RPGMaker MV on a Chromebook

[ocean pollen]

It works. It requires Crouton and a chroot installation of Linux (this is much easier to setup than it sounds - crouton handles everything), and editor-launched playtesting can only use the canvas mode. The editor is too laggy to be pleasant to use. It's actually fine for mapmaking, but the database interface and the menus are painfully unresponsive.

I tried Crouton in two configurations:

xfce

sudo sh Downloads/crouton -t xfce4 # install
sudo startxfce4 # launch

This version launches in a browser window, and is convenient for having MV up next to ChromeOS's own Chrome browsers. I installed Crossover Linux with their 'shell' installer (download the .bin and then run 'sudo sh the-download.bin'), used that to install Steam, then used Steam to install RPGMaker MV. RPGMaker MV loaded to a blank white screen until I put opengl32.dll in RPGMaker MV's steam directory. I grabbed that .dll from a spare windows computer, but there are some links in the Tech Support forum for other people who need it.

This version shares a paste buffer with ChromeOS. It's quite nicely integrated.

gnome3

sudo sh Downloads/crouton -t gnome-desktop -r trusty # install
sudo enter-chroot startgnome # launch

The version launches in its own virtual terminal - it takes up the entire display. The Chromebook's 'search' key (where Caps Lock is on a normal PC keyboard) is mapped to Super_L, so it behaves like the Windows key in desktop Linux. Ctrl-Alt-Shift-Forward is the impressive keychord used to switch between Linux and ChromeOS displays. The Windows key functionality in Gnome3 was too laggy to be pleasant due to the software rendering, so even though Gnome3 is my favorite desktop environment, I'll probably stick with xfce4.

I installed gnome3 in the first place because this configuration was supposed to offer hardware acceleration, but it doesn't seem to do that, and telling RPGMaker MV to ignore the GPU blacklist just leads it launching to a black screen. If hardware acceleration (hardware rather than software OpenGL support) can be achieved, RPGMaker MV's editor will be more pleasant to use.

Both configurations share a Downloads directory with ChromeOS.

Playtesting with WebGL

I started a webserver in Linux and then connected to it from ChromeOS. This again is easier than it sounds.

# you only have do all of this once
sudo apt-get install nodejs
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/nodejs /usr/bin/node
sudo apt-get-install npm
sudo npm-install http-server -g

# cd to Games/ for playtesting a game in development, or to your export directory for
# a deployed HTML5 agme.
cd Games/YourGame/
http-server

then just browse to http://localhost:8080/ in Chrome


It'd be nice if a HTML5 editor that produces HTML5 games would work natively in ChromeOS. "All" that Degica would have to do is repackage it. But maybe they still have their hands full pulling the kinks out of the platforms they current support. Also, since Steam doesn't have ChromeOS support, they have additional distribution issues to think through.