Welcome to Week 1 of my project, “I Created A Video Game in 8 Weeks, Using RPG Maker MZ”!
During the course of this project, I will endeavor to create a self-contained video game quest with impact, choices, and multiple endings, from scratch, using RPG Maker MZ.
The quest, called “The Man Who Promised the Moon,” exists within a larger story (and a possible full game, if I expand this project), titled Visiting G.R.A.N.D.M.A..
A few things to know:
I have never used RPG Maker MV before.
I have never designed a video game before.
I have never created a video game before.
My background is in fiction and creative nonfiction. I am hoping that both will be useful to me as I set forth, but I have a feeling that video game creation is its own beast.
...Let’s dive into Week One!
The Story
A recently orphaned boy, on the verge of adulthood.
A mysterious summons from an ineffable presence.
A cult that sprang out of a famine.
A choice that impacts the lives of many.
Welcome to Visiting G.R.A.N.D.M.A.
Learning the Software
This week, my three big goals were to:
--Learn how to create maps in RPG Maker MZ
--Learn how to make characters and NPCs in RPG Maker MZ
--Learn how to make interactable objects in RPG Maker MZ
My week was a combination of feeling incredibly on-pace and incredibly in over my head. It’s not that I’m behind on schedule, it’s that I’m realizing that my schedule was wrong. This is not a short project. But I’m going to give it my best shot.
Creating Maps
Learning how to create maps was relatively simple. And infuriating.
RPG Maker MZ has a limited range of visuals available for you to play around with.
This looks like a lot, until you go through each individual tile (which I did), and find out that the purpose of these tiles is to form bunches of thematic visuals that all fit in together, to answer various questions like: what if my character lived in a dirt village, with a dirty, tiled roof? What if my character lived in a mansion? What if my character explored a golden temple?
For example:
Do you want to create a demon castle? Here’s the demon castle tileset:
--One wall choice
--One stairs choice
--One roof choice
--Etc.
This is incredibly helpful when you want to create a demon castle with matching walls, stairs, and a roof, but less helpful if you aren’t immediately in love with the one design available to you.
(These are the basic demon castle exterior/interior designs when put together.)
Don’t get me wrong; RPG Maker MZ is an incredible program, and I’m having a blast with it. But it’s not great for variety. If you’re a picky designer, you have to purchase your art from licensed tileset creators.
Which I did.
Except, the tiles I bought turned out to be too fuzzy to use. Or, rather, too fuzzy to use without causing them to be incredibly distracting.
Here’s an example:
RPG Maker MZ’s artwork is crisp and clear, with definition.
The details are easily identifiable, and the lines are sharp.
In contrast, here is the ‘bloody tileset’ I purchased (and is a good example of the usual artist-rendered tileset problem.)
If this level of detail and definition were uniform throughout the game you create, it wouldn’t be a big deal. The problem is that even if you were to create a game entirely out of fuzzy tilesets, your character (unless you purchased a fuzzy sprite) would be visually out-of-place.
Case in point:
Apparently, this is a common problem.
The internet is filled with suggestions for how to minimize this, but if you start with 32x32 pixels (which is the amount of pixels per tile in an earlier iteration of RPG Maker) and then blow them up to 48x48 pixels (the amount of pixels per tile in RPG Maker MZ), you’re going to get a fuzzy image. A lot of RPG Maker artists selling their work (I assume) did just this.
There are a few tilesets that have definition and detail, but they’re few and far between and almost always require a license for RPG Maker MV to legally use. Considering that RPG Maker MV is currently $70, that’s a no from me.
Rant aside, the visual mapping system of RPG Maker MZ is extremely intuitive, and there are a lot of helpful tutorials on the internet that helped me walk through it.
I’m still undecided about what I want my maps to look like. The design will depend entirely on what the quest shapes and forms into.
That being said, here’s an example of an interior I’m playing around with: my potato church! (The barrels on the left are filled with vodka, and the sacks/crates on the right are filled with...you guessed it! Potatoes.)
Creating Characters and NPCs
Check out how I learned to make characters and NPCs in my Week 2 update!
Want a sneak peek? Here’s a screenshot of the main character (his class is “A Very Good Boy”)!
Making Interactive Objects
To be clear, when I say interactive, I mean ‘creating objects that you can click on to learn things about and/or have the character make observations regarding’; I have not yet learned how to make a door open with a special key, how to make a skill increase if you drink a potion, etc.
This was just pure narrative goodness. Playground-enabling.
Walking around and clicking on things to learn more about the world is one of my favorite parts of video games, and I wanted to make sure that players could do it in mine.
I love seeing worlds blossom through all of the details that you are invited to interact with, but aren’t required to. If I play a game that has a lot of object interaction, I get EXCITED, I get GIDDY when I enter a new map, because I know there are so many goodies waiting for me to find and read about.
It was so confusing, navigating through the software. Sometimes the object vanished from the table; other times it refused to trigger the interaction; my personal favorite was when the player somehow couldn’t reach the table the object sat on at all. But, I eventually figured it out!
Here is a character successfully interacting with an object!
Don’t pay attention to the NPCs, the design environment, or even the text. They’re all notes and rough drafts laying around as I learn the program.
The point is: THE OBJECT IS INTERACTIVE!
The choices worked and successfully triggered the correct interactions! Different portraits came up to imply different speakers! The mugs showed up as images, and didn’t vanish as soon as I hit “play”! Hitting the space bar activated the interaction! And to top it all off: all of the text fits inside of the boxes!
Moving In-Between Maps
I also learned how to let the player move in-between maps (i.e. if you walk through a doorway, you can go inside).
(Again, there is no sense or reason to the setting; it’s all notes while I learn the mapping system.)
This looks simple, but it was so exciting to learn! I felt like I was unlocking the gateway to Platform 9 3/4; we now have magical travel from one area to the next!
Conclusion
I have so much more to learn (especially character creation), but I feel good about how much I’ve accomplished so far!
My goals for Week 2 are:
--Write a full plot outline for the entire quest
--Finalize the design for my potato church, and make every single object within the church interactive
--Learn how to create characters and NPCs
--Learn how to use “self-switches”
(Spoiler!) I wound up doing all of these, and a little more!
Click here to read all about it, and to access the first playable portion of the game!