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ACTION GAME MAKER

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ACTION GAME MAKER

The latest in the long-running “Maker” series of game development toolkits, “ACTION GAME MAKER” brings 2D action game development to those of all skill levels! Built using Godot Engine, “ACTION GAME MAKER” provides access to professional level functions without any programming required!

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Producer Letter 6: Assets & Resources

24 dec, 2024

Hello again, everyone! ACTION GAME MAKER producer Morino here!

We’ve received a lot of comments leading up to this 6th letter, and I’d like to thank you all! Some of the comments have been asking about how to get ready for the launch and what kind of assets ACTION GAME MAKER will support. So today we’ll go over what kind of assets and resources are supported!

Visual, audio, and video assets all have different formats, and so we’ll cover the default formats available out of the box as well as details about the assets included with purchase. So let’s get started!

General Information

Supported Resolutions

As in PGMMV, ACTION GAME MAKER supports custom resolution input, so you can make small resolution or full 4K projects if desired! But the default included assets are designed for a 960x540 image scaled to a 1920x1080 output resolution.

Supported Image Formats

BMP/PNG/JPEG/SVG/WebP are all supported by default, so you shouldn’t have any issues getting your image into ACTION GAME MAKER.
The default assets are primarily provided in PNG for ease of use and easy editing.
When creating your own original assets for an ACTION GAME MAKER project, we suggest using SVG or WebP formats due to their compression ratio and support of transparency data.

Objects

Godot treats Objects using the scene format. Each scene is saved as a .tscn file. This makes it very easy to export or import Objects. This is because animation, scripting, and other node settings are all saved within the scene file. However, this could be subject to change in future versions, as image and sound resources are not included and have a fixed path. You would need to manually add this missing information to the exported or imported data.

Scripting

ACTION GAME MAKER does allow the use of GDScript in addition to our custom visual scripting system, and you can use both freely within a single project. C# support is not available at this time.

Regarding Plugins

Any plugin that is designed to work with default Godot is expected to work with ACTION GAME MAKER.
As ACTION GAME MAKER’s additional functions are closed source, any plug-in or function changes that require a recompile of Godot are not supported for use with ACTION GAME MAKER.
However, any plugin that can be used with the official build of Godot should work with ACTION GAME MAKER.
Indeed, while there may be some compatibility testing to ensure that there are conflicts with ACTION GAME MAKER’s changes, all Godot 4.3 plugins for the 2D pipeline are expected to work. More information about Godot’s plugin system can be found here:
https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/plugins/editor/installing_plugins.html

Graphics

Tiles

The included tileset are 24x24 tiles designed to be used with Godot’s TileMapLayer Node:
https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/2d/using_tilemaps.html
TileMapLayer has no size limits, so sizes like 8x8 or 48x48 are supported, but you’re free to use unusual sizes like rectangular 16x64 tiles or whatever your project needs.
Additionally, if you separate them into layers it is possible to mix tile sizes (resolutions) in a single scene. So it’s more than possible to use both 24x24 tiles and 48x48 tiles simultaneously! In addition, thanks to the power of Godot, ACTION GAME MAKER supports the following tile layouts:
Isometric

Half-Offset Square

Hexagon

Autotile

ACTION GAME MAKER uses Godot’s Terrain and terrain tileset functionality. Typically, using terrain tiles requires manual configuration of tile connections (Peering Bits) and collision shapes for each tile. However, ACTION GAME MAKER can auto-configure Peering and collisions as long as the tile image matches our template structure.

The portions of the tile connected by the red lines represent the connections checked when determining tile placement. Users are able to paint these lines to configure the tile Peering, and this is how the autotile function determines if a tile should be changed when placing tiles into your game world. Note that if a peering extends to the edge of the tile it can connect to any other tile with a matching peering, so please be careful when configuring your tileset and tile peering.

Note that the above image is only an illustration with Peering Bit display enabled. The actual tiles look like the image below. For this sample, we used 24x24 pixel tiles, but other tile sizes will be supported.

Characters

The included character and enemy assets are designed for use with 2D bone animations. You can learn about Godot’s 2D bone animation system here:
https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/animation/2d_skeletons.html
More than 30 animations, including the skeleton data, is included, so the animations can be quickly customized by changing the texture (sprite) data.

