Well then I'll wait and see what happens.
Hopefully it's not one of those deals where a promotional price gets offered, but only for people who were already signed up for the newsletter. I really don't feel like dealing with newsletters. They clutter things up.

The pre-order says there will be a discount for sure(though how much, that's what I wanna know). It'll most likely be the best deal over the newsletter. A newsletter is free, a pre-order is cash money.

Though, I have a bajillion email accounts is why I ever sign up for the things.

I missed this in the first go around, the pre-order also comes with as of now undefined "bonuses". I imagine it would be bonus RTP content in some form or fashion, but that's speculation on my part. It's also been mentioned by their blog employee that the discount for pre-ordering will be revealed slightly before the 1st, and that they're looking into making a newsletter coupon stack with that discount, along with being a current VX owner. If even the pre-order+newsletter discount is true, the whole theory I had with $90 being a kind of high retail price meant to be marked down is coming to fruition. Though, this entirely depends on discount amounts. For all anyone knows right now, the two discounts could be only 5% each, netting a whopping 10% off.

Pre-order page is up!

http://preorder.rpgmakerweb.com/ace/

It's a $15 discount, putting it to $75 with bonuses.

The VX users discount is right now, heavily hinted to begin after this pre-order deal. Which, is super crappy for those who have VX, but meh. I just have XP.

You can pre-order until March 14th.



The classic music(I believe both of those games are SNES RPG makers), and the DS graphics do sound pretty cool.

Classic music is on site as a small sampling, and I have to say, hey, sounds pretty nice.

I never played the DS game, so I dug up one random Youtube video to see:



Looks pretty similar to the VX RTP stuff.

Also interesting, they're finally just gonna make official forums for the PC Makers. Kinda interesting!

How dare they call it "RPG Maker DS" when it never actually got a chance to release with that title.

The bonuses make this very tempting, though...

Also, some of that sample music is totally from RPG Maker 3.

Well, I had no clue. I've never touched SNES RPG Makers. Though, do you mean RPGM3 for PS2? Cause I've only really played Vonwert's game with that sadly. I'm working on getting another copy though to check more games out on the RPGM2 and 3 platforms. I have the Max Drive anyways.

I was hoping for the discount to at least be $20. I know $5 isn't a lot, but $20 felt more significant.

I pre-ordered anyways. I had money put back since I was hearing about it, so I was ready with $80 for it.

It was kind of odd to be like GRAPHICS AS MADE FAMOUS by a game that NEVER CAME OUT HERE! Though, how in the world would you share your game? Maybe a system like how you can share Warioware D.I.Y. mini-games? Hm.

EDIT: My bad. I just checked, and RPGM 3 in Japan was the PSone... one. You'd think I realize that since RPGT4 was just frikken' patched! Logic fail. I hope they keep those bonuses in then.

I meant our RPGM3. Otherwise I would've said Tsukuru.

Ah, okay. I thought it would've made sense if they gave bonuses to put successive games in order, but I guess not.

Still pretty cool. I need to play more of the actual RPGM3.

More bonus music samples:
http://www.acepromo.info/ace-sample-2.mp3

Hearing these kinda makes me wonder if the bonus music collection is large enough to make up for the obvious difference of quality of some of these songs. I mean, these are all coming from different generations of RPGM. It's especially noticeable once you include the RPGM3 tracks.

For those of you who have sampled Ace, what is its default soundtrack comparable to?

I remember Syn saying that Ace's soundtrack was improved from VX, but if I had to take a stab at it... honestly, the SNES game music may not fit in perfectly well. I can see the RPGM3 tracks meshing with the Ace music library better from what I've seen.

That's not to say that I don't appreciate the bonus music in total. I mean, they didn't have to give us anything but a discount. And the music sounds pretty cool. Could be a cool starting off point for anyone wanting to create their own sounds as well.

A couple sample songs from Ace's default soundtrack.

http://www.acepromo.info/Battle3.ogg
http://www.acepromo.info/Battle4.ogg

Battle 4 is glorious.

Damn, those battle tracks are insane, man. I see where a lot of money for Ace went.

Actually, I liked battle 3 better than 4. But both of them are the MAD NOTE!

If you wanna listen to all the BGMs, I have them right here.

http://www.mediafire.com/?28tmtdgsaek2wgt

If you wanna listen to all the BGMs, I have them right here.

http://www.mediafire.com/?28tmtdgsaek2wgt

Thanks! I have iTunes on the music computer(my Macbook Pro), so I went ahead and converted them all to MP3, added the track info, and put a picture associated with it. Used the promo pic for the game. I know there's some kinda update to make ogg work with iTunes, but hey, I'm lazy.

