57 replies to this topic

[Koh]

You can easily compare the three.  All are tools used for game development, and each have capabilities of just jumping in, hitting a few buttons, and making a game.

 

ZC:  Hit some checkboxes, slap some tiles down, standard newbie ZC game.

RPG Maker:  Adjust character stats, slap some tiles down, enable random battles, standard newbie RPG Maker game.

Game Maker:  Import your graphics, make an object and throw down some drag and drop commands, plop in it a room, standard newbie GM game.

 

But when it comes to using VISUALS alone, you get this:

 

RPG Maker

Pros:  Mouse over each icon in the toolbar, see what they are "Open the Database, Edit Event Layer, etc".  All buttons are in Layman's Terms and are fully functional.  All basic things have a button in the event editor (Move Player, Play Sound, Show Picture, Change Music, Go To Map, etc.).  Easy to use tile placement and event placement.

 

Cons:  You have no idea of knowing how powerful something is just from the stat's alone.  Close the database, make a test battle event, see how strong it is, close the game, reopen the database, edit the enemy's stats, repeat for future enemies.  This is from RPGM2000 though, so they may have made a simulator by NOW so you don't have to do all that shit...right?

 

ZC

Pros:  Organized menus with options and buttons to click on, categorized by function.  Mostly easy to use tile editor (forgoing not knowing keyboard shortcuts).  Easy tile placement and editing methods.  Easily adjustable enemy stats and properties (now).

 

Cons::  Not all the buttons and checkboxes are self-explanatory, or tell the full story (incomplete features, such as Sideview Gravity), thus invoking trial and error button clicks.  There's no (or very minimal, for things like combos and flags) mouse-over helper either.  Dee Dee:  "What does THIS button do?"  Close down ZQuest, run ZC, find out what it does, close ZC, reopen ZQuest, click more checkboxes and buttons, repeat for further buttons and checkboxes that aren't self explanatory.

 

Game Maker

Pros:  Folders for each category of gaming (Sprites, Sounds, Object, Rooms, etc.).  Events for objects that respond to specific things (Collision, Frame Advance, Pressing a Keyboard Button, etc.).  Click-to-place editor for adding objects and tiles to a room.  Run the game directly from the editor.  "Off the rails" development style, where you can make whatever; not specifically RPG games, or top down games.  

 

Cons:  There's no pre-built game setup due to the above.  You can't check a box that says "Start with the Sword" or "Spawn this enemy."  Everything needs to be built from the ground up.  The mouse-over helper isn't as useful as it could be, thus requires resorting to the help file quite a lot.  Newbie's won't be sure which event to drag and drop all those functions that control movement and such until they consult the help file.  Finally after doing that, newbies can drag and drop all the buttons they need in an event...gravity in the step event, movement from a keypress event, etc.  Free version limits how flashy the game can be, so about half of the buttons newbies would want to use are locked out.

 

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All game development/editing/creation tools can be compared and contrasted, especially user-friendliness.  

Edited by Koh, 25 July 2013 - 02:41 PM.

[Shane]

Zelda Classic is hard to learn? Well colour me impressed. I was at least 10 when I learned most of it. That's how easy it was for me. I'm pretty sure all buttons were labeled pretty clear and they even gave you keyboard shortcuts as well. There is no need for a readme, everything was common sense when you read it. Scripting is a bit difficult, but adding tiles in Game Maker made me have to look up a YouTube tutorial. That's not user friendly, or at least not enough to earn #1 on my list. User friendly is when the editor helps you as much as possible, not leave you to do everything on your own. Seriously, at least ZC allows you to build stuff from the get go. Can't say much for RPG Game Maker, but it does have a stronger "been there, done that" aura than ZC.

Edited by Shane, 25 July 2013 - 09:57 PM.

[Koh]

I never said it was hard to learn, I said there are things that just aren't self explanatory and incomplete (which can only be completed with scripting, but a newbie wouldn't know that.  So a newbie aiming to make a platform game with Sideview Gravity is screwed from the beginning, or an RPG Game where enemies give experience, but again, are screwed.), and require trial and error to find out, instead of just being known right off the bat like RPG Maker.  That's why RPG Maker is number one on the list.  The program literally couldn't make game development any simpler; there's a button for pretty much everything a newbie would need, and they're all in Layman's Terms.  The only trial and error you need in that program is, as I said before, balancing enemies, since there's no simulator (at least in the old verisons.  Haven't used XP and above).