Texture Formatting

The default character uses a 240x144 PNG formatted image. The character ends up being sized 24x32 after compositing.
Below is a sample of the included characters. Simply replacing the sprite inside the texture file with your own customized version is enough to get started with making an original character!

Animation Data

All included animation data can be customized or appended to with your own creations. The male character includes a lot of weapon-based melee attacks, while the female character has more of a focus on movement and special abilities. Both are designed for use in Metroivania-style games.

The animation data is stored in the Godot tres format. This means that they can be exported or imported into other projects as desired. Just make sure you use the same bone structure to ensure compatibility. Note that the male and female characters do have differences in their bone structures, so the animations are not directly compatible.

In addition to bone animations, sprite-based animations are also supported. In ACTION GAME MAKER, you will need to create the sprite animations using Godot’s Animation Player, as the “AnimatedSprite2D” node is not supported. Please see this Godot documentation for information about the Animation Player:
https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/2d/2d_sprite_animation.html#sprite-sheet-with-animationplayer

Character Images

Character busts included with ACTION GAME MAKER are sized at 1080x1080, and full body images are sized at 1272x2000.
Base, happy, anger, sadness, surprise, and fear expressions are included!
Note that due to the large size these images are in the WebP format.

Backgrounds/Environment

In order to enable large amounts of scrolling, images designed to be used with Godot’s Parallax2D function are included. You can learn about 2D parallax here:
https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/2d/2d_parallax.html
Included are 2 backgrounds: a sky-heavy outdoor environment and a skyless cave environment, with multiple layers.
For very distant use in the most background layer, the outdoor image is 720x1152, and the interior image ix 720x576.
For middle distance backgrounds, such as mountains, both the interior and outdoor images are 720x576.
For backgrounds nearest to the player, such as ones that include the ground, the outdoor version is 720x1152, and the interior version is 720x1728.

Audio

BGM/SE

The included assets are all in the Ogg format. While WAV, Ogg, and MP3 are all supported formats, Ogg was chosen due to the reasonable file size and ease of looping provided by the format. While the default Ogg metadata (LOOPSTART, etc.) are not supported, it is still possible to create specific loops manually using offsets.
Please check the Godot documentation for more information about supported audio formats:
https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/assets_pipeline/importing_audio_samples.html#supported-audio-formats

Video

The only video format supported by ACTION GAME MAKER is Ogv (Ogg Theora). H.264 and H.265 codec videos, while a popular format, are not currently supported by Godot due to Godot’s structure as an open source engine. Some additional information can be found in the Godot documentation:
https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/animation/playing_videos.html

And that’s all there is to know about the default assets included with ACTION GAME MAKER! While we tried to keep it simple today, I think this gives you an idea of how versatile we’ll be thanks to the power of Godot! While the included assets focus on a pixel-style side view action game, it should be possible to create a variety of games using these assets, especially if you start creating your own assets. And that was our goal for today: to give future ACTION GAME MAKER developers information needed to get started on getting assets prepared!

That’s all for today! Unfortunately we’re not quite ready to share the release date, but I can tell you that we’re still working hard during this holiday season. Our next letter will be in January, so I hope everyone is able to enjoy the holidays while they wait!
Have a Happy New Year!

ACTION GAME MAKER

you think this will support 2.5d? similar to ps1 type stuff ?

^^^ i want to branch out a bit and practice modeling using Crocotile 3d but still use tile set based assets i just want some subtle 3d models ontop if that makes sense

Space

13 jan @ 3:57

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Producer Letter #5: Animation

20 nov, 2024

Hello everyone, ACTION GAME MAKER Producer Morino here!
In this fifth Producer’s Letter, I think it’s time to cover animation!

ACTION GAME MAKER uses similar logic to how Pixel Game Maker MV used animation, in that each action can be assigned an animation.

However, in the older tool you either used our custom animation function or imported a sspj file created with OPTPiX SpriteStudio. But with the new engine, all animations go through Godot’s Animation Player[docs.godotengine.org] functionality.

Overview of Godot’s Animation Player

Godot’s Animation Player is based on a modern Timeline format using Tracks.

Anyone who has used a video editing program should be familiar with this system. Bezier curves and easing as supported, and creating rich animations without the use of another tool should be possible.

