It's been a while since the last time I randomly rants about something, let's go!
Apparently, I'm Learning Things I Didn't Want to Learn
Ever since the RPG Maker VX Ace era, there is one part of RPG Maker that I have consistently avoided touching: the UI.
By UI, I mean the whole Windows and Scenes business, the rectangles containing text, menus, selection boxes, handlers, positioning, drawing, and all the other stuff that makes RPG Maker's interface work.
If you're wondering why, the answer is simple:
I'm lazy.
Well, there's a slightly more complicated explanation.
Working with RPG Maker's UI has always felt to me like remodeling a castle.
You can't just slap a new door onto the wall and call it a day. You need to understand what kind of wood the door is made from, how the wall is structured, where the hinges are supposed to go, how the bricks are arranged, how everything connects to the floor, how the roof is supported, and probably which medieval architect originally decided that the entire thing needed to be built this way.
Meanwhile, building something from scratch feels much easier.
At least then I know where everything is because I built the stupid thing myself.
This is why, historically, I have been much more comfortable creating complicated gameplay systems from scratch than messing around with RPG Maker's UI.
Barriers? Sure.
Special counters? Fine.
Randomly cast skills? No problem.
Skill X-value stacks, attack-type weaknesses, elemental absorption, double casts, skill cancellation, and whatever other nonsense I've come up with over the years?
I'll happily write the entire system myself.
But ask me to create a proper window with a proper scene and proper handlers?
Suddenly I have the motivation of a corpse.
There was one notable exception during the Perang Cemen II era. I needed a Additional Parameters window for the ancient combat system, and rather than learning how RPG Maker's UI worked properly, I took the more traditional developer approach:
I stole someone else's homework.
More specifically, I took MOG's Skill Mastery Window Display and modified it. I replaced the parameters, changed the text drawing, and adapted it to display all the additional parameters I had crammed into the combat system—things like Unsheathe Attack, Pierce, and so on.
It worked.
And, importantly, I didn't have to learn anything.
Fast-forward to RPG Maker MZ.
By this point I had started writing my own plugins, but my general philosophy toward UI hadn't changed much. Whenever a plugin needed a window like crafting, cooking, or whatever else, I made the simplest functional UI I could get away with and moved on.
Why spend three hours making a beautiful interface when I could spend those three hours making another unnecessarily complicated gameplay mechanic?
That brings us to late August 2026.
For the first time in years, I finally decided to actually learn how RPG Maker's UI works.
And holy shit.
It was exactly as unpleasant as I remembered.
I spent a considerable amount of time going back and forth through the code trying to figure out where the rectangles were defined, where things were drawn, where the handlers lived, which scene was responsible for what, which window was calling which method, and why something that looked like it should be incredibly simple apparently required me to travel through five different classes and consult the ancient spirits of RPG Maker development.
It genuinely felt like wandering from town to town asking random laborers:
"Excuse me, sir. Do you happen to know how this castle was constructed?"
Eventually, though, I got it.
I reworked some of my plugin UIs, and while it was absolutely a pain in the neck, I did learn quite a bit from the process.
And now that I've finally experienced what it takes to properly remodel the castle...
I'm not doing it again unless I absolutely have to.
If something is functional and nobody is complaining about it, it's staying that way.
If somebody really wants me to redesign it, they can put the request in the suggestion box and I'll consider it sometime around the year 2037.
And Now I'm Learning Music
Unfortunately, apparently learning one new thing wasn't enough.
Some people have recently started playing a game I made during Game Jam 2025, and this brings us to another problem.
Because it was a Game Jam project, time was extremely limited. I needed background music, and normally I would have gone looking for some suitable tracks from one of the sites I used to borrow—I mean, legally acquire—music from.
Unfortunately, the site I relied on had disappeared.
So I had two options:
- Don't have music.
- Make the music myself.
I chose option 2.
This was, in hindsight, a terrible decision.
I had basically no idea what I was doing.
The result was... let's be generous and call it "music."
The first three bosses got some of the most questionable BGM ever committed to an audio file. By the time I reached the fourth boss, however, I was finally starting to figure out what I was doing, so that track was actually somewhat decent.
Of course, I assumed nobody would ever reach the fourth boss anyway.
So nobody would hear the decent one.
Naturally, the universe decided otherwise.
Now someone has complained about the music.
And because apparently I have chosen violence against myself, my response is:
Fine. I'll learn music.
I can't promise that I'll become some professional composer who charges $200 for a two-minute battle theme.
I'm not expecting to suddenly become Yoko Shimomura or Nobuo Uematsu.
But I can learn enough to make music that doesn't sound like it was composed by a computer having a seizure.
That's the goal.
I'll keep learning until I can make BGM that is at least genuinely pleasant to listen to.
What About the Art?
This one is a little different.
I have been learning art, and I think I've improved considerably if I compare my current work to what I was capable of years ago.
But there's a difference between:
"I've gotten pretty good compared to my old self."
and
"I'm good enough to replace an actual professional artist."
I'm somewhere in the first category.
Compared to the artists I've commissioned, I'm still basically an average Joe.
So while I'll continue improving my own art—and I'll probably keep making more assets myself—I don't see myself completely abandoning commissioned artwork anytime soon.
There are simply things that are better left to people who are much better at them than I am.
So, after years of avoiding RPG Maker UI, I'm finally learning it.
After making questionable Game Jam music, I'm now learning music.
And I've been learning art for years as well.
At this rate, I'm slowly becoming the person who can do everything myself.
Which sounds great until you realize that it also means I'll have no excuse to be lazy anymore.
...Actually, forget that.
I'm still going to be lazy.
I'll just be more capable while being lazy.
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