First of all, apologies for the delay in getting this latest update out there! A lot of my focus lately has been around documentation, bug fixes, and other behind the scenes improvements, but there are a few small features here and there that have been added since my last development update.

Since I'd like to start building out the combat systems more in the near future, I thought it would make sense to go ahead and implement some of the functionality around damage and healing. One feature related to damage that I added is the handling of the player being defeated. In combat, if the player's health reaches zero, their "death" animation will play (if defined for that character model) and a "Game Over" screen will display informing the player to press SPACE to restart the game.



To complement this, the Item Editor now has an option that lets you define an item as "usable". If an item has been defined as such, you can also specify the number of uses permitted as well as a script to trigger whenever the player uses the item by right-clicking it.



There are also two new scripting functions, "Damage Entity" and "Heal Entity". Currently these only work for the player character, but they can be used to either damage the player or heal the player via scripting. This will allow you to create items such as healing potions that will heal the player, or tiles that damage the player as they walk over them. Damage/healing numbers will display to indicate the values as they are added/subtracted from the player's health.



I've also continued working my way through converting the Tiny Dungeon sprites into voxel models. There are a lot of sprites, but I've devoted around 10-15 minutes each day to completing the task! At this point, I only have a handful of the item sprites remaining. I've also been experimenting a bit with a roguelike mode using the Tiny Dungeon models that I think may work out pretty well! There's still a lot of work before it becomes a viable game mode, but I'll be chipping away at it in between other development.


As you can see below, the cast of Tiny Dungeon characters is growing!



Every once in a while, I like to play around with ideas that pop into my head as a break from development, and this time I thought it would be cool to create a Crossy Road style prototype within RPG in a Box. What's shown below is mostly scripted (the cars are triggered to move across as the player steps onto certain tiles), however this was all done using functionality currently available in RPG in a Box. With a few more features (for example, randomizing and looping), it could probably get pretty close to the gameplay of Crossy Road!

Crossy Road was one of the influences that led me to the voxel style of RPG in a Box, so it was really cool seeing how easy it was to throw something like this together.



As I mentioned in my previous post, I've also been working on the new documentation site for RPG in a Box. I finally made it through all of the scripting reference pages and have moved onto the various other pages. I am striving to make the documentation as comprehensive as possible and including explanations for any concepts and features that I think would be helpful to the community.



One final note regarding the Steam Early Access release date: I originally indicated the window as being Q3 of 2017, but at this point it's looking like I may end up pushing the estimate back to Q4 of 2017 due to certain dependencies and general time constraints. I'd like some of the major features such as combat to be more complete and polished before releasing it on Steam, and I will also be taking this time to upgrade RPG in a Box to Godot 3.0. As a reminder, Founder's Access is available on Itch.io and includes a Steam key that will be distributed once it goes live on Steam. Once the remaining Founder's Access keys are gone I will still continue selling it on Itch.io as early access.

Founder's Access: https://zeromatrix.itch.io/rpginabox

Thanks so much for reading! I truly appreciate everyone's support as I pursue this dream of mine. Every bit of feedback means a lot to me, and I look forward to building a community around RPG in a Box. :)

First of all, apologies for the delay in getting this latest update out there! A lot of my focus lately has been around documentation, bug fixes, and other behind the scenes improvements, but there are a few small features here and there that have been added since my last development update.

Since I'd like to start building out the combat systems more in the near future, I thought it would make sense to go ahead and implement some of the functionality around damage and healing. One feature related to damage that I added is the handling of the player being defeated. In combat, if the player's health reaches zero, their "death" animation will play (if defined for that character model) and a "Game Over" screen will display informing the player to press SPACE to restart the game.



To complement this, the Item Editor now has an option that lets you define an item as "usable". If an item has been defined as such, you can also specify the number of uses permitted as well as a script to trigger whenever the player uses the item by right-clicking it.



There are also two new scripting functions, "Damage Entity" and "Heal Entity". Currently these only work for the player character, but they can be used to either damage the player or heal the player via scripting. This will allow you to create items such as healing potions that will heal the player, or tiles that damage the player as they walk over them. Damage/healing numbers will display to indicate the values as they are added/subtracted from the player's health.



I've also continued working my way through converting the Tiny Dungeon sprites into voxel models. There are a lot of sprites, but I've devoted around 10-15 minutes each day to completing the task! At this point, I only have a handful of the item sprites remaining. I've also been experimenting a bit with a roguelike mode using the Tiny Dungeon models that I think may work out pretty well! There's still a lot of work before it becomes a viable game mode, but I'll be chipping away at it in between other development.


