Nekoworld

Making games through a visual interface.

Disclaimer: this is not a review, but an attempt of documenting an artist’s (with some rudimentary programming knowledge) experience with IG Maker. In a nutshell: First impressions are very positive and IG Maker functions in a way that is very close to somebody who can think visually – but there are also a few niggles that somewhat downgrade the experience.

Background

Enterbrain have a long history of making game makers across platforms from PC to Playstation: among others, engines for fighter / brawler games, dating sim makers and, probably their most popular product in the West, RPG Maker XP and RPG Maker VX. The main appeal of these makers is supposed to be their magic way of allowing basically everyone to make games, not just programmers. Judging by the amount of games made with Enterbrain’s engines, it certainly seems to work. The role of these makers can best be compared to digital cameras in the media of photography.

Intro

IG Maker is a program that allows building of 2d games (and other applications) through a visual interface without any typing whatsoever. All the programming is done through setting conditions and rules that define what will happen when, how many times etc. There is no need for writing custom collision detection or 8-way movement, it all works out of the box and feels surprisingly good.

It works in a very simple way: every game is divided in “common” / “abstract” settings and resources (for example, it is assumed the game will use graphics, music, text, interface that are organized into characters, backgrounds interface, sound and music effects etc – although you can make one without them too if really necessary) which are later combined through genre-specific rules (for example gravity has a different role in Action RPGs compared to Platformers).

At the moment of writing, there are four basic plugin / genres (Action RPG, Platformer, Shooter and Demo) and they can be freely combined, meaning a game can be composed of minigames set in space, then switching to a platforming section and then back to space all within one game. Although it may seem limiting to be tied by the rules of a specific genre, each of these plugins is amazingly flexible – example games on IG Maker’s site can give an idea (personal favourites probably being 魔物大陸 and スペースピピューン！).

Using IG Maker

There is no typing or a “language” in IG Maker, and no scripting. Absolutely everything is done through a graphical interface designed to show the game mechanisms in the clearest way possible. However, this graphical approach is probably one of the biggest obstacles in using IG Maker – the interface must be learnt by heart at least partially before IG Maker can be used properly (or at all). While some people might find this interesting, challenging and even fun, others might be put off –  after all, there are indeed quite a few tabs and menus everywhere!

Animations are easy to define and relatively easy to maintain.

Still, it’s all very logically organized and probably in the best possible way for the particular task of making games. All the components / rules etc are broken down into understandable bites which, put together, might look like a texture of unconquerable mysteries but upon closer inspection it all starts to make sense – and is probably the main reason why IG Maker is actually easy to use. When defining an initial appearance of a gadget a menu like “(initial) Layer for Display: 1,2,3,4″, a slider with “Health” written above or a slider with “Attack Power” are probably self explanatory – the rest is easily built upon the familiar bits.

The first real challenge is combining all the small pieces together, and while learning IG Maker I often found myself in a position where I was wondering “Where did I see that menu for bullets?” (now I know it by heart: under plugin -> gadgets -> projectile).

For example, even such a simple action as putting a character on screen requires you to go through a few different tabs scattered all over the interface (first import the graphics, then define it and finally shape it into a gadget – every of these actions is done in a different part of IG Maker) – compared to some other 2d game making tools available on the market it looks much more complicated. It definitely sounds complex and convoluted in description if you check the tutorials linked at the beginning of the paragraph… which it is not – the whole procedure takes a few minutes. It all starts to make sense in an IG Maker kind of way once you realize that everything is imported using an almost identical procedure and treated in the same way.