Rpg Maker Developers Group

Introduction
AuraMZ is a collection of RPGMaker MZ plugins originally developed for my main project. I initially started extracting them into a generic project to make life simpler for me when I wanted to start the next project. I imagine that they might be particularly useful to those aiming to make games with good/evil choices and would like to have more support in modeling and visualizing gameplay mechanics focusing on moral corruption. Maybe you want to make a Vampries Dawn-like game; I feel like there might be some useful stuff in here then.

However, even for those making a completely different game, there may be various plugins in this collection that might be helpful to you as well, so I decided to share the plugins that have been developed over the course of time for my main project.

The plugin collection is delivered with a Template Project, showcasing how they have to be setup and also with a couple of samples on how to use the plugins.

IMPORTANT: The plugins are aimed for people who are willing to go into the javascript files and tweak them to fit the purposes of their project! If you don't want to do that, it's unlikely that these plugins will work for you as there are only a few convenience parameters!

Key Features

• Full overhaul of the UI (see screenshots) for a vastly improved user experience, including visual novel like features such as saving during dialogue, backlog, etc.
• Addition of various common game mechanics such as sneaking, ambushing enemies, quests, crafting, enchanting (blessing), bestiary, score-based new game plus and more.
• Usability experience improvements such as hotkeys, key Remapping, skipping through dialogue and battle, etc.
• Custom additional game mechanics, in particular for supporting toggleable special skill types (Enhance/Martial/Auto-Skill).
• Improved user inputs by conditionally disabling/hiding choices, providing a skill selection menu, and filter conditions in the item selection menu.
• Utility functions e.g. for better error reporting, dynamic choice construction for skill/item checks, creating gradient texts, and more.
• Mod loading so players can put modifications for files into the mods/ folder together with a Meta.json describing the changes they have made. More documentation can be found at https://wiki.starknightessaura.com/en/Mods
• Translation compatibility with JSON based string extraction and loading that works with the plugin collection

Furthermore, in the GitLab source code repository, you can further find the following contributions:

• Android template project
• GitLab-based CI/CD pipeline for automatic deployment to Itch.io, also supporting automatic creation of Linux and Android builds

Template Game
A sample setup of the plugins and samples on how to use (some) of them can be found in the AuraMZ_Template_Game. Feel free to use it to either copy paste setup plugin entries into your project or to just use the project itself as your starting point.

The plugins in auramzui/ contain the actual skinning logic and use the img/menu/ assets. If you just want additional functionality and parts of the overhaul that don't depend on these assets, you can simply ignore these plugins. On the other hand, if you do you want to use the assets, you have to add these plugins to your project. For plugin order and similar, simply consult the Template Project.

Licenses

• All auramz/ and auramzui/ plugins are free to use for commercial and non-commercial projects.
• All assets in img/menu/ are are free to use for non-commercial projects but for commercial projects, you need to buy the commercial license.
• All plugins in thirdparty/ are subject to their licenses as found in the corresponding links of the CREDITS file. At the time of integration into AuraMZ, they are all free to use for commercial and non-commercial projects.
• All other assets are from RPGMaker MZ. You must own a copy of RPGMaker MZ to use them.

tl;dr AuraMZ plugins are free to use for commercial and non-commercial. Only for the menu assets for commercial projects do you need a commercial license which can be bought on itch.io

Download

• Download Page - Itch.io - https://aura-dev.itch.io/auramz
• Source Code - GitLab - https://gitgud.io/auragamedev/auramz

Note that the Template Game in the Download Page is the deployed build, for the source code, please check out the GitLab repository.