Help - Porting PC RPG Maker Game to SNES

[Kannagi]

Also: you are talking to someone that has zero skills in what your
knowledge is: you are all probably experts ... to me its a question of time and if its worth investing taking months trying to figure this
out and learn, or even possibly, years. Because the majority of this forum is starting to make zero sense to me.

I will be more honest, you will never make your SNES RPG.
In the sense that all the experts who tried to make an RPG on SNES all failed, and all were very good.
Are you talking about a few months?
I think you can talk in several years, and if you embark on this project, it would be between 5 and 10 years, and I'm not joking, depending on your level you will have to learn programming, program well in 65816, know the SNES and its hardware etc, all that is very long, very complicated and technical.

This is currently a problem of the SNES homebrew scene, it is very complicated to make a game, especially an ambitious game that would compete with a pro production of the time, and not a small demo.

[NovaSquirrel]

This is currently a problem of the SNES homebrew scene, it is very complicated to make a game, especially an ambitious game that would compete with a pro production of the time, and not a small demo.

I would argue that it's complicated to make an ambitious game that stands up against stuff made by teams of full-time developers on any platform, not just the SNES. Most of the effort in an RPG isn't going to be in the engine, it's going to be in drawing all of the art and design, writing all of the dialog, balancing all of the stats and items and monsters, making all the maps and worldbuilding, etc. and if that's all done (or if there's something preexisting to adapt) then that makes it completely different from if someone were to try to make a SNES RPG right now from scratch. I think that a lot of unfinished projects are the result of a programmer realizing they have what it takes to make the engine part, but then not having the interest or focus or skill to then fill it with hours of gameplay, and that's very prominent on PC too.

[Kannagi]

It's a bit more complex than that, making a game engine is "more or less easy", but you will have to modify it and adapt it for your RPG, the story, the cut scenes etc, in any case, there is an important and not obvious programming part (because the code will have to be readable and your modifications will not cause too big a bug for the whole game).

With of course all the SNES constraints for graphics, sounds, text and then the game design part etc

In short you have the difficulty of making an RPG on PC + the difficulties of making a SNES game

[Pokun]

As an artist that is used to work with RPG Maker I find the programming of the engine from scratch pretty hard no matter the platform, probably harder or at least as hard as making the content for the game (which is also no sneezing matter even if you can draw and compose music).
I often get stuck unable to find a solution to a programming problem.

[Colin Sandquist]

In principle, yes. It's not a quick or easy task, though. The chasm between how the SNES works and how a modern PC works is so enormous that the games would have to be programmed from scratch (well, the first one would; the second could use a lot of the same code). I very much doubt anyone's going to do it for anything like $200.

Well ... what about 2000$? or even 6000$? I wish i had the time to go find answers, but It may take me a lifetime to look and still not learn or understand. i am serious about hiring someone out, but I think it would have to be a face to face work on hire collaboration anyways. I can't say that I am a millionaire right now, so I have to take what I can spend on seriously if I can get a good return on it. Anyways, thanks for the base honesty.

I'd love to just sell as many copies as I can and garner some sort of prestige in the industry to make connections, I thought this might be a fun and easier way to do it than be buried in the job hunt.

[Colin Sandquist]

Is this you?: https://sandquistgames.com/

Yes it is! Colin at your service.

[Colin Sandquist]

If you do want to try learning to program the SNES yourself we did give you a lot of links and tips for learning 65816 assembly and SNES programming early on in the thread.
Even if porting these games are too much maybe you could try making something simpler, it's a very worthwhile experience and you will understand the basics of how computers works in general on the bare metal level. SNES doesn't have a BIOS, OS or any type of firmware so its just you (the CPU) and the hardware and there is no file system or anything, only memory and bytes that you read, write and do calculations and other processing on.

Well I sort of knew about the memory and bytes [which I CANNOT Read] as I bought a XGecu Pro TL 8660 Programmer hoping I could just burn the files onto a chip. Boy was I wrong. lol. I mean - it contained data. But I couldn't read it one bit.


FYI: If anyone wants to play the game on RPG Maker 2003 - I can send the files to anyone that wants to check it out?! You can see just how big a scope of a project it was. As the game took about nearly two years to build, day in and day out.

Also: it WAS on steam, now it isn't, but I am working to get it back on steam. I am having some issues with them.

[Colin Sandquist]

I will be more honest, you will never make your SNES RPG.
In the sense that all the experts who tried to make an RPG on SNES all failed, and all were very good.
Are you talking about a few months?
I think you can talk in several years, and if you embark on this project, it would be between 5 and 10 years, and I'm not joking, depending on your level you will have to learn programming, program well in 65816, know the SNES and its hardware etc, all that is very long, very complicated and technical.

Yes, I absolutely believe you, no sarcasm involved. 5 to 10 years is a huge chunk of time for 1 thing. This all sounds beyond me. And since I don't have 5 to 10 years [unless I am going to live until I am 400 years old, you never know...] I kind of have to get out of this crap town, re-locate and then re-evaluate where I am at. My priority is financial freedom just like everyone else, then I will start to make decisions as to what I wish to pursue.



