A new release: Our Hero! Trilogy Reloaded

How It All Started

We’re talking about the Our Hero! trilogy, which I published on Steam a few years ago, which includes:

• Our Hero! First
• Our Hero! Two
• Our Hero! Omega (formerly known as Our Hero! Last)

These are games that, before landing on Steam for the first time, I had only released on a few niche forums and websites, exclusively in Italian and with somewhat dated mechanics, partly due to my inability at the time to touch any kind of code or programming language.

Then one day I decided to pick them back up, dust them off a bit, and bring them to Steam, giving them some dignity.

The things I did to prepare for the release on the famous platform were:

• Adding multilanguage support: Italian, English (and also French and Spanish for Our Hero! First)
• Touching up some graphics (HUDs, menus…)
• Redoing the illustrations for promotional materials (game titles, Steam assets)
• Replacing all the music
• Working on some scripts to improve gameplay fluidity and mechanics

Those were the main tweaks I made to all three games at the time.

Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do about the major limitations of the engine used to develop all three games: RPG Maker VX.

RPG Maker is a somewhat clunky and limited engine, but sadly it was the only one I knew how to use when I first created these games. Over time I learned to use Unity as well (and today Godot), so I’ve thought many times about remaking the entire trilogy on a different engine, but in the end I always concluded it wasn’t worth it. So much work, so much time, for games that were relatively unsuccessful and that were already complete, just running on a somewhat dated engine. I should already feel satisfied that I picked them up and got them onto Steam.

Picked up and then left to gather dust, since marketing isn’t exactly my strong suit, and indeed the number of players who have ever discovered the games is decidedly few.

But it doesn’t matter much! This is game dev and this is my passion. I’ve decided that if I’m going to do something, I do it primarily for myself.

All of this is to say: yes, fair enough, I took these old games, improved them a bit, and published them on Steam, but I hadn’t done them the justice I truly wanted.

As I mentioned, the limitations of RPG Maker VX were still all there:

• massive black bars on every side of the screen
• extremely low resolution, extreme lag on many maps (to the point of making them unplayable)
• and compatibility only on Windows (meanwhile Steam Deck had come out, and it really bothered me that the Our Hero! games couldn’t be played in portable mode)

Then one day a friend of mine asks me (thanks Simone!):

Why doesn’t Our Hero! have Steam achievements?

And I immediately replied: “Well, because in a game made with RPG Maker VX it’s probably impossible to integrate them.”

I looked into it for a bit, apparently there is a way, but it’s quite complicated. Is it worth it? I don’t know.

Some time passes.

I think: “man, now we have ChatGPT, maybe if I ask it step by step I can actually pull something off.” I ask Chat. Among other things, it mentions a project: mkxp-z. A whole new world opens up to me.

The New Our Hero! Release with mkxp-z

What is mkxp-z?

mkxp-z is a player for older RPG Maker versions (XP, VX, Ace) that:

• Drastically improves game performance
• Increases resolution (supporting HD if desired)
• Makes an RPG Maker project cross-platform (!!!), meaning it can run natively on: Windows, macOS, and Linux (Steam Deck included!)
• Allows Steam achievements integration!

I get excited. I think: “finally, it can be done!” I pick the Our Hero! trilogy back up. I want to release a “definitive edition”!

Toward the Definitive Edition

The initial idea was simply to integrate Steam achievements and re-release the three games with mkxp-z, along with all the improvements I mentioned above. I would finally eliminate the massive black bars, drastically improve performance by removing all lag from the games, integrate achievements, and add the long-awaited Steam Deck support!

“Unfortunately,” one thing leads to another. By starting to make one improvement, I began thinking that maybe it was time to, once and for all, set aside the idea of remaking the three games in a different engine and instead release a “definitive edition” of the existing ones built with RPG Maker VX. Now, thanks to mkxp-z, that was possible.

I’ve always been a little embarrassed to tell people “yeah, I’m a game developer, these are the games I made…” and then show them Our Hero!, with the black bars on screen, the pixelated graphics, the characters drawn so poorly that when they walk it looks like they’re limping.

And so I began this final, new, ambitious project to release the definitive version of the Our Hero! trilogy, to restore dignity to these games built on a dated engine and finally be proud of them.

And it’s something I’m not doing for any particular audience, given that total sales across all three games amount to just a few hundred copies. It’s something I’m doing primarily for myself, to be satisfied with these games I created, so that when I play them myself, they’re fun and enjoyable to me first, and then hopefully to everyone else who gets the chance to play them too.

So I decided (once again) to revisit these three old games and improve them one final time, making the following changes:

• Release of all three games with mkxp-z integration, which includes:
  • Steam achievements!
  • Native Windows and Linux builds! (macOS would also be possible, but it’s not worth spending €100 a year to maintain Apple’s developer license)
  • Steam Deck compatibility!
  • Higher resolution (goodbye black bars!)
  • Performance improvements (goodbye lag!)
• New professional illustrations for promotional materials (made by Satsume , thank you! ♥︎)
• New scripts to eliminate the clunkiest and most annoying mechanics in each game
• Completely redesigned character sprites with improved animations
• Redesigned all HUDs with a more modern look
• Integrated lighting effects to enhance the visual atmosphere of maps
• Added support for additional languages

And that’s how a job of roughly one month (just the mkxp-z integration) turned into nearly a year 😆

I started working on it 2 months ago and today I can almost say I’ve completed the first game (Our Hero! First), which I’m currently putting through final testing and last-minute touches. After that I’ll focus on Our Hero! Two and Our Hero! Omega, which, being somewhat more complex, I expect will require even more work 😮

I started this devlog to keep track of my progress and provide explanations of how I integrated some of the features mentioned above, things like specific scripts, localization, mkxp-z integration, and Steam achievements in an RPG Maker VX project.

Do you have a game made with RPG Maker XP, VX, or Ace that you’d like to integrate Steam achievements into? Are you interested in the mkxp-z project? Let me know in the comments! 🌟