MV plugin compatibility in MZ- am I missing something?

So, knowing that MZ wouldn't be compatible with MV plugins, and understanding the reason for that, I bought MZ fully expecting to just use it as a second RTP because my game is already too much into development to start over and it's extremely dependant on some plugins to work... things like Doodads, Dragonbones etc.

Today, just for funsies and curiosity, I opened my MV project in MZ.

Imagine my surprise when I learned that EVERYTHING is working. Perfectly. No bumps and weirdnesses. I seem to just have to copy an old event's "Plugin Command" thingie into new events and edit that to be able to use MV plugin commands instead of MZ plugin commands. All else... working great.

Don't get me wrong, I am EXTREMELY pleased with this new turn of events - it means that now I only need my game's writer to buy MZ too and then we can make the switch without any pain.

But hey, did I mention that curiosity? I am now wondering HOW it is that everything is working. After all the warnings I read everywhere that the plugins would break? I figured some simpler ones might still work, but - complex, core-changing plugins like YEP_CoreEngine and SRD_SuperToolsEngine are working fine. I almost fear that someone will come telling me "no, you're wrong, it's actually running on MV and your screen with the MZ title is just bugged" but I made a new map with layers and put doodads on it and everything is working fine and well.

So... what gives? :ptea: were all the warnings about plugin breakage just a "let's be safe" warning that they wouldn't guarantee any compatibility?

Haha! I decided to give it a go, just for kicks. This is what I got


:guffaw::guffaw::guffaw:

The language of MZ remained Javascript, so basically all commands themselves remain the same.
What changed is the data structure with added options and different mapping structures and so on.

So if you have only plugins that do not touch the changed sections, then you have a chance of everything working. But as soon as you try to force compatibility over something that was changed, then you get errors.

As for the published comment - there is no way to know without testing which plugins remain compatible.
And if Degica had made any promises for compatibility, the response on the first incompatible plugin would be really bad, so they didn't promise anything in that area.

Very much this /\

Are you using MZ's core? If you didn't change the core, then it is still running MV.

Holy--- :guffaw: :guffaw: :guffaw: And I have so many of them plugins too! Was I just lucky?


Yeah I figured as much. Though from their wording I was thinking it was a definite "most likely that nothing will work". :kaohi:

I'm... not sure what this means, I confess. I pretty much made a new MZ project, then copied everything in my MV folder over it, replacing anything it prompted me to, and then I just copied MZ's buttons png file from the system folder as (per the help file) that one has to be new. And then loaded the MZ project file.

Yeah, it sounds like you overwrote the core files, so you're essentially still running it on MV.

I had a tutorial out showing people how to do that and took it down. I don't feel right encouraging it, since people will think they ported, when really they made some weird mostly MV hybrid.

Oh! Dang o_O

But the layered maps are working, and it gives me the list of events, and uh uh...

.... I-- might keep using this hybrid. :guffaw:

If you're happy with it, you should! :guffaw:

I took the tutorial down because it wasn't explained well, but I might put another one explaining exactly what happens that I would feel better about. Some people might want the hybrid for sure :LZSgrin:

I'm first checking what works and doesn't here with it - like if it also takes MZ plugins, and Effekseer animations, etc - and in a moment I'm gonna test what happens if I try not replacing the core. (Probably that catastrophic failure :guffaw: ) Because what can I say, the curiosity is strong with this one, gotta try the stuff myself LMAO


Edit: yeah ok so test results:

-I tested (on the hybrid) a GALV plugin for MZ and a VisuStella one - Galv's worked, VS's didn't, I'm guessing it's because Galv's is a port from one for MV anyway. So, hybrid needs MV scripts, makes sense.

-Animations: system menu will show Effekseer, and not MV animations. Actualy test game will show MV animations (that were saved back in MV), and return errors when trying to play Effekseer animations. That's such a pity - I don't use animations for my game really, but would start to if I could use particles. I wonder if there's a way to further hybrid this thing to make Effekseer animations work. Code masters, any ideas?

-Move Route previews: not sure if they're supposed to behave this way in MZ, but in this hybrid the route previews correctly, but if I have one event creating a move route for another event, the preview shows for the event that prompts the moving, not the event that's supposed to move.

-Map layers working correctly, as far as I'm aware. At least they look correct in the test play.

-It seems like you can go back and forth with this between MZ and MV. When you save it on MZ, when you load it via MV you get this error when test playing:
But it works anyway. Layer information remains if you save in MV and load in MZ - of course, in MV it will be all flat. But back into MZ you still have your layers correctly.


This is fun to try. xD thank you everyone for all the information! (I'd still love it if someone figured out what to change to make it load Effekseer stuff, anyway.)