This applies both to sprite-based animations and bone-based animations. All animations we have shown so far are all made using the Animation Player’s bone system without use of an external tool.

Additionally, Godot Nodes can be placed into the Animation Player as an additional track to make changes to Node properties during the animation.

This means that position and rotation information, scale, color information, and many other elements can be updated directly within the animation structure.

So, what does this enable for users of ACTION GAME MAKER?

Improvements over Pixel Game Maker MV: What was difficult is now possible!

Animated Cutscenes

In PGMMV you needed to script up a complex sequence of events in order to create an in-game cutscene. With the power of Godot’s Animation Player, creating in-game cutscenes with lots of animation should be a much less complex task.

Mid-animation Particle Effects

Particles are represented by a single Node in Godot, so simply adding the particle effect Node to the Timeline as a Track and then assigning the start time is super simple, and makes it much easier to accurately time the effect start and stop time compared to PGMMV.

Parameter Inheritance from Animations

Not only can you update Node parameters directly within an Animation, those parameter changes are retained at the end of the animation, and thus carry over into subsequent animations. So it’s now possible to easily make an animation where a weapon is dropped, a facial expression changes, or even hair color is changed based on game events without complex scripting. When you combine this functionality with graphics Filters, there is a lot of variety and versatility available easily to any user of ACTION GAME MAKER.

Shaders in Animations

This is for the advanced users, but of course Godot has full shader support via scripting. A shader can be added as a Track to the Animation Player, so there’s really no limits on what kind of effects you can use in ACTION GAME MAKER.

2D Bone Animations: Collision Movement

As each Bone in an animation is a child node, each Bone can also have its own independent collision detection. So this makes it easy to have tracked and controlled collision dynamically updated through the animation. And of course Connection Points are available to easily control projectile generation.

These are only examples, of course! Godot’s Animation Player is richly featured, and when combined with ACTION GAME MAKER’s additional functionalty should allow for a lot of creative uses!

However, there is one unfortunate limitation that has resulted from this change. While this is generally a much more versatile and capable toolset compared with Pixel Game Maker MV, ACTION GAME MAKER will not support the importing of OPTPiX SpriteStudio sspj format animations. Despite the release of SpriteStudio Player for Godot, SpriteStudio animations are not supported due to a variety of technical issues. We understand that some of our existing users have gotten very skilled at using it, but we ask for your understanding on this matter, as the Godot Animation Player does provide mostly equivalent functionality.

Also, while configured sprite animations cannot be imported from Pixel Game Maker MV, the sprite sheets are compatible and setting up sprite animations in ACTION GAME MAKER MV is expected to be a quick process.

And that’s all for this letter! I’ll be back in December for the final letter of 2024. Thank you for your continued interest in ACTION GAME MAKER, and we look forward to sharing more information soon!

ACTION GAME MAKER

Producer Letter #4: ACTION GAME MAKER Visual Scripting

22 okt, 2024

Hello again, everyone! Producer Morino here.
For this fourth Producer Letter, I’d like to go into some more details about the Visual Scripting system used by ACTION GAME MAKER.

As you may be aware, there’s a lot of competition in the “non-coding” category of game development tools. Even just within the Godot community there’s several no code assets available.
Given this situation, I’d like to take a little time to clarify how ACTION GAME MAKER does things differently!

Our strongest goal for development is to ensure that we have a system that is easy and approachable even for people with zero skill at programming.

Our Thoughts on Visual Scripting

Visual Scripting Generalities

It can be reasonably said that most game engine-based visual scripting systems are developed as just converting code from text to a visual structure. Indeed, this is how it was in Godot 3.

Under such a structure, the knowledge needed to take advantage of the scripting system is quite similar to that needed by a programmer. While this does ensure that there’s few limitations and that is easy for someone using the system to easily switch to programming, it doesn’t make it easier for someone without programming knowledge to access the system. Thus the barrier to entry remains high.

For example, a person may want to implement a “walk left or right” function. Under low-level visual scripting systems this means the user needs to implement things like “when the left key is pressed, change the X variable to 1”, “when right key is pressed, change the X variable to -1”, “while X is less than 0, flip the walk animation and play”, and other such sub functions. Knowing which sub functions are needed – and how to implement them – is a difficult task that requires a lot of knowledge and practical experience.

