How to Make a Game in RPG Maker XP
RPG Maker XP is a toolkit and engine created by the Japanese company, Enterbrain, to ease the creation of 2D console-style role playing games (RPG), similar to those produced by Squaresoft in the early 90s. RPG Maker XP has developed a large fan following due to its popularity and ease of use.
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Things You'll Need
- Windows 98/XP/2000
- 800 Mhz Processor or better
- DirectSound compatible sound card
- 128 MB of RAM
- 1024x768 or higher video resolution
Instructions
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1
Create a new project by clicking "File," then "New Project." Give it a folder name for storage on your hard drive. Be sure to use only alphanumeric characters and spaces to ensure compatibility across multiple platforms. Also provide a game title, which can contain any characters you like, including punctuation marks. You will be given a default map containing only grass to start.
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Create a map. For this tutorial, use RPG Maker's default tile-sets, though you can make your own with any image editor. The first and most important aspect to map creation is understanding RPG Maker XP's layer system. Maps are created in four layers, and their buttons are located between the undo and pencil icons in the toolbar across the top of the screen.
Layer one is used for tiles that will be drawn underneath the player. The grass tiles you've been given in RPG Maker XP's default map are in layer one.
Layer two is drawn above layer one and the player. If the player and a layer two tile are in the same position, then the player is drawn under the layer two tile. Tree branches are a good example of layer two tiles. Layer two is also where you place "impassible" tiles such as walls and locked doors.
Layer three is drawn above layers one, two and the player and exists to help create an illusion of depth. For example, when drawing a forest, some trees will be in the way of other trees, and you can use layers two and three together to give depth to your forest by adding trees to both.
The final layer is the event layer for objects such as non-player characters, or NPCs, and treasure chests that will have some programming associated with them so they are active.
For now, use the default grassland tile-set and draw a simple map with a tent and a few trees. Maps are drawn in much the same way as as a paint program: choose a tile, and draw the tile on the map by clicking a location.
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3
Create a doorway event to transport your character to another map. Right now, you have a map with a tent and a few trees on it. You can press the play button and walk around your map, but are unable to do anything else. Your next task is to create an event to let your character walk into the tent.
Create a new map to represent the tent's inside. Right-click inside the map list on the bottom left of your screen. No need to draw anything yet. Go back to your first map and click the event layer (the cube icon in the toolbar), and double-click the doorway of the tent to get the event scripting screen. You'll be presented with a dialogue of many options, but just a few will get you through 90% of your design situations. Set the "Trigger" option to player touch. This ensures that events occur when a player character touches them on the map. Double-click the "event commands" box, choose "transfer player," and set a location in your second map. You will use this technique to link maps all over the map. Build another door event to exit the tent and return to the first map.
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4
Make it so players can be attacked randomly in the second map. After all, what's an RPG without battles? Go to map properties and double-click the "Encounters" box. Add the prebuilt Ghost*2 encounter and set the "steps average" to five so the player will be attacked, on average, every five steps by a party of two ghosts. This will be a simple battle for the player to win.
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5
Create an NPC. Create another character for the player to talk to. Right-click a grid location on either map and choose "New event." Double-click the graphics box and choose a character sprite to represent this NPC. Ensure the "Move animation" is turned on, and set the autonomous movement type to random. This will cause the NPC to walk around the map in random directions.
Set the trigger to "Action button," since we want the player to be able to walk up to the NPC, press "Enter," and begin the conversation. The action for an ordinary RPG conversation will be the "Show text" event within the event selection box. Simply type what the NPC will say into the box. In this case, have the NPC say, "Here is a sword." Add another action in the event selection box, "Change Weapons," and set it to increase the player's number of "Mythril Sword" by one. That will help them fight off the ghosts!
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Tips & Warnings
An important aspect of creating good looking maps in RPG Maker XP is learning how to layer tiles over each other to give an illusion of depth. Design your maps to use layers two and three together with each other, otherwise, your maps will have a very flat appearance.
Note that layers have no bearing on passibility (whether a character is permitted to walk through a given tile or is blocked by it). Passibility is assigned to individual tiles in the game database, an advanced feature whose default settings are right for 99 percent of the situations you'll encounter when making your game. So, even though a layer three tile is set to appear "above" the player, if it is impassible, it will block the player's movement.
