Description


RPG Maker 2003 is back and out of retirement! Degica by order of KADOKAWA GAMES/Enterbrain and with the cooperation of Cherry and Archeia_Nessiah has released an official English version of RPG Maker 2003. To celebrate we're having a Golden Week of RPG Maker 2003 and everybody's invited! Veterans, dust off your copy of RM2k3 and reach into the depths of forgotten memories and show you still have your skills. Newbies to RM2k3, try out a new RPG Maker engine, experience one of the tools that brought RPG Maker to fame in the English communities, and show those oldbies up with your spunk and RPG dev skills!



Your quest is to make a game in RPG Maker 2003 in a week and a weekend! Form a party or take it solo in any version of RPG Maker 2003 and tell your story. Our judges - Liberty, GRS and unity - will decide which game is the best and who will become the Heros of A Golden Week of RPG Maker 2003!



RPG Maker 2003 aka RM2k3 is a modified version of RPG Maker 2000 aka RM2k released in 2002 only in Japan. RM2k itself was released in 2000 also only in Japan but was translated into English by Don Miguel. RM2k's ease of use, quality included graphic and audio assets, and number of features for creating RPGs made it an instant hit and a community around RM2k formed.

When RM2k3 came out a few years later it was quickly translated to English by RPGAdvocate and it became a community favorite for its side view battle system and ATB turn system similar to the one used by the SNES Final Fantasy games. Many classic and revered games like Hero's Realm, Alter A.I.L.A Genesis, Leo & Leah: A Love Story, and Phantom Legacy were made using RM2k3. Over time users moved on, some from constraints of the engine and others a desire to use the newer and more robust RPG Makers, and RM2k3's usage has waned. Some enterprising hackers like Cherry worked on hacking the RM2k3 executable itself to make it more extensible called DynRPG. Others like WolfCoder have been working on their own RPG Maker inspired by RM2k and RM2k3. Others yet have also made their own player for RM2k and RM2k3 games called Easy RPG. RM2k3 may have been hurting but it certainly wasn't out and there was still a lot of interest in using it.

In April 2015 an official translation of RPG Maker 2003 was finally released, and celebrating that is what this event is all about. To differentiate the new official RPG Maker 2003 is called RPG Maker 2003 on RMN's engines list with new icons. The fan translated version of RPG Maker 2003 is called RPG Tsukuru 2003 with the classic icons.



Here are the official rules of the event:

  • Your game must be made in RPG Maker 2003, the trial for RPG Maker 2003, or RPG Tsukuru 2003 (the fan translation of RM2k3). No other engine will be accepted.

  • Your game must be complete. This may be a celebration of an old favorite tool but we won't accept the trend of never finishing a game for this event!

  • Your game must be submitted by the end of of May 10th. Check the time the event ends on the right and make sure your timezone in your account settings is correct.

  • Your game can only use the RM2k3 RTP. What you get with the editor is what's allowed! The RPG Maker 2k RTP is not allowed except what's already part of the 2k3 RTP, such as sounds or music. This means no rips or other assets from other games, resource packs, or RTPs. You can download the 2k3 RTP here.

  • No DynRPG or similar patches are allowed.




Only the following non-RTP assets are allowed:
  • Splicing and rearranging existing RTP graphics. For example you can make a new tileset out of existing tilesets or create a faceset out of battler graphics.

  • A custom title screen for your game. Your title screen must use an RTP title screen as a base and recognizable as such.

No other edits or custom assets are allowed.



To submit your game to the contest:
  • Create a new gameprofile (by going to Submissions > Submit Game). The game must go through RMN's standard game approval process. (Get your gameprofile submitted early so that you aren't at the mercy of the whims of the Submission Manager!)

  • After the gameprofile is approved, upload the game to the Downloads section of your gameprofile.

  • Come back to this event and submit the download for judging! There is a Submit button in the upper right of the event page.