The core script Hudell mentioned can be checked from the menu bar in the editor by selecting Game and choosing Update Corescript. This will open a window that lets you choose what version of the Corescript you want the game to run on. If you haven't updated this then, as the others said, you're basically just running MV through the MZ engine.

Good luck with your testing! Make sure you have a backup of your project though!!:ptea:

Oh yeah usually I have to worry about having too many backups.... I may have a problem :guffaw:

I have tested this on my own project.
The true update is on core RPG Maker plugins and If you do that, you don't get the updates, so don't make sense to use MZ.
The only thing that is really updated is the NW.js, the "console" plugin.
This can make the performance a little better.
However, on MV3D the performance was worst.

@AfroditeOhki You can use one of the launch plugins to use both types of animations. I made a tutorial on that too :D I'm keeping this one up!

Best of both worlds

If you read the instructions in the help file, the correct way to convert a project from MV to MZ is not to just open the MV project with MZ. That will let you use the MV editor, but when you play, it is still the MV version of your game. In fact, if you now edit this project by adding new events that use some of the features not available in MV, and doing database stuff that's not available in MV, you may damage your project in a way that it won't run in either MV OR MZ.

The correct way to convert is to create a new MZ project, save and close. Then copy over a number of folders, NOT including the js folder (and some others). This gives you an MZ project which you can edit and play. THIS is what will make MV plugins no longer work. Basically, any MV plugin that has plugin commands is pretty much guaranteed to not work in MZ, because plugins are called in a completely different way now.


It won't. As said above, if you've just opened your MV project in MZ, you are using all the MV scripts, so the new stuff added (outside of the editor) will not work.

If you continue to "play" in this way - I sure hope you have a recent backup from before you started to experiment.

There is a huge incompatibility between dragonbones for mv, and for mz. (well, technically its between pixi v4 and v5) if your boners are still working then your probably still using the mv core. if you switch to the mz core (with pixi 5) they should break immediately.

I had to find a completely different dragonbones core script to add dragonbones into my plugins. The one people used for mv had compatibility issues with pixi v5.

The main reason why I wanted MZ in the first place was for the map layers, and the move route previews, and these are working well :) I don't use 3d for maker at all.

This one requires MZ core to be up, right? I really need to keep in MV core because I'm way too dependant on those plugins.

Yes, when I read the thing about how to convert, I saw a bunch of folders to copy over and just went ahead and copied the entire thing. After this thread I realized that some things just replace the base of the Maker and tried the correct way - but as stated above, it doesn't work because most of the plugins required for my game aren't available for MZ (at least not yet, though I hope that eventually they will).

I've tested plugin commands - the ones I had saved in MV still work. Trying to make a new plugin command in MZ doesn't work because the new plugin command window doesn't recognize MV plugins at all, they don't even show in the list. Buuut copying a plugin command that came from MV and editing it to whatever I want works. It shows up in MZ in a window that looks the same as the MV plugin command window.

As I showed above, I'm kinda addicted to backing things up :guffaw:

Yeah it's running on MV core, but giving me MZ interface. I'm still amazed that those map layers work correctly. With Dragonbones I'll be waiting a while I think, if I want to actually move to MZ - I don't have battles in my game, I use Dragonbones for animated message busts, and a friend of mine coded a small extra plugin over the MV Dragonbones plugin to make it easier for me to play Dragonbones on the map. I don't even know if the MZ Dragonbones plugin available has plugin commands/script to show a Dragonbones armature on screen out of battle/character like that.

Well, idk about other mz dragonbone plugins, but I know I haven't coded that yet. People keep asking me about showing boners on the map and as message busts though, so I'll probably add them in soon enough. :)

Edit: I do have animated armatures in every other game scene already though, like, as status screens and shown in the title and such.. Which idk if there even was an mv plugin that did that? : ponders :

I was mostly waiting on ports of the plugins I need the most... I'll be lurking, when I see versions of everything for MZ I'll switch over for good. For now, I'll probably keep using this hybrid :)

(My first thought is to say that I need dragonbones and doodads, but the more I think on the stuff I need the more I understand why my plugin list is huge...)

I'm surprised by that. I would expect them not to work at all ... though thinking about it, I can kinda see a way.

If you really just want the mapping in MZ, but everything else in MV, you could certainly load the game into MZ JUST to do mapping, but save and close MZ and go back to MV to do any kind of databasing or eventing.

If your writer is only writing, and not using the engine at all, they don't need to buy it. But if they are doing eventing (ie - they're not just writing, but they're putting it into the game for you), they will need it. But if you ONLY do mapping in MZ, as I just mentioned, they could still work with MV.