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So I’ve been working on a couple of RMVX maps. These are pretty basic, but after Ocean’s advice to go with a more “old-school” style of map when using the RMVX RTP, I came up with a simple forest and a cabin interior. Here they are so far.
Cabin Closeup
Here’s my overall forest.
RMVX RTP Forest Map
Not the most spectacular, but I wasn’t going for a highly detailed map at this point. Next are a couple of shots of the cabin interior.
I just found a pretty dang cool Japanese RMVX site called “Closet” where the artist there has been splicing existing RMVX monster/enemy sprites together to make new ones. Definitely go and check it out.
Pixel Mirage
Found via Ocean’s Dream’s Tileset Tutorial site, there’s a new pixel art site called Pixel Mirage up now. I’ll include a link in my blogroll. So far the site has four tutorials up: one on line art, one on tools, another on color and one on dithering.
Also, Ocean’s Dream’s Tileset Tutorial has been updated with a guide to updating old-school RPG characters (in this case from Final Fantasy 1) to a more modern, RPG Maker VX style of sprite. My favorite part of this tutorial is the step-by-step look at how to color hair.
Hi everyone, I’m going to present some basic information about editing the battle formulas in RMVX. For the most part, this information is semi-documented in the RGSS2 help file included with RMVX but is pretty incomplete. Anyway, let’s get started.
Step 1: Open the Script Editor and scroll down to where it says “Game_Battler.” This is the script for the engine that handles battle calculations. Left-click on the script to open it, and scroll all the way down to line 637. You’ll notice green text (green text is a comment or series of comments that are not compiled by the engine) that says the following:
Calculation of Damage From Normal Attack
# attacker : Attacker
# The results are substituted for @hp_damage
Here’s the whole chunk of code you’ll be working with and a screenshot:
Game_Battler script section
Quick update: Here’s an article about how a relatively small team produced 16 Flash games in 3 months, from scratch. RGSS2 stuff coming tonight. This will be the first evening I’ve been home all week, so I haven’t had a chance to finish that other post yet.
Found some neat stuff the other day. First is a really cool article on GameCareerGuide.com (Gamasutra’s site for people aspiring to a career in game development) called “20 Essential Design Questions.” Check it out.
Second, I’m learning more about Ruby at the moment and got a great book by author Chris Pine. It’s called “Learn to Program, Second Edition.”
Learn to Program Second Edition Cover
FYI, there’s a pretty decent free tutorial section on his site already, but the book is more comprehensive and has better exercises. You can get the book on Amazon for a decent price (about $17 before shipping and handling). The book covers a lot of good, fundamental programming techniques that apply to many object-oriented languages in addition to just Ruby.
Battle formula editing coming up next.
I said I’d start some scripting tutorials for RGSS2 but before I get started I’m going to make the disclaimer that I’m a beginning scripter with this particular framework. I’m also a beginner when it comes to programming. Those facts aside, I think there’s something to be said for teaching what you’re learning to others. In this case, because I’m a beginner, I plan to explain RGSS2 in terms that other beginners can understand.
Before I get to the interesting stuff you can do with RGSS2, I’m going to start with some basic Ruby (and general programming) definitions. Grab a beverage and get comfortable, because this post is pretty long. To get any good at using RGSS2, though, you’ve got to understand a bit about Ruby and object-oriented programming, and that takes a fair amount of explanation.
Hi everyone, I’ve been learning how to program in Java and Actionscript lately, and because these are what are called “object-oriented” programming languages, understanding how they function has helped me a whole lot with understanding RGSS2, the programming framework that RMVX uses. After going through RMVX tonight, I finally started getting a good grasp on how RGSS2 works, so I’ll be posting some basic scripting tutorials in the near future.
In the meantime, here’s a very, very simple script on how to use a different font for your game’s text that I got from TheMize18’s video on YouTube (and he credits it to the community on RPGmakervx.net, which is listed on the left-hand side of this blog, actually).
Okay, now just about everybody out there making an RMVX/RMXP game is interested in free graphics. Here are some sites I check when I need free tilesets and sprite sheets:
First Seed Material: The content on First Seed is all royalty-free, which means it can be used even in commercial projects. The only rule about usage is that you can’t post content from the site on your own or try to re-sell the graphics on your own site or something.
Mack’s Blog: Mack is a Japanese pixel artist who makes free graphics for RMVX (and he made a lot of stuff for RMXP a while back) that you can use under the same terms as First Seed Material resources (at least as far as the blog translation of the license on his site goes).
Charas Project: This site allows you to create custom “overworld” and “battler” sprites for RMK 2003. If you’re making your own sprites, it’s also not a bad quick reference for various animation poses.
Famitsu RMVX Sprite Maker: This Japanese site has a great tool that allows you to mix and match parts (ala Charas Project) for sprites. The sprites are designed for use in RMVX.
Famitsu “Tsukuru” Blog: This is the blog for Enterbrain’s RPG Maker and Action Game Maker products. From time to time they have great tileset and sprite art (go through the archives; use Google’s language tools to translate the site if you’re having trouble navigating) that you can download. Recently, they’ve had a series of “modern Japanese” furniture and other tiles (both school and “domestic/house” tiles) that are pretty cool.
Anyway, I’ll post some links to these sites in my blogroll, but definitely check them out when you get a chance. I found some great robot sprites in the Famitsu “Tsukuru” Blog’s post archives.
For those of us who do plan to create our own sprites, tilesets and backgrounds, these resources are great for prototyping purposes and also allow you to start working on your design or demo right away rather than spend months creating graphics and nothing else.
