When comparing Starling vs RPGMaker, the Slant community recommends RPGMaker for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D game engines?” RPGMaker is ranked 28th while Starling is ranked 78th. The most important reason people chose RPGMaker is:
It's possible to create a game with absolutely no art or coding skills, so even complete beginners can make something.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Lightweight
Starling is just 12k lines of code and doesn't try to do everything — but what it does, as efficient as possible.
Pro Feathers User Interface Components
With Feathers, you can easily add great user interfaces to your games — or even create business apps with Starling.
Pro Free and open source
Starling is available for free with code available on GitHub.
Pro Strong community support
Forum is always active with knowledgeable developers and with lot of inside info, and post mortems.
Pro Works with Flash
With UI, you can design it in Flash Professional (powerful 2D editor), export to swf file, use GAF convert swf file to gaf file, finnally, load gaf file to Starling. GAF can convert a lot of file swf to one atlas. Alway use same resource in design files (fla) to optimize atlas size, avoid duplicate asset in atlas.
You can use flash to create animation for starling.
Pro Hardware accelerated rendering
Let the GPU do the rendering, the CPU has more important tasks to do.
Pro Cross Platform
It can be exported to web flash player, iOS, Android, Windows, and OS X
Pro Works with AIR's native extensions
Using AIR's native extensions any native code that can be written can be run and used by the game engine.
Pro Constantly updated
New features are added regularly.
Pro Better performance than most alternatives
Starling can run more animated display objects than Unity2D and many others frameworks at 60 fps.
Pro Easy to jump into using an intuitive WYSIWYG editor
It's possible to create a game with absolutely no art or coding skills, so even complete beginners can make something.
Pro Large and active community
The engine has seen multiple iterations since 1995, so a large online community exists that is always willing to help each other out.
Pro Ruby / Javascript support provides depth to more experienced developers
With a script editor that uses a modified version of Ruby, it's possible to go well beyond the traditional RPG with this engine. Note: XP and VX use Ruby, the latest version "MV" uses Javascript for scripting.
Pro It's an open engine
It's possible to use custom editors from the community, edit libraries,include libraries,etc (MV Only)
Pro Multi-platform
MV supports HTML5 exports, so it is easier than ever to make your game work on iOS, android, OSX,Linux or Windows.
Pro Inbuilt database and multplayer plugins, providing you the scalfolding to customising your projects with ease
The inbuilt database which binds to game saves or can be made persist allows great power within your logic. Also a plugin called 'Alpha.net' provides multiplayer. This combination can allow great customisation of the engine, allowing a powerful 2D game to be made with little to no coding experience.
Pro Greater Map layers
MV Mapping uses an additional layer to create better depth.
Pro MV has HTML5 export
You can now HTML5 export your projects, so you could theoretically host your game on your webserver, and have your friends play the game without ever having to install a single thing.
Pro A cheap license that allows using the software commercially
There are several versions of RPG maker, with MV being the latest and most fully featured: MV ($79.99), VX Ace ($69.99), VX ($59.99) and XP ($24.99), 2003 ($19.99).
Cons
Con Poor text/font support
It supports only 4 features for text rendering:
- bitmap font with batching.
1.1. basic distance fields with support for outline and filters via MeshStyle.
1.2 the new multichannel distance field, the ultimate solution for bitmap font rendering. - Draw and upload texture in runtime
So every new text field required texture uploads or vertex/idnex buffer uploads.
skipUnchanchagedFrames keep the backbuffer static for scenes without changes between frames, leveraging a good rendering optimization.
Con Engine supported mainly by one man
Its open source but in most cases community features or pull request are canceled.
Con You have to code when you want something didn't built in
You know,RM series' default walk animation only has three frames.If you want to enhance,you have to code by yourself——especially majority of it's user are newbies.
Con No Hardware accelerate
You'll get a bad performance when you have big animations,especially in MV,which can easily change into higher resolution.
Con No 3D support
None of them have 3D support, it is possible only with manual scripting which could be difficult for beginners.
Con MV Does not have a "REAL" Android export.
MV has an export to HTML5 - which can run on any browser including android. It is however not a "native" app export.
Con Inconsistent included visual assets
Included visual assets within MV have inconsistent presentation. Though RPMMV does contain enough to make a small basic title, the visual assets don't often look like they should be mixed on-screen.
Con No built-in realtime battle system
RPG Maker series has only turn based battle systems, unless scripts/Plugins made by the community are used.
Con Conversion to MV difficult
Older iterations of RPG Maker use smaller sprite sizes that require manual conversion to use older RTP assets and older assets are more robust.
