Good morning/afternoon/evening.
I just read through the website that the main developer (Wano) is willing to port the engine from desktop to a web based one. With that in mind I have some questions about the new relationship that we will have with the engine after its transition:
1) Is it going to be offered as a service over the cloud (even if it's a free one) or will we be able to download and install the web version offline? Having it in the cloud has its advantages from a maintenance and control perspective but incurs in risks for the common developer. There is a reason why all the main engines are desktop applications. If the developer can't download the tool, the tool can be taken away from him without notice and suddenly just by putting the server offline or blocking his account. This is a risk that more serious developers choosing an engine to produce commercial titles will surely weight in. The desktop version can never be taken away from inside his/her computer, even if it's to migrate the project to another engine after license changes (think of Unity).
If the answer for the first question is that RPG Paper Maker will be completely cloud based, then I have the two following questions:
2) If it will be offered in the cloud, how the developer is planning to absorb the costs of hosting all the projects data from all the developers that use the engine? If the project is really successful, and it appears that it will be, it can explode in usage which will force the developer to have tremendous costs to host large projects. Very difficult to think it will remain free in that scenario. Will the tool be online but the project offline? What is the plan?
3) How will us integrate the engine with external tools? By having the game in a desktop environment, we can use dlls and a lot of other code alien to RPG Paper Maker to update the json game data dynamically to implement some features. We can also use productivity tools developed to massively update data (think of translation done by AI). Not having access to the project in a file system can be a tremendous let down for this kind of advanced use and a extremely limiting one for the engine's future. Every single commercial success title in RPG maker was not made only using vanilla RPG Maker, they all used some external code/library too.
Cheers!
- No cloud option planned for now. If so, it would be something not free because it would be a cost for me. For web version, since we are restricted and cannot store data directly to your computer files, everything is stored in local storage. To be precise, I'm using localforage (asynchronous storage with IndexedDB). So it's basically stored inside your browser local storage and persistent (but if you change browser or computer, you won't have your projects). You can of course export and download your project into a .zip to your local computer, and import it into the desktop version (or put it back into browser, just something to have backups). Don't forget that the 3.0.0 will also be ported to desktop. There will be both web and desktop versions that will be the same code. Just some adaptations for files management (in desktop all can be saved normaly).
- I think you have your answer from 1.
- Same, all can be stored in localstorage, and then exported in .zip. But yeah you don't have full control as in a classic file system. You will have access to adding new assets (graphics, musics, objs etc) and also plugins. Plugins would now also be able to edit the engine itself, not the game only.
Hope it helps. Cheers.
Thank you for the prompt answers.
What about the deployment of the game itself? Will it be web-based, relying just on localforage for data storage (which in tablets are capped to 50 MB the last time I checked), or the end game would be a download to be played in the file system? If it's going to produce only web-based games, a common developer will have to pay to host the game online and also probably for hosting all the save games from their players as well. This will make RPG Paper Maker a free engine but not so free to use since it will incur on costs for the developers to distribute even the simplest of games, and also will forbid him/her to distribute his games on Steam. So please be mindful that being able to create just web based games capped to the total storage of localforage can hinder the popularization of your engine by forever dooming it to produce just simpler, non commercial games that wouldn't be distributed on Steam. As I said in my first post, there is a reason why all popular game engines (Unreal, Unity, Godot, GameMaker, RPG Maker) are desktop applications .
But I'm relieved to hear that you're planning to maintain the desktop version. I was under the impression that it would be discontinued. As long as you maintain the desktop version updated alongside the web based one, none of those problems that could hinder the engine's future would be a problem anymore, and hardcore Steam-oriented customers (probably the paying ones) would use the desktop version while the more casual and uncompromised developer would use the web-based one.
Cheers and congratulations for your phenomenal work!
Wano 20/01/2024 2:00 pm @joe-vic Even if making games through web version, you'll be able to export it as desktop standalone. There are also some people already hosting their web version game in itch.io. All you should know is that you can create/play your game in every platform (web or desktop) and switch anytime! It won't change many things, most of the users will be desktop based. It will just bring more opportunities for people that would like to work on tablet, will have a better compatibility for Mac/Linux users, and it's also a good opportunity for me to change the tech and make something more customizable! Thanks for your message 🙂
Merci. Keep up the phenomenal work. Hoping it will get more eyeballs inside the RPG Maker community. Cheers!
