RPG in a Box (Demo Game Hub)

my honest review of the engine after 3-4 years using it
(hopefully my comments don't get removed again)

good things about the engine

the engine is good for making small to mid sizes games there a lot of unfinished things that hopefully will be "finished" as with the way engines works but with one dev developing this it takes far longer for things to be rounded off eg finished 

you can make fairly desent fps games
puzzel games
fnf clones
and VERY basic rpgs


things ive found with the engine that arn't so good or need vast amounts of work on

free movement (8 directional)
works for player and player controlled characters but isn't for npc's movement wise and still very new in what its meant to do

combat chose's real time turn based menu based are very limited currently

turn based
mobs can only have one attack move they cant pick from a "set" pool of moves.
no projectile cam so u don't know if projectiles have hit the player or mob if they have long range
there no way to speed or or skip turns as in skip or speed up the combat when its the npcs or speed your any character/npc
turn orders don't seem to be done correctly when making skills as the engine don't know what turns in (for eg think of a fire status effect that's meant to last 2 turns currently it lasts permantly)
projectiles have no way to know if they hit something over then the player meaning they will just go thought trees walls objects and ect 
missing or evading an attack is "hard-locked" meaning u can set a weapon up with a % miss chance or a projectile its it hits or don't hit

menu based (think of ff  1-2-3-4-5-6) style

much like turn based but a little more workable since skills work in setting up multipool attacks as long as they don't have status effects (see issue with that above) and npcs cant have multipool attacks in this mode too

real time combat

the most workable of the lot but still limited to the above issues (eg the issues above i mentioned)

coding/programming
is hard locked to its made up simple language that currently isn't very complex (think of a very rookie version of python) you cant use common languages like gdscript or c+ or c++ thought u can use json's for making lists for like character classes and things don't be expecting to make vast and complex mechanics even if you have knowage of how to make things programming wise because its just not there

no custom shaders
over then the two shaders (that you can enable in the map editor) there no way currently to make a shader 

GUI/UI 
to make ui with overlays you have to make 3 widgets and layer them on top of each over to make a widget since there now way to assign a image  in a widgets back ground or foreground 

built in Documentation is VERY out of date 
when new things code or anything wise gets added the documentation isnt there plus things that have been added over the years/changed have very little changes to the visual or understanding of what this thing dose not do

lighting day and night 
this is a bit touch and go people like myself cant have any form of lighting shadows day or night on because it tanks fps and performance in the engine and your game some people can have everything on with no reason why it should be one way or the over

performance and stable of the engine is a bit all over the place
again depends how you use the engine but don't be expecting to make a game using the hole grid size and having a lot of coding and interactable and things on a map that big let alone anything that's more then 30-40 tiles objects that are animated on a loop as the engine freezes lags struggles
with no performance or stability fixes incoming any time soon it seems

rounded options for one set of models and nothing for overs

 voxel models have the most options to do u can texture them make models from nothing use the engines attach points to connect over objects to said object/character/tile you can do frame animations u can round of edges with marching cubes or turn them into billboards

low ploy support is currently in and is being worked on but don't have 90% of the options  making a voxel model has 

sprite sheets is in and very very limited as u can texture them in engine u cant attach anything to them u can make framed animations but is really missing options

no in engine performance  settings or in game performance settings
there no way currently to allocate or help the engine run better by using settings to help it run (think Godot's mobile forward and forward+) and grafixes settings in game don't have things like vsync or most modern options to help a user of a game get performance games or help the game look better as these seems to be missing for seemly no reason

the engine uses Godot 3.1 currently
thought there been talk of "one day" updating this to 3.6 at some point 
any Godot issues the engine faces or back end of how the engine works via when u play game or when your in engine CAN not be fixed by the user/developer of the game there working on in engine because its a closed system on the backend 

one dev no time
to think an engine is made by one person for over ten years is crazy but this brings some issues as bug reporting getting things fixed (things get fixed but more based on what people need fixing  if your making a game that's your doing that's not the "normal" good luck getting fixes because its based on high, mid, low priority  (eg your making a puzzle game and your the only one making one your your gonna struggle getting fixes that happening in your project then the 80 people making an fps for eg) or features getting put in that aren't finished or polished or in some cases aren't maintained/updated (eg combat set ups above hasn't been touched in years)

exporting models out is working but missing some things
you can export your models out of the engine to use them in over things but if u have a lot of textures build inside the engine  it only exports the "default" texture out and not all textures and don't even give you the option to pick what you want from the model to be exported

exporting games (standalone)
missing some things like what files to include with your games export (eg json files you might have set) a custom icon or even setting a name for it (thought u can change the name of the exported game manually)
mac and Linux versions export out as normal but mac exporting needs fixes

steam version has way more support making this and the epic versions lesser

with the 2 latest versions supporting exporting models and now games to the steam workshop and steam cloud support please make sure if u buy this version without these in mind if you want the steam stuff best buy it on steam!

if you can work within these limitations (some of witch admittedly are getting fixed bit by bit) you should be able to make quite descent games with it just currently its not quite there to make an inventive massive full game with 10-15 mechanics all that work and flow together as the coding/and the way the engine handles things currently isn't just "there" yet

Segfaults: tried this after testing another game based on rpginabox (Gardiny), which segfaulted on load on Ubuntu 24.04.2, x86_64. I could load this one after adding a symlink to game_linux64.pck, but it also segfaults after hitting New Game. Then tried the demo version of the engine package, I could instantiate the "Default Example Game", and that one launched just fine. The backtraces seem to be about 90 deep (!) in GDScriptFunction::call after launching some thread. If there is a way to aid in tracking this down, I would be glad to help.