ACTION GAME MAKER’s Visual Scripting

With ACTION GAME MAKER, our intent is to improve our scripting system from Pixel Game Maker MV and make it even easier for those without programming knowledge to use. This is similar to our intent with the RPG Maker franchise as well! By careful writing of our UI text and explanations, it should be possible for new users to get started. We are targeting high level conditions and actions that are human-centric, such as “When the A button is pressed”, “Move in the direction currently faced”, “When touched by another Object”, or “Lock on to the Attacker when an Attack is detected”, as we are trying to link intent to language to configuration in an easy to follow chain.

Let me explain more using our current work-in-progress UI (apologies for the Japanese screenshots, but no UI translation has been done at this time).

Our system uses boxes, sometimes called nodes, that contain an Action (or Actions) that need to be performed. These Action boxes are connected via Link Conditions, which are represented by the arrow lines. When a Condition or Action box is selected, the right panel will update with the configuration information for the selected item.

For this sample, we’ve configured it to use the Condition of “A button” and “When pressed”. This means that as soon as the button input is detected, the Condition is valid. This specific Condition connects the Movement and Jump Action boxes.

Now let’s look at the Action configuration panel. This specific Action box is configured to enable a wall grab. So this Action will play the Wall animation in the “Right” orientation. It’s also been configured to ignore movement input, not change orientation/facing, and ignore gravity. This means that until a new Link Condition is activated the Object will not update.

It is through this combination of Actions and Conditions that will allow full games to come together. I showed off some of the easiest to understand items today, but “Fire Projectile”, “Move in Direction of Orientation”, “Change Variable” and more than 50 additional Actions will be available.

Some people feel that this could be limiting what can be created with such a scripting system. But based on our experience with this system in Pixel Game Maker MV, people were able to create platformers, puzzles, simulations, shooters, fighting games, and other genres besides.

For examples, you can take a look at the titles that we released on the Nintendo Switch:
https://rpgmakerofficial.com/act_game/?lang=en

Since we are implementing basically all functionality from Pixel Game Maker MV, ACTION GAME MAKER will have at least the same level of variety. We hope that our users will have fun figuring out how to implement all sorts of different mechanics in our system!

Scripting Improvements Over PGMMV

Now a little bit of information for those who are already familiar with our scripting system from Pixel Game Maker MV. I’m sure you’re all wondering what might have changed now that we’re based on Godot!

Firstly, a number of the actions are based on Godot functions. Our “Display Text” action is based on Label Node, and “Display Gauge” is based on Godot’s Progress Bar. We’re not intending to reinvent functions in ACTION GAME MAKER that Godot already provides! We’re also leaving in Godot properties. This means you’ll be able to use the “Adjust Node Properties” Action to adjust things like coordinates, visibility, and more – just like you would any other variable. This ensures that Node properties can be adjusted dynamically. For our more advanced users, we are including an Action called “Send Signal”. Signals are a Godot system that allows a Node to notify other Nodes when something happens. With a “Send Signal” action, you’ll be able to send a database record or Object variable as a Signal to another Node. It is expected that this also will make it easy for those who can also write GDScript to switch between our visual scripting and GDScript.

With our previous effort, there was a lot of limitations in accessing base engine functionality due to how the abstraction was performed and that caused a lot of issues for our users. We’re paying a lot more careful attention this time to make sure that our abstractions are providing accessibility without creating a divide between Godot and ACTION GAME MAKER.

And we apologize for the short notice, but we will be attending the Digital Games Expo 2024, being held in Akihabara on November 3rd! ACTION GAME MAKER will be available for anyone to get their hands on. An acrylic stand will be given out as a present to everyone who gives it a try! It is my hope that many people will stop by!

That’s all for this month! Please look forward to my 5th Letter, coming this November! And thank you for your continued interest in ACTION GAME MAKER!

ACTION GAME MAKER

内容どおりで特に問題なければほぼ神ツールだけど

RPG Maker Uniteやラノゲツクール(Visual Novel Maker)みたいに魅力的だったけどいざ売られたら問題多すぎてコケたみたいにならないことを祈る

no name chan

2 jan @ 3:50

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Why does this exist?

The listed features aren't that compelling, nor anything groundbreaking. Heck one of the features is literally: "UI design based on the existing Godot UI" Like duh, of course it is.