About Successor

[Profile]

So I just a bit of researching about what first RPG Maker I want to buy.

I research about MZ, Unite, and Action Game Maker(?)
in the meantime I think MZ is the best option for me, cause seeing the bad review/floppiness about Unite, makes me think that Action Game Maker will flop too (I hope not, but I can`t just take out the doubtness on my mind, sorry )

then, I have a question, Unite is not the successor of MZ right. Then, Is Action Game Maker the next successor of MZ?

If no, Do I need to wait the successor of MZ to be released? cause it`s 2025 which likely there will be something new.

I just trying to get the stable & many possibilites (feature & game type) of RPG Maker.

Thank You in Advance

[Xuande]

Unite, being tied to Unity, is not a good idea unless you're already tied to the Unity ecosystem.

Action Game Maker is a successor of sorts to the mostly disappointing Pixel Game Maker, which had the misfortune of tying itself to an abandoned Japanese engine and ended up with a number of usability issues. But AGM is tying itself to Godot, which likely won't be abandoned in the short term, so I have my hopes up there...not enough to spend $81 at launch (or $90 for those who don't own PGM), but enough to pay attention to its development. Its main use case is likely with 2D Action genres, but its too early to say for sure and there is some ability to use 3D features.

RPG Maker MZ is the latest mainline RPG Maker despite being a bit old at this point. There are valid reasons for several versions of RPG Maker, but if you're coming in new, I would recommend waiting for a sale of either MZ or MV (the version prior to MZ with a similar level of functionality), as sales are frequent and steep. Both operate on JavaScript as their programming language and support somewhat modern resolutions instead of the roughly 480p-640p you can expect from RPG Makers older than MV.

Not sure what the above poster is going on about (they deleted their post?), but I routinely make progress with projects that aren't RPGs with all of the last several RPG Makers going back as far as VX/VX Ace. Just because the default assets and systems point towards a generic JRPG style combat system and world exploration doesn't make it the main or only thing RPG Maker is capable of.

Will we get a new RPG Maker in the near future? Hard to say, but competition in the space is starting to arrive while RPG Maker itself is only making small incremental improvements, with its plugin community getting increasingly fractured over time. Even if a new version were to come out, chances are high that it would be at best a sidegrade, the way MZ is a sidegrade to MV for having far less public plugin support.

[Razuth]

Would not recommend Unite.

MZ is the latest but it's more like an MV+ (arguably) in that it does not differ enough from it's predecessor to be it's own game engine entirely IMO. Not to say MZ is bad I use MZ all the time but if you don't have any I would go for MV in a sale as it is super good value.

[Xuande]

Originally posted by Razuth:

Would not recommend Unite.

MZ is the latest but it's more like an MV+ (arguably) in that it does not differ enough from it's predecessor to be it's own game engine entirely IMO. Not to say MZ is bad I use MZ all the time but if you don't have any I would go for MV in a sale as it is super good value.

This. If you're not coming in with specific defined needs, MV is likely to serve your needs as well as MZ does, and for much cheaper during a sale period.

If you don't mind paying more, and don't mind paying extra for your plugins (long story short, drama led to a situation where MZ has far fewer publicly available free plugins to use), then there's not too much of a reason to go back to MV.

I'm using MZ mainly due to inertia, not because it was a significant upgrade from MV.

[Scorpiova]

It depends on the game you want to make. There are many plugins for MV and MZ. You need to determine your battle system and features first to know which plugins will better suit your needs.

For MV, check out the Yanfly library. For MZ, check out the Visustella library.

[Xuande]

I find that VisuStella supporters fall into two main categories - those who would be better served by using MV and its wider array of freely provided plugins (Yanfly included, and I'll note many of these work with MZ since the engine is similar), and those who don't mind dropping hundreds of dollars to buy access to obfuscated, compatibility-breaking code.

If the user has low/no familiarity with coding, doesn't want to spend a lot of money, and needs a lot of preset features via plugins, MV is better than MZ for that. And the reason why is closely related to how plugin culture changed between the release of those two titles.

The drama behind the VisuStella group is a big part of what got me to stop modifying the built in combat system in favor of making my own from scratch instead of relying on plugin support as I often did in MV.

[Liam]

For what it's worth, there are still a good number of MZ plugins that are free and cover a lot of VS does--on the Japanese side of the plugin developing community. For example on places like fungamemake that host a lot of them: https://plugin-mz.fungamemake.com/

There's of course a language barrier that might get in the way of setting up more complex plugins, but more often than not they're straightforward enough and plenty of Japanese plugin devs make things multi-lingual if you search their githubs and such.

They are more piecemeal and specific compared to VS' several mega plugins that cover tons of ground, in one go (perhaps more than you may want in some cases) but I've always found it interesting keeping tabs on the Japanese community and seeing what they've been doing with MZ!

I also understand it's far less convenient having to source things out across far more places, compared to just downloading an all-in-one suite, but there's plenty of options if the need for them is there!

[Xuande]

It'll likely be another month before the next MZ/MV sale on Steam, but there's currently a storefront that just put Steam keys for them on sale, with MV as low as $12 USD and MZ at $44. That's roughly in line for what I'd expect with the Steam Summer Sale.