How to Get Started With RPG Toolkit 3

I have seen similar articles that have a nasty habit of directing you back to the Toolkit homepage to read tutorials. No more. I do not intend for this to be an all-inclusive guide, but this will get your feet wet with project planning, creating a tileset, laying tiles out on a board, creating characters, writing a simple program, and bringing it all together.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Computer
• Internet Connection
• RPG Toolkit 3.1.0
• MS Paint
• Desire to Succeed

1. Plan Out Your Project - This is where most would-be game developers fail; lack of planning. During this step, you should be writing down what you wish to accomplish, get some story ideas down, have characters developed, and know that it will be a lot of work. A good way to organize your project during this phase is to keep an excel file with all of the details of your game such as characters, items, spells, monsters, and so on. Maintain a notebook with a story layout and a script. The script itself can be put off, but the basic ideas must be first!

2. Download RPG Toolkit - Point your browser to http://www.toolkitzone.com . There is a set of links on the top of the site including: Home, Toolkit, Files, Games, Library, Register/Login, and Community. Click the one that says Toolkit. Follow the links on this page to download RPG Toolkit 3.1.0, or should the software be updated by the time you read this, the latest stable release. You will want to save the download file to your desktop. From there, double click and install the Toolkit. The default directory is C:/ProgramFiles/Toolkit3/ Remember this; you will want to save every file related to your project in various subfolders within this directory.
   
   Your time on the Toolkitzone website is also an opportune moment to joint the Toolkit community by clicking Register / Login and creating a user account.

3. Open the Toolkit and Create a New Project - When you open the Toolkit, you will be greeted with the "Tip of the Day" Close the tip, and take a nice long look at the interface. Looks rather plain, doesn't it? That's alright. From here, go to File -> New Project. You will be met with a pop-up window prompting you to name your new project. Name it carefully, as this will affect the directory you save your project in. For the sake of this tutorial, I will name the game "Greenhorn's Journey" Leave the default files checkbox marked. It's always helpful to have placeholder graphics on hand. Click on "Setup My Game", and a new folder and project file will be created. All files related to Greenhorn's Journey will now be in the folder C:/Program Files/Toolkit3/Game/Greenhorn'sJourney

4. 
    
   Example Grass Tile AFTER Highlights

   Creating a simple grass tile - This is where all tile editing must begin. Ignore the window that showed up from the last step, yet don't close it either; you will be editing a few things later. Anyway, for now we want to make a grass tile to lay out onto a board. To do this, go to File -> New -> Tile. You will be greeted by an interface similar to the MSPaint Editor. On the left side of the screen, select the fill tool. From there, you will want to change the active color. To do this, on the bottom of the screen, select "Select Color." Click on "Define Custom Colors", and from here we're going to create a small palette. Find yourself a nice shade of olive green, and create 3 shades of it, saving each one to a slot in your custom colors. There should be a neutral shade to represent the bass color of the grass, a darker shade to represent shadows, and a brighter shade to represent highlights. Lay down your base color first using the fill tool, and then switching to the pencil tool, take your shadow color. Starting from the left column, place the shadows at random points (in the left column only!) From there, go to the right column and place shadows at points that would mesh well with the left column. Then do the same, only by the top and bottom rows. From there, slowly fill in using this same procedure until you reach the center of the tile. The blades you create using the shadow should extend no more than 3 or 4 pixels at a time. Examine this for a bit; make sure it looks like it can mesh well. From there, save this tile. Go to File-> Save into Tileset, and create a tileset called Main.tst This is where all of your regular tiles will go. Save it in the upper left hand corner of this tileset. From here, take your highlight color, and fill in the top 2 pixels of about half of the shadowed blades. The highlights should not be more than 2 pixels long. Make sure they reflect the light source and keep the lighting consistent. See screenshot for an example. Save this into your tileset as well, directly next to the other grass tile. The reason for 2 grass tiles is that the one without highlights will be used in shaded areas. Keep in mind there are many other ways to do a grass tile; this is just my method.

5. 
    
