When comparing RPG Maker VX Ace vs Adventure Game Studio, the Slant community recommends Adventure Game Studio for most people. In the question“What are the best game engines for point & click adventure games?” Adventure Game Studio is ranked 1st while RPG Maker VX Ace is ranked 35th. The most important reason people chose Adventure Game Studio is:
Good for newbie game creators. Can be used for prototyping: on several occasions was used to make a demo/experimental version before creating a final commercial product on different engine.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Quick and easy to learn
Built for ease of use to get your game made quickly!
Pro Plenty of premade assets to get you started
Super high quality art assets get you making a game quickly without it looking terrible.
Pro Steam support
Get a ton of great assets for the community by the community through Steam’s Workshop support.
Pro Large community
Never a shortage of user tutorials, assets, or support.
Pro Simple scripting implementation
Quickly script simple events with a few clicks. This powerful part of the editor allows you to get through the tedious amount of content for quests and other in game sequences quickly.
Pro Creating maps is simple
Choose a tileset and get to mapping! Supported tiles will connect automatically to help you speed through the mapping process. Setting events on tiles is easy to do and populating your world with NPC’s and other items is easy to do.
Pro Uses Ruby as a scripting language
Need more power for things like battle systems, plugins, or awesome effects? RPG Maker uses Ruby along with its own library to bring you the tools you need to stand out.
Pro Powerful Database for everything you need
Everything you make is done through this powerful expansive database. You customize every character, weapon, enemy, and skill through this and so much more to make a designer's life easier.
Pro Ton of customization options
Create things quickly with things like the character customizer or the experience curve editor. RPG Maker is made to let you change every single thing in your game swiftly and simply.
Pro Relatively cheap
Although not free it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to get RPG Maker VX Ace. You can buy RPG Maker for $69.99 or get a free trial to see if it’s right for you.
Pro Easy to learn tool
Good for newbie game creators. Can be used for prototyping: on several occasions was used to make a demo/experimental version before creating a final commercial product on different engine.
Pro Completely free and open source
AGS is licensed under Artistic License 2.0 and is completely free for use for creating both freeware and commercial games.
Pro Relatively well documented
Besides the manual there are multiple text and video tutorials and code samples written by community.
Pro Used for a number of high-profile commercial releases
Adventure Game Studio has been used to develop games such as "Resonance", "Blackwell" series, "Gemini Rue", "Primordia".
Pro Lots of assets available
An extensive library of game templates and script modules accumulated over years. You can construct a simple game in hours (if you know what you are doing).
Pro Friendly community
An old, big and active community which would support newcomers not only in learning basics of the engine, but can help with every aspect of game making (including art, voice acting, moral support, etc).
Cons
Con Windows only development
With the ability to only work and deploy on Windows RPG Maker misses a major opportunity to create awesome RPG’s that anyone can play.
Con Multi-user development can be a hassle
RPG Maker was not really intended for multi-user support. There are a few tactics but for those of you who are used to with multi-user development may get annoyed.
Con Isometric not out of the box
Want to make a tactics game? Well you’re going to have to do some extra work to get those awesome isometric tiles in your game.
Con RPG Maker stigma
There is a major stigma with using RPG Maker since it does have such a low bar to entry. If you do use this engine just make sure your game is so awesome that no one will care what it was made in.
Con Only one tileset per map
While a tileset in RPG Maker can encompass many files it also can be a hassle if you want to use multiple tilesets on a map. You can switch tilesets through code for multi-world game though.
Con Natively supports only 2D
2D only native support, 3D could be supported with plugins though.
Con Uses dated tech
Engine is based on the old technologies, which impose number of limitations and may cause problems on latest systems (level of annoyance varies depending on your priorities).
Con Graphics renderer is a bit dated
Graphics renderer is not well optimized for high-resolution games and complex effects.
Con No visual editor for scripts
You have to actually write all scripts yourself.
Con Development is slow
Further development of the engine is currently slow, done by only few people in their free time.
Con AGS Script isn't as full-featured as other scripting languages
Its own scripting language has lower syntax capabilities compared to modern script languages.
Con Assets cover almost exclusively adventure/quest genre
The features, script functions and game templates are very biased towards adventure/quest genre. The non-adventure games were made in AGS (2D shooters, platformers, turn-based strategies), but their development usually requires to write everything from scratch.
Con Workflow is closely coupled with the editor
Workflow is very tied to the editor and custom file formats, which can cause problems for bigger, more professional projects (interfering with source control, parallel development, automated builds, etc)