The RPG Toolkit (sometimes without the space; often abbreviated to Toolkit, RPGTK, or simply TK) is an open source software suite designed to allow amateur developers — with or without prior experience — to design and play both conventional and Isometric projection tile-based console-style computer role-playing game.

This system was one of the first RPG creation programs that ran natively on Windows, and it has attracted a large user base, many of whom have gone on to study art, programming, and game theory in schools, attributing their introductions to these fields to the Toolkit.

= History =

In 1996, Christopher B. Matthews — frustrated with the limits the popular ZZT engine placed on game creation — began to code the first version of the Toolkit, using QBasic. The engine included a simple scripting language called RPG Code, which allowed users to create events for the game. After finishing the system, Matthews opened a small site in 1997 and made the Toolkit available for download. The system quickly grew popular, and Matthews supplemented it with several minor releases fixing bugs, culminating with version 1.4.

DOS was quickly becoming an anachronism, however, and in 1998 Matthews decided the Toolkit had to be completely redesigned. During his first university year, he coded version two with Visual Basic. This major version introduced a vast command library for RPG Code, including mathematics, string manipulation, audio playing, and graphics. A plugin system was also created, which allowed the coding of external Library_(computer_science)#Dynamic_linking in C_plus_plus to add additional commands to RPG Code. Matthews also offered a registered version of the system, which allowed people to support his efforts.

Version two was developed until the summer of 2002, and underwent twenty releases, ranging from trivial bug fixes, to whole new features like animated tiles. Dozens of games created using the system had been released — some commercially — and it had received over half a million downloads.

By late 2002, many other similar systems had developed, and Matthews decided that a major overhaul — version three — would be required to remain equal with newer, more powerful programs. This new version would include support for isometric games — the system had been purely overhead view for previous versions —, a modernized integrated development environment, and hardware acceleration via DirectX. After beginning the initial development, however, Matthews decided that it would be in the Toolkit s best interests to make the Toolkit open source. Matthews became largely a figurehead, and after some time, a development team was organized. The current version is 3.0.6, released on April 5th, 2005.

The development team is currently migrating the mostly Visual Basic engine — now considered dated — to C++. This release will also add vector collision, a method of setting the solidity of map areas based on polygonal areas, rather than by tile. A release date has not been announced. [http://toolkitzone.com/library.phpmode=read&doc=239]

= RPG Code =

RPG Code (sometimes without the space) was initially a very simple language, providing exclusively numbered variables and several commands to display their values. Version two, however, introduced an expansive library, and users gained a high degree of control of their games, even allowing the creation of such complex programs as battle and menu systems to replace the internal ones.

Version two also introduced real programming constructs, most borrowed from C_programming_language, such as the while, for, and if control flows, and function_(programming)s (dubbed methods ). An unfortunate remnant of version one, however, meant that lines needed always to be prefixed with a hash, something almost universally resented by coders.

Version three removed the # prefix doctrine, and allowed functions to return values. Thus random(5, ret!) became the more semantics valid ret! = random(5). Removal of type declaration characters (! for floating points, and $ for character data) in favour of a dynamically typed language is planned for the next version, 3.0.7.

Recent versions have transformed RPG Code into a partially object-oriented programming language, providing such features as inheritance, and syntactic sugar like operator overloading. The engine lends itself well to such features — players, maps, &c. fall naturally into groups of object_(computer_science). These additions have made it even easier to write concise, organized RPG Code, and many users have embraced them.

Using the internal message window, a simple hello world program can be rendered thus:

mwin( Hello, world! ) wait()

= Community =

The Toolkit s community was initially very small, consisting of only 6–8 regular visitors. Once version two entered steady production, however, this number increased exponentially, and visitors to Matthews site began to discuss more general topics, rather than focusing solely on the Toolkit. Forums existed for newer users to ask for help, and these proved to be largely successful, with many people learning tricks from the older users. Matthews also created a suggestion board where users could suggest features for the next version of the Toolkit. Many of these features — such as animated tiles, and returning values — eventually became prominent features in the Toolkit.

Much of the community revolved around the official RPG Toolkit home, Matthews site, but several others opened too. One member opened [http://www.mysticsoftware.net Mystic Software] to provide a place for users to download resources and games from an archive, and to submit their own for use by others. It proved to be hugely popular, and is still around to this day, albeit with a diminished base of frequenters.

After Matthews moving away from development and making the Toolkit open source, the official home became the pertinent site of the [http://www.toolkitzone.com ToolkitZone]. The site quickly adapted to become the Toolkit s home, a resource site and document library, and games showcase for the Toolkit, placing all most users needed on just one site. A small minority expressed discontent at the idea, but it has generally been popular. Almost all Toolkit related discussion now centres around the ToolkitZone, and the progress of releases is periodically announced on its front page.

An influx of new users have been continually arriving since the new ToolkitZone s inception, and although many have become active members of the community, some older members are annoyed by the perceived invasion of their community. As time passes, these feelings are likely to subside as newer members become completely amalgamated with the community.

= External links =