Making Original Resources for RMVX: Road Collection 1

Due to the lack of road tiles that are of appropriate size for a world map in RMVX, I took it upon myself to seriously modify (okay, by the end, I was just using the color palette and that was about it) the existing grassland road tile into a full set of road pieces. I created half-size roads, 1/4-size roads and a single 1/8-size road set. I’ve included the 1/4- and 1/8-size roads in a single template.

Due to my beginner’s level spriting skills, this took me a while to do. Here are the roads, though, in all their pixellated glory. Click on the pic for the full-size version. Feel free to use this for personal projects. If you want to use this for a commercial project, I ask that you credit me (Ceric) and return the favor and make something (within reason, of course) that I could use for a commercial project.

Hopefully some people other than me will get some use out of this. I will be updating this set as time goes on. This is just the first incarnation of my road set. I plan to add a stone-colored road set (like the Roman roads, kinda sorta) and possibly roads for other types of terrain, such as desert and snow.

 

If you have any comments or spriting suggestions/advice for me, feel free to comment.

Sprites and Art 1: Importing Files Into RMVX

Importing your own character and tile art (not to mention music, scripts and various types of background art) is an important part of turning the games you build with RMVX into personalized creations. The limited instructions on the English-language site for RMVX means a lot of people are always asking how to do this. Here are my tips for importing art of any kind. First, we’ll start with preparing images. Then, we’ll move on to actually importing them in RMVX.

Mapping Tutorial 1: Building a Schoolhouse

Since a poster on www.rpgmaker.net asked about mapping, I decided to put up this mapping tutorial. This is a basic schoolhouse. I did grab some roof tiles from www.rpgrevolution.com to make this map.  Sadly, the default roofing tiles that come with RPG Maker VX are somewhat lacking, so to get the visual effect I wanted, I didn’t have much choice, I felt. It’s possible to build a decent-looking building with the default tiles, it’s just going to be kinda square. For rounded edges and different perspectives, you really need to either make your own custom tiles or download some resources from a site that features tilesets. So, without further ado, here’s how to design a schoolhouse in 7 easy steps (with pics):

RPG Maker VX Event Basics 1: Allowing the player to choose a name for his or her character.

I’m kicking off the actual design process with some of RPG Maker VX’s basic concepts. Everybody who has ever played a console RPG from the 1990s is used to the obligatory opening sequence, where the game introduces the player to the main characters, backstory and current events. Creating a complete opening sequence is a much longer process, and I’m going to get to it. But before I can tackle that topic, I need to provide a very basic example that a user of RPG Maker VX can build on to create longer, more complicated introductory and cut scenes.

This basic example explains how to create a “Character Naming” Event that allows the player to name his or her main character. By the way, I’m bolding words that appear for the first time that are actual commands used in RPG Maker VX. FYI, this first post covers a whole lot about using the RPG Maker VX interface. If you’re already familiar with it, what Events are and how Switches and Self Switches work, you might just want to skip to the very end of this post and read the summary. If you have no idea what you’re doing and want to learn the basics, keep reading.

Why I’m creating an RPG.

Before I jump straight into an actual example, here’s a little bit about why I’m making an old-school console-style RPG. I was a kid in the 1980s and a teenager in the 1990s (which makes me old) and my first console RPG was Dragon Warrior for the NES. That was my first foray into console and computer RPGs, and although Dragon Warrior would probably seem simplistic and dated if I played it again now, I have fond memories of sitting in my parents’ living room for hours on end, looking for Erdrick’s shield, sword and armor so I could beat the crap out of the evil Dragonlord.

From there, the next milestone RPG for me was Final Fantasy. Yes, the first one in the series, not FF2 for the Super NES or anything after that. It was AWESOME by comparison to Dragon Warrior. I made party configuration after party configuration, and even though I played that game for at least a couple of months, I eventually moved on to other RPGs.

