Download

Yes, this is the first paragraph, because I know people are looking for it most of the time, probably. So be it.

Click me hard!

Contact

And yes, this is the second paragraph, because people seek this information very often too.

If you have any questions, you may either ask in of the following forum threads:

English: Thread on RMN
German: Thread on Multimediaxis
French: Thread on Oniromancie (my reponses will be in English though)

...or write me an e-mail at dynrpg@cherrytree.at!

Oh, and if you find errors in this documentation, or bugs in the patch or the SDK, please tell me too!

Introduction

DynRPG is a plugin SDK for RPG Maker 2003. "SDK" means "Standard Development Kit", and in this case it means that everyone can create his own extensions to the RPG Maker software now, as long as he knows how to use C++. DynRPG not only offers the average programmer access to the world of "patching", but it also provides the basis for far more powerful extensions than all "patches" made for the RPG Maker before.

DynRPG works using plugins. Plugins can be written in C++, they will be loaded when the game starts and they are notified of certain events (like the drawing of a new frame, the writing to a variable, etc.) and are allowed to react to these events.

What in past were "patches" are now going to be simple plugins. Any game using DynRPG can be extended by a new feature by simply putting a plugin file into a folder called DynPlugins. That's far easier than "patching", something which many game makers are even afraid of, because they think it might harm their game. And if somebody doesn't like a certain plugin, all he needs to do is deleting it.

So, DynRPG is beneficial to both plugin makers and game makers:

Plugin makers can use a simple C++ library to write powerful plugins and distribute them to other game makers!
Game makers get many new possibilities just by adding these plugins to their game!
Professional game makers are able to write plugins which exactly fit to their game's needs, for example they might write part of their action battle system in C++ or apply a custom design to the default battle system, or maybe they even create a whole minigame using DynRPG... the possibilities are endless!

Important links

Are you a game maker? Then look at The Patch to find out how to install and use the DynRPG Patch and what features it has!

Are you a plugin maker? Then you might start with the Getting Started section, and make sure you follow the Rules and guidelines for plugin developers! Of course, you can also explore the SDK documentation using the navigation bar and the search function. The two main sections you need are the RPG namespace and the Callbacks.

Parts

The name "DynRPG" means this project as a whole... but actually, it consists of several parts:

The DynRPG Patch: This is the only real patch here. Yes, I was not completely honest: The game makers don't get completely rid of "patching", since they have to install this one patch. It is a small patch for RPG Maker 2003 version 1.08, which loads the DynRPG Loader at startup, notifies it of game events and also applies several bugfixes to the RPG Maker. The DynRPG Loader then looks for plugins, loads them and later forwards game events to them. The DynRPG Patch is compatible with most of the other RPG Maker 2003 patches out there. More information here: The Patch
The DynRPG Patcher: This simple tool installs the DynRPG Patch for you.
The DynRPG Loader: That's a little DLL file called dynloader.dll which is the middle-man between the DynRPG Patch and the plugins.
The DynRPG SDK: That's the library and the C++ header files which allow you to create your own plugins for DynRPG very easily. (If you are no programmer but just a game maker looking for ready-made plugins, you don't need to bother yourself with this.)
The plugins: Although not actually part of the DynRPG project, the plugins are what makes the whole thing useful. They can extend the features of the RPG Maker (as in the past patches did), but in a far more powerful way. A plugin is a simple DLL file which is placed in the DynPlugins folder of a game.

Credits

I want to thank Bananen-Joe for helping me when I had questions - all the time since I got to know him... and also for his Destiny Patch because it gave me the competition I needed. :-)

I also want to thank MagicMaker for testing all my stuff before. Although he wasn't able to test DynRPG itself, his contribution also helped me with my previous research... and that research is the base of DynRPG.

And last but not least, I want to thank Crash-Override alias WordsBG for trying to "own me" years ago when I created my first "patch" (the RM2k(3) Font Changer)... I think if he hadn't challenged me, I wouldn't have dug into reverse engineering and I would never have come this far. (Explanation: After I published the font changer tool, he created a thingy called "RM Binary Patcher" which basically did the same as my font changer and Miroku's "Maker Ultimative" patcher combined. The latter had several bugs, and because he commented his tool with "because I just wanted to own you", I took that as a challenge and created a better tool, Hyper Patcher 1, which did the same as his tool, but without bugs and with more features. He then admitted that I had won.)