Hello everyone! ACTION GAME MAKER producer Morino here!
We hope you’ve all been enjoying the RPG Maker Festival 2025 event and our recent announcement! We’re super excited to be bringing ACTION GAME MAKER to you this June 16 (PDT)!
So even though we’ve had several of these letters so far, we think it’s important to take this opportunity to shed some more light on our current development status.
Development Status
Currently, we are nearing function complete.
The missing functions are primarily around some options, additional actions for save/load operations, database control, and game build functions. Pretty much the rest is there, and it’s all about polishing things up into their final status.
Of course, function complete doesn’t mean those implemented functions are ready for release! We’ve still got plenty of verification and debug testing before we can say things are done.
Let’s look at some screens to give you a better understanding!
First up is the main Scene view, where you’ll make your level maps and place Objects.
This main view is primarily a Godot screen.
We understand that there’s a lot of information to place in front of users and that it takes time to get used to it. But generally speaking there’s a lot less window/function switching now, so it should be a lot more efficient to use than Pixel Game Maker MV.
The left panel is the Scene panel, and it gives quick access to Objects and the layer structure.
The bottom left panel is the file browser for quick access to resources/assets you have added to your project.
The right hand panel is the Inspector, that provides access to detailed settings for whatever scene, Object, or other item selected from the Scene panel.
Let’s move on to the Object screen next.
The UI doesn’t change much, as it uses the same basic layout as the Scene menu.
The important information for Objects, as well as their settings, are contained within Godot’s Node structures. As examples, the CollisionShap2D node contains collision information (wall detection), and the BaseSettings node contains the basic Action Game Maker-provided settings.
You can differentiate Godot’s nodes from ACTION GAME MAKER nodes by looking at the icon color. ACTION GAME MAKER nodes are all colored blue and orange!
The visual scripting systen primarily relies on these custom nodes, and they contain the many of the same information and settings as was provided by Pixel Game Maker MV.
Let us remind you that you will have full access to Godot’s 2D nodes, such as Light2D for lights and Label for displaying textures. Through this combination of Nodes, Objects can be highly customized to provide whatever your game needs.
Next let’s take a look at the visual scripting interface!
Again, you can see that the base UI doesn’t change much compared to the other screens.
The rectangles you see are the action boxes, and the lines are the conditions that control movement between the action boxes.
Each action box contains a list of actions that will processed when that box is accessed. These actions are assigned using a special inspector window similar to RPG Maker’s event command system. Connecting the boxes with link conditions will create your program flow.
Please note that flow is now strictly left to right, and the free form structure of Pixel Game Maker MV is no longer possible. While some people might feel strongly about this, we hope you will understand that this tradeoff comes with many new improvements and that you will agree that it is a much improved system in total.
Here are some of the improvements that this new system has enabled over Pixel Game Maker MV:
You can now drag to select multiple boxes and move them as a group.
It is now possible to copy and paste all selected boxes.
These are just a few examples of a how we are improving the visual scripting to be easier than ever to work with!
The current intended flow for producing a game in ACTION GAME MAKER is
- Create the Objects needed.
- Implement the logic for your Object using the visual scripting system.
- Place the Object into a Scene.
...and repeat as needed!
That generally covers where we are with ACTION GAME MAKER’s development status, so let me give you some information about the closed beta test.
Beta Test - It starts today!
It’s a bit sudden, but from today (February 13), a few select creators have been given access to ACTION GAME MAKER in order to participate in a closed beta test.
Currently, only a very small number of creators have been invited to participate. This is due to the fact that documentation is incomplete at this time, and we are only able to provide support for a handful of users at this time. We will consider expanding the test program to more users if things progress well. We selected the current testers fully internally using criteria we do not plan to share publicly, so your understanding on this matter is appreciated.
The goals of this test are to gather data for the improvement of ACTION GAME MAKER, fix bugs, and hopefully have testers become evangelists!
Testers will generally be able to post about ACTION GAME MAKER on social media, Discord, Youtube, or other platforms, including sharing of the beta UI.
We hope that these testers will be able to provide more details about ACTION GAME MAKER than we are able to provide in these Producer Letters!
However, we do ask that you act as follows when talking to the testers:
- That they are being asked to test software that is still under active development and is not complete. Many things could change between now and the release date.
- The testers are all volunteers who have agreed to help make ACTION GAME MAKER a better experience. Please do not harass them for information they do not posses or do not have access to. Be nice to them and let’s keep the communication pleasant!
We appreciate your cooperation with these points.
And that’s all for this letter.
The next letter will be in March.
We are looking forward to seeing you again next month!