animations to be affected by screen tinting. (maybe with a toggle to turn it on or off in games that want the animations to not be tinted). I think this might've been suggested on a way earlier page though.
author=NicoB
One nice thing to have would be the ability to show more than one battle animation at the same time. Normally, if you try to show two, it simply skips the first and shows only the second.


I second this notion.
Thirded. The one-battle-animation-at-a-time limitation stopped many of my schemes to break the bounds of the engine in certain respects. Battle animations can do things for which you'd need an insane amount of pictures.
Yeah, it's honestly completely stupid that it doesn't allow that. So if you want more than one character showing the same emotion blurb at the same time, you'd have to make a special multi animation for that particular situation and test play it until it looked right (which is ridiculous).
Yeah, this was annoying when I tried to get four torches to burst with flame at once and it just didn't do it. This is stupid, it's actually easier for me to just have multiple battle animations than to ensure only the latest requested one will play.

This alone made making a Bomberman game hard.
NewBlack
☽ TRASH THAT IS A WASTE OF TIME
4879
Cheap and dirty request:

Customisable Weather Effects.. At least with the 3 colour sliders + trasnparency.

Maybe the ability to make new weather effects?
I don't know. I should focus on making the existing effects look much better first.
Please do; they suck shit. The sandstorm effect is the worst of the worst.
author=Feldschlacht IV
Please do; they suck shit. The sandstorm effect is the worst of the worst.


No joke.
NewBlack
☽ TRASH THAT IS A WASTE OF TIME
4879
This has probably been asked a lot of times.. But does "fixes the hit list of bugs and annoyances with the original engine " mean... A ... NON-broken DBS :D?

And.. Is a built-in run/walk system a possibility? (like I hear VX has) I know they're not hard to do with common events, but those systems cause havoc when it comes to on-touch intiated events (making those events essentially inert).
And.. Is a built-in run/walk system a possibility?


What's the point, why not just have one speed that's not too slow?

But does "fixes the hit list of bugs and annoyances with the original engine " mean... A ... NON-broken DBS :D?


If nothing else, the engine would have a much better default side-view ATB system which is kind of the reason for this thing to exist in the first place.
Clyve
GOATSE FOR LIFE
1858
author=WolfCoder
And.. Is a built-in run/walk system a possibility?
What's the point, why not just have one speed that's not too slow?


Because sometimes it's nice to walk slowly when checking chests, lining up to doors, etc.
That was a problem before?
I wouldn't mind having a speed between Normal and Half Normal, like .75. I think it'd get a lot of use as a default walk speed.
It all depends on the scale of your maps in relation to the players. For fine-tuning, the global walk speed for all speeds can be adjusted.
Oh, quick note: Does 20XX fix the bug where, if a character goes into a skill subset, backs out of it, then uses a Link to Event command, the ATB bars go haywire? I can fix up a demo if you don't know what I'm talking about.
20XX doesn't fix bugs. Because 20XX is a replacement from scratch, it simply does not have any of those bugs to begin with. 20XX will have an entirely new set of bugs for me to then fix.
author=WolfCoder
It all depends on the scale of your maps in relation to the players. For fine-tuning, the global walk speed for all speeds can be adjusted.


I think you're right to a certain extent, but this engine desperately needs a walk speed inbetween normal and half normal as Kaempfer says. Normal is inaccurate if you are in a smaller room and trying to search things, and half-normal is unbearable on larger maps. RPGs tend to have small and large maps anyway. You should definitely find a way to add this in (and even make it the new default).
NewBlack
☽ TRASH THAT IS A WASTE OF TIME
4879
I agree with the above.

RM2k3 has a horrible tendency to do everything exponentially. The differences between walk speed settings(by just one point) are huge. The same goes for volume control on sound effects/music. I have no idea what kind of formula they were using to map out those increments.