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Role-playing game creation software is a game creation system (software program) intended to make it easy for non-programmers to create a role-playing video game. The target audience for most of these products is artists and creative types who have the imaginative abilities to assemble the elements of a game (artwork, plotline, music, etc.) but lack the technical skill to program it themselves.
The most famous RPG maker is the commercial Japanese RPG Maker series that has been released since 1988 for many systems ranging from the PC-8801, MSX, PC-9801, and Microsoft Windows, to the Super Famicom, PlayStation, Game Boy Color, PlayStation 2, and Cellphones.
| Name | License | Publisher | Initial release | Linux | Mac | Windows | Mobile | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adventure Construction Set | ? | Electronic Arts | 1984 | ? | Apple II | MS-DOS | ? | An early RPG maker for creating top-down view tile-based role-playing and adventure games. Published for the Commodore 64 and later ported to other 8-bit and early 16-bit microcomputers. |
| Adventure Creator | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | An early RPG maker for Apple II computers that allowed users to build very simple games. Not to be confused with Graphic Adventure Creator, a simplified version of which was also released as Adventure Creator. |
| Bard's Tale Construction Set | ? | Electronic Arts | 1991[ citation needed ] | ? | ? | MS-DOS | ? | A (relatively) early RPG maker by Interplay, based on the basic design (first-person view and tile set) of the Bard's Tale games, using a version of the Thief of Fate game engine. [1] |
| Mire Engine | Proprietary | Making Italia | ? | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | A 2D Cross Platform Game Engine using WebGL, DirectX and HTML5. |
| BYOND | ? | BYOND Software | 1996 | Server only | No | Yes | No | Used for NEStalgia , and others. |
| DCGAMES | Proprietary | DC Software | 1990 | No | No | MS-DOS | No | An Ultima-style RPG game creation system [2] |
| EasyRPG | Free | EasyRPG community | 2013 [3] | Yes [4] [5] | Player [5] | Yes [4] [5] | Player [5] | A cross-platform, open source RPG development tool and client, compatible with RPG Maker. [6] |
| 001 Game Creator | Proprietary | SoftWeir Inc. | 2006 | No | No | Yes | Yes | A commercial action/RPG maker. Uses a subscription model. |
| Unlimited Adventures | Proprietary | Strategic Simulations, Inc. | 1993 | ? | Mac OS | MS-DOS | ? | A commercial game builder by MicroMagic using SSI's "Gold Box" engine. [1] |
| RPG Creator | Proprietary | ? | ? | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | A commercial game development toolkit which runs through HTML5. |
| RPG Playground | Proprietary | ? | 2012 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | A free, web based RPG maker to make, share and play RPG's. [7] |
| KAGE | Free | ? | ? | Yes | No | Yes | No | A free software game development toolkit able to make RPGs utilizing KonsolScript. [8] |
| OHRRPGCE | GNU GPL [9] | OHRRPGCE community | 1997–1998 [10] | Yes | OS X | Yes | Android | An open source RPG maker. [11] |
| RpgBoss | Free | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | A cross-platform open source editor and engine based on JavaScript and Scala. [12] |
| Solarus | Free | ? | 2002 | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Open source RPG engine with a custom quest editor. [13] |
| Sphere RPG Engine | Free | ? | 2000 | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | A set of open source RPG makers utilizing JavaScript. [14] |
| Verge | BSD | 1997 | ? | Yes | Yes | PSP | An open source 2D game engine with an emphasis on role playing games. [15] | |
| Maker3D | ? | ? | ? | Yes | ? | Yes | ? | A 3D RPG creator in manga style |
| Lugdunon | Proprietary | Cinera LLC [16] | ? | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | A 2D online RPG creator platform. |
While not an RPG maker per se, the Worldforge game engine is intended for creating MMORPGs.
A voxel is a three-dimensional counterpart to a pixel. It represents a value on a regular grid in a three-dimensional space. Voxels are frequently used in the visualization and analysis of medical and scientific data.
GameMaker is a series of cross-platform game engines created by Mark Overmars in 1999 and developed by YoYo Games since 2007. The latest iteration of GameMaker was released in 2022.
Epic Games, Inc. is an American video game and software developer and publisher based in Cary, North Carolina. The company was founded by Tim Sweeney as Potomac Computer Systems in 1991, originally located in his parents' house in Potomac, Maryland. Following its first commercial video game release, ZZT (1991), the company became Epic MegaGames, Inc. in early 1992 and brought on Mark Rein, who has been its vice president since. After moving the headquarters to Cary in 1999, the studio changed its name to Epic Games.
Clickteam is a French software development company based in Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine. Founded by Francis Poulain, François Lionet and Yves Lamoureux, Clickteam is best known for the creation of Clickteam Fusion, a script-free programming tool that allows users to create video games or other interactive software using a highly advanced event system. They are most known for publishing the first seven titles in the Five Nights at Freddy's series.