As you can see below, the cast of Tiny Dungeon characters is growing!



Every once in a while, I like to play around with ideas that pop into my head as a break from development, and this time I thought it would be cool to create a Crossy Road style prototype within RPG in a Box. What's shown below is mostly scripted (the cars are triggered to move across as the player steps onto certain tiles), however this was all done using functionality currently available in RPG in a Box. With a few more features (for example, randomizing and looping), it could probably get pretty close to the gameplay of Crossy Road!

Crossy Road was one of the influences that led me to the voxel style of RPG in a Box, so it was really cool seeing how easy it was to throw something like this together.



As I mentioned in my previous post, I've also been working on the new documentation site for RPG in a Box. I finally made it through all of the scripting reference pages and have moved onto the various other pages. I am striving to make the documentation as comprehensive as possible and including explanations for any concepts and features that I think would be helpful to the community.



One final note regarding the Steam Early Access release date: I originally indicated the window as being Q3 of 2017, but at this point it's looking like I may end up pushing the estimate back to Q4 of 2017 due to certain dependencies and general time constraints. I'd like some of the major features such as combat to be more complete and polished before releasing it on Steam, and I will also be taking this time to upgrade RPG in a Box to Godot 3.0. As a reminder, Founder's Access is available on Itch.io and includes a Steam key that will be distributed once it goes live on Steam. Once the remaining Founder's Access keys are gone I will still continue selling it on Itch.io as early access.

Founder's Access: https://zeromatrix.itch.io/rpginabox

Thanks so much for reading! I truly appreciate everyone's support as I pursue this dream of mine. Every bit of feedback means a lot to me, and I look forward to building a community around RPG in a Box. :)

Over the past month I've been putting a lot of focus into a new and improved documentation site for RPG in a Box. The task of creating comprehensive documentation for every aspect of the tool is rather daunting, but I have set up a goal for myself of completing one page or section each day. I've started by setting up detailed pages for each of the available scripting functions to provide information on each function's usage along with specific examples, visual demos, etc. After I complete the few that are remaining, I plan to move onto editor guides for the Map Editor, Voxel Editor, etc.

You can access the new documentation site here: http://docs.rpginabox.com

The scripting reference that I have been working on can be accessed directly using this link: http://www.rpginabox.com/docs/doku.php?id=scripting_reference



Another exciting thing that I have been working on involves the Tiny Dungeon tileset by Oryx Design Lab (http://oryxdesignlab.com/). A while back I stumbled across this awesome sprite pack and I got the idea to convert the sprites into voxel models and use them for a demo game of some sort for RPG in a Box. The style is a great fit for the engine, and it's been a lot of fun converting the tiles, characters, and monsters into 3D! I've included some screenshots below showing a before & after of the original examples by Oryx using their sprite pack together with my maps using the converted voxel models.









In between the documentation efforts and the Tiny Dungeon project, I've managed to get some development done here and there as well. :) I added some new scripting functions for fading in and fading out, as demonstrated in the GIF below. These should be useful during cutscenes, for example when you want to make a visual change to the scene.



Another feature I added involves an improvement to the "Missing Dependencies" dialog that is shown when attempting to open a map containing resources that no longer exist. You now have the option of selecting replacement resources for any that are missing! This can be used as a workaround if you'd like to rename some tiles, for example, without permanently breaking any maps containing those tiles.



Lastly, another very minor change I implemented was to support interaction cursors for tiles. Previously, this feature would only work with objects. To demonstrate this in my Example Game, I created this simple "stairs" icon that I assigned to the dungeon entrance tiles.



Thanks so much for reading and for your interest in RPG in a Box! Let me know if you have any questions or would like to know more. :)

Over the past month I've been putting a lot of focus into a new and improved documentation site for RPG in a Box. The task of creating comprehensive documentation for every aspect of the tool is rather daunting, but I have set up a goal for myself of completing one page or section each day. I've started by setting up detailed pages for each of the available scripting functions to provide information on each function's usage along with specific examples, visual demos, etc. After I complete the few that are remaining, I plan to move onto editor guides for the Map Editor, Voxel Editor, etc.

You can access the new documentation site here: http://docs.rpginabox.com

The scripting reference that I have been working on can be accessed directly using this link: http://www.rpginabox.com/docs/doku.php?id=scripting_reference



Another exciting thing that I have been working on involves the Tiny Dungeon tileset by Oryx Design Lab (http://oryxdesignlab.com/). A while back I stumbled across this awesome sprite pack and I got the idea to convert the sprites into voxel models and use them for a demo game of some sort for RPG in a Box. The style is a great fit for the engine, and it's been a lot of fun converting the tiles, characters, and monsters into 3D! I've included some screenshots below showing a before & after of the original examples by Oryx using their sprite pack together with my maps using the converted voxel models.









