Has anyone came from RPG Maker to Unity3D

Hey, I'm just curious what your experiences are, do you find it easier to use? less confusing? RPGmaker has an eventing system, but I think it's way different from normal scripting or using stuff like playmaker. Also, do you use playmaker or blox visual scripting plugins? Has anyone tried to create an RPGmaker type of game in unity3D or a RPG story driven game that requires alot of databasing text and stuff ?

 

I've not used RPGMaker, but I did test out Playmaker at one point and yes I have used databases for RPG's.. Simplest and easiest way is to use XML, I've tried SQL / Excel and a couple of other bits but again XML is generally the easiest way to go.

I'd recommend trying to code using C#. It's nowhere near as bad as you'd think, plus it enables you to create things that just wouldn't be possible in a pre-defined event driven system. If it doesn't sit well eventually you could try PlayMaker, I personally found C# simpler to understand when I first picked up Unity.

There's a metric ton of examples you can find via search engines on RPG's. I'm guessing the whole process with Unity is going to be far more difficult than RPGMaker whether or not you choose visual scripting or coding. Although the benefit is, you can do whatever you dream up and it's your game! ..

 

If you don't mind that XML ends up using more space for the tags than the actual data. If you're going to be altering your data files by hand then you might want something easier on the eyes like this one made by @JoeStrout.

http://luminaryapps.com/blog/announcing-grfon-a-kinder-gentler-serialization-format/

 

Well if we want to get into "easy to read".. Go YAML ..

http://www.bendangelo.me/unity3d/2016/02/21/creating-a-rpg-database-in-unity.html

I must be really tired, because that's how I organise "plugins" and other stuff in Unreal.. LOL!. Thought never occured though.,

 

Are you guys using those formats for your cold storage?

 

@Freakyuno, I'm not sure what you mean by cold storage in this context (typically it means secure offline storage, but I don't quite see why you would need that for your games). But I do use GRFON for both built-in game data, and persisting game state.

@ShadowK, I looked carefully at YAML before developing GRFON. GRFON is substantially easier to read (and write!), in my opinion. But of course YMMV.

 

@HaruEQ, are you experienced with RPGMaker? I've never used it because most of that series only runs on Windows, and while they now have a Mac version of one of them, there is no trial version. And $80 is pretty pricey compared to Unity.

Have you looked in the Asset Store to see if there is anything similar? I've seen UTAGE for making games that are more like visual novels, but I don't know if there's anything for JRPG games.

I've got a project under consideration that could use something like this, and one of my sons is interested in that kind of game too. So, I'm somewhat tempted to try to make a JRPG-style game kit for Unity. But I could really use the advice of somebody who's used RPGMaker, since I believe that is the current gold standard for this sort of thing. If that's you (or anyone else reading this thread), let's talk!

 

About the only engine I'm aware of for RPGs is ORK Framework. I've never actually tried it though and the showcase doesn't really look like the JRPGs that I'm familiar with (I'm only really familiar with SNES era games).

 

No, it doesn't to me either, but I believe you and I had very similar childhoods. Thank you for pointing this out though; I had seen it ages ago and forgotten about it. It does appear to be focused on 3D models; I was thinking more of something based on pixel art. But possibly it could be adapted to work in a pixely world.

 

In another thread, @Steve Tack just pointed out RPG Map Editor. Like Script Inspector 3, this appears to be an asset that has far outgrown its humble title. And it supports RPG Maker tilesets and character sheets!

I haven't tried it yet, but I probably will. From the outside at least, it looks like a pretty solid foundation for making this sort of game.

 

Sorry, yea we've developed some of our own terminology in the shop here that bleeds out once and a while. You're correct, and we use cold storage differently.

In our games, our architecture provides for an online "state" to be persisted in memory all the time as you'd expect. We CRUD (and other game / business logic) directly to that persistence model which is essentially just a large .NET object graph in memory. Our object graphic observers have mechanisms to detect state changes, and dirty objects in ordered updates, these observers handle async writes to the persistence model. In fact, once the observer matrix is fully loaded and the graph built, we can disconnect the persistence layer entirely and the game will continue to run indefinitely, when we reconnect our persistence the ordered updates will start writing back asynchronously.

In our model we call our object graph our hot storage.
Our persistence layer our cold storage
Our offline data our deep-freeze.

A small shift from the normal paradigm, but it works for us. I'm really interested in the overall performance of your pattern though in large scale, and have you attempted a similar model with a binary version of your object? (Just running it through a binary formatter and storing it?)