Tag Archives: construction set

Super Mario Maker 2: In Praise of “Normal”

Now Super Mario Maker 2 has been out for a little while, we can consider certain aspects of it in greater detail — something of a necessity when contemplating an online-centric title like this!

There’s already a huge variety of levels out there for you to enjoy, with new ones being added all the time. I’ve even got in on the action with two of my own at the time of writing and more to come — check the game’s Hub Page for the codes if you want to try them!

And, of course, the game is flavour of the month for streamers and YouTubers. But I have a bit of a concern about this side of things in particular; let’s talk about that.

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Super Mario Maker 2: Nintendo Hands Over the Keys… Again

Super Mario Maker was a noteworthy title in that it managed to be extremely popular and culturally relevant despite being on a console considered to be a high-profile “failure”.

Now Nintendo has well and truly picked itself up, dusted itself off and raised a hearty middle finger to its competition with the Switch, many people would have doubtless been happy with a simple port of the original Super Mario Maker, opening up the possibilities that package offered to a whole new audience.

But what Nintendo has actually given us is something much, much greater. Let’s dive in and see what Super Mario Maker 2 brings to the creators’ table.

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Visual Novel Maker: How to Look Fontastic

Last time in our exploration of Degica’s Visual Novel Maker, we looked at how you can create your own custom characters to form the cast for your next masterpiece.
Today we’re going to look at something a little more mundane but just as important to the overall experience of your game: the user interface. Specifically, we’re going to take a look at some ways in which you can customise the way it looks and feels.

This is one of those steps you can quite easily skip when putting something together in a package like Visual Novel Maker, but using something other than the default UI not only helps your game look more polished, it gives you a greater feeling of ownership over the whole experience — so do consider taking a few of these steps on your next project!

Note: This post has been updated with some helpful advice from Archeia, a member of the VNMaker team. Please give it another read even if you’ve already looked it over!

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Visual Novel Maker: The Breath of Life

Last time, we looked at how to get up and running with Visual Novel Maker as soon as possible using its built-in assets and template project.

Today we’re going to take a look at how you can use your own assets to create something unique to you! Because built-in assets are all well and good — and Visual Novel Maker certainly has some lovely default artwork and character designs — but if you’re serious about getting creative, you’ll want to take control of as much about your work as possible.

That means, among other things, creating your own characters with which to tell your story. So let’s take a look at that today!

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Visual Novel Maker: First Steps

Now that we’ve had a whistle-stop tour of Visual Novel Maker’s main features, it’s time to delve into how it all works.

Today we’ll be taking a look at how you can get started with the application using its built-in resources. In subsequent articles we’ll look at importing custom resources and creating new characters, but for today we’ll primarily be focusing on the core functions of the program, getting a playable game up and running as soon as possible.

Let’s dive right in, then!

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Wii U Essentials: Super Mario Maker

The idea of a “construction set” for a video game being sold as a standalone product is something we haven’t seen a lot of in recent years, but it used to be a common sight in the earlier days of gaming.

Back in the ’80s and early ’90s, titles such as EA’s Racing Destruction Set, Interplay’s The Bard’s Tale Construction Set and SSI’s Unlimited Adventures allowed players to try their hand at game design without needing to know any of that pesky programming, albeit within the constraints of an existing game’s framework in most cases.

The concept of “programming-free game creation” was later expanded on by companies such as Clickteam (Klik and Play, Games Factory, Multimedia Fusion, the latter of which is still used by many indie developers today), YoYo Games (GameMaker) and ASCII/Enterbrain (RPG Maker) — these packages were more “general purpose” and could be used for a wider variety of projects, but became quite a bit more complex as a result.

Given Nintendo’s love of making “toy-like” games, it was entirely appropriate that it would be the one to mark a triumphant and high-profile return to the standalone, more constrained and accessible “construction set”. Super Mario Maker was the result, and it’s one of the Wii U’s most interesting titles.

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