For the purpose of this tutorial, bring your attention to the tilesets tab. Here, you’ll see how the program treats each tile in your game: whether or not players can walk through them, what level of visibility they have, and when, if ever, they provide free icecream. Study it, then go back to the main editor screen.
Right, let’s get a change of scenery. Scrap the green stuff, we’re going for the desert! Highlight “MAP001” in the bottom left corner and press Spacebar. You should be presented with a map properties dialog. Change the tileset to “Desert Town”. Bam! You have new scenery. You can readjust your map as necessary, but before you leave the dialog, you should have a look at the “Encounters” box on the right side. Here, you can set up battles on the map that occur after a certain number of character steps. Just under the “Troops” heading, you’ll want to double-click and select some enemies to challenge the players on random occasions. Ah, look: we’re provided with a pair of ghosts by default! Let’s use those.
Go back to the playtesting mode and walk around. You should soon enter a battle with a pair of ghosts. Check out the system, then go back to the editor. Very nicely done: you’ve just sorted out some basic combat.
As a parting shot before you move on to explore the system more thoroughly: any good RPG game is going to be driven by events. You can place events onto a map as you would tiles: just look for the necessary button at the top panel, right next to the three layer buttons. Events in RPG Maker can do just about anything: they trigger text, change status effects, and even start battles for you. Suffice it to say, they’re very useful.
Try this: select the events cursor, go to a tile on your map and double-click. This will open an events dialog. Set the “Trigger” option to “Player touch”. Then look for the “@>” indicator on the events page and double-click again. You’ll be presented with a LOT of options, but don’t get a fright: for now, just select “Show Text” and enter a message. Then leave the dialog, go into game testing mode and walk over to the event tile.
Well done! In a few short minutes you’ve created your own RPG map, had a few battles against some nasty ghosts and have learned the basics of event triggering! For further help on using RPG Maker XP, tutorials such as these, and the program’s own help file, will definitely go a long way. But don’t be scared to explore the system yourself: it’s very detailed but quite fun to use, and can get you making a full game in next to no time.
Is there a superior RPG toolkit out there? If so, let us know about it! Leave a comment below, and we’ll check out your game creation tool of choice in a future column.