Instead of one huge cluttered window full of tabs, you see this window first and then when you click edit you will see an appropriate window for editing the item. This way I can also add shortcuts in case, for example, you're selecting an enemy for something and decide you want to change it from where you were.

Inheritance is a very good feature, it lets you create items much faster and makes it easier to edit tons of items quickly. For example, you can make a basic Potion item as a parent and then have children where only the icon, value, and strength were set. You can then edit the Potion parent for the other fields and they will be set for all children of Potion. It's like Map Properties but for everything.

If you want to know what one of the grayed out types actually are, you can read here for now:
https://subversion.assembla.com/svn/rpg20xx/doc/spec.txt

Here's your first resource spec! For those of you who wanted to create parts for an original 20XX RTP or who want to adapt an existing rip, this will tell you all.

It accepts 24-bit images with magenta (R:255,G:0,B:255) as the transparent color or it can directly use 32-bit images and their alpha channel. Actually I think the importer will automatically decode 8-bit images, but you'll have to re-assemble your old resources anyways and would be encoding them as true color already.

1. Autotiles (16 per tileset) (64 x 48 / 48xN for animated)

Autotiles will now be in their own files. You can put any combination of up to 16 of them in 1 tileset (this is 2 more than RPG Maker 2003).

They are formatted a bit differently:



The center round part goes on the left, the top right is the inverse 4 corners, the middle right is the background (which may or may not end up getting used, who knew what it really did in RPG Maker 2003) and the bottom right is the icon for the editor.

ANY autotile can be animated simply by adding frames under the first image. ANY number of frames may be used. You'll be able to set the speed for each tile in the tileset editor. Arrange animated autotiles like this:



The lower layer is now a psuedo bi-layer. This separates tiles into Terrain and Features. This bi-layer will be managed for you as you edit so you aren't juggling layers like in RPG Maker XP, all you have to do is specify for each lower layer tile if it is a terrain or feature. All of the above were TERRAINS, here is an example of a FEATURE



Lastly for autotiles, you can set each tile if it will update adjacent tiles. For what that means, you can understand just by seeing this example:



This way the autotiles that are supposed to be nested into other autotiles will occur automatically. Once you build your tileset, you won't have to worry about keeping up with these.

2. Animated Tiles (8 per tileset) (16 x 16xN)

These are simple, just import strips of single tiles (of any number of frames you want) and then you can assign 8 of them per tileset.

or

If you want larger, more complicated animations patterns, you'll want to start scripting them using a Tileset Transpose command. Examples of those include clockwork-style or ultramodern-style maps where almost everything is animated, or deliberate gameplay elements such as the rising and falling blocks in A Link to the Past since the Tileset Transpose command would also transposes the tile settings (just like it did in RPG Maker 2003).

3. Normal Tiles (1 assigned for lower layer, 1 assigned for upper layer) (128 x 384)

The tiles for lower layer and upper layer go in different files. Each file is 128 x 384. This is about 1 and a half RPG Maker 2003 chipset's worth of tiles- that's a lot. The old editor had a 6 tile wide palette, RPG 20XX will have one that's 8 tiles wide. Here's an example:

Lower Layer:



Upper Layer:



I've put all the ready-to-import resources for a complete RPG 20XX tileset into this ZIP file:

http://landtraveller.com/rpg20xx-classic-2003-tiles.zip

But importing in bulk is pretty tedious. You could also copy the .2x files directly into the <projectname>.bin/tile folder. Here's a ZIP file with those:

http://landtraveller.com/rpg20xx-classic-2003-tiles-bulk.zip

I was literally able to fit half the tiles of RPG Maker 2003's RTP into there. If you manage to create a complete resource set (ripped or for the future RPG 20XX RTP) let me know.

Some required legal stuff:
I'm using and posting these tiles for a demonstrative non-commercial purpose that doesn't devalue the original product (RPG Maker 2003) under the Fair Use doctrine of US Copyright Law.

I've eventually decided to directly use the WIN32 API for the editor.



It's going to be some really ugly messy code, but it will get results (eventually).

Spent quite some time in a dilemma.

RPG 20XX's sound engine has a simple interface. It should be able to play sound files with varying volume, balance and speed. It should also stream music such that: 1. playing the same file again does not restart the song and 2. playing the same file again with different volume, balance or speed will adjust these values for the song already playing. Finally, it can fade-in and fade-out any song. These are all original features of RPG Maker 2003.

What was the problem? Odd legacy formats like MIDI (not an actual sound format) and cumbersome formats like MP3 (prepare to be patent trolled!). My sound engine would play OGG, FLAC and WAV just fine. You can easily convert MP3 to OGG using Audacity, so there wouldn't have been a problem. But MIDI.. Quick research I did suggests tons of people using RPG Maker still use MIDIs for some reason.

The previous engine used FMOD-Ex API which would perform all this in many formats. But it was not free. For most of you making hobby games, the FMOD-Ex NON-COMMERCIAL LICENSE lets us do this.

The solution is simple, I've included both sound engines inside. If you want to use RPG 20XX for some commercial indie thing, you can either contact Firelight Technologies for an indie license (expensive!) or you can contact ME for a version of RPG 20XX that only has the default sound engine in it (if I hadn't already released one). If you're willing for such a venture, you're also willing to realize you can figure out how to make WAVs out of MIDIs and then to convert them to OGGs via Audacity. If (more like when) RPG 20XX is ported to various platforms, it is highly likely there will only be the default OGG/WAV/FLAC sound engine available, so consider that too.

Don't suggest some arbitrary open source MIDI library because I've already tried them all and they 1. don't work (no, they don't) 2. are only for Linux 3. don't work (really, they don't) 4. sound terrible (and still don't work) 5. don't work

Most of you are just making the usual hobby RPGs with "borrowed" resources like you had before, so the inclusion of FMOD-Ex API is just so I don't get 8000 E-Mails of people asking me why ff4battle.mid isn't playing.

You're not really used to the concept of an RPG Maker 2003-like software that's not only legal but I'm not charging any commercial royalties for, are you? Oh and it's open source- watch out, it's the GNU General Public License so your edits must also be under this same license and no stuffing your code edits into mystery binaries either.. There's actually a couple of you who wanted to edit the previous engine too for some indie projects, so I know you're out there.

https://subversion.assembla.com/svn/rpg20xx/doc/spec.txt

Well it is between 12 and 14th of December, it's time for me to continue with things~

These are really rough and subject to change, but it helps me list everything that would be needed. Mostly you'll all might have lots of questions, so those will work. Once I have enough feedback, I'll modify the specs and perhaps begin.

I'll also be cleaning up this game page.