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 »
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 »
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 »
