RPG Maker MV: My take on it versus the Ruby based RPG Makers

Since the pandemic has forced everyone to find something to fill spare time with, I decided to seriously buckle down and make a game in RPG Maker MV.

I had a few false starts, the superficial stuff is largely similar to the previous makers, but I mostly had to adjust to using Javascript for code, not Ruby.

In terms of ease of use, I find both Ruby and Javascript quite human-readable, but they still feel like the difference between reading a physical book and reading an e-book. Both are easy to do, but there are minor differences that make the experience feel much different in actual practice.

I must admit I both like and detest how scripts are organized in MV. Unlike previous makers, they are plug and play instead of you having to copy-paste the Ruby code. This means it's less tedious to just add JS scripts, but the interface for organizing is not as easy to navigate as prior makers. Regardless, it's much easier to just enable and disable certain scripts, so I can live with the flaws with that in mind.

On a technical level, Js based code feels slower for loading resources. Ruby could be a tad slow too, but I never had to wait for a second or two unless my scripting was optimized really poorly, while JS can take several seconds more.

Also not a roaring fan of not being able to keep my RTP bloat down, sharing demos will be a hassle since I have to obsessively trim for size all unneeded files because the RTP is included by default, but, whatever, I guess I'll shut up and deal with it.

One thing I must admit really drives me up the wall (and prior makers had this problem too) is that it is not easy finding battlers with both a faceset and a matching walking sprite. My current WIP project uses a lot of battlers as actors, and I need all three, and I'm either going to have to shell out cash to commission art, or exercise my thimbleful of talent and Frankenstein something together.

I'm probably going to have to dig deep in my collection of resources and resize a lot of stuff for MV proportions to fill in blanks, and while I have the basics of that worked out in GIMP, that is gonna suck, even if I batch file a lot of it.

In conclusion, it's not much harder to use than the prior makers, but all the special quirks of JS versus Ruby means there are some annoying under the hood differences, but overall it's generally still easy to use.