rpgskeleton
===========

This is a skeleton project for use with RPG Maker VX Ace. It contains everything you need to get started on a collaborative RPG Maker VX Ace project.

There is a basic empty skeleton RPG Maker VX Ace project, along with some scripts and makefiles that make it easy to pack/unpack RPG Maker datafiles to/from YAML and script files. This converts them between plaintext formats, which means they're now easy to version control/merge/share. (And it means that programmers can work on scripts without ever opening the editor **at all**, just repack and run Game.exe!)

Dependencies
============

* gnu make
* ruby
* rvpacker (https://github.com/akesterson/rvpacker)
* RPG Maker VX Ace

License
=======

All of the files in "LICENSE/Enterbrain_files.txt" were ripped from RPG Maker VX Ace, (C) Enterbrain. The Enterbrain RPG Maker VX Ace license is in this repository as LICENSE/VXACE_EULA.rtf. It is assumed that your team will have at least as many licenses of VX Ace as you have people working on the project.

Everything in this project not created by Enterbrain is covered by the MIT License, see LICENSE/MIT.txt.

Stuff you add to the project beyond what I have here is covered under your own license; please add all applicable licenses into LICENSE/.

For non-programmers
===================

For any project built off this skeleton, collaborating is easy:

* Download and install the version control client that your developer tells you to
* Check out the project from the URL they give you
* Repack the project
 * If you are on Linux or OS X:
  * Double-click the 'unpack.sh' script in Finder, Gnome file manager, or run it in a terminal
 * If you are on Windows:
  * Double-click the 'unpack.bat' script in Explorer
* Open the game project in RPG Maker and make whatever changes you want
* Unpack the project before committing it up for everyone else
 * If you are on Linux or OS X:
  * Double-click the 'pack.sh' script in Finder, Gnome file manager, or run in a terminal
 * If you are on Windows:
  * Double-click the 'pack.bat' script in Explorer
* Commit the project into version control

Now your programmers and project managers will thank you.

For programmers and others who care about diff/merge
====================================================

* Clone the project
* Do whatever work you're going to do
 * edit yaml files in YAML/; these are all the game database files converted to plaintext YAML
 * edit scripts under ./Scripts - these are all the game scripts, ready for your IDE/editor of choice
 * Whatever else
* Test your work in the game (or open it up in the editor)
 * make pack
 * do your testing
 * make unpack (convert it all back to text)
* Commit your work

The game skeleton has had all of the default ruby scripts yanked out. The scripts (100% stock) now live in ./Scripts/RPG/*rb. There is only one script loaded by the project proper (and which gets packed back into Data/), ./Scripts/entrypoint.rb. It doesn't do anything more than setup some load paths ( so 'require' works how we expect ), import the RPG module, and then call the main loop.

If you want to modify entrypoint.rb, do it before the game loop starts.
