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You probably have been waiting for this release. Previous time you were able to create new levels, but not yet for your hero to walk into them. Well, head over to http://rpgplayground.com, because now you can add doors to go to other levels. There are 2 kinds of doors: A real door where you always stay beneath it, and which opens with an animation sequence when walking into it. A portal that you need to Read more…

One of the main ideas behind RPG Playground is to minimize the effort and time between playing and editing your game. I didn’t want to make another game making tool where you need to build your game before play-testing it. RPG Playground does just that. Play your game, and if you want to make a modification, just open the edit project pane on the left, and edit it straight away. After that, you can continue playing just were Read more…

So, time for another RPG Playground release! This time I added functionality to create multiple levels. Although you can now create multiple levels or scenes, the hero cannot yet walk into them. But don’t worry, that’s planned for the next release. You might say that because of this, the functionality is not yet quite complete, which is true. But I wanted to release this anyway so you can already create the interiors of your houses. Read more…

If you want to create a successful indie game, marketing is one of the most important things. Some claim that an awesome game is all you need, and word of mouth will do the rest. To back up their claim, they use use Minecraft as an example on how a great game can succeed without marketing. Well, let me explain how Notch, the developer of Minecraft, did more marketing than the average indie game developer Read more…

Finally, the new version of RPG Playground is available at http://rpgplayground.com! First of all, this release took waaaay too long. The previous version was released 1 year back, which is definitely a very long time ago. I don’t want any of my next releases to take this long ever again. The plan is to make a new release every few months, or even faster.

A lot of you were asking, poking and bugging me when this release will be out, and what features it will contain. So thanks for your patience! I hope you will stick around while I keep adding new features.

So, why did it take so long? Well, a lot of work was done both on visible features and framework improvements. I will explain everything in this post (so yeah, this is going to take a while). I will handle the most important features first, so feel free to quit reading and start designing your game.

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My RPG creation software will allow you to create an entire online role playing game, but as you probably know, it is still in early development. Currently you can let characters say something, but this is of course not enough. You want the player to have entire conversations with characters, and to have cut-scenes that reveal a part of the story.

My first thought on allowing you to create this extra functionality is by using ‘screenplays’. These screenplays would allow you to define conversations and animations in an easy, straight forward way. Screenplays are created entirely by using a point-and-click GUI. You basically can’t do anything wrong.

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When I started programming games, I had the same workflow as most game developers: Program the game logic in a programming language, compile it, and then playtest the game. Once you stumble upon an issue, the whole cycle starts again.

I did the same for resources. So when a graphic needed updating, you stop the game, edit the resource, and start the game to test it.

This process seems fast and easy on paper, but most of the time it’s pretty tedious. The part you want to see might be at end of a level, so you first need to reach that point (again). You can work with cheat codes, but it still remains pretty annoying. (more…)

Mobile devices are so popular

Although RPG Maker doesn’t officially support building games for other platforms than Windows, some people have succeeded in doing so. All available options will be explained in this blog post. So if you know of any other options to port an RPG Maker game to other platforms, please contact me or leave a comment below, so I can improve this article.

RPG Maker is probably the most popular tool to make your own JRPG’s. Unfortunately, it is only available for Windows, and can only create Windows games.

As far as Enterbrain (the creator or RPG Maker) is concerned, Windows will remain the only platform that they officially support. This is extensively explained in a forum post on their official website. The general conclusion is that it’s technically too difficult or costly for them to support other platforms. RPG Maker heavily depends on Windows only technology, which makes it nearly impossible to go beyond the Windows platform. (more…)

Time for a small update of your favorite RPG creation tool. The most important fix is that you can now control the hero properly with the mouse. I implemented A* pathfinding for this. So now he moves to the place where you clicked, not in the direction of the click. Other things also improved: NPC’s say “…” by default. Tilemap and entity editing are now completely separated. Fixed a nasty glitch where the grass is Read more…