Program my own game from scratch code?!

[Alecain]

I have a programmer friend, one that knows many languages and is quite adept at his craft, whom seems to think RPGMaker is quite lame. Says the limitations could be avoided if you just learn to program code.... whichever one I'm supposed to learn.

Alright, so I'm no programmer, but I understand it enough to know that if I were to make my own RPG from scratch code that... it would take freakin' forever! All the sprites, tiles, music, sounds, etc... and it's better that I create all of this myself, then program every last bit of code by myself.... just one guy? WHOA! 

RPG Maker is a shortcut, not a shortcoming. It allows a single person (not a team of hundreds) to make a complete without havign to do so much programming. I'll admit that using your own code and such could net a better product, but, sheesh....  the work involved...

[Moosetroop11]

...you seemed to have accidentally clicked on 'charas' rather than your blog : p

Anyway, I'm not sure I agree with you entirely. I like rpgmaker but learning to code can be very rewarding. Coding an rpg would be hard but wouldn't necessarily take forever - I made something similar to an rpg in my last year of uni, though it didn't have as complicated a battle system.

[DragonBlaze]

I agree with Moose.

Usually you'd never start from scratch anyway, you'll start from a base engine such as Unity, XNA, etc (there are probably hundreds), that give you basic capabilities such as loading graphics, displaying things on the screen, playing music, etc. I've build games from absolute scratch, a blank text document, I wouldn't recommend it unless you have a really good reason to (like your graduate level computer graphics professor forces you to).

There are actually many things that are much easier to do with code than RPG maker. Pretty much any custom battle system, custom menu system, mini games, or anything that is not default in rpg maker is actually a lot quicker and easier to do with actual code. Some things are impossible all together in rpg maker such as 'real' pathfinding, learning algorithms (AI), or even using different color depths.

Yes RPG maker is easier, and quicker for SNES style rpgs, but if you ever wanted to do more than that, real code will probably not take much longer (once you know how to code). I've made complete games in 2-3 weeks for my graphics and computer game technology classes, granted they weren't rpgs like you'd make with rpg maker.

[Dr. Ace]

I concur with Blaze. I always say: RPG Maker is a toy, programming is a tool. (I've never said that so I coin this from now on.) RPG Maker IS a limitation. It is nice for simple press attack to win RPGs but doing anything more advanced or different it is extremely limited. Doing custom things in RPG Maker is actually a bigger hassle than picking one of the by DragonBlaze suggested base engines and programming it for yourself. Sure, it's a bit more difficult to get into but as a programmer I can tell you the time you put in it is worth more than the time you put into customizing RPG Maker.

And as Blaze said, a game can be made quite fast. There are huge communities that build games from scratch within days (these are called game jams, Global Game Jam being an example) and making full games can easily be done in a month. Unless you of course want bigger games, or 3D, those might take some more time, but it all depends on the time you're willing to spend in learning.

[fruckert]

What they said.
The only thing that I can add that hasn't been said yet is that making your own game, with no barriers except for the ones you make, is a lot more fun than using any given Maker.
I was a Game Maker junkie for a few years, and then decided to start giving other programming languages a try, due to how restricting GameMaker felt.
Haven't looked back, and don't quite want to. I love what I'm doing right now too much to even consider it.

As a side note, I don't consider Unity to be in the same category as Game Maker or RPG Maker.
It's a very flexible tool, and fantastic for prototyping.

[Alecain]

I love the feeling of enlightenment.    I'd love to learn how to do custom battle scripts, menus, and stuff. I just don't think I have it in me to learn all of the necessary knowledge of programming. I've already learned so many things in life (music, drawing, woodworking,automotive, aviation, to name only a few) and to be honest my brain feels a bit... filled. I'm not sure if there is actually such a limitation to the brain but the though of learning so many different languages make my aviation training feel small.

Is there a single language that RPG maker uses? My programmer friend thinks it might be XML, and I know little bit of it.

[DragonBlaze]

Is there a single language that RPG maker uses? My programmer friend thinks it might be XML, and I know little bit of it.

Rm2k/3 doesn't use a language. Rmxp and up can use Ruby, which is actually a decent scripting language, but the Ruby is interpreted by the rpg maker program, and thus it's still very limiting (but not nearly as much as rm2k/3).

XML isn't really a programming language. XML is essentially a text document that allows easy storing and retrieval of information. There are a lot of game makers that use XML to store the information you store in rpg maker's "database". An example would be:
<enemy>
<name>Big monster</name>
<hp>1000</hp>
<mp>20</mp>
<attack>15</attack>
<skills>
 <skill>Fire</skill>
 <skill>Bite</skill>
 <skill>Steamy poop<skill>
</skills>
</enemy>

It may be possible that rpg maker uses xml to store this information as well, but it's not exposed to the game creator.

[fruckert]

If you're asking what RM2k3 is actually programmed in, I...don't know, but I think it's Delphi.
It's also very likely that it was coded in C++, which I personally don't recommend as "my first programming language".
Delphi neither, because the only things that I can think of that use Delphi are older versions of Game Maker and, if I'm correct, 2k3.

If you're going to get into bigger game development, I do actually recommend checking Game Maker out and scripting with it.
Download tons of tutorials, read the code, etc.
And then work your way up to other things, like C# and MonoGame/XNA, and Unity, etc.

Just...start small, otherwise you're going to choke.

[Dr. Ace]

With the amount of tutorials that exist for Unity and with the ease of level design due to it's build-in map editor it's an excellent start to begin with it. I'd skip the Javascript though and go for C#, way more useful to learn.

[DragonBlaze]

I'd skip the Javascript though and go for C#, way more useful to learn.

*cringes* javascript. Both are about just as easy to learn, but I would imagine that it is much easier to go from C# to javaScript than from javaScript to C# (or any structured language). C# is fast, you don't need to learn about memory allocation, it has great graphics support, and it is fairly user friendly, so it's probably the best place to start. That being said, I'm actually working on an MMO using javascript/HTML5/WebGL and Java, which has none of those features (other than not needing to worry about memory allocation). Too bad you cannot use C# in browsers to render graphics :/

[Dr. Ace]

Weren't they working on doing that with Silverlight? But then again, with how much Microsoft is ****ing up I bet they dropped that as well.

[Moosetroop11]

Having said all this, don't feel pressured to take up programming. It IS a lot of work to learn and if you're not particularly interested, that is what things like rpg maker are there for after all.  Consider the posts in this thread a list of good reasons to take up coding rather than a list of reasons why rpgmaker is bad. It's a lovely program for what it does. The site was founded on it, after all.

[Prpl_Mage]

RPGmaker got some bugs, and the battle events could use a lot more variety for stuff like conditional branches: "damaged by X element" or "is affected by X condition" , also most importantly "hero/monster X uses the Y skill"

Besides that, it can handle a lot of difficult stuff, just look at Meiscool's game otherwise.

[fruckert]

Weren't they working on doing that with Silverlight? But then again, with how much Microsoft is ****ing up I bet they dropped that as well.

I think that silverlight exists, but idunno.
I know that Moonlight probably still exists.
gotta love open source communities

[DragonBlaze]

Hmm yes it looks like you can use Silverlight to render 3D graphics in browsers, didn't know that haha. Its Microsoft and it requires a plugin download though.

Besides that, it can handle a lot of difficult stuff, just look at Meiscool's game otherwise.

True, but honestly, it would have been much easier to do that work in a real language rather than rm2k3 events. You can do a lot with rpg maker switches (booleans), variables (floats), loops and conditional branches, but you can do so much more with arrays, recursion, objects, complex variables, inheritance, and polymorphism.