Edited by Koh, 25 July 2013 - 10:22 PM.

[Haylee]

Let's have an agreement.

 

Userfriendliness can pretty much be defined as basically not needing a tutorial, and that's what ZQuest, you can do literally almost everything without needing a tutorial, because it's so simple and labeled properly.

 

RPGMaker, yeah, you can have fun with it for a while, but actually trying to make something is so complicated and complex(This is from personal experience.), that you don't even really know what to do, without a tutorial, that is. The best example of this is the use of event pages. I didn't even know Event pages existed until after I looked up a tutorial for something completely different relating to RPG Maker.

 

And Game Maker, I don't even need to go into detail about why this one is so complicated. But here I am, putting it into detail. Half of the things aren't accessed until after you uncheck "Hide advance settings". For some odd reason, the creators thought it was a good idea to make that checked by default, thus resulting in that being infuriating already, unless you look up on the internet something like "Why don't I have all these options in game maker?" or something like that. That is just ONE example, as Shane has mentioned before, pretty much everything has to be coded yourself.

 

I have nothing else to say on the matter, other than either ZQuest or SMBX is pretty much the most Userfriendly game makers around.

[Shane]

Well, sideview gravity is just one out of a hundred features. You can still make a quest. And that's only one thing you'll need to script. GM you have to script an engine, collect resources and do this via trial and error. ZQuest does not make you trial and error that much. It gives you a variety of enemies, items, tiles and songs to start with upon using it for the first time. Not to mention a dozen of features at your finger tips to stylize your quest. List things that GM give you as a beginner? Not so user friendly now if you think about it.

 

Also everything was labeled clear as daylight to me. What features did you get confused with?

Edited by Shane, 25 July 2013 - 10:38 PM.

[Jared]

I can't even figure out how to make a game in Game Maker. I had to use one of the built in tutorials, and STILL didn't get it working right. I didn't even know how to make it playable.

[Koh]

Well, sideview gravity is just one out of a hundred features. You can still make a quest. And that's only one thing you'll need to script. GM you have to script an engine, collect resources and do this via trial and error. ZQuest does not make you trial and error that much. It gives you a variety of enemies, items, tiles and songs to start with upon using it for the first time. Not to mention a dozen of features at your finger tips to stylize your quest. List things that GM give you as a beginner? Not so user friendly now if you think about it.

 

Also everything was labeled clear as daylight to me. What features did you get confused with?

I personally started with 1.92 beta when I was a kid, but here's the things I wanted to do, but couldn't get done as easily as I could with RPG Maker:

 

-Cutscenes.  There's no existence of "Lock player movement, Move this Left, Move that right" buttons.  Still not present in 2.5.  Either have to do a ton of combo cycling, or scripting.

-Custom Enemies:  There was no way to change the AI or colors of an enemy easily (You can update both now, but you still can't give enemies custom AI unless you script.)

-Multiple Secrets Per Screen:  Trying to make it so one switch opens a bridge, while the next uncovers torches, while those finally open the shutter.  Everything kept happening all at once (I think it's still like that, but easier to do with scripting if you know how.)

-Multiple Warps Per Screen:  You can have up to 4 now, but back then, it was completely impossible.

-Adding Custom Items, More Tiers of Existing Items or Changing the Effects of Existing Items.  Easier to do now, but custom items need to be scripted.  With RPG Maker 2003, you didn't need to script them, so much as make a personal use for them with the events.  Like for example, if I want to make a Holy Orb item that makes a cutscene, I just click the button that checks for that in the inventory to start triggering cutscenes.  But in ZC, there was no such thing (there is now, but again, you need scripting for personal usage, instead of just being able to click buttons).

-Interactable NPCS:  This could only be done in a ghetto fashion on ZC.  Make a warp to a special room that looks exactly like the previous to make some guy appear and say something.  You could only do one per screen to.  It wasn't as simple as making an event, give it a sprite, and tell it what to say, while being able to place as many as you want.  It's technically still this way, while increasing the limit to 4 per screen, UNLESS you use scripting.