Homebrew, when applied to video games, refers to software produced by hobbyists for proprietary video game consoles which are not intended to be user-programmable. The official documentation is often only available to licensed developers, and these systems may use storage formats that make distribution difficult, such as ROM cartridges or encrypted CD-ROMs. Many consoles have hardware restrictions to prevent unauthorized development.
Fighter Maker(格闘ツクール, Kakutō Tsukūru) is a series of games for PlayStation consoles and Microsoft Windows. It features a robust character creation system, letting players even create animations. There are two versions of the games, Fighter Maker and 2D Fighter Maker.
The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall is an open-world, action role-playing game published by Bethesda Softworks. The second video game in the Elder Scrolls series, it was released on September 20, 1996 for MS-DOS, following the success of 1994's The Elder Scrolls: Arena. The story follows the player, sent by the Emperor, to free the ghost of King Lysandus from his earthly shackles and discover what happened to a letter sent from the Emperor to the former queen of Daggerfall.
Unity is a cross-platform game engine developed by Unity Technologies, first announced and released in June 2005 at Apple Worldwide Developers Conference as a Mac OS X game engine. The engine has since been gradually extended to support a variety of desktop, mobile, console, augmented reality, and virtual reality platforms. It is particularly popular for iOS and Android mobile game development, is considered easy to use for beginner developers, and is popular for indie game development.
An open-source video game, or simply an open-source game, is a video game whose source code is open-source. They are often freely distributable and sometimes cross-platform compatible.
RPG Maker, known in Japan as RPG Tsukūru, is a series of programs for the development of role-playing video games (RPGs) with story-driven elements, created by the Japanese group ASCII, succeeded by Enterbrain, and then by Gotcha Gotcha Games. The Japanese name, Tsukūru, is a pun mixing the Japanese word tsukuru (作る), which means "make" or "create", with tsūru (ツール), the Japanese transliteration of the English word "tool".
Linux-based operating systems can be used for playing video games. Because many games are not natively supported for the Linux kernel, various software has been made to run Windows games, software, and programs, such as Wine, Cedega, DXVK, and Proton, and managers such as Lutris and PlayOnLinux. The Linux gaming community has a presence on the internet with users who attempt to run games that are not officially supported on Linux.
The Official Hamster Republic Role Playing Game Construction Engine is a free and open-source, "all-in-one" game creation system. It was designed to allow the quick creation of 2D role-playing video games (RPGs). It was originally written by James Paige in QuickBASIC and released in late 1997 or early 1998. In May 2005, the source code was released as free software under the GNU GPL-2.0-or-later, and it was soon ported from QuickBASIC to FreeBASIC and to modern operating systems.
A fan game is a video game that is created by fans of a certain topic or IP. They are usually based on one, or in some cases several, video game entries or franchises. Many fan games attempt to clone or remake the original game's design, gameplay, and characters, but it is equally common for fans to develop a unique game using another as a template. Though the quality of fan games has always varied, recent advances in computer technology and in available tools, e.g. through open source software, have made creating high-quality games easier. Fan games can be seen as user-generated content, as part of the retrogaming phenomena, and as expression of the remix culture.
Doom is an American media franchise created by John Carmack, John Romero, Adrian Carmack, Kevin Cloud, and Tom Hall. The series usually focuses on the exploits of an unnamed space marine operating under the auspices of the Union Aerospace Corporation (UAC), who fights hordes of demons and the undead to save Earth from an apocalyptic invasion.
A game creation system (GCS) is a consumer-targeted game engine and a set of specialized design tools, and sometimes also a light scripting language, engineered for the rapid iteration of user-derived video games.
Simple and Fast Multimedia Library (SFML) is a cross-platform software development library designed to provide a simple application programming interface (API) to various multimedia components in computers. It is written in C++ with bindings available for Ada, C, Crystal, D, Euphoria, Go, Java, Julia, .NET, Nim, OCaml, Python, Ruby, and Rust. Experimental mobile ports were made available for Android and iOS with the release of SFML 2.2.
Mozilla is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, publishes and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, with only minor exceptions. The community is supported institutionally by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation and its tax-paying subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation.
Undertale is a 2015 2D role-playing video game created by American indie developer Toby Fox. The player controls a child who has fallen into the Underground: a large, secluded region under the surface of the Earth, separated by a magical barrier. The player meets various monsters during the journey back to the surface, although some monsters might engage the player in a fight. The combat system involves the player navigating through mini-bullet hell attacks by the opponent. They can opt to pacify or subdue monsters in order to spare them instead of killing them. These choices affect the game, with the dialogue, characters, and story changing based on outcomes.
GDevelop is a 2D and 3D cross-platform, free and open-source game engine, which mainly focuses on creating PC and mobile games, as well as HTML5 games playable in the browser. Created by Florian Rival, a software engineer at Google, GDevelop is mainly aimed at non-programmers and game developers of all skillsets, employing event based visual programming similar to engines like Construct, Stencyl, and Tynker.