Looks like they are using a true stack in this release! YAY!

Nice to seem them get so much smarter now. This will make doing 'mini' scenes that much easier. Still have alot of playing around to do before I start writing anything for it, but looks like they changed alot of the core stuff. Meaning no vx scripts will likely work with vxa without some pretty major overhaul. Sucks, but what can you do.

OMG! that console will be a life saver in debuging code. To not have to run print messages to constantly troubleshoot your code will save eons!

Just saying...

Yes indeed, the graphics engine is 2 times slower from what I have tested...
I tried to create a 400x400 bitmap and went through all its pixels, setting them using Bitmap#set_pixel:
VX - about 0.3s
Ace - about 0.5s

So right off the bat, Ace graphics engine is slower. And this makes me saaaaad. :(
The other features are cool, but I expected more.

The console is indeed a nice addition but I've been using a custom console output for years which is good enough for me.
But still, it's a nice touch.

I've been playing around with vxa and I have to say that I'm not only blown away just from the graphics, but the system itself. I'm amazed and I will likely upgrade to VX ace. I'm amazed. There are features that I wasn't aware that was going to be around, it's only too bad that I can't understand Japanese... I'm seriously going to learn to script, that or my brother...

there's a english patch on esrever site.

About the graphics performance, did you all made the tests with the console open? It may not be the cause, but he may be the cause of the lower performance. There was a emulator i used that had an really heavy console.
This may not be the cause here, but if you all made the tests using it, it may õ.o

The console should really only have an effect on performance if there is something be output to it, and even then it should be very minimal. The window is merely just a standard console window of the operating system with Ruby's STDOUT directed to it.

If you want to try out the new game engine performances on a vx project : http://www.mediafire.com/?7pxph60bde8g9nl
(You must copy the RTP in the game folder)

so i'm messing around with the rtp
and I have to say it's quite impressive. Some of the audio is considerably solid. Saw a video of vx in session (the trial version) and I really have to say I find it quite interesting. Obviously there are features to be added, but a fair bit is pretty nice.

Anyone up for this?

The competitions probably tough but its the best bet on getting your hands on the first English release.

my Ace is already in spanish, so you can have that free english copy.

Been messing around with it in my spare time. For all my blithe talk about how Enterbrain only fixes one thing so they can break another, and for all that my praise of each program has been littered with "but"s and "despite"s, this seems like pretty much an out-and-out improvement on RMVX. It's what it should have been however many years ago. I wouldn't hesitate to call this one a proper tool on its own merits, rather than a game ambitious designers have to wrangle into working order.

I might actually do a full-size thing with it eventually, if no immense problems come to light. Messing around in RMs has always been fun in its way, and this time I'm not running into any nonsense that robs me of my motivation.

(I have no doubt that I'll get sick of seeing the RTP, but that's true of every game maker that comes with prepackaged graphics.)

It is definately a big improvement on VX - even an improvement on XP. Unfortunately the only thing I really use XP for is the mapping system - I do everything else in RM through scripting really - and so until Enterbrain get their ass in gear and bring back XP's mapping then this is not much use to me :/ I really don't know why they changed it, mapping in XP is just so logical.

Still, will probably try this out when I have some more free time. Who knows, might fall in love with it.

There are other engines I'm more interested in trying though.

The fact that they still focus so much on autotiles does make it a little weird to sprite new things, but I'm immeasurably glad that they're at least letting people use multiple tilesets now. Shouldn't be so thankful for such a minor thing, but hey.

For someone like me who is not a programming man, the increased depth of in-engine options is pretty nice. To do what I wanna do, though, I'm sure I'll have to once again leave most of that behind and puzzle out some new stuff.

One thing is for certain: making JRPGs just got even easier, with all the good and the bad that comes with that.

e: vvv Sometimes I wonder if they even know there are people who make their own materials for it. Or who try for anything besides an SNES Dragon Quest look-alike.

Yeah for sure, for people who are using this as an RPG Maker, it's a greatly improved tool.

One thing to note - they've removed the ability to edit the default bank of resources/scripts apparently. That means you can't say, replace the water autotile with a rounded one, and have all new projects seed from that. A really annoying thing for them to remove for seemingly no reason, I wish they wouldn't do that :|