SEVENTHSON'S PROFILE

I'm glad you wrote this article. It's good to highlight the pros to an old version that can accumulate cons. I look at them more as RM versions for different purposes than chronological updates that unquestioningly replace the former.

Events vs. straight up coding is a great point. I think it's important to emphazise the differences between the latest versions and the legacy versions to new users. It seems that 2k3 offers the most for the old, more accessible approach and VX Ace offers the latest up-to-date features and content for the new approach. There's a sliding scale of how much coding and a priori content creation you have to do, starting with RPG Maker and going into other game makers. 2k3 is by far one of the best places to start on the non-coding end.

author=Addit
Sure, it might take a while...

OK gotta comment on this one... "Reinventing a wheel is worthwhile because you did it all by yourself!" said no one ever. Except up there... We'll just ignore that. The rest of the points are great though.

Porting and emulating is a must! Let's keep RPG Maker games running self-contained on all OSes and, yes, let's even expand to new platforms. That's gotta happen.

In an interview with Enterbrain, Indinera Falls makes the great point that "the Internet is constantly moving" so there will always be new places to go. We just need to find them (or create them).

author=Liberty
2k3 is actually fun to use, though. Yeah, I've had fun with Ace, sure, but 2k3 is FUN to use. And it has graphics up the wazoo, a built-in side-view battle system and did I mention it's fun to use? Also, hello non-square mapping! 16x16 tiles are the shit.

(I like Ace. I like the RTP a lot, but even I think that 32x32 is pretty bad for tiling purposes.)

I like what Liberty said about being a multi-version game developer. Those are some valuable points about what version to select and why for a given project.

Lastly, is there a good link for purchasing the Japanese version? Preliminary googling is not proving as succesful as I expected.

I started with RPG Maker back in 2001, so this is a great first thread to join for coming back to the community and get more involved this time.