RPG Maker Times Blog - Important Notice

The RPG Maker Times blogsite domain is down is up again.

Visitors to the site will receive a "503 - Service Temporarily Unavailable" error. This means that the current webhost claims that CPU resources and capacity have been overloaded, yet all the other subdomains work perfectly.

As many of you know, this is not the first time I've had problems with the webhost, but this is the final straw! I've managed to secure enough funds now to finally migrate to another, more expensive VPS webhost and from 12 May, 2015, onwards the migration process will begin. This means that the blogsite will be temporarily unavailable during this time.

It needs to be done, as the site has been expanding for a while, so with the new migration there will be no more interruptions.

The "Complete Chests Tutorial" Is Being Updated

The Complete Chests Tutorial is finally being given a long overdue update!

Since my recent purchase of the officially translated version of RM2K3 from Steam, I decided to finally bring this tutorial up-to-date. I'm basically rewriting them but using the tutorials as templates and adding some additional features as well.

Included will be some new chapters, which again were planned but never fully implemented. A downloadable demo will be available for each RPG Maker. Maps will be unique to each but the basic principles will be the same throughout. The demos will be more puzzle-orientated as well.

Once complete, the Complete Chests Tutorial will also be uber-updated.

RPG Maker 2003 Official English Translation

Yes, it's official! RPG Maker 2003 has been officially translated into English and is now available on Steam.



I just bought it to add to my Steam collection. I now have them all in one convenient place.

The final results for the March 2015 Poll What RPG Maker Do You Use Most Often? are in.

The three "other" options were:

• Unity3D - Not strictly speaking an RPG Maker product, but it still counts. Making RPGs with Unity3D is something I've always wanted to do but just haven't learned any of it.
• RPG Maker 2K - Kudos! A true diehard!
• RPG Maker VX Ace - Already an option, so the official count is 102!
  

I find the results most interesting, not what I expected. So, based on these results, I'll try and tailor the content accordingly.

Thanks to ALL who voted and commented!

Fix: Gold Comma Separators Scriptlet

In reference to the Gold Comma Separators Scriptlet, a bug was found. It was pointed out that in RMVXA, the commas worked fine in the main Gold Window, but opening up a shop and buying items resulted in a "Comparison of Fixnum with string failed" error.

And, since the previous method worked in RMXP and RMVX, but not in RMVXA, I was quite interested in finding a solution (not being one to shy away from a challenge), since I did overlook this in the first place.

Thanks to Dahcster for finding it and pointing it out.

Read More: Fix: Gold Comma Separators Scriptlet

Scripts/Scriptlets Updates

I have two days off (from tomorrow) so will spend the time tweaking and updating all Scripts/Scriptlets. They'll also be uploaded to Pastebin, providing the option to copy and paste them directly or download a text version from the site.

Saturday is my last work-night before I have a week's holiday, which will give me the chance to finally make some proper progress on my project, Otherworld.

I'm hoping to finally publish Version 4.0 of the Q-Engine, along with its add-ons, following some additional testing and tweaks.

We'll see how things go. My priority IS Otherworld, however, and creating something of more substance.

Gold Comma Separators Scriptlet

If, like me, you hate the way large numbers are displayed without any separators, thus making it hard to read, then you’ll want the Gold Comma Separators Scriptlet for your games.

What this does is separates large numbers with a comma every three blocks of numbers. Thus, 100000 becomes 100,000. That’s way easier to read! (Incidentally, it took me ages to figure out how to successfully do this!)

To achieve this, we attach

.to_s.reverse.gsub(/(\d{3})(?=\d)/, ‘\\1,’).reverse

to the $game_party.gold. This is done differently in each RPG Maker.

Edit: The RMVXA error has been fixed.

Read more: RPG Maker Times & Companion

Looking for Guest Bloggers

The RPG Maker Times blog has come a long way since its earliest beginnings as a site devoted exclusively to RM2K/3 stuff on Blogger. And since migrating to its own domain name, it's come farther still.

As a result, I love checking the site's statistics: how many daily or monthly visitors, where visitors come from and ultimately which pages they're drawn to. I also like checking the keywords that people are using to find the posts, whether those keywords are organic or direct or are from social media sites. Most days RPG Maker Times averages 250+ hits per day. That's not bad considering it's not been up that long really, as traffic is still stronger at Blogger (obviously because it's Google's).

So I'd like to start expanding further. As much as I try to blog frequently, including sharing scripts and reviews, I don't have as much time as I'd like to mostly because of my odd hours. That's why I'm looking for guest bloggers to post regularly on RPG Maker Times. Guest bloggers can share anything from tutorials to games reviews, or even voice opinions.

There won't be any money, but if you have a website guest blogging will guarantee some exposure for you, including a short bio so you can promote yourself and any projects/games you might be working on! You can even post your own RPG Maker or game/project promo video on YouTube.

If interested, leave a comment and I'll give you a "Contributor" status to post your articles. When you're approved, they'll then be placed as a post or page (depending on the nature of the post).

Note: Please don't post the article in the comments, just sign up if you're interested and I'll give you a trial run. This applies to RPG Maker Times Blogsite. You have nothing to lose but a lot more to gain!

Otherworld Inspiration and Influences

I was asked some days ago about the inspiration behind Otherworld and its influences.

Although it draws its inspiration from several sources, its main influence is Celtic mythology, with others interwoven into its conceptual faric. I’ve also drawn on my own experiences as a "paranormalorist", a term I coined to combine parapsychologist and paranormal investigator. (I have a little over 30 years experience in the fields and, although I’ve now retired from the investigations side of it, am still consulted by individuals and groups on paranormal, psychic and spiritual topics.)

When I first wrote the short story, upon which much of the game is based, its basic concept was that the worlds of the living and the dead overlapped. Usually, ghosts and spirits are invisible but every so often manifest physically.

Read More...

Q-Engine v5.0 In Progress - Improvements

The Q-Engine and its add-ons are undergoing some improvements.

This is primarily to remove the dependency on the UCSM. Instead, the Q-Engine will contain the global settings required for the main scripts and the relevant configuration settings will be placed in the add-ons themselves. This will make it much easier to tweak rather than relying on a single configuration to set them.

I'll also be creating a downloadable demo (finally), which will enable you to install the Q-Engine and all of its available add-ons without having to copy and paste them individually.

I'm making this a priority over the next few weeks to get this done as quickly as possible so I can focus on my other projects, especially Paranormality: Otherworld.