Tutorials

Bust Edits for Beginners

The character generator has come a long way… do you remember the haunting results of the VX Ace generator faces? But even now, with MZ, even though the results look pretty good, you might want something a bit more special for an important character. Let's learn how to make quick edits using pieces existing busts to make your own unique character!

Avery

April 7, 2021

April 6, 2021

Letting The Player Choose Their Character

We’ve all made games where our main character has a premade look and personality, but sometimes it’s fun to give our players some options to the main character they’ll be controlling. So let’s take a look at a few ways we can give our players some control over their main character at the start of the game.

hiddenone

March 30, 2021

Getting Emotional: Making Your Own Emotionsets

It's always weird when our facesets don't match the emotion your dialogue is presenting... so let's learn to make emotionsets on our own!

Avery

March 11, 2021

March 9, 2021

There and Back Again: Making Camp with an Item

Sometimes it’s nice for our heroes to be able to take a break while adventuring and relax at a campsite. Camping in games often offers a place to heal, to converse with party members, and even to make new equipment. Let’s take some time today to learn how to make an item that’ll let our players travel to a campsite.

hiddenone

March 2, 2021

Plugin Tutorial: Ramza's Crafting System

An in-depth tutorial on how to use Ramza's Crafting System Plugin, straight from Ramza himself!

Archeia

February 25, 2021

February 24, 2021

Tile Edits So Simple, ANYONE Can Do Them!

There are tons of simple tile edits that anyone can do to make their maps look better! Let's learn some of them!

Avery

February 25, 2021

February 23, 2021

Combining Items to Make New Items!

Collecting items is a common event in games, but often once we’ve gotten the item all we can do with it is leave it in our inventories. While that does work for plenty of items like keys and potions, what’s stopping us from giving our players item pieces that they need to combine to make something better?

hiddenone

February 18, 2021

February 16, 2021

Beginner's Guide to Plugins (Part 2 / 2)

A beginner's guide to understanding how plugins work in RPG Maker MV / MZ.

Archeia

February 18, 2021

February 13, 2021

Beginner's Guide to Plugins (Part 1 / 2)

A beginner's guide to understanding how plugins work in RPG Maker MV / MZ. Part 1 will include how to download and install a plugin, and how to use plugin parameters!

Archeia

February 14, 2021

February 10, 2021

RTP and FSM - How to make styles match each other

We all love FSM. But sometimes we just don't have enough pieces in that style. And they don't quite match up with the RTP. But what if you could make them match yourself? Let's learn how.

Avery

January 21, 2021

January 19, 2021

Locked Doors and How to Open Them

Locked doors show up in almost every game. Whether the doors are shut through magical means, a password, or even a simple deadbolt, chances are the heroes will need to figure out a way to unlock the door to move forward. Since having to open locked doors is so common, let’s learn the basics we need to add our own doors to our games.

hiddenone

January 12, 2021

Using States with Skills in Battles

How many games have you played where a spider enemy’s bite can poison your heroes, or a huge foe’s bodyslam causes stun? We’ve all seen states in games, but sometimes it’s tough to come up with different ones that really add to our battles. So let’s figure out four different ways we can use states to improve our battle skills for some of our default MZ actors.

hiddenone

December 29, 2020

The Basics of Tints & Picture Overlays

A common complaint about RPG Maker games is that many of them look the same since they use the default tiles that come with the program. There are a ton of ways to deal with that complaint, from editing tiles to buying brand new tilesets, but for this tutorial we’ll look at a simpler method: using tints and pictures to improve our games’ appearance.

hiddenone

December 16, 2020

Eventing a QTE: Time Hits Minigame

Quick Time Events (QTEs) can add an extra bit of interaction between our players and our games, rewarding them for their focus. So let’s take a look at how we can event one type of QTEs: timed hits.

hiddenone

December 6, 2020

How to Make Rounded Caves Walls

Ever wanted your caves to a be a bit more organic and less square? Ever thought "I can't do that I'm not an artist!"? Well we're here to tell you that you are wrong. You CAN do it yourself, and we're going to show you how!

Avery

December 3, 2020

December 1, 2020

Classic Tutorial: Making an Autotile

The companion piece from last week's classic tutorial, originally posted in 2018, this tutorial walks you step by step through how to make your own autotiles.

Touchfuzzy

November 24, 2020

Classic Tutorial: How Autotiles Work

This classic tutorial from our old blog can show you how autotiles are generated. It was originally written in on our original blog in 2018 for MV, but everything it has to say about Autotiles still works for MZ!

Touchfuzzy

November 17, 2020

How to Map a Desert

Mapping a desert sounds easy, right? Select sand, click fill, and done. But there is a lot more to keep in mind if you want to make it visually interesting and engaging for your players, and today we are going to talk about these things!

Avery

November 10, 2020

Eventing a Push/Pull System

The in-engine tutorial gives us a brief guide to making pushable events with moving rocks, but sometimes we want our players to have more options when dealing with a puzzle. So why don’t we create a system that lets players grab those events to push and pull them out of the way?

hiddenone

October 29, 2020

October 27, 2020

Making Secret Doors!

Pssst! I heard, secret doors might be a nice element, that might enhance your game and be a good fuel for puzzles! The big disadvantage of that element is that it might be difficult to find the right charset just for the situation you have in your game, but no worries! Today we go step by step through several options you might want to have and show them how to create them with any tile you might want to have to do that movement.

Avery

October 20, 2020

Topics