Yesterday I saw a rather dull twitter message from John Carmack, linking to one of his interviews. But I clicked on it none the less, just out of curiosity. But what I discovered was absolutely fantastic! It totally made my day, my week, heck, my whole month. In the interview he revealed that he’s currently working on a virtual reality headset. I experienced some VR headset demo’s in the past, and I must say I Read more…
It’s been a very long time since I updated anything related to Koonsolo. Having a demanding full-time job, 2 young kids and building a house, doesn’t leave much time to work on spare time projects. But since the kids are getting a bit more independent, and we finally moved into our new home, I managed to squeeze some Koonsolo time back into my schedule. Oh yes, that’s right, you can expect more to come soon! Read more…
2 years after my original article on How to create RPG’s, this is the final installment.
The easiest way to create an RPG is by using an RPG creation tool. The most famous of these tools is RPG Maker, but there are some alternatives:
RPG Maker
And of course, there is my own tool that I’m currently working on: RPG Playground!
RPG creation tools already include most of the programming, artwork, sound and music for you. So the main thing you do is design the levels and gameplay. For a game designer without much technical or artistic skills, it’s definitely possible to create a nice game. Most tools also allow you to script some custom functionality, and let you import custom artwork. So clever programmers and amazing pixel artists can still add their own expertise into their game.
RPG designer tools might seem like toys, but don’t be fooled. There are some professional game developers who earn a full-time living by creating their RPG’s using RPG Maker. Amaranth Games and Aldorlea Games are both great examples.
In my previous article I talked about how to create an RPG all by yourself. In case I wasn’t clear enough: the conclusion is that you shouldn’t attempt to do everything by yourself, unless you seriously know what you’re doing.
It’s possible to speed things up by taking advantage of what other people already created. RPG’s seem to be very popular for game development projects, and a lot of people have made their own frameworks or even art available. So why not see if one of them fits your needs?
Eschalon Book II from Basilisk Games
LAST UPDATE: January 2018
This post is a part of the How to make RPG’s series, which shows you the different ways on how to make Role Playing Video Games.
Creating an RPG all by yourself is a huge undertaking. To finish such a project, a lot needs to be done, and that’s probably an understatement. Let’s go over everything:
Welcome to the ultimate guide on how to make your own RPG’s! Most game developers I know have a game idea for a Role Playing Game. So I assume you do too. But making such a game is a huge task, plus, there are so many possible ways on how to make one. That’s why I’m writing a series of blog posts about the different paths you can take to create an RPG. This way Read more…
Our RPG Editor features a tilemap editor with a cool innovative feature. I call it “Tilemap Auto Layering”, and it makes tilemap creation faster and easier. You can see it in action in the video below. I hope you don’t mind my Flemish accent :).
It’s been a while since I released any news on Koonsolo. That’s because the last few months I was completely focussed on developing our Koonsolo RPG Editor. It’s still far from finished, but currently I can play with some functionality and get some cool results. I will create a video showing off some of that stuff in the near future, so stay tuned! Last weekend I created a ‘Koonsolo RPG Editor’ web page. That page Read more…
Note: I use the term ‘Encapsulation’ as a language mechanism for restricting access to some of the object’s components. Others might call this ‘information hiding’.
In every object orientend programming course or book that I know, you get introduced to a concept called encapsulation. Encapsulation is a technique that allows you to protect implementation details while exposing only the interface. The advantage is that the rest of the code can only use the interface, and therefore is not dependent on the hidden implementation.
The thought behind the whole idea of encapsulation is that when implementing a class, you protect it against misuse. You make sure that the user can’t break it. You have total control over your class, and the user can only use that what you allow him to use. Another advantage is that providing a stable interface will protect implementation details that are likely to change, and therefore limiting interdependencies between software components. That is, it forces the users to do so.
Most Object Oriented programmers totally agree with all of the above, and I used to too. But that was until I met python. (more…)