LOOKING FORWARD

Though rpgmakerweb is still alive, tkool.jp has been closing product support for a bunch of products (some of them were not very old). No blog updates since almost a year, tkool_dev account abandoned since 6 months ago and his account manager did some farewell. It's known Kadokawa was doing a branding reorganization, however there are no news from the tkool part. They made more product licensing but no further development in more RPG Maker products, the latest is RPG Maker DS+.

Looks like rpgmakerweb tries to maintain the licensed line with some artistic packs, translations are taken and refurbished from third party translators who made a translation first then made official. But no significative new software stuff.

Is time for changing things? How we should look forward with current situation? Are they preparing some big product for Android or other mainstream devices?

Apart of this rant, does it have any relation with the programming and plugins forum?

Nowadays we can do more things with crowdsourcing: doing games, software and this make us competent and play with the same level than some small studio companies, for fun or not. There are individual projects like Neko RPGXP or Choco Player doing great things with game interpretation on exotic platforms, or open source implementations like MKXP or EasyRPG Player. But there are also some easy to use editor efforts on the way.

However, if we want to look forward I see some growing projects a bit sticked into executable hacks, making the scene to increase the handicap between existing games and limit their platform expansion.

We should be aware of this, and keep in mind those games won't work anymore in a few years due to OS API deprecations. RPG Maker 2003 official support finished in 2012; is a dead product, like Windows XP.

To look forward and keep the 2000/2003 scene I believe in new interpreters as the right way to play with, and make them the preferred community products, made from it. There are some challenges with the current situation, and people involved with this have the key to help with the renewal.

You are right, so let's make it happen as RPG developers we are.

I've created a new post with some developer information to read and write RPG Maker 200x game data with ease:

http://rpgmaker.net/forums/topics/14925/

We're already working on a new game editor supporting RPG Maker native format import and already can edit tile map data and the map tree. It's under heavy active development. However, it won't support patched games. We encourage all patch developers to make alternate projects reliable by hacking its patches as new editor/interpreter features instead hacking memory bits in unsupported and license-limited products.

The new game editor code in progress, will be announced later:
https://github.com/EasyRPG/Editor-Qt