Game Design and Project Resources: The Workshops Quarter > Computer Game Development - The Indie Alley

RPG in a Box

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ol_smaug:
Hi everyone! My name is Justin Arnold, and I'm a solo developer working on a game creation tool called RPG in a Box. RPG in a Box lets you easily turn your stories and ideas into games and other interactive experiences! As its name suggests, it contains everything necessary for doing so, all packaged together "in a box". The software is designed with a fun, beginner-friendly approach in mind as to not require any programming or modelling knowledge, while still providing a wide range of customization and openness. The games you create are your own and can be exported to Windows, Linux, and MacOS as standalone executables, so they can be easily shared with others to play!

RPG in a Box recently reached v1.0 and has left Early Access. This is just the beginning, though, as I have so many more fun things still in store for it! I also have a press kit here for anyone interested in checking out some screenshots and learning a bit more about it: https://www.rpginabox.com/press

For anyone who’d like to try it out and get a feel for what’s currently possible, a free demo version is available on both Steam and itch.io. It includes all features found in the full version, but with a limitation of two 10x10 maps per project and a splash screen on exported games.

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/498310
itch.io: https://zeromatrix.itch.io/rpginabox

You can check out the 1.0 launch trailer below, as well as the community showcase video (which is also included at the end of the launch trailer).

Let me know if you have any questions about RPG in a Box and I'll do my best to answer! Thanks so much!

Jubal:
Welcome to Exilian! :) Hope you'll stick around, do make yourself at home!

This looks really cool, a couple of questions:

If you start something in the demo version then get the full version, can you carry on the same project but sans the limitations?

Secondly, how much in terms of assets does the system come with - can you edit from pre-sets when it comes to e.g. making people with a basic animation set etc, or are you expected to mostly scratch-build in the system's editor?

I'll hopefully find some time to give it a go in the coming weeks - juggling doctoral thesis editing and my own projects, but this seems a cool system and I'm keen to have a try.

ol_smaug:
Thanks so much, I appreciate the interest!  :)

Yes, projects created in the demo version can be opened in the full version as is, so it's easy to continue working on them if you move to the full version!

In regards to assets, the built-in Asset Library includes a decent amount of tiles, objects, and characters to choose from. There are even a few base characters that are meant as starter models to paint and customize! The simpler one based on my default Justin character comes with quite a few different animations as shown below, and the larger base one shown below it (which has two versions) come with a few animations as well. In addition to that, there are a couple of starter projects to begin with and learn from - one built from my default example assets and the other using the assets based on Kenney's 1-Bit Pack. Let me know if there's anything else you're interested to know about!







Default Example Game: Kenney 1-Bit Example Game:

Jubal:
Great! I'm going to try and carve out some time to have a look at it next weekend if I can get enough work cleared out the way :)

Jubal:
Right, duly given this a go!

Lots of thoughts:

* Four or five errorless CTDs over the course of the day. That's more than I'd like: I've been saving regularly so no huge deal, but it's a bit of a pain. Usually happened when trying to load things in the voxel editor.
* Voxel editing is slow work. Don't get me wrong, I think the system's very good, but it certainly takes a while. It'd be useful to have a few more sample assets for different clothing styles - robes, armour, etc - to make the frame by frame editing more cosmetic for NPC humanoids at least.
* The lack of a conditional statement for an item not being in an inventory can be worked around but it'd simplify life to have it.
* I implemented real-time combat: it feels odd that you can't seem to adjust enemy attacks and HP, unless I'm missing something wildly - I get the impression this is quite an in-development part of the kit?
* It took me a while to work out how to make an equippable weapon: I'm still not clear what the tags menu does and why it's that rather than setting it as a weapon in the item editor that seems to work.
* Still not worked out how going into houses and disappearing the roof/upper floors while inside works, that bit is still alchemy as far as I'm concerned.
I'll get round to actually posting a bit about my testing project at some point, too - too tired to do that tonight!

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