Arabian Nights Tileset Pack

Posted on September 14, 2012 by Nick Palmer

…like Arabian days, more often than not, are hotter than hot, in a lot of good ways. And so is our new Tileset Pack.

Fantasy isn’t all about knights and wizards in their long robes. And we think its time for a new fantasy! Enter our resource pack inspired by On Thousand and One Nights: The Arabian Nights Tileset Pack.

Included are beautiful new tiles for interior settings…

… and majestic exterior tiles.

Are you ready for this magic carpet ride? Act now to also receive an Arabian music addon! Check out more about this awesome pack here!

Ace Almost 6 Months Old! Review Drive!

Posted on September 2, 2012 by Nick Palmer

So its approaching six months since the release of RPG Maker VX Ace! Overall the response to our new version of RPG Maker has been phenomenal. Thanks for all the feedback we’ve received, and all the sales.

Ace has been a whopping success, so why don’t we work on getting the word out even more!

Knowing how awesome our fans are, and you guys are awesome, I know you are asking yourselves: How can I help?

Well our first step on getting the word out there is to get more reviews of our product on the major site CNET. I mean, just look at that one lonely review for our product page for VX Ace.

Now, we don’t want just a bunch of 5 star votes, we want honest detailed reviews. Its not just about a number to us, its about visible feedback for potential customers. We want to make sure the people who would want our software really know what its like, and the best way to do that is have you guys talk about it and tell them why they would want it.

Disclaimer: If your honest opinion is a 5 star review, we are definitely perfectly happy with that part, too.

I’ve always thought our product stands on its own, being a unique entry in game development software. Nothing comes close to the simplicity of RPG Maker, especially not with the amount of power and flexibility we provide. But people won’t know that unless you help us get the word out.

If you have the time, and own some of our older products, we’d also appreciate if you took the time to review those on CNET as well:

RPG Maker XP has a lot of reviews, but a lot of them are old and outdated. If we can get some fresh reviews, that would be awesome!

RPG Maker VX, while not having as lonely of a review as VX Ace, could use some reviews as well.

Thank you for your time, and I hope you will share your honest unfiltered opinion of our excellent software on CNET, and other sites as well. Thanks for being great fans.

Summer Fun Contest!

Posted on July 8, 2012 by Nick Palmer

Ah, summer! The beach, the water, the heat that demands icy cold treats … It is a time of fun and a time of celebration. With all that spare time you are spending lounging on the beach, why don’t you join in on our community contest!

~Deadline~

Sunday, July 29that midnight EST (GMT -4).

~Prizes~

First place: Any one item from our official store.
That’s right, folks! This is your chance to get your hands on a copy of VXAce, or perhaps that shiny new resource pack you’ve been eying.
Second place: Any one item from our official store except VXAce.
Third place: Any resource pack from our official store.

All participants will also receive a nifty little badge that you can proudly display in your signature.

~Rules~

1) Your entry must be a mini-game that’s thematically related to summer.
Not sure what to do? Well, there’s beach volleyball, ice-cream dash, sandcastle building, crab mini-maze or crazy surfing bonanza.
2) Your entry must be made in a legal RPG Maker engine or IGM.
3) You must provide credits for any non-RPG Maker material. No rips are allowed! Please make sure you have permission to use any external resources in your projects.
4) Your entry should be posted here.
5) Judges must have an unencrypted version of your entry. If you don’t want your unencrypted entry to be made public, please pm it to me (Lunarea) before Sunday, July 29th at midnight EST (GMT -4).
5) You may create an entry thread at any point and update it accordingly. The project version that’s in your thread at the deadline will be counted as the final entry.

~Judging~

The entries will be judged by the following criteria:
Fun factor – /40
Originality – /20
Playability – /20
Adherence to theme – /10
Effort – /10

Let the summer fun begin~!

NaGaDeMo

Posted on May 31, 2012 by Nick Palmer

Well, that’s a funny looking blog post title.

So what is this NaGaDeMo thing? Taking inspiration from NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) a group of people have decided it was time to have a National Game Development Month!

So what do we do with NaGaDeMo. During the month of June, just start and make a game. It doesn’t have to be a long game, but just GET STUFF DONE. So often, so many of us plan and plan and we never finish anything.

Well this is your chance. Throw caution to the wind, grab your tools and go.

You can head over to their site to register your entry, just click on Registry!

Also, to anyone who manages to complete NaGaDeMo using RPG Maker XP, VX, or VX Ace will receive a special prize that will be announced near the end of the month!

Come on everyone, let’s put those noses to the grindstone, and MAKE SOME GAMES. And remember, above all HAVE FUN!

RPG Maker 3 Music Pack

Posted on April 26, 2012 by RPGmakerweb

Hi Everyone,
We’re excited to announce the first official Music Pack Add-On.
We’ve snagged 40 tracks from RPG Maker 3 (on PS2), touched them up,
converted them to .ogg’s and sorted and labelled them.

Here’s a sample for your listening pleasure.

If you’d like to get more info or purchase (only 20 bucks) this Add-On then head on over to the RPG Maker 3 Music Pack Page.

