Making Your Own Custom Enemy in RPGMaker!

I'm sure we've all dreamed of one day being able to make our very own video games, and what better way to get started with that dream than making your own Role-Playing Video Game with RPGMaker? RPGMaker comes built-in with preset graphics and music that you can use to build your very own RPGs. As long as you have basic programming experience and a creative mind, creating your own RPGMaker RPG is relatively easy and fun!

However, even though you have all of these resources at your disposal, who wouldn't want to add their own artistic flare to their game? With these instructions, I'm going to show you how to create your very own enemy character that you can use in your RPGMaker game.

A computer

RPGMaker

For this tutorial, I'll be using RPGMaker MZ, but any edition of RPGMaker will do.

Spriting Software

My preferred software for creating pixel art is Aseprite, but there are several other good programs out there.

First, open the pixel art software of your choice and create a new file. Then simply let those creative, artistic juices flow. What will your enemy look like? Is it cute? Ugly? Big? Small? Silly? Ferocious? Bent on world domination? Let your inspiration guide you.

Now that we've created our enemy, we need to make it suitable for use in RPGMaker.

Click on "File" > "Export". Depending on what pixel art software you're using, the window that pops up may look different. Make sure you save your artwork as a .png file. Once you've chosen a folder to save it to, click "Export". Our enemy character is now ready for RPGMaker.

Open up RPGMaker. To import new images, click on the Resource Manager button. The Resource Manager window will open up.

Choose a directory you want to import a file to. In this case, I want to import a file to "img/sv_enemies".

Once you've chosen a directory, select Import to select a file to import. Go to the folder you saved your enemy character .png file in and select it. Click Open to import it into RPGMaker.

Your enemy character is now ready to be placed into your game!

Now that we've imported our enemy into RPGMaker, it's time to make it something that your player can fight!

On the main screen, click on the "Database" button. This will open your RPGMaker project's database, where you can establish many characteristics of the objects in your game.

Click on the "Enemies" tab to manage your game's enemies. RPGMaker has a maximum of 5 enemies already programmed by default. To store more enemies, click on "Change Maximum" to allocate more memory for enemies in your game. Set the value to at least 6 for now so we can add one more enemy. (You can also replace an existing enemy, if you wish)

Click on a blank bar in the list of enemies to start creating a new enemy. Click on the blank image to open up an alphabetized list of all the enemy .png files stored in RPGMaker.

(Note: RPGMaker MZ has the option to set the point of view for battles in either "Front View" or "Side View". Because of this, there are two directories for enemy images, one for front view battles (img/enemies) and one for side view battles (img/sv_enemies). If you want your game's battle system to be in "Side View" and you can't find your created enemy, you saved it to the wrong directory. Simply import it to the other directory and you should be able to find it.)

Navigate to your enemy character's .png image and either click its name, the image itself, or "OK" to set the image.

Give your enemy a name. Feel free to customize its Max HP, Max MP, Attack, Defense, M.Attack, M.Defense, Agility, Luck, Rewards, Drop Items, Traits, and Action Patterns in any way you want.

Your enemy is now ready to fight!

Now that we've created our enemy, let's set it up so that our players can fight it.

In the database, click on the "Troops" tab to create a new enemy troop that your player can encounter when they play your game. As with enemies, RPGMaker has a maximum of 5 troops already programmed by default. To store more enemy troops in your game, click on "Change Maximum". Set the number to at least 6 so we can add one more enemy troop. (You can also replace an existing troop if you wish)

Click on the blank bar in the list of troops to start creating a new troop. On the right of the window is a list of the enemies in your game. Select the enemy you want to add to your troop and click "< Add" (You can add up to 8 enemies in one single troop). Your enemy will now appear in the Placement View. Click and drag your enemy to where you'd like to see it when you encounter it.

Click "Battle Test" to preview how the battle will play out.

Your enemy troop is finally ready to be placed into the game world.

Finally, let's set it up so that you can actually encounter your enemy in your game. There are two ways to set enemy encounters in RPGMaker. Random Encounters and Battle Processing. I'll show you how to set random encounters.

On the bottom left-hand side of the main screen is a list of all of the maps in your RPG. Right-click a map you want to encounter your enemy in and select "Edit". The Map Properties window will open.

To set a troop that your player can randomly encounter on the map, click on a blank bar under the Encounters list. From there, a window will open up where you can select an enemy troop. Select the troop you want to encounter. Set the weight (The likelihood this troop will be encountered compared to other troops) and the range (if you want your enemy to only be encountered on specific spots of the map). Click "OK" to save this encounter.

To set the frequency of random encounters on your map, change the number under "Enc. Steps", the average number of steps you need to take before you encounter an enemy troop. The smaller the number, the more often enemies appear.

Press OK to save the Map's settings. If you want to make sure the encounters work, click on "Playtest" to run your game. Wander around a bit, and you should eventually encounter your new enemy troop.

And with that, you have successfully created your very own custom enemy that you can battle in your very own RPGMaker game.

When creating your RPG, it's important to understand the concept of "balance". When you play a video game, it is expected that as your character progresses and gets stronger, enemies in turn become gradually more difficult to defeat. You don't want your enemies to be too easy or too difficult for the player to defeat depending on what level their characters are at. However, everything is adjustable. Mess around with all your enemie's and character's stats until you strike a good balance.

One more note. This tutorial is not limited to enemies specifically. It can be applicable to literally every facet of RPGMaker. If you want to import your own custom character images and make your own characters, you can do that. If you want to create your own custom fields, trees, towns, oceans, and castles, you can do that too. You can even import your own custom music and sounds. (Note: if you want to import music or sounds to RPGMaker, make sure you save the audio as a .ogg file.) RPGMaker can be an extremely versatile game creation tool in the hands of an expert.

Happy RPG Making!