Releasing games without needing RTP, lightweight and easy

It's every developer's biggest wish to make a game reach as big as audience as possible. To reach beyond the community of VX Ace, you have to be able to make the game function without the RTP. But do you really need every single item from the RTP included? Not only do you add tons of recources not needed for the game, you are basically beefing up the file size way past its requirements.

It's my pleasure to teach you how to make your game both light weight, as well as working without RTP, easily and 100% idiot proof.

Step 1: How does my game know it needs RTP?

If you release a game without RTP, your player will be greeted with an error saying "This game requires ACE RTP" or something along the lines. This is not good as they'll be unable to play the game. However, there is a very easy way to get past this.

First of all, go to your game folder and locate "Game.ini" file. You should be greeted with a file that's something along the lines of this.



Now looking at the Game.ini file you may have seen RTP file. Logically thinking, you can guess that by removing the RTP line you'd make the game work without RTP and you'd be right. There is just one problem. Everytime you do changes to the project and save it, the game adds the RTP=RPGVXACE at it. This is very aggrivating, especially if you forget to import something and have to come back to import it later, thus forcing you to go and delete the RTP line again. So how do you fix this?



As you can see, the RTP= is left intact however, the RPGCXACE part has been removed. This tricks the game to never finding the rtp, even when it's on your computer but never needing it. Save this change you've just made and you can close the Game.ini file.



Step 2: Making your game work

By now, if you've tried starting your game after this point, you'll probably start getting missing file errors. This is because your game no longer finds the games in RTP folder but rather in the game folder. What you want to do is import stuff from the RTP that you need for your game, the ones that give errors. Use resource manager and you can drag many items at once, importing them to your project. Make sure you test the game various times so that you've got all the game's bugs worked out. If you have the missing file error, your player also will have it.



Step 3: Releasing your game

After you no longer get missing file errors and are done with your game or want to release a beta or something for the public to admire, there's one last step for you to follow.



Making sure that the Include RTP Data is on, is esential. Now, you can just compress the game wherever you want, along with encrypting it if you need to.


Congratulations, now your game works with anyone being able to play it and it is not nearly as massive in size!

This is pretty helpful - there's nothing I hate more than having to link people to the RTP as well as the game.

The option to make it not use the RTP was mysteriously missing in RMVX - I'm glad it's back.

Yeah, pretty easy. =D

But the pratice I recommend before this method is to start making a game with a entirely blank database (just put the essential to the game engine work there), and only importing some basic resources on System folder, and the Title Screen.

The games would be less dependant of the RTP, so the default database would come only with the minimals instead the normal fullfilled one, imho.

Does include RTP data actually check what you're using? If so then why did I bother writing my resource checker LOL

No, I believe include RTP just includes all of it.. I could be wrong, but the last two times I had it ticked it included resources I didn't use also..

As Acetonide stated, it includes the whole RTP. But now I do wonder if EB could re-design it so that it only includes the parts used.

I always found this very strange too... Thankfully, Enterbrain listens to their fans.

You don't really need anything for the engine to work. Make your blank game and edit RTP from your Game.ini if you wish as soon as you make it and you can boot the engine a-okay. The maker is not tied to your RTP, so you can see what is missing and what's not as you start making your game. This way, if you plan on not using RTP at all, you can just delete the pre made things and just import the RTP ones you need.To get the test play to work with, you only really need the Windows.png graphic in the system folder though you can make any Windows graphic yourself and the fonts to display in the game. The regular without scripts is VL Gothic. the RTP comes with one but it's free to use and you can find an updated one online.

I realized the fonts is something I totally forgot to mention, so to make up for my error, here's Alice to cover up my behind.



Thank you Alice.

It does not. It includes everything in RTP folder, which is why I recommend writing out the RTP thing to only make sure you include the files you need.

Kind of curious on the third step then. If I'm manually copying the files over and not using an RTP, what does checking the box do?

It tells the program there is RTP included and makes the necessary steps to produce the installer with functions to make the game work without RTP, even if you'd not use RTP related things you may still get "ACE RTP required" like in RPGmaker games of past.

Well, what bothers me is that when you create a "new" project, the default database will be already fullfilled with lots os items (of course, they're only for reference purposes).

But to exclude them all every new test project is boring, so I zipped some project with the "blank database", and every time I need to decompress it in a new folder.

Enterbrain would give the option to start a really blank new project if the user wants, to prevent this frustrating workaround.

That's actually a feature worth having in the next maker: basically when you start a new project, have a tick mark that includes or excludes the RTP.

I have the Steam version running on Windows 7 64bit (if that matters).  If I follow step 1 and delete just the "RPGVXAce" when I go back into the project and save it or compress the game, it adds the line in.  However, if I delete the whole line, "RTP=" included, everything works out fine.  Then following steps 2 and 3 produces the desired result.  Hopefully that is of some help to other Steam users.  Also, thanks MISTER BIG T.  I just made a really short game to test out the system which shouldn't be 190MB.  Now it's down to 18MB thanks to your tutorial.

hmmm really helpful,,

i need to do this now... but i have question, 

when i remove RPGVXACE ... all my maps return to empty maps.....

if i add what i used for the maps from the manager will they return to normal ?

thanks

I never ticked the include RTP part... I simply removed the RTP=Blahblah line and imported every resource I need from the RTP and it works fine...

So all you need to do is:

1) Remove the RTP=Blahblah line from the game.ini

2) Save game.ini

3) Import the RTP files that  you need

4) Enjoy

I've already tested that with other computers and also via other people here whom made their games that way...

They could not. At least not including custom scripts.

I believe that in general considering all possible custom scripts it is literally impossible to design an algorithm which includes only the parts that are used :(

@Offender - It's because it removes the linkage between the RTP and your project, meaning all RTP resources that you use (without importing to project folder) will be gone so you'll have to import them to your project... I think it's better to import everything you need from the RTP first before doing the removal part... so that it would be less likely to have a problem... and it will be easier for you too as you can still see them visually in your project when filtering which ones you actually use...

Would a similar procedure work with XP?

Never tried that before, so I'll try it now! :p

This was extremely helpful, but it doesn't mention anything about how to resolve the default text problem. When I remove the RTP, I import all the necessary graphics just fine but I can't figure out how to replace the default text. There's nothing in the resource manager about text. I'm wondering if it requires some sort of scripting?

Changing text requires a Fonts folder and a script change. If you want to know how to do that (since it's really not related to using or not using the RTP), please start a new thread in RGSSx Script Support.