RPG Maker 95 and 2000 - a Comparison

The Big Idea

RPG Maker 95 is designed to create PC-style games that were fairly state-of-the-art at the time. It can be considered a serious developer's tool.

RPG Maker 2000 is designed to create SNES-style games. In spite of its advanced features, it is basically a retrogaming toy.

Heroes and Party

Eight heroes which can all be in the party at the same time. Only the first four will be active in battle. You see the whole party on the maps.

Party of four heroes out of a theoretical total of 5000. Only the graphic of the party leader is shown, no reordering.

Maximum level 100.

Maximum level 50.

System and Interface

System requirements: 486DX2/66, Windows 95 or higher. Does not run under NT, 2000 etc. Games may not run properly if you have a sound card with software wavetable emulation.

Pentium 200MHz, Windows 95 or higher. Runs under XP.

Either (ugly) grey default windows, or rather cool looking green transparent windows (only in fullscreen mode).

Window style defined through seperate graphic. No transparent windows by default, possible indirectly for message boxes, but not menus.

Savegames are simply saved as *.sav files, in a standard window. You can have as many savegames as you want.

Savegame dialog part of the system interface. Limit of fifteen savegames.

No specific limitation for the length of heroes' names etc., just how much fit in the text field, usually 17-20 characters for names of heroes and monsters, exactly 19 for items.

Heroes' name and degree 12 characters each, items and skills 20 characters, descriptions 50 characters (= one line), attributes and conditions 8 characters.

Graphics

Screen resolution 640×480, tiles and sprites 32x32. Four chipsets of 256 tiles each per game, a total of 1024 tiles that are available for every map. No animated tiles.

Screen resolution 320×240, tiles 16×16, maximum sprite size 24x32, typical sprite size 16x24. One chipset with 444 tiles per map, animated water tiles and three additional 4-frame animated tiles.

One charset with 64 different sprites, animation with two frames: characters never stand still.

Practically unlimited number of charsets, 3-frame sprite animation.

Graphics are stored in BMP format only and so take up some diskspace (1.5MB per game). Editing these rather large files isn't always easy.

Graphics can be stored in BMP, PNG, or ASCII's proprietary XYZ format. Files are small and easy to handle.