As mentioned in
this thread,
dungeoncrawlers.org is starting a 7 day
Dungeon Crawler Jam in April.
Does anyone know of an easy tool to create a grid based RPG viewed in first person with 90 degree turning in under a week?
March 31st is currently 2 months and 6 days away, so I probably wouldn't have enough time to learn how to use something as complicated as Unreal Engine or Unity (and both would be overkill for this project anyway).
Off the top of my head, really really basic ways:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/483950/SMILE_GAME_BUILDER/
If you want really basic, Smile Game Builder (commercial game making software) can be put into step based first person perspective to create a grid based rpg; standard blocks can have "2d skins" added to them to make it personaliszed. But then you have the issue of having a very inflexible system (four characters only, standard "dragon quest" like system, difficult to change fonts etc. etc.) for combat and other components to work with. Also it is expensive.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/498310/RPG_in_a_Box/
Another option would be the RPG in a Box system; again you can put the system into step FP mode and there is a lot more flexibility with the open scripting, much more customization and the like...the problem is that it very much a voxel art system so if you don't like that then you may have some issues, also it is not complete (I know I had problems getting any battle system up and running properly) and it is written for one character. Also I found previously that you get a lot of clipping for some reason in the FP mode. Cheaper option than Smile Gamebuilder and IMO you can get a cool, nice looking game pretty quickly and easily if you know your way around voxels/graphics generally.
Godot 3 - 2D->3D Dungeon-Game-Template by Jumpingeyes Games (itch.io)
This is a FP Dungeon template for Godot (Godot a free game engine, although this template costs money) in the vein of a single character M&M style- easy enough to take and run with and create maps but suffers from the problems of the above mentioned programs - if you want to do anything different/interesting you are going to have to go away from the template and actually learn Godot...
On that last point, there are some decent basic youtube tutorials on how to get first person mazes up and running in Godot very quickly, albeit will need some tinkering to limit it to 90 degree and grid based movement. The issue if you don't have time would be setting up the combat system, classes all that kind of stuff....
Another point is that if you know what you are doing and don't care too much about the graphical transition from one location to another, getting an easy 2.5D system (Gamemaker or even Godot in 2d mode) with sprite graphics (The guy that I think is running the Jam has a thing on his website to create all the sprites you need from a single one) is probably your best bet if you want to focus on customization of the systems etc.
Hope that provides some ideas.
So IMO it depends on what you are willing to compromise on.
