RPGds

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RPGds (Role Playing Game Development Studio) is a cross-platform Role Playing Game development environment created and maintained by Akuma No Houkon. It has been written in the C++ programming language and utilizes OpenGL for engine rendering. Also, the cross-platform FOX Toolkit is being used for the development of the RPGds GUI.

Unlike many other RPG creation programs, RPGds comes with no default Battle Systems, Menu Systems, etc., for the novice game creator to use. Rather, a powerful but easy-to-use script editor is included that the game creator can use in order to create all of the necessary systems for their game (it must be noted, that scripts may be exported and shared with other game creators).

Currently, RPGds has been released under Pre-Beta status as a Linux binary (although Microsoft Windows compatible binaries are planned for the near future).

RPGds Development Environment

[edit] Features

Well organized and clutter free development environment

Project Wizards

4 Map layers, Tile Drawing Tools (Flood Fill, Spray Can, Select Hollow Box, Select Hollow Eclipse, Tile Swapper, Single Tile Draw, Line, Filled Box, Filled Eclipse, Selection)

Tileset Creator, Map Creator, Script Editor, Sprite Animation Editor, Font Editor, Image Editor, Animation Composer, Database Editor, and a Sequence Editor

Map Zones

Brush Designer

Path Designer

General Game and System Settings Configuration

Visual Sequence Designer which allows for the Point n Click creation and positioning of graphical game system elements.

[edit] Concepts

RPGds is a tile based game creation application that allows movement of sprites to be based upon either tiles or pixels. RPGds utilizes four layers per map (Base Layer, Lower Fringe, Upper Fringe, System Layer) which allows for diverse and interactive maps to be created.

Sprite sets may have four or eight way direction with custom collision detection. Each sprite can be tied to an activation script, an "On Step" script, and a Movement Path. A full featured Path Editor enables the RPG creator to design a custom path for the sprite to follow in their game, as well as call custom scripts to produce dramatic and varied actions.

Using the built-in Script Editor, game creators can visually create complex scripts with complete control over the game without having to remember formal language syntax or common coding conventions. The Script Editor features a toolbox that gathers tasks under several headings that allow the game creator to easily find what scripting features they are looking for. Common features of the Script Editor include the ability to create and destroy Objects, change and load maps or other objects (including images, text, animations, etc.), set variables, iteration, decision structures, case structures, loading and unloading of resources, "key" binding and checking, screen panning, and database management.

RPGds utilizes a Database which stores Elements and their corresponding values. These Databases can be used throughout the games that are created with RPGds.

A brush editor/designer is available that allows the creation of custom brushes (for example, a brush draws a whole building, rather than only pieces). Custom brushes are composed of many tiles and streamline the drawing and placing of rather large or complex structures (or common structures) on maps.

Finally, there is a Visual Sequence Designer which allows the "visual" creation of game elements.