Game Making » Nekoworld

IG Maker so far (2)

Again (see IG Maker so far), not a review of IG Maker but rather a list of pros and cons of this game making software.

Since it was asked on a game making forum, it seemed best to put it here for anyone who is interested (and for those who have more questions, our IG Maker forum is a good place to ask).

From time to time comparisons will be made with other game making software. Most of what is said for The Games Factory 2 holds true for Multimedia Fusion 2 too – the former is a crippleware version of the latter. Read the rest of this entry »

IG Maker Autotiles Tutorial

How tiles work

To better understand how tiling works, let’s imagine we have a big game that takes place in an abstract environment that is composed primarily of green rectangles [see left].

A modern interpretation might be to draw all the rectangles manually and import the picture into the game as one big background. That would be pretty wasteful. In classic console RPGs, game environments were usually created with tilesets – collections of small pieces of the world that can be combined among themselves. Using tiles reduces file size and saves memory, so let’s see how is it done in IG Maker. Read the rest of this entry »

IG Maker so far (1)

IG Maker presents data in an easy to understand way

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. Read the rest of this entry »

IG Maker game: Robot Farewell

It’s always interesting to see what can be done by different people using the same tools – holds true especially in the case of IG Maker because the software is still relatively new. Unfortunately, at the time of writing no finished games done in IG Maker were published outside of Japan yet.

Enterbrain, the company behind IG Maker, have been producing game engines – such hits as RPG Maker 2000 and RPG Maker XP (which were used in production of many commercially successful “indie” RPGs) – for a long time. And it shows – IG Maker is well organized and fascinatingly flexible!

To complement the tutorials for IG Maker that might be found elsewhere on Nekoworld (at the moment of writing: “How to put player character on screen” part 1 and part 2), we are making an experimental game that will follow soon after the series (or what could become the first part of a series) of tutorials is finished!
At the moment it looks like this (please ignore the main character, it’s just a placeholder):

Robot Farewell, an original IG Maker game by Nekomura Games

Read the rest of this entry »

IG Maker tutorial: how to put the player character on screen – part two

Part Two: Importing a Character Spritesheet and Setting Up a Player Gadget

In the first part of this tutorial, we covered the very first steps in IG Maker: how to set up a new project in IG Maker, import some graphics and create a simple map. Now it’s time to put a character on that map! Let’s begin by importing some placeholder graphics for the character and setting up basic movements. Read the rest of this entry »

IG Maker tutorial: how to put the player character on screen

Part One: Importing Assets and Creating a Simple Map

In this tutorial, we cover the first steps in IG Maker: how to create a simple map and place a player gadget on it.

Defining the player character was really simple in RPG Maker, but don’t let the apparent complexity of Enterbrain’s new engine discourage you – once you get over this first stumbling block in using IG Maker, the engine will hopefully start to make sense.

IG Maker - different types of game genres

IG Maker currently has 3 genre plugins: platform, shooting and RPG (the demo plugin has a different function and we won’t cover it in this tutorial). In all 3 of them, it is assumed that one of the “gadgets” will be a player character. The player gadget is treated as a special gadget that can’t be deleted and has its own dedicated events that trigger switching actions. In this tutorial, we will show how to put the player on screen in RPG mode, but the same basic rules apply to other plugins, too. Read the rest of this entry »

Finding Game Assets on Japanese Websites – Part 1: Keywords for Developers of Cute Games

Lots of people working in RPG Maker, Ren’Py and similar engines seem to have some very basic knowledge of the Japanese language (or someone who can help them with Japanese text in a pinch). However, for various reasons, utilizing the resources that can be found on Japanese websites can still prove challenging.

The main reason, I think, is that while it’s easy to learn the basics (just about anyone seriously interested in Japanese-style games seems to have either taken a basic Japanese class, went trough some free online lessons or even just picked up a phrase or two from their favourite anime), it’s much more difficult to learn specialized vocabulary related to game-making, especially since there seem to be no books available in English dealing with the subject of Japanese game-making terminology. The terms are sometimes counter-intuitive for an English speaker – when looking for character graphics to put in your visual novel, for example, you don’t search for キャラクター (although the term does mean “characters”) but for 立ち絵 (“standing pictures”). To complicate matters further, the “English” on Japanese websites doesn’t necessarily mean what it says (“free” being a good example of this). Read the rest of this entry »

Nekoworld

Games and cuteness!

IG Maker so far (2)

IG Maker Autotiles Tutorial

How tiles work

IG Maker so far (1)

Background

IG Maker game: Robot Farewell

IG Maker tutorial: how to put the player character on screen – part two

IG Maker tutorial: how to put the player character on screen

Finding Game Assets on Japanese Websites – Part 1: Keywords for Developers of Cute Games

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