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HopDrop, in its RPG Maker VXace version, celebrated its 7th birthday in September 2022. It is extremely rare for an RPG Maker game to reach such a grand age during its development, this is mainly due to the fact that I have constantly revise my ambition upwards. HopDrop's codename is Project Dream, and I have to give credit to that codename...

This is how, after long hesitation, I decided to restart HopDrop on Unity.

There are several reasons:

• I am professionalizing myself in video games as a tech artist, where my new favorite engine is Unity, so I might as well use my new skills for a new and better version of HopDrop.
• Unity is more flexible and, according to my first tests, lends itself to HopDrop better than RPG Maker (that makes sense). Fluidity and performance are there.
• The possibilities offered by Unity are exponentially greater.
• Portability on different platforms, one of my concerns, is much easier with Unity.
• For the public and people who will join the project directly or indirectly, Unity is more interesting than RPG Maker.
• RPG Maker, it aged badly. Getting RPG Maker 95 to work on a modern PC is tricky. The games of the 2000 and 2003 versions must sometimes undergo a patch which can damage certain aspects of the games, to avoid this patching you can go through EasyRPG but not everyone knows this solution. RPG Maker XP, even in its time, had issues with some versions of Windows. RPG Maker VX sometimes has trouble on some modern PCs (at least for me). It's bound to happen one day with RPG Maker VXace, which relies heavily on VX and older technologies. Of course, its RPG Maker versions are on Steam (except RPG Maker 95), but Steam does not guarantee the longevity of the software's operation. Unity, as it is more popular, is less prone to this kind of problem.
• It's easier to upgrade a Unity project to a newer version. It's risky, but less than porting an RPG Maker game to another version of this engine.
• My main fear was the non-portability of 7 years of graphic assets from RPG Maker VXace to Unity. The resource migration, at the time of writing, is already complete.

So what will happen to the RPG Maker version of HopDrop in the short term?

It will remain online until a demo under Unity is ready, it will take more or less time. The RPG Maker version is abandonned, too bad for the German translation, it will then be part of the Unity version the launch day.

And when the Unity version of HopDrop is released, what will happen to the RPG Maker version?

A new page will be made, the current one will then join the archives alongside GoldenWorld -Nokoshi the evil king- or Mario Kart MegaMix. I'm still considering for download availability (for discover the universe while the developpement of Unity version), but I'm likely to take it down.