Happy Listening!

The RPG Maker Team

Ace Preview: Character Generator

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Nick Palmer

So as Ace gets even closer to release, its time to do another feature preview. This time, we are going to show off the built in Character Generator.

This is going to be a short preview, as there isn’t a whole lot to say about it, because its easy to use and pretty self explanatory. When you click the Character Generator option (in the Tools menu) you will be given the following screen:

As you can see you have a ton of component parts to play with and add to your character. The Faceset and Sprite are made simultaneously, so you don’t need to select a bunch of options to make sure they match. When you are done you can just output the sprite or face to a properly formatted image to import using the resource editor.

And if you don’t have a good idea of what you want to build you can always just click the random button… just be prepared.

... Random Characters... can be frightening.

Another cool feature of the character generator is that if you follow the correct naming scheme, you can add your own component pieces! Making the number of characters you can make with it infinitely expandable.

Sound exciting? Thinking of buying Ace? Make sure to get in on our AWESOME PREORDER BONUSES. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask in the comments section below.

RPG Maker VX Ace Release

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Nick Palmer

151

Simple enough for a child; Powerful enough for a developer

Prepared for RPG Maker VX Ace? Ready to step your games up to the next level?

Over the last couple of weeks we covered how Ace brings out its power in character customization, mapping, and with its Region IDs, but now we are here to answer the most important question you’ve been asking: When can I get my hands on a copy?

The closed beta has already started, and we are hard at work ironing out the final bugs so that you can be up and using the new engine. Ace will launch internationally on digital distribution for $90(USD) on:

March 15th, 2012 Continue reading →

Ace Preview: Region IDs and Encounter Setup

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Nick Palmer

So you’ve set up your World map and now you are ready to put encounters down on your map, but you want different terrain to have different types of encounters. In RPG Maker VX you would have had to rely on scripts or clumsy rectangular areas that you could never get to fit right.

Ace has a new non-visible map layer to help with this called the Region ID layer. This replaces the old Areas from RPG Maker VX. You can see the Region ID layer selection below.

Each map can have up to 63 layers plus a null layer. Currently the whole layer is drawn as a null layer. Lets start by painting the grass with the 1 Region ID. Just select the 1 from tile palette and start painting directly on the map. Easy, don’t you think?

Now lets fill the grass with 1, the trees with 2, and the hills with 3. Look at how much more exact this is than the old Areas. We can apply them in odd shapes, even in portions of the map that don’t even touch!

Time to add some enemies. You can see below how easy it is to set enemies to show up either on the whole map, or on up to 3 different Region IDs. I currently have it set to have Orcs show up on Grass, Trees, and Hills, Man-Eating Plants to show up in Trees, and I’m setting up Big Snakes to show up in Hills. Weight determines how common the enemies are in those areas.

And this is just what Region IDs are used for in the editor. Scripters have come up with plenty of new uses already such as slippery ice floors. No matter what you use Region IDs, their power is readily apparent.

So what ideas do you have for the use of Region IDs? Seen some useful scripts that take advantage of them? Tell us about it in the comments section below.

Getting excited for Ace? Want to keep up with the latest in Ace related news? Be sure to sign up for our email newsletter!

Ace Preview: Mapping Features

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Nick Palmer

Hey its another preview (It’s almost like we are actually getting closer to release or something!)

This time, I’m going to cover some things that are near and dear to many users’ hearts. Mapping features. And why shouldn’t they be? Your maps are the representation of the world the player is interacting with. But that is a conversation for another time. Let’s look at some awesome features that return from XP, and a tool that is appearing for the first time in VX Ace.

First thing: Tilesets

Isn’t that just a beautiful screen? This is the Tileset tab from the database. You can have as many Tilesets as you have maps, and each one can individually select a separate A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, B, C, D, and E independently of any other Tileset. The RTP includes 4 Tilesets: World, Outside, Inside, and Dungeon.

You can also see the return of a lot of useful functions. 4 way Passability, Bush Tag, Terrain Tags, etc.

VX Ace Tileset format is very similar to VX. The only changes are in a couple of parts of TileA, which actually now has two different layers. I’ll show pictures of that in a minute but first lets talk about another thing.

Let’s look at the Shadow Tool. VX Ace, much like VX, still automatically adds shadows to your maps. This was a huge pain to a lot of RMers that hated the default autoshadow setup. But we’ve got an answer to that now.

This tool gives you complete control over them. Shown on the left is using the shadow tool to add shadows where they didn’t exist before. Shown on the right is using the shadow tool to remove existing shadows.

You can do this with any shadows you like, even those made automatically by the program. It follows a 16×16 grid instead of the normal 32×32 tile grid so each tile has 4 sections to add shadows to.

I mentioned earlier the 2 TileA layers, and now I’ve discussed the autoshadow tool. So lets put together what all that means:

This image shows from left to right, two tile A tiles, the shadow tool, and a TileB-E tile. On the bottom you can see how they can all combine on to one tile in your map.

(Near) Infinite Tilesets! Controllable Autoshadow! Tall Grass on Water?! Aren’t you excited?

The Official RPG Maker Blog