[Discussion] Solarus Engine as an alternative to RPG Maker XP

[Alxira5]

Hello developers, I open this topic to ask a not very common question, and it is referring to the engine used in the fangames. Well, let's start with the topic.

Recently I've been wondering if there is a decent alternative to RPG Maker XP and by decent I don't mean a complex engine like Unity, so I decided to go on a little development trip to try them out on my own and I thought I found the one. Solarus Engine, a free and open source engine developed by Solarus Labs. Like RPG Maker XP, focuses on the development of RPG games and specifically on the ARPG subgenre, or Zelda-like, but with a little work you can radically change the style, both at the project level and at the engine level, since being under the GPL v3, its modification is allowed.

Now that we have a little information about the alternative, now let's look at their similarities.

Game editor

The Solarus editor allows us to modify the maps, sprites, text, dialogs, and other basic game things, since this engine is not entirely visual, and many things we will have to do on our own. I guess this is not a problem, since this way we have greater control of its operation and playability, and it's not that hard to do.

Programming language

The programming language used for game development is Lua, a very easy language to learn and widely used by several small engines. The Solarus API is easy to use and you can see a reference in its documentation.

Lua is not much different from Ruby, and both are lightweight and run anywhere, and I guess they work in my coffee maker.

Playing style

As I had already said, the game focuses on the ARPG subgenre and by default there are no those famous Pokémon turn-based battles, but with a little work and exploiting all the characteristics of the engine, we can achieve the battle style worthy of a JRPG.

Leaving aside the battles, it is possible to configure the characteristics of Pokémon very easily using a Resource Pack, like day and night. the berry growing system, generation of monsters and the weather, and maybe something that is in later generations that I don't have in mind yet.

Tutorials

Unfortunately Solarus is not a very popular engine and there are not many tutorials, but there are a series of tutorials from the creator of the engine Christopho that may be useful.

Conclusion

First of all I want to clarify that I do not want to say that this engine is better than RPG Maker XP, rather, I want to say that it is a very good alternative for the development of fangames and deserves a chance.

Unlike other developers who promote their engines and do nothing to prove it, I want to do a demonstration with a fangame that I developed with this same engine, but it is still very basic and not suitable for production.

What do you think?, would you give it a chance or is it not worth it?

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Attribution

Because I couldn't do a demo with my project, I decided to do it with Max Mraz's Trillium resource pack.

 

[Sake-Kun]

I have some experience from having to deal with Lua before from the previous fan game community I did some modding work in, and my main problem with that language is how annoying it is to get a text editor to works with that language as well as how clunky Lua can get when it comes to coding. Granted, it was a special very confusingly documented version of it called BLUA, but the point still stands.

At the same time, though, RPG Maker as a game engine seems a little too rigid for the vision I have without an extensive list of modules that may not even work all that well together. So I would either have to code an entire battle system from scratch or take my chances with Ruby coding language.

So yeah, I'm going to have to keep searching for options myself once I have made the GDD for the battle system and thus know what capabilities it would need.

 

[Alxira5]

I probably wrote this post with my feet on my back and that's why it looks so bad, but my point was that Solarus is a similar engine to RPG Maker and can serve as an alternative, although it has some problems as expected.

I don't understand why people hate Lua, it's probably because of the developers' laziness in not documenting their APIs.

 

[Wirawr]

I think you should also post this on evee expo discord. More people know the better 👍

 

[Jbsundown]

The primary reason RPG maker XP is used is not because it's the best for the job, far from it in fact! But because the ecosystem is there with Pokemon Essentials.

The amount of community support that is available with expertise, plugins and tutorials for specifically pokemon essentials is huge compared to everything else. With the majority of people involved in creating fan games not being comfortable in the technical side, this makes it much easier to "plug and play" leading to much wider adoption.

If you feel comfortable rewriting a whole pokemon system in a different engine then of course go for it! But without all the support of Essentials, it unfortunately won't catch on as much