For a little weekend fun and challenge, I thought I’d try out a game engine I have but never got around to using. Throughout the year I have purchased a few game development Humble Bundles that included quite a few 2D sprites. In addition one of them had a game engine called 001 Game Creator.

Since I mostly play 3D games and am working on creating one. Switching over to 2D would provide me with some interesting challenges as I get used to that kind of format. Along with working out how I want to create zones using a more simple layout.

001 Game Creator is also quite different than Unreal Engine which is what I have been using. While 001 Game Creator can make a few different genres of games it feels like RPGs is where it is at for getting the most out of it.

It’s also a lot more beginner-friendly engine to use. It comes with a lot of things already started for you. For instance, you already have life, leveling, saving, inventory, AI, combat, and a whole host of other things. The kind of stuff you can get bogged down by when all you want to do is make zones and set things up.

One of the nicer things I have noticed when checking it out was outside of buying the base game engine that is all you need. While they do sell other products they make it clear that you are not required to buy them to get those features.

The added stuff appears to be more of a template setup so you could see how such a style of game could be made. That again is great since you don’t have to spend a bunch of extra money just for features.

It also comes with a few starting 2D meshes for walls, and sprites for things like NPCs to use. That however will only get you so far. Since I have quite a few gigs of the stuff just sitting from Humble Bundles I’ve purchased. I’m hoping the process to import what I have to add won’t be hard.

To get started I went with the already provided assets for my first few hours of trying out 001 Game Creator. Which I’ll be using for the first map and a couple of side dungeons. From there I’ll be adding to it.

There were a few things I was wondering how they were going to work out. Such as moving the player to another zone such as a small dungeon I’ve created. After watching some of the YouTube videos the 001 Game Creator developers have I was thrilled to see doors have an option to connect to another zone.

001 Game Creator is also a bit of an older engine. While they do have things like a wiki and even the developers themselves have recent (within the last year) videos out. I am a little shocked there are not more content creators talking about and showcasing what this thing can do.

I also tried out the demo map they had set up for you in your first RPG project. I was rather happy to see questing right off the bat and how easy information could be displayed to the player. Going around and picking up some quest items, and moving to the next part of the game.

Like all game engines, you first need to set up the new game. Quite an easy process. This will hopefully be something I can have fun over the weekends for the rest of the month and then be done with.

Then I went and set up my first map. I’m calling it the Hills since there will be a windy side road going up on rocky hills to a dungeon. There will also be some other side areas for the player to explore.

I was going to make a huge map to get things started. The game informed me that while I could there was a risk of lag being caused. As such, I toned things down just a tad to the biggest recommended size it states.

One thing I was not that thrilled with right off the bat is how you move around when designing a map. Instead of being able to click and drag, use the keyboard, or other ways. You had to use the side scrollbars to go left, right, up, and down in moving the map.

After that experience, and not wanting to always have to be moving in that method just to move to a different area on the map while working on it. I downsized the map even further so that at the furthest zoom out of 25% I would get the most the zones map in view.

One thing I have been enjoying a lot so far is the basic things in a game that make it easy to do stuff. In the first instance, I wanted to place some lootable chests throughout the zone and in the mini-dungeons, I’ll be creating.

Not only can I just place an item on the ground the player will auto pick up and place it in their inventory when they walk over it. I can choose to place that item in a chest. I can also give that player experience and even money for opening that chest as well. Finally, if I want that chest to have a respawn timer I can just edit that setting.

Yes! I loved older-style games where things in a zone would respawn after so much time has passaged. While I did not directly see that option for NPCs I can only hope I can add a timer to them on their death trigger or some other way. As I loved games you could always go back and re-clear your favorite maps and dungeons in.

Setting up monsters that will attack the player was also quite easy. So far I’m only using the sprites they have set up but I’ll be adding in others I have later on. Instead of needing to learn how to do complex things like setting up an AI, give it health, attack abilities, and so forth. A lot of things are just a click of a button or changing of a number.

There is also some cool stuff you can do with NPCs in this game. You can set them up on different teams or what I would be seeing as factions. I can give them routes by either telling them to go point a, b, c, or I can draw out an actual route it has to follow. I can also add or change a few different trigger types on them.

After placing some tiles down on the map I came to one of the things I wanted to be able to do. That was having the player enter a dungeon, clear it, and exit it to the same place they came in on. That was quite easy to do.

I created a new map by clicking the new icon that is just to the right of maps and interfaces. I populated it with some tiles, NPCs, a chest, and a door. Nothing fancy as it’s the first dungeon the player is going to enter.

I then placed a door in the first map that would take the player into the second map. That just involved making sure triggers were set to go to the open door. Along with setting up the destination option that tells the game what map and were in that zone to place the player.

Then I edited the door I placed inside of the dungeon. They make it even easy to pick the exact location you want the player to spawn in after they interact with the door. This is done by a mini-map opening up and you just click the location. Alternatively, I could just get the location coordinates myself and enter them in.

After that, it was time to continue building out more of the map by placing down tiles. I created a little river the player will have to cross a bridge on. I also set up a chest on the other side as a reward. I would later go back in and add in NPCs on both sides the player would have to fight.

As always it’s a good idea to be testing things as you go. Throughout the entire process, I would spawn in and run around to see how things looked from the player’s point of view and adjust the difficulty of the NPCs I was spawning in.

There are a few emulation options to pick from. Since you can create a game for HTML5, Steam, mobile(Android/IOS), or windows. it’s great you can test emulate on a few different devices.

Along the way, I did learn some limitations that 2D spaces create. I can no longer just build like I would in a 3D environment. I quickly ran into issues such as placing a door in a manner that does not work for the ordination of the 2D environment.

There would have to be certain ways I just go about how I place things. Both so the player can see it in 2D. Along with it working as intended. This just means going forward in the future I’ll have to think about how I have my zone ordinated and the flow of how the player can move through it in a different way than I’m used to doing.

After a little while, I managed to add in three dungeons for the player to run on this first map. I added in some things like trees, paths, rocks, and NPCs to fight to give it more depth. While it is nothing crazy it did not take that long from having zero understanding of how 001 Game Creator works to have a fully working first map.

Final Thoughts

I still have quite a few things to learn and change how I would normally approach doing something. For the first day, I already have many major steps of a game setup. Things that would have taken me forever to do in something like Unreal Engine were already done leaving me just to have fun and focus more on the creative side of things.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by our main developer. This post can be originally found on his blog here.