In between the documentation efforts and the Tiny Dungeon project, I've managed to get some development done here and there as well. :) I added some new scripting functions for fading in and fading out, as demonstrated in the GIF below. These should be useful during cutscenes, for example when you want to make a visual change to the scene.



Another feature I added involves an improvement to the "Missing Dependencies" dialog that is shown when attempting to open a map containing resources that no longer exist. You now have the option of selecting replacement resources for any that are missing! This can be used as a workaround if you'd like to rename some tiles, for example, without permanently breaking any maps containing those tiles.



Lastly, another very minor change I implemented was to support interaction cursors for tiles. Previously, this feature would only work with objects. To demonstrate this in my Example Game, I created this simple "stairs" icon that I assigned to the dungeon entrance tiles.



Thanks so much for reading and for your interest in RPG in a Box! Let me know if you have any questions or would like to know more. :)

One of the main features I have been focusing on recently is support for character portraits. In the initial implementation, you can choose between two different styles/positions for the portrait: side and top. The side position will show the portrait to the left of the dialogue (inside the box), and the top position will show the portrait on top of the dialogue box. Check out the examples below!



Below is another example of the top style but with smaller portrait images. Transparency is supported in the images to allow more flexibility with how they appear. Character portraits should add a lot to the game as they will help give more life to your characters. :)



In addition to defining portrait images for specific characters in the Voxel Editor, the Dialogue Editor now has a "Portrait" setting in the NPC and Player nodes. This will let you override the portrait for a particular bit of dialogue, as well as let you specify an image to use in cases of a custom speaker.



I've also recently started putting some focus into combat and related aspects after having been away from it for a while. There is nothing majorly new at this point, but I have started implementing some things to help set the groundwork for future combat improvements. Firstly, characters now have stats for health, attack, defense, and movement with defaults of 10, 5, 1, and 2, respectively. The attack and defense stats are used in a simple damage calculation during combat. To go along with the health stat, I added some health bars that are displayed above enemies.

https://youtu.be/GFsM5W8TXLo
The movement stat determines how many tiles a character can move per turn during combat. This value is set in the Properties panel of the Voxel Editor along with the other new stats of Health, Attack, and Defense. Allowing different movement ranges for your characters and enemies will be important for the default tactical type of combat.





Another smaller feature that I recently added is the "Favorites" functionality. From the Game Explorer, you can now mark certain resources (such as maps, tiles, scripts, etc.) as favorites for quick access. Once marked, they will show up under the Favorites tab located alongside the Game Explorer tab. They can be reordered and removed at any time.



And last but not least, I thought it would be cool to share a recent screenshot from Nékromegà, a game being developed by lectronice using RPG in a Box. It's been great seeing the game progress and evolve over time!



Thanks so much for reading and for the support! Check out https://zeromatrix.itch.io/rpginabox if you have a game concept in mind and are interested in trying out the latest version of RPG in a Box.

One of the main features I have been focusing on recently is support for character portraits. In the initial implementation, you can choose between two different styles/positions for the portrait: side and top. The side position will show the portrait to the left of the dialogue (inside the box), and the top position will show the portrait on top of the dialogue box. Check out the examples below!



Below is another example of the top style but with smaller portrait images. Transparency is supported in the images to allow more flexibility with how they appear. Character portraits should add a lot to the game as they will help give more life to your characters. :)



In addition to defining portrait images for specific characters in the Voxel Editor, the Dialogue Editor now has a "Portrait" setting in the NPC and Player nodes. This will let you override the portrait for a particular bit of dialogue, as well as let you specify an image to use in cases of a custom speaker.



I've also recently started putting some focus into combat and related aspects after having been away from it for a while. There is nothing majorly new at this point, but I have started implementing some things to help set the groundwork for future combat improvements. Firstly, characters now have stats for health, attack, defense, and movement with defaults of 10, 5, 1, and 2, respectively. The attack and defense stats are used in a simple damage calculation during combat. To go along with the health stat, I added some health bars that are displayed above enemies.

https://youtu.be/GFsM5W8TXLo
The movement stat determines how many tiles a character can move per turn during combat. This value is set in the Properties panel of the Voxel Editor along with the other new stats of Health, Attack, and Defense. Allowing different movement ranges for your characters and enemies will be important for the default tactical type of combat.