I can also take this down if needed.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/u70acq

For those that have not pre-ordered the game, the RPG Maker VX Ace is available on the rpgmakerweb.com website for download. About time. Probably came up before midnight.... PST.

One of the "Featured" sample games is out for Ace.

http://www.rpgmakerweb.com/product/crysalis

Looks pretty neat!

I am actually playing a game made in regular ol' VX right now, but it's flooring me. It's just got ambience, mood, and everything down. Attention to detail is such a nice thing to see, and the custom art really makes it pop. It also has drawn a lot of influence from Lufia 2, but in a great way. The main character kinda reminds me of a more capable Prince Alex of Lufia 2. Since VX is similar to Ace(but Ace has more user-friendly stuff right off the bat thankfully), I'm optimistic for my own project more.

Currently, I'm working on my spriting ability, because I think that is what can make a game my own personally. I'm not the best at scripting, but hopefully, a custom soundtrack and fully custom art assets with alright story making will see me through.

Though, I'm planning on doing a smaller sample game to start with to test my spriting and tilesetting.

On an unrelated but related note, I find it interesting that certain features that have been in the RPG Makers previously are making their way back into Ace. Simple convenient things like having the caterpillar-effect built in, being able to make scrolling text without a custom script, and most interestingly having an easier method in-game apparently to create introductions where the main hero isn't immediately visible on a map.

The bonus RPGM3 tracks are coming back this time in full force.

As in, the entire RPGM3 collection of BGMs is hitting RPG Maker VX Ace.

http://soundcloud.com/rpg-maker/main-theme-1

That's from the twitter.

Thanks for keeping this up-to-date Ash.

No problem on the updating! News is a bit slow so it's not bad.

New announcements! I didn't think I'd keep updating, but one of the pieces of news is kinda cool and nice(the whole charity thing).
tryace.rpgmakerweb.com/m/ember-plus/

First, they're introducing a Members+ program. Think of it as an MMO sub fee, cause uh, yeah, it's a fee. 3 months is $14, a year is $42. 10% of all Member+ funds go to Child's Play, which is a charity as I'm sure a lot of you know.

The program is interesting. Perhaps even more interesting to those who have been running the PC Maker fansites, I'd imagine... you'll see what I mean.

*Custom Resources(MY NOTES: This one doesn't make much sense to me... you can already do that, I guess you get more pull with official resources)


*20-40% Discount on Future Purchases
This is all stuff from the RPG Maker store. And I imagine it applies to the software releases itself, and also game resource packs and all that.

*Promotion for Your Games/Projects

MY NOTES: Does this sound familiar?

*Blog

MY NOTES: This is a feature I noticed a ton of XP/VX fansites have by default.

*Special Forum Usergroup and Badge
MY NOTES: Uh... kay.

*Improved File Manager

MY NOTES: I guess they're making a download repository on the official site, then.

Then, there's more news- the modern tileset has been released at the INTRODUCTORY price of $6.99... for two weeks. Apparently it'll go up after that(Expect at least $13-14 I think from prior stuff)
http://tryace.rpgmakerweb.com/modern-day-resource-pack/

They're made by Lunarea, and they do look quite nice. My only complaint is that the fridge and microwave look a bit more jarring and flat compared to the rest of the objects. Which, hey, it happens. And hey, the first modern tileset...ish. She has done a lot of free resources as well, which you can find by Googling and all that.

***

Honestly, I just don't know if the money is worth it for me on this Members+ thing. I can just as easily donate to Child's Play, and I'm ambivalent on half the features, heh. I have a game dev blog that needs to see more action already on tumblr. Their forums are so-so to me still, because honestly about half the people there I could take or leave. The biggest thing is, that basically, the price point. I get that it's like really, a cup of coffee a month, but my cups of coffee are already in Netflix and Hulu and junk. I think the coolest thing here is, you get official promotion on your games. But even that seems... if they like it enough. Meaning the site staff. Meaning a couple of people decide what actually goes in, or not. It's probably not a big deal, since the amount of finished PC RPGM games is pretty slim. Just finishing is probably good enough.XD

Modern tileset does look snazzy though. But, I'm making most likely my own resources, but I dunno. For an RTP game, I bet that'd be nice to have.

Sorry if old news, just got an email about all this.