The next RPG I really enjoyed was Final Fantasy 2, and it was one of the first console RPGs that I remember having a pretty intricate story. Although the dialogue seems terrible to me now, it really immersed me in that world and made me care about the characters in the game (and there were a lot of them now).

Since then, I’ve played probably about a hundred different console RPGs on various systems, from the NES and Super NES to the Playstation and PC. I own a Nintendo DS and continue to play new games that remind me of those original console RPGs I started playing almost 20 years ago.

So, now that I’ve found RPG Maker VX, I’m having a great time designing, and building, my own RPG. Why? I’m a world-builder and storyteller at heart. I’ve written my own prose fiction, taken screenwriting and novel writing classes and have also written a script for a graphic novel series for a class at UCLA. I started playing tabletop RPGs when I was a teenager (it was Ad&D 1st edition in 5th grade) and became interested in creating my own worlds to set stories in. Because of my interest in interactive entertainment (I started playing video games when I was 4), I can combine all of these elements, storytelling, world building and gaming, into a single project using RPG Maker VX. Hence, I’m making my own game.

I’ll post screen captures of my progress on the game in future posts, and also write up my thoughts on the design process and my approach to design.

For now, I’ll move on to examples and the basics of using RPG Maker VX. I should have a completed example up shortly, specifically about creating Events in the game, so check back here from time to time. I’ll do my best to update this blog twice a week, at the very least. For really long posts, it might mean I continually update the post and eventually finish it. Anyway, keep on reading, and I hope you enjoy my future posts.

Borealis and RPG Maker VX

Hi everyone, and welcome to my design blog for a video game roleplaying game (henceforth, I’ll use the term ”RPG”) I’m building. I’m using a program called RPG Maker VX. This is a fairly powerful editing tool that allows users to create old-school-style RPGs, such as games in the Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger,  SaGa and Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest series. This is the latest version of this program, and Enterbrain, the Japanese publisher of the program, released the English translation just a short while ago, at the end of February 2008. The original programs in the series were RPG Maker Tsukūru Dante 98, then RPG Maker 2000/2003, and also RPG Maker XP. There might be a version or two of the program that I’m missing, but I’m sure the RPG Maker experts out there will tell me. I do know that there were a few versions of this editor for the Playstation and Playstation 2.

So just what the heck is this Borealis RPG blog going to cover? First of all, I just started using the program about a week or so ago, so this design blog is going to cover not only the design of the game but also the problems I run into and the solutions I find while designing and building it. There are a few online communities (www.rpgmakervx.net, www.rpgrevolutions.com) out there for this version of the program and for the older versions as well. I’ve been compiling information from these forums, as well as screenshots that help illustrate the steps necessary to make the game do what you want it to do, and I plan on editing and formalizing this information in future posts. Don’t worry, I plan to credit the users on these forums for this information. If it wasn’t for them, new users to RPG Maker (like me) would be pretty lost. I’ve already learned a great deal from reading the forums on these sites, and I wouldn’t be nearly as far along with Borealis as I am without having spent the time reading the topics in the RPG Maker VX Support forum on www.rpgmakervx.net.

The best up-to-date help you can get is on these forums, as the moderators and experienced users of this program post often and are really trying to build a community around this program.

All that said, I’m going to be documenting my experiences in a fairly detailed fashion. I’m hoping that this blog will become a valuable resource for users new to RPG Maker, as I plan on providing a number of step-by-step, illustrated (with screenshots) example. I also hope that as I get better at using the program, I’ll be able to cover more advanced topics (hopefully some scripting) so experienced users will get something out of any time they spend here. I’ll also post any custom resources (graphics, sound, title screens, etc.) here as I create them (though I currently suck as a sprite artist). If you want to use anything, the only rule I have is that you credit this blog here somewhere in your final game.

So, before I get into the game design itself, and the design process, in my next post I’ll talk a little bit about why I’m embarking on this venture to create an old-school console RPG for PC users. Stay tuned.