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.

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.

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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?

Ace Preview: Traits

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Nick Palmer

Are you guys excited for the Ace release? I know I am. Today, I have a preview of a cool new feature in VX Ace: Traits

While not entirely new, the way traits are organized and how they can be applied is much more powerful and versatile than anything you could do without scripting in previous RPG Makers.

This screenshot of the database shows two things. Highlighted in green is where you add traits. The tabs with names highlighted in blue (Actors, Classes, Weapons, Armors, Enemies, and State) are parts of the database that you can apply traits to.

So what is a trait? I’ll walk you through a simple one. Lets say you want to change a character’s resistance to Poison. You double click in his actor trait section to bring up the trait window.

Here is the trait window. There are six tabs that organize the types of traits we can add and what we need is on the first tab. I’ve selected the State Efficiency: Poison, and changed the resistance the character has. Then I hit the OK button.

And here is the trait listed in the database section. Pretty straightforward and simple, huh? Now lets explore the breadth of options traits give you, and their versatility.

Things That Traits Can Do

Set resistances to Elements and States
Change a character stats
Add a State on attack
Add an Element to attack
Add or Remove Skills and/or Skill Types
Add Weapon/Armor types allowable
Reduce or Remove random encounters
Double currency or item acquisition after battle
…AND MORE.

And here is where the versatility comes in. All of these things can be done by ANY of the items that can have traits applied to it. A character can gain skills based on the weapon he equips, have his resistances changed by his class, have an accessory add an element to his attack, have a state give him access to a new skill type, the list is nearly endless!

As you can see, this way of organizing what used to be a bunch of boxes to check in separate sections of the database into one unified section, and allowing the designer to apply any of them to so many different parts of a character (actor/class/equipment/state) gives you a lot more power that would have had to be scripted in previous RPG Makers.

Do you have some cool ideas of how to implement new systems in your games with the power of traits? or Maybe you just have some questions about them? Don’t hesitate to post in the comments section below.

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