We have five achievements participants can earn:
  • Friend of 2k3: Everybody who participates during Golden Week earns this. No game submission needed! Take part in the discussion, give feedback, and cheer others on! Just like a good NPC!

  • Player of 2k3: Everybody who plays a game created for this event and reviews it (either through an official review or Let's Play video) is dubbed a Player of 2k3. This award will be available until the end of May 2015.

  • Party Member of 2k3: All teams that submit a game that abides by the above rules earn this achievement. These devs were not content to repeat their one line ad infinitum and found their way to the Hero's side to fight evil!

  • Villain of 2k3: What's a quest without a villain? The team whose game is judged to be second only to the Hero's own will earn this achievement. Foiled again!

  • Hero of 2k3: Only the best game will earn this achievement! Whichever team's game is judged to be the best will become the Hero of A Golden Week of RPG Maker 2003!



We have additional prizes beyond the above achievements. The Hero and Villain teams both get one game gifted to them on Steam. All teams that submitted a game get a ticket in a raffle to win an official copy of RPG Maker 2003 on Steam!

Only one game or copy of RM2k3 awarded per prize; the winning team is responsible for receiving and distributing their prize. The Hero team gets dibs on the Steam game award over the Villain team.



There are many resources available for learning RM2k3 and tips and tricks on using it. You can check the RPG Tsukuru 2003 engine page for a collection of tutorials and articles users have written over the years. Some articles that are recommended reading are:



If you're looking for more specific advice feel free to ask questions on the event page or post a new topic on the Help Me! forums. We have many RM2k3 veterans here that would be happy to help.



Details

Achievements

Registration

You must be logged in to sign up for A Golden Week of RPG Maker 2003.

Teams Members Entry
Gimme dat shiz ;p
KING OF VAPORWARE RETURNS
Why the hell not?
McBacon's right eye
RTP Luv
J-Team (I'll try and get something finished in 10 days.)
Longtime procrastinator trying to finish a full mini-game in a week! :D
Cernus
r m 2 k 3 b o y z
No Self Switches I'm Going to Cry
My body is ready
A very silly entry
Zombies ate my videogames
LOVE or MONEY?!
Co-op block pushing!
GoldenGuard GO!GO!GO!
the old dog squad
Good morning, you have amnesia!
jk i'm using 2k3
Babby's first RMN event
Loyalty Pays Off
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!
Not In The Slightest
*Smash announcer* BABBY!
Count me in!... Now. How do you use this thing.
Strong Opinions on ATB
aight lets do this
Project Starcrossed
It's time to shine (light flickers)
Because Pizza
hi i ned 9 more teamates join plz
I dont have time but I'm doing this anyway
Pom Gets 2k3
Team Review Something
Gam mak tyme!
I've got too much going on right now but whatever
Why do I keep signing up for these?
YOGURT
Butterball Babe
'Cuz Nostalgia, That's Why!
A New Game of Thrones

Posts

okay, so what did I promise in prizes again..?

EDIT:
Okay, hmmm:

Borderlands 2 GOTY
Two Worlds Castle Defense
Endless Space Emperor Edition
Planetary Annihilation
Planetary Annihilation
Fallout New Vegas
Fight the Dragon
Portal 2
Portal 2
Never Alone
Castle Storm
Shadow Warrior
8Bit Boy
Trails in the Sky
Child of Light
Child of Light
Rogue Legacy
Hero Siege
Scribblenauts Unmasked
FortressCraft Evolved
System Shock 2
I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream
Orcs Must Die 2 Complete Pack
RPG Maker 2003
RPG Maker 2003

Here is the list of games I currently have.

TrueMG, you get to pick first.

Friend me on Steam (kentonagbone) as I find that that is the easiest way for me to track and send gifts. Cernus, you might as well friend me, too, for your game and pick (after TrueMG reveals his).
I'll do a write up of each. I'm pretty sure the others have a few notes written but it'll be up to them to share.
What I need is a list of officially recognized participants (people, not just teams) so I can whip up the raffle.