Another smaller feature that I recently added is the "Favorites" functionality. From the Game Explorer, you can now mark certain resources (such as maps, tiles, scripts, etc.) as favorites for quick access. Once marked, they will show up under the Favorites tab located alongside the Game Explorer tab. They can be reordered and removed at any time.



And last but not least, I thought it would be cool to share a recent screenshot from Nékromegà, a game being developed by lectronice using RPG in a Box. It's been great seeing the game progress and evolve over time!



Thanks so much for reading and for the support! Check out https://zeromatrix.itch.io/rpginabox if you have a game concept in mind and are interested in trying out the latest version of RPG in a Box.

One of the main new features that I have been working on recently is the Credits Editor and its related functionality. Using the Credits Editor, you can define a list of items that will be scrolled across the screen whenever the credits are shown for your game. The current options for the background of the credits are similar to the Main Menu's options - you can select a map view using any of the map's defined camera positions or a solid color.



If you have specified some text for your credits, a "Credits" menu item will be shown in the Main Menu. You can also trigger the credits to be shown using the new "Show Credits" scripting function. This will provide a way to gracefully end your game (as previously there was no way to do so). Here is a preview of the credits that I created for my Example Game!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz-ycrEvSME
The Egg is a small, but very interesting, RPG in a Box game that was recently released by lectronice. The below text is taken from his description of the game:

The Egg is a short atmospheric game about the meaning of life, adapted from Andy Weir's short story, with permission of the author. It tries to be as close to the original material as possible, while offering an immersive interactive experience, with minimal 3D visuals and a dynamic ambient soundtrack.

I'd definitely recommend checking it out! The Egg is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac.

You can download it from Itch.io here: https://lectronice.itch.io/the-egg



A while back I stumbled across Oryx Design Lab's "Tiny Dungeon" tileset, which is available for purchase from their website here: http://oryxdesignlab.com/tinydungeon

I loved the style of the sprites, so I thought it would be cool to translate them into voxels. For the few that I've done so far, they have translated surprisingly well! I quickly put together some dungeon rooms to test them out. I am planning to gradually go through and create voxel models from more of the sprites as I get the time. I think they'll make a great demo game for RPG in a Box.





I recently threw together another quick collage of some games/demos made with RPG in a Box to help show the diverse range of styles that can be created with the engine. The first row contains screenshots of the official Example Game, A Road to Awe by lectronice, and Vloxelworld by Ofihombre. The second row contains screenshots of Seeker 17 (a game I am planning to make), Nékromegà by lectronice, and my DOOM E1M1 test map. And finally, the third row contains screenshots of The Egg by lectronice, my Tiny Dungeon conversion project as mentioned earlier, and a small desert-themed game that I created for some tutorials.



I've also begun to do some brainstorming about combat in RPG in a Box. Some of the games that I grew up playing will serve as inspirations, in particular Shining Force, Ultima, Shining in the Darkness, and Might & Magic. I plan to eventually have multiple combat styles available to select from, but to start with I will be focusing on the turn-based tactical style similar to Shining Force. More to come on combat in the near future!



Thanks so much for reading and for the support! :)

One of the main new features that I have been working on recently is the Credits Editor and its related functionality. Using the Credits Editor, you can define a list of items that will be scrolled across the screen whenever the credits are shown for your game. The current options for the background of the credits are similar to the Main Menu's options - you can select a map view using any of the map's defined camera positions or a solid color.



If you have specified some text for your credits, a "Credits" menu item will be shown in the Main Menu. You can also trigger the credits to be shown using the new "Show Credits" scripting function. This will provide a way to gracefully end your game (as previously there was no way to do so). Here is a preview of the credits that I created for my Example Game!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz-ycrEvSME
The Egg is a small, but very interesting, RPG in a Box game that was recently released by lectronice. The below text is taken from his description of the game:

The Egg is a short atmospheric game about the meaning of life, adapted from Andy Weir's short story, with permission of the author. It tries to be as close to the original material as possible, while offering an immersive interactive experience, with minimal 3D visuals and a dynamic ambient soundtrack.

I'd definitely recommend checking it out! The Egg is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac.

You can download it from Itch.io here: https://lectronice.itch.io/the-egg



A while back I stumbled across Oryx Design Lab's "Tiny Dungeon" tileset, which is available for purchase from their website here: http://oryxdesignlab.com/tinydungeon

I loved the style of the sprites, so I thought it would be cool to translate them into voxels. For the few that I've done so far, they have translated surprisingly well! I quickly put together some dungeon rooms to test them out. I am planning to gradually go through and create voxel models from more of the sprites as I get the time. I think they'll make a great demo game for RPG in a Box.





