Game construction kits

[WindupAtheist]

So lately I'm in the mood to tinker with something. I used to play around with stuff like Shoot 'Em Up Construction Kit back in the eighties when I was a kid, but I haven't paid much attention to such things in recent years. What the hell is out there these days that's simple to use?

I know there's that pseudo-JRPG creator thing, and the idea of making an SNES-style Final Fantasy clone with fucked up dialogue and people getting stabbed in the dick does have a certain appeal. Still, I'd be interested to hear what else there might be.

[IainC]

Epic released a free version of the Unreal editor recently.

Link.

You can either be as serious business as you like with your own assets or you can just tinker with the provided ones.

[Sheepherder]

Starcraft II is supposed to have a pretty nifty editor.

[Salamok]

Torchlight/Porchlight

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=18112.0

[rrazcueta]

Are there any interesting Torchlight mods out there? TL is $5 this weekend...

[WayAbvPar]

Back when EA had a cool logo, and when seeing it almost always meant a quality game.

[tazelbain]

SNES-style Final Fantasy clone

I was thinking the same but less dick stabbing and more procedurally generated content.

[Ingmar]

Back when EA had a cool logo, and when seeing it almost always meant a quality game.

I played the SHIT out of that game. I still miss it.

[Kail]

Epic released a free version of the Unreal editor recently.

Ooh, nice.  Anyone know if that has any actual modeling software, or am I still stuck with shelling out three grand for SoftImage or something?  UT2k4 came with a plugin for Maya, but the pack-in "Editor" stuff for UT3 was just a map editor and a suggestion to buy 3dSMax.

[taolurker]

Blender is a free opensource modeller.

[Nightblade]

Funny you mentioned this, I happen to be making a jRPG in which you ... well, I'm not sure if I understand that analogy(?) there, so I'll just stop.

...ANYWAY:

(I'll spare you the Rm2k(3), RMXP, RMVX bit since I assume you know about them)


Game Maker
http://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker/try

What you primarily see with game maker is shootemups and platform games, but it is (of course) capable of making RPGs with some additional effort.
I included an example below that some of you may of heard of already (Barkley Shut up and Jam Gaiden)

http://www.standarderror.net/Barkley%20Shut%20Up%20and%20Jam%20Gaiden.zip

To stem some confusion that may arise from the above; there was an incomplete RM2k3 version that had a thread here awhile back. The game itself was remade in gamemaker and completed.

[Kail]

Blender is a free opensource modeller.

Yeah, but last time I tried it it seemed awkward to use for modeling, especially for games.  The lack of a "split polygon" tool drove me berserk, I had (and still have) no idea how to model stuff in there without having to spend ten minutes stitching things together every time I want to add or remove a polygon somewhere.

[WindupAtheist]

Just wanted to say thanks to people for posting, though I'm not sure what I'll end up playing with just yet.

[raydeen]

Here's a little project to keep your eyes on if you liked the old Bard's Tale Construction Set from ye olde DOS days.

http://www.identicalsoftware.com/btbuilder/

[Venkman]

For really light-weight tinkering (though you can go somewhat deep with it too): Sims Carnival.

[KallDrexx]

Heh.  I was tempted to make some joke about the old school 3DRad, only to find out it still exists.  I remember using that back in middle school on 95.

[Musashi]

I tried to learn Blender.  There's a video tutorial out there somewhere by some dude teaching it.  The tutorial itself is actually awesome, but Blender I was less than enthused about.  Everything is hot-key driven, so you have to commit that shit to memory, essentially.  And the UI is wonky.  I'm not sure wonky is strong enough.  The UI is balls on fire terrible.  I admit I don't have a whole lot of experience with anything comparable.  It's free, but I definitely don't recommend Blender.

[Ghambit]

I'd been looking for a similar style game engine and I came up with this one:
http://www.spritec.com/legacy/isoworld.html

It doesnt have online capability, but for singleplayer it's said to be the best for a relatively old engine.  (you said you wanted old snes style)

edit:
then there's always:
http://tkool.jp/products/rpgxp/eng/index.html