E:
Cecil_Beoulve
Liberty
unity
Pizza
Zeigfried_McBacon
pianotm
Cap_H
J-Man
iddalai
goldenroy
Ratty524
Ninphelos
El_WaKa
Healy
Link_2112
Avee
Caninemm
Turbo852


??

E2:
hey, where is Cernus and TrueMG in this list?

E3:
fixed. Gave them the Party Member of 2k3 achievement.
Congratz to MG and Cernus for winning this one! Was a really nice contest. (:
They didn't get that because they got the wins...

C'm'ere and let me bop you on the head. :/
I still need to get around to playing some of these to be a "true" participant.
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
author=iddalai
Can we get game feedback from the contest judges? That would be helpful :)

Here are my revised notes on each game, with a point score (out of twenty).

Dule

Beautifully mapped, interesting premise, but gameplay was weak and generally lacked any sort of strategy. Maps were lush and fantastic, but towns felt empty with a lack of interactable NPCs. The last town really needed a place to rest before the final dungeon. Story was interesting and left me wanting more information. 14 points.


Cave Adventure R

A fun and somewhat amusing game, but lacking polish and balance. Magic was often not powerful or useful enough to warrant using. The events and encounters were very creative and a lot of fun, and it was neat to explore and find everything, but the difficulty lacked balance and if you wanted to advance you needed to grind on the same slime enemy encounters over and over. 10 points.


Sellsword

A cute, funny, charming game. Nice gameplay, fun characters. Buffs seemed to vary in how long they last, making their use feel iffy, and battles seemed to change in difficulty based on how lucky you are (your whole party getting stunned can really ruin your day) but everything was well made and felt polished. Again, let me say that I really loved the characters and the silly moments really added to my enjoyment, and the cool battle effects boosted that even further. My personal favorite entry in the contest. 18 points.


Lost Land Renard

A basic RPG with some neat effects and nice levels of polish. Those transitions from outside to inside were a nice touch. Gameplay could use work, as it felt very grind-heavy and lacked balance. 10 points.


Tsukuru 9

A fun, silly game with a class system and randomized dungeons. I enjoyed being able to customize my party, but only one dungeon is present, and the classes never got their chance to shine. The randomized aspect is really cool. Has a nice sense of humor. Seems to be a big world with many locations, but the game isn’t really complete, however, as it pulls a “To Be Continued” on us. 13 points


Jotun Coliseum

A neat stat increase system and coliseum battle setup. However, lacks a narrative and is increasingly grind-heavy and progression is very slow. I spent hours playing this, and while I enjoyed a lot of the ideas initially, it got old fast. Some sort of narrative or other means of holding interest rather than just endless fights would have been very welcome. 9 points.


Bachelor’s Deal

A short but cute, neat, and fun gameshow style game. Very well evented and a really cool idea. Seeing the same responses and having the contestants’ answers/personalities in one round contradict their answers on the previous round was kind of weird. Overall, an enjoyable experience. 14 points.


Golden Guard

A very cool Action-RPG Puzzle hybrid. Well made, though having to grind out monsters to restore HP was a little tedious. An inn would have been super welcome. Enemies also seem to have a few too many HP for my liking. The whole “tell a story with no words” thing was really cool, though, and the last boss battle was pretty darn amazing. 17 points.


R

Lacks substances and the battles require no strategy. Really funny, though. I am a complete sucker for this style of “dumb” humor, however the game needs to have a bit more to it to feel satisfactory. 11 points.


On Wednesdays

An interesting but strange game with only one battle. There’s a lot of character bits, which I liked, but so much of it left me confused, which may have been the point. Mapping was decent and some areas were very nice. Overall, it’s hard to draw a conclusion on it one way or the other. 10 points.


Ghost Visit

An interesting short game with some neat mechanics and a lot of polish. Your actions don’t really flow with the narrative, as it feels like you’re just going through padding to get to the end of the story, but this padding is very well done at the very least. Events have a lot of thought put into them and are engaging, and the sense of mystery is very nice. The game, however, ultimately feels incomplete as the ending is missing and we’re left with questions. 16 points.