I recently threw together another quick collage of some games/demos made with RPG in a Box to help show the diverse range of styles that can be created with the engine. The first row contains screenshots of the official Example Game, A Road to Awe by lectronice, and Vloxelworld by Ofihombre. The second row contains screenshots of Seeker 17 (a game I am planning to make), Nékromegà by lectronice, and my DOOM E1M1 test map. And finally, the third row contains screenshots of The Egg by lectronice, my Tiny Dungeon conversion project as mentioned earlier, and a small desert-themed game that I created for some tutorials.



I've also begun to do some brainstorming about combat in RPG in a Box. Some of the games that I grew up playing will serve as inspirations, in particular Shining Force, Ultima, Shining in the Darkness, and Might & Magic. I plan to eventually have multiple combat styles available to select from, but to start with I will be focusing on the turn-based tactical style similar to Shining Force. More to come on combat in the near future!



Thanks so much for reading and for the support! :)

Since my last development update, I've made a few improvements/changes relating to dialogue boxes. Firstly, I adjusted the default appearance of the dialogue boxes to be a bit more simplistic. The default style is now more rounded and vibrant compared to the original. Of course, with the new dialogue box image editor you are free to change the style to best suit your game!



As you may have noticed in the screenshot above, I also made a change to show the speaker's name within the main dialogue box instead of within its own. I'll eventually provide some more customization around this aspect, but for now I believe this is the cleanest approach and works well as the default. To go along with this change, I also added an option to modify the color used for a character's name. In the Voxel Editor, when editing a character you can now select a "Name Color" to use when that character is speaking during a dialogue.



Another new feature that I have added this past week is language selection. If you imported translations for multiple languages into your game, there will now be a "Language" setting shown on the in-game options screen. As demonstrated in the video below, this setting will allow you to switch between the translations that are available. Similar to the other settings, this will be saved in the user's settings file.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAxAp4vNho4
I have also started maintaining a spreadsheet of built-in text for which there will need to be translations. These values will be combined with your own imported translations, so you will have the option of overriding these built-in text values or providing values for additional languages that do not happen to be supported yet. There's still a lot of work to do around localization (in particular for the editor itself), but I think I have completed some good groundwork up to this point.



Lastly, another cool feature I have been working on is the addition of positional sound support! Previously, all sound effects would be played at the same volume regardless of where the player was currently located. I made some changes to this so that now any sound effects that are attached to model animations (for example, a door opening) are now played spatially from the location of that entity. The video below is a good example of this feature in action. As I approach the slimes, their jumping sounds begin to get louder. I am still tweaking some distance parameters, but I think this will open up some interesting options for your game!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWi3tCDKgNY
Thanks so much for reading and for the continued support! :)

Since my last development update, I've made a few improvements/changes relating to dialogue boxes. Firstly, I adjusted the default appearance of the dialogue boxes to be a bit more simplistic. The default style is now more rounded and vibrant compared to the original. Of course, with the new dialogue box image editor you are free to change the style to best suit your game!



As you may have noticed in the screenshot above, I also made a change to show the speaker's name within the main dialogue box instead of within its own. I'll eventually provide some more customization around this aspect, but for now I believe this is the cleanest approach and works well as the default. To go along with this change, I also added an option to modify the color used for a character's name. In the Voxel Editor, when editing a character you can now select a "Name Color" to use when that character is speaking during a dialogue.



Another new feature that I have added this past week is language selection. If you imported translations for multiple languages into your game, there will now be a "Language" setting shown on the in-game options screen. As demonstrated in the video below, this setting will allow you to switch between the translations that are available. Similar to the other settings, this will be saved in the user's settings file.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAxAp4vNho4
I have also started maintaining a spreadsheet of built-in text for which there will need to be translations. These values will be combined with your own imported translations, so you will have the option of overriding these built-in text values or providing values for additional languages that do not happen to be supported yet. There's still a lot of work to do around localization (in particular for the editor itself), but I think I have completed some good groundwork up to this point.



Lastly, another cool feature I have been working on is the addition of positional sound support! Previously, all sound effects would be played at the same volume regardless of where the player was currently located. I made some changes to this so that now any sound effects that are attached to model animations (for example, a door opening) are now played spatially from the location of that entity. The video below is a good example of this feature in action. As I approach the slimes, their jumping sounds begin to get louder. I am still tweaking some distance parameters, but I think this will open up some interesting options for your game!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWi3tCDKgNY
Thanks so much for reading and for the continued support! :)