   Example board WITH Vector wall

   Lay out tiles on a Board - Now that your tile is saved, go to File->New-> Board. In this editor, we are going to make a plain grassy field. I know its boring, but many users of the new toolkit are intimidated by the board editor, so I may as well show you how it works. When you create your new board, you're going to be prompted for the parameters of this board. Just leave the defaults by now; you'll be able to play with these when I let you off the leash. You'll then b greeted with a plain black board. In the left side of the screen, select Tile Tools (it's right under the hand button). Afterwards, make sure the pencil is selected. Click the button on the right side of the screen that looks like a small black square to go to the tileset browser. It should bring up the last tileset you messed with. If not, open Main.tst through the folder icon. Anyway, from there, select your highlighted grass tile. Fill in the board with it. This is a plain grassy field. Now, for a little functionality, we're going to create a small hole using you're shadowed grass. Select the shadowed grass in the tileset browser, and using the pencil tool create a 2x2 patch in the center of your board. From there, we need to put a barrier up so the player doesn't walk over the hole. To do this we need the vector tools. It's the button to the left of the tile tools. Here, you will draw a box using the vector tools around your 'hole', making sure you're creating a SOLID wall. Save your board as "test.brd" It will show up in your /Boards folder. Screenshot attached to this step. Warning: all tiles in this screenshot are to be used in a project of mine; do not steal!

6. 
    
   Example Character Animations Set

   Creating a character - Again, File-> New -> Player. Here you will be greeted with the template file for a Playable Character. Here you will want to set the stats as you will. Just put a name in the name box for now. We're going to call him Greenhorn for this tutorial. Go to graphics. We're going to use the default animation files for this project. Utilizing the 'Start' animations in the MISC folder, allocate them to their appropriate animations such as walking, attacking, defending, etc. Save the results. I'll leave you to play with the vector coordinates, as there's no way to explain these. Basically, draw your vector coords on the lower half of the body, as this is where the collision detection will be based. You will want to go back to the main file and set your character as your default character under startup info. Do the same with your test board. Sample Attached.

7. 
    
   Ahh, I can't go into the hole!

   Go ahead and test out what you have. You'll be greeted with your board and player. Try to make your player walk into the hole. He can't, can he? If he can, that means you didn't set your vector up. I know the tiles aren't 'joined', but that's not the point of this guide. All that's left for you to do now is learn to create a program, and then I can cut you loose to learn from the community.

8. Your first RPG Code Program - We're going to try out a basic Message Window in this. In most RPG games, communication and dialogue takes place in these Message Windows, so let's try it out.
   
   Go to File-> New -> RPG Code Program
   
   In this editor, type the following:
   MWin("Hello, welcome to the test board!")
   Wait()
   name = Prompt("What's your name?")
   MWin("Hello " + name + "!")
   Wait()
   
   Anyone with a programming background can understand what's going on here. For those of you that are getting confused, let me explain. MWin sets a message window that shows programmer-defined text as seen in the command. Wait forces the program to wait until the user presses a key. Prompt brings up a keyboard prompt window that saves the result into a defined variable. Now that I explained a little of that, I'm sure this is making a little sense. Save this as testboard.prg and set it as your startup program in the main file editor under RPG Code -> startup program. You'll notice when you save and test the program that the screen will remain black while it is running. That's perfectly acceptable. After the program is done running, you'll be taken to the board and the game begins.

9. This is NOT intended to be the elite guide to the Toolkit. As a 7 year veteran of RPG Toolkit, who has been around since version 2.20b, there is a lot of knowledge that I could easily pass on, yet I choose to wait until later to do so. Remember, the Toolkit Community is a GREAT source of information and guides to further your ability to develop games. I will of course be posting additional guides as they come up. Good luck!

Tips & Warnings

• Remember to constantly keep up in case of updates.
• Constantly check in with the Toolkitzone Community for additional guides
• When in doubt, it never hurts to consult a help file or contact an expert directly

Resources

• Toolkit Zone

[howard31b]

on 7/24/2009 Will keep that in mind. Thanks!

[dagnytaggart]

on 7/24/2009 Really informative but I think it would be more user friendly if you made the steps more concise and shorter. It's always harder to motivate yourself to read steps that are in paragraphs instead of a few lines. :D