Perhaps any of you know a school for this kind of stuff?

I assume they don't teach it in schools... well, not this specifically.

[Colin Sandquist]

I would argue that it's complicated to make an ambitious game that stands up against stuff made by teams of full-time developers on any platform, not just the SNES. Most of the effort in an RPG isn't going to be in the engine, it's going to be in drawing all of the art and design, writing all of the dialog, balancing all of the stats and items and monsters, making all the maps and worldbuilding, etc. and if that's all done (or if there's something preexisting to adapt) then that makes it completely different from if someone were to try to make a SNES RPG right now from scratch. I think that a lot of unfinished projects are the result of a programmer realizing they have what it takes to make the engine part, but then not having the interest or focus or skill to then fill it with hours of gameplay, and that's very prominent on PC too.

Also YES that is very true: Both Games are original FULL LENGTH GAMES. The First One was sort of a learning fun precursor game, because I loved the engine so much that I wanted to talk about all its fun stuff. It runs about a 2 - 3 hours of game play.

The Second Game [Niinamigota] is the Sequel. Thats the one on RPG Maker 2003, that I can send to anyone that wants to see the scope of the project.
It doesn't matter to me if I give you guys the original files, you can see the amount of time [just me] put into it [aside from the sprites / animations.]

1. Story. 2. Programming 3. Game Design 4. Music. I relased CD Copies. With the Original Story. Its about a 12 hour game, which I think is considered a standard FULL Video Game. Although Some games are shorter [like 6 hours].


So yeah: 12 hour full length game [yeah kind of like Undertale - no battle sequencing though] and no, I had never HEARD of Toby Fox until after I'd written the entire game. But still, the underdog solo dev kind of guy.

[Colin Sandquist]

So Anyways - if any of you are interested - send me an email to my websites

www.colinsandquist.com

or

www.sandquistgames.com

[Doesn't matter]

For a copy of the RPG Maker 2003 game Niinamigota, and I will send it to you [the original Files] Through Google Dropbox.

Also: NO, I do not consent to any form of reproduction or freeware of any kind, or re-selling, or uploading to the internet kind of deal.


This is me trusting you, the NES / SNES Dev group, with a PRIVATE copy of the original files, for you to check out on RPG 2003 [If you have the software] to provide potential feedback of the possibility of a Playstation / SNES port POTENTIALLY happening.

All the best guys and girls.

C.

[Colin Sandquist]

If you do want to play the game, just note: it is very story driven and NOT [RPG battle sequence].

So just be prepared for that.


The next game I am working on right now [on RPG VX ACE] is the final game, and is fully battle sequenced.

That will be a 20 hour game and yes, it is epic. It is the final chapter and is a brand new story, but references
Niinamigota and Exvelten, which are own games of their own right.

[Bregalad]

Well ... what about 2000$? or even 6000$? I wish i had the time to go find answers, but It may take me a lifetime to look and still not learn or understand. i am serious about hiring someone out, but I think it would have to be a face to face work on hire collaboration anyways. I can't say that I am a millionaire right now, so I have to take what I can spend on seriously if I can get a good return on it.

Look at wages for freelance software engineers consultants in a developed country, considering you'd have to pay for social security (retirement, sickness insurance, ...). For 6000$ you'd get AT MOST two business weeks of work for one person, which I suppose is way too short to hope to finish such a project to code an entiere SNES game. At first glance, you'd need at least 10x this time (and money) to get anything remotely working, and maybe up to 20x to have something somewhat polished and fully working exempt from bugs.

[Pokun]

just note: it is very story driven and NOT [RPG battle sequence].

So it's basically more of an adventure game than an RPG?
In that case does the game need the RPG Maker engine at all? It's common to make non-RPGs on RPG Maker like that, mostly only using the map/actor walkabout engine (for displaying environments, characters and interactivity), message windows (for the story and perhaps player choices) and part of the menu (for title screen menu and for saving the game) without touching the battle system, equipment, items, skills, enemies etc. Such a game could maybe be turned more into a traditional graphical adventure game instead. Depending on how much interaction there is it could be made into something like a sound/visual/kinetic novel (which is an adventure game with 0 or close to 0 interaction).

In general, an RPG Maker game is made with the RPG Maker constraints in mind, but if you make a game from scratch you don't have any of those constraints and may perhaps instead focus on making the engine tailor made for that particular game to eliminate unnecessary work.

Removing the battle system from an RPG basically turns it into an adventure game and also makes it much much simpler, as the battle system is basically the backbone and what defines an RPG (talking about the D&D-derived video game RPG genre here and not the much broader concept of "roleplay").

I'm just throwing out some ideas for how to make the game easier to make.

[Kannagi]

Also, what is the license of your assets/sprites?
If those provided by RPG maker, I doubt that their license accepts being used outside their software.

[Pokun]

Normally you are not allowed to use the basic package of assets that comes with RPG Maker (called the "Run-Time Package" or RTP) for anything besides an RPG Maker game, but he said previously in this thread that he got Kadokawa's approval to use it outside RPG Maker. I'd guess the permit applies for the purpose of porting his games to other platforms only.