A Traitor’s Hold

Interesting use of narration in an RPG, as well as a neat class system. An impressive amount of locations for the time allotted, and some of the humor worked well. Exploration was a blast, and there were plenty of secrets to find. Several aspects felt buggy and not optimal, and some class level up skills were useful while others were not. The battles lacked balance and were very hit or miss, but worked overall. This game was an odd one for me, as it started off very weak. The first dungeon literally tells you to go back and get all the treasures, and given the random nature of the loot, may or may not be worth it, and if you don’t get healing items or revives, you could be in trouble. Also, you literally just leave whenever you want to advance the story, and there are no events or any other point to going back into that dungeon other than that the game told you to go get items there, which felt odd. Only after that first dungeon does the game get good. 16 points.


2-Player Block Puzzle

A very interesting mechanic, that is unfortunately held down by buggy controls and a frustrating 2nd character button layout. A lot of cool ideas, but unfortunately the setup of everything made it hard for me to enjoy them, and for some reason, at some points, the girl just wouldn’t respond to the key presses, making things frustrating. Having areas where you couldn’t see her just added to the frustration. 10 points.


Jack’s Magic Beans

A confusing messy game that makes progressing in any fashion difficult and hard to enjoy. The king’s place where you must enter a number is broken immediately if you guess and enter a number higher than the correct number, which meant I had to restart the game. When I did enter the correct number, I fought a boss and got Jack’s beans back, which I thought was the objective, but the game continues, and you can only progress by poking and prodding around in an odd manner. Nothing much is explained and it all doesn’t make a lot of sense. 4 points.


Dragon’s Tooth

An ambitious-sized game with many locations, however an extreme lack of polish, poor mapping and very poorly balanced gameplay really hurt the overall presentation. There were cool additions like the Jump mechanic, but there were all sorts of bugs and mistakes, like event NPCs who stayed around even after being defeated and events that replayed themselves if you revisited the map long after the events were over. This needed a lot of testing that it seems it did not get. 7 points.


Her Dreams of Fire

An unconventional but powerful example of storytelling done creatively. Very poetic and I liked having to piece together the backstory. (Disqualified to win because it’s a fellow judge’s entry XD) 16 points.
author=Liberty
They didn't get that because they got the wins...

C'm'ere and let me bop you on the head. :/

But it says "Submitted a 2k3 game during the Golden Week of RPG Maker 2003." :<
But it meant that they weren't the winners. I blame GRS. >.>
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
now when people say that i'm out to get 2k3 and that i'm evil and horrible i can point them to my achievements from this event

...i mean yeah i didn't make a game for it because five minutes in the maker made me want to vomit, but i'll play your games if you make them !!
author=Liberty
But it meant that they weren't the winners. I blame GRS. >.>


Ya gotta submit a game to the event to win it! They were even on the cheeto list I sent ya. My intended cheeto distribution was:

Hero and Villian got 1st and 2nd respectively, are subsets of Party Member
Party Member submitted a game for the event, subset of Friend
Player gave any sort of feedback for any event game, subset of Friend
Friend posted anything related to the event up to and including a "Yay!" post on the event page itself. Easiest 5 makerscore to get! Encompasses all of the 2k3 achievements.
Blame me then. >.<;
Ratty524
The 524 is for 524 Stone Crabs
12986
author=Unity
Buffs seemed to vary in how long they last, making their use feel iffy,


That's odd with the buffs. I may need to double-check but I thought I set at least the buff states to end on a set amount of turns, though I could have made oversights in my haste to complete the game.

Thanks for your feedback!
Turns are based on character turns, not battle turns. That is, if it's set to five turns and you have three characters and three enemies, one battle phase - if they all have equal speed - would be 6 turns.
Ratty524
The 524 is for 524 Stone Crabs
12986
author=Liberty
Turns are based on character turns, not battle turns. That is, if it's set to five turns and you have three characters and three enemies, one battle phase - if they all have equal speed - would be 6 turns.

