[RM2K] PLACES TO FIND FREE GAME ASSETS?

Problem is with RPG Maker 2003 is that it wasn't officially localized until YEARS after even VX Ace was out, so by the time 2M2K went official everyone had already moved on to VX Ace and then a few years later MV. To understand the lack of RM2K assets, you must first understand the history of RPG Maker. The very first RPG Maker was released on Japanese computers in 1995 for, well, Windows 95. For the longest time, RPG Maker had absolutely no fanbase outside of a very small group in japan and that's it. No international presence whatsoever. However, this all changed when a German programmer unofficially translated RM2003 around 2005 or so into German and then into a very shoddy english translation. This is how the english RPG Maker community was born, through a crappy pirated bootleg version of RM2003 translated from japanese to german to english in the mid to late 2000s.

It took YEARS, and I mean YEARS for the publishing company, KADOKAWA, to take notice of the growing community of English RPG Maker users pretty much exclusively using a pirated bootleg copy of an outdated engine and due to this localize the engines themselves. This is how many veterans of the community started, through that pirated version of RM2K, and this very website was created before the engines were even officially localized. Hence why this here fan-forum is called "rpgmaker.net" while the official website is called "rpgmakerweb.net" and why this site has such lax rules of piracy, emulation, and rips while on the official forum they'll ban you for using rips in your games. It was created directly by the pirates themselves who founded the community in the first place!

Finally, sometime in the VERY late 2000s or even the early 2010s, RPG Maker was localized for the very first time with the English release of RPG Maker XP. A couple years later VX released, an engine many in the community found to be extremely lackluster compared to XP, but when the VX Ace updated version came out it attracted a whole new wave of creators, mainly young people, to create crappy RPGs made in like a week which greatly soured the engine's mainstream reputation outside of the community.

Then, after all that, people were still using the pirated version of RM2K since it was free, that's what they were used to, and that was the only way to access that engine at the time. So KADOKAWA took notice, relentlessly shut down any traces of the pirated version of RM2K, and released officially localized versions of RM2K and it's better version RM2K3. This was LONG after VX Ace went mainstream, and since all those old RM2K assets were made with the pirated engine and were often posted on ancient early 2000s forums, most of them have been lost to time sadly.

RM2K is also a VERY limited engine. It's like developing games for the SNES in 2022. So many things will have to be cut or altered and file management is key. I highly recommend you switch over to RPG Maker MV as it's a far better, more modern engine with a lot more assets readily available and a whole lot more features. I recommend getting it on Steam when it inevitably goes on sale for the steam summer sale happening in a few months. It's a really good engine. And if you have some money left over (just $6) you can subscribe to Aekashics ($1 a month) and Yanfly's ($5 a month) patreons for only a month, download all their assets, (over 20,000 SV battlers and over 300 plugins!) and than instantly unsubscribe before your charged for another month.

Don't even bother with the latest one, MZ. The built-in assets absolutely suck and the games made with it are often very laggy and neigh-unplayable unless you have a Windows 11 PC with a good graphics card and lots of RAM. (MV had the same issue back in 2016 if you still used Windows 7) Meanwhile MV's built in assets are amazing with a built-in character generator with tons of options and one of the best OSTs in all of gaming. (seriously.)

TLDR: RM2K has no assets because it was only officially localized recently so the majority of it's assets were from the pirated version and thus were taken down/lost due to old early 2000s servers going down and KAKOKAWA personally taking down all traces of the pirated version on the internet. Ditch RM2K, use MV instead.

Look up refmap

https://rpgmaker.net/forums/topics/15396/
https://rpgmaker.net/forums/topics/24240/

Search for "Theodore" if you want something more contemporary

White Screw Shop also has a mix of contemporary/fantasy:
http://hi79.web.fc2.com/material/frame-material.html

and as suggested use charas via their resources:

http://charas-project.net/resources.php?lang=en
or
https://www.rpg-maker.fr//index.php?page=ressources

Though some art from those sites might be ripped from other games, just know you can't make it commercial (REFMAP and White Screw Shop allows for it though). Making your game free won't absolve you, though chances are nobody will give a shit unless you call your game Final Fantasy or something. You can also poke around in other peoples RM2K3 games (likely mostly rips too) but make sure they aren't original art since it's bad form.

Hello!

you can visit Hellsoft.net is the spanish comunity of RPG maker, and you can fin lots of resources too for 2k and 2k3

enjoy!!