-Jumping off of Cliffs:  You have to do some warping or combo cycling chaos to do this with an animation.  But on RPG Maker, you can just make the player jump, and move them down with the correct number of spaces by clicking the "Move Player Down" button the requisite number of times.

 

The list goes on, but you see what I mean.  Basic things a newbie would want to do weren't self explanatory.  It's a bit better at it now, but most of that is still nigh on impossible for a newbie compared to RPG Maker. 

[Shane]

...You are comparing today game editors with the oldest version of ZC? Um, okay... ZC 2.50 is still user friendly. It gives you the basic resources you need right from the start unlike GM and RPG Maker. You are complaining that most stuff in ZC requires scripting yet GM requires everything to be scripted?

 

ZC is most user friendly since it helps the user start off with resources and makes a lot of features clear. Why you are saying ZC is not user friendly because you couldn't do stuff back then is beyond me.

Edited by Shane, 26 July 2013 - 07:46 AM.

[Avaro]

Hm, I can't say for sure because I never even took a look at rpg maker or game maker, but what I heard from it, it sounded like you even would have to script your engine in those editors yourself . Though, maybe youre right about everything you said there, Koh. Except your first point, the cutscenes. There is some very easy to use freeform combo editor, to make moving combos by simply entering the speed, velocity or delay of the movement. Though, locking the players movement is not that easy, yes. Either scripting or hiding link behind a layer and place him onto solid combos would be required.

[Koh]

I compared both, the old while describing how the new one handles it now.  RPG Maker does provide you with everything you could need as a newbie (a whole slew of character graphics, music, animations, sound effects, backgrounds, tilesets, etc.).  There's even an animation editor so you can make animations frame by frame with the provided graphics (you can do it with custom graphics too, but I wasn't an artist back then xD).  This is a battle between ZC and RPG Maker at this point.  I could see how GM is less userfriendly because of how often you resort to the help file.  That was my main reason for putting it above ZC, however, because even though you reference it  a LOT as a newbie, EVERYTHING is in there; it's not incomplete and missing things.  RPG Maker isn't new by the way, it dates back to the 90s, and even before.

Edited by Koh, 26 July 2013 - 07:52 AM.

[Shane]

Not really. Sideview gravity is still functional without the ladder thanks to the Roc's Feather.

[Koh]

Not really. Sideview gravity is still functional without the ladder thanks to the Roc's Feather.

But not vertically.  You can only move left and right, and jump up small enough cliffs.  You can't climb up...you can only go down.  So a platform game that's not just left and right is out of the question as a newbie o.o.  But one who sees the Sideview Gravity checkbox isn't going to know that.  What if they haven't played a Zelda game that had a Roc's Item?  How are they going to know what that is?  Google yes, but that's stepping outside of the program...

Edited by Koh, 26 July 2013 - 07:58 AM.

[Shane]

Trial and error. Still user friendly, Zelda Classic isn't there to teach you Zelda. If you are using ZC you should know at least a decent amount of Zelda before asking "what is this" and blaming ZC for not knowing what it is.

Edited by Shane, 26 July 2013 - 08:21 AM.

[Haylee]

 What if they haven't played a Zelda game that had a Roc's Item?  How are they going to know what that is?  Google yes, but that's stepping outside of the program...

You can VERY easily see what it is by testing your quest, therefore making your argument about having to google it kind of invalid.

[Koh]

Trial and error. Still user friendly, Zelda Classic isn't there to teach you Zelda. If you are using ZC you should know at least a decent amount of Zelda before asking "what is this" and blaming ZC for not knowing what it is.

But that's my point right there.  You have to close  the editor, bring up the player, find out what items do, close the player and reopen the editor, when the editor could just have a little description under the default items that says "This does that."  Newbies aren't going to know Sideview doesn't come with ladders like it should until they try everything they can click on and realize you can't climb.  It could take a while for them to figure that out, instead of the checkbox saying "Sideview Gravity (Incomplete)"  Seeing the word incomplete would let them know right away that the feature isn't fully implemented yet.  Combine that with the lists I made previously of things newbies would want to do, and you'll soon realize it's not as userfriendly as RPG Maker.  I'm not saying ZC isn't userfriendly at all, I'm just saying there are other development tools that are much more so.