That would explain it. I bet if you had a speed buff in addition, your turns will be used up a lot faster. Jesus there are so many things wrong with this battle system.
author=Ratty524
author=Liberty
Turns are based on character turns, not battle turns. That is, if it's set to five turns and you have three characters and three enemies, one battle phase - if they all have equal speed - would be 6 turns.
That would explain it. I bet if you had a speed buff in addition, your turns will be used up a lot faster. Jesus there are so many things wrong with this battle system.


I wouldn't really consider that "wrong" but it's definitely something you would have to consider--that "turn" is counted globally and not per actor.
Foiled again! I'll get my revenge Golden Guard - the next time we meet! :P

author=Ratty524
This was surprising! I didn't even think A Traitor's Hold would be considered ever since the initial broken state of its release (though how lenient were you guys in terms of hotfixes after the contest deadline?)

Nonetheless, congratulations to TrueMG and Cernus for winning their respective prizes! This event was awesome!

Yeah, I had similar thoughts. I was absolutely gutted when I realised that my released version had a game breaking bug in it so thank you very much Liberty, Unity and GreatRedSpirit for your leniency as I know you didn't have to make that allowance. This was quite a nice surprise. Thanks so much :D! What surprised me by this event was not only the high quality of games people made but just how diverse they were. I imagine it must have been quite challenging for the judges to compare them all against each other. Where do you start?! lol

I'm actually working my way through Sellsword at present and I'm really enjoying it so far. Ghost Visit was amazing and made me quite angry that goldenroy had thought of such a great idea :P. After I've completed Sellsword I'm definately going to try Golden Guard! Congratulations to TrueMG, Ratty and goldenroy and to everyone else who made such great games!

author=unity
A Traitor’s Hold

Interesting use of narration in an RPG, as well as a neat class system. An impressive amount of locations for the time allotted, and some of the humor worked well. Exploration was a blast, and there were plenty of secrets to find. Several aspects felt buggy and not optimal, and some class level up skills were useful while others were not. The battles lacked balance and were very hit or miss, but worked overall. This game was an odd one for me, as it started off very weak. The first dungeon literally tells you to go back and get all the treasures, and given the random nature of the loot, may or may not be worth it, and if you don’t get healing items or revives, you could be in trouble. Also, you literally just leave whenever you want to advance the story, and there are no events or any other point to going back into that dungeon other than that the game told you to go get items there, which felt odd. Only after that first dungeon does the game get good. 16 points.

Thanks very much for the feedback unity! I'm glad you got some enjoyment out of it after the horrible start :P. I've got a long list of things that I need to improve lol. I really wanted to make a large game world as I was dead set on evoking a feeling of openness and non-linearity but this was at the expense of polish that I slowly came to realise every other game in this event had and it is not much of an exaggeration to say that two days before the deadline when I had no story beyond the sunken cave, no monsters, shops or NPC's - I was sat at my computer in tears... in my pants. :P
Das raffel:






by which I mean that members of teams are entered individually into the raffle.








Congratulations Ninphelos! You are now the proud owner of RPG Maker 2003.
Unity
Beautifully mapped, interesting premise, but gameplay was weak and generally lacked any sort of strategy. Maps were lush and fantastic, but towns felt empty with a lack of interactable NPCs. The last town really needed a place to rest before the final dungeon. Story was interesting and left me wanting more information. 14 points.


Thanks for the feedback. Honestly, my only excuse for the poor combat is the time restraint and the fact that it was my first time (ever) designing RPG combat.

The excuse for no NPCs in town is pretty much the same level of bad. In the world of Dule, it's been raining for 50 years, and well... There are no RTP sprites with umbrellas. The backstory on the rain wasn't explained in game because I honestly couldn't find a way/place to do it.
Yaaay well thanks guys. I really appreciate it