creator cover Egmatic: An Editor & Engine for Creating 2D Games
Egmatic: An Editor & Engine for Creating 2D Games

Egmatic: An Editor & Engine for Creating 2D Games 

Observe, influence, and be the first to test

3subscribers

9posts

About

Hi, everyone! My name is Vlad.
I translated RPG Maker 2003 into English. I managed “Neutral Zone”, a popular RPG Maker community. I wrote scripts and helped thousands of people make games using other people’s tools.
Now I’m building my own visual editor for creating 2D games — Egmatic — where it takes weeks, not years, to go from an idea to a playable prototype. It’s a modern, modular, powerful, yet simple tool for indie developers and small teams.
Here I keep a developer diary: I share the development process, early builds, architectural decisions, and things that won’t make it to public channels. Subscribers get to see the product before anyone else — and help shape what it will become.
FeedMedia
Sep 06 12:10

What it is and why

Egmatic is a modern editor and toolset for making your own 2D games. It is written in C# and built on two cross-platform frameworks: Avalonia for the interface, MonoGame for the engine.

Why

Visual editors on the market fall into two camps.
The first camp is tools locked to one genre. They do their one thing well and nothing beyond it. You want a platformer? Sorry, this one only makes role-playing games. Or only adventure games. The genre decides everything: which objects you can create, which properties they have, which logic is available.
The second camp is general-purpose engines. Powerful and flexible, but they often require programming skills, or a long study of a complex interface. The distance from "I want to make a game" to "something is running on my screen" is measured in months.
Egmatic sits between the two. It is a visual editor with no genre lock and no programming requirement, a tool where an idea reaches a working prototype in weeks, not months.

How it works

Egmatic has no predefined object types. There is no built-in "hero", "enemy" or "item". The starting point is an empty object, and it becomes anything you need through behaviors.
egm
gamedev
indie games
game engine
no-code
2d
devlog
Oct 26 15:13
Trial Run and Debugging
Level required:
Observer
egm
gamedev
indie games
game engine
no-code
2d
devlog
Oct 25 12:49
Vote of the Week #3: which debugging help matters most?
Level required:
Observer
egm
gamedev
indiedev
voteoftheweek
Oct 24 15:00

The Egmatic community is open. Come be early

One line of context first: Egmatic is a visual editor for 2D games, no programming involved, currently in Pre-Alpha.
On October 16 the project opened its community side: a live Discord server. This post covers what already runs there, what runs on a weekly schedule, and where it's heading. Including the part most launch posts leave out: the current member count.

What's in the server right now

Three things are up and running:
  • The developer posts in person. Updates and working notes come from the person building the editor, not from a support queue. When something changes, you hear it from the source.
  • Egmatic Companion, a digest bot. Everything that moves on the project lands in its digest, so you don't have to live in the channel to keep up.
  • A pinned intro. If you're new to the project, the pin gets you oriented without asking anyone anything.

Voice of the week

The anchor rubric is a weekly poll, Voice of the week. Each week it asks one question: what should the editor be? The options are features phrased in plain user language, the way you'd describe what you need rather than the way it lands in a dev ticket.
Results are published whatever the turnout. A small vote still gets an honest readout.
Topics for future polls come from the members. You don't only answer the week's question; you can set the next one.

Where this is going

  • Community-first as a course. Editor development listens to the community. What people ask for in the server is an input the dev side actually reads.
  • A weekly cadence. The rubrics keep a rhythm you can plan your visits around.
  • The developer stays the voice of development. The person doing the work is the one talking about it.
egm
gamedev
community
Oct 01 13:25
Vote of the Week #1: which editor feature is essential?
Level required:
Observer
egm
gamedev
indiedev
voteoftheweek
Sep 28 15:06
The Editor and the Engine: Two Processes
Level required:
Observer
egm
gamedev
indie games
game engine
no-code
2d
devlog
Sep 22 06:15
Behavior Models: An Empty Object Becomes Anything
Level required:
Observer
egm
gamedev
indie games
game engine
no-code
2d
devlog
Sep 14 15:02
The Event Sheet: If, Then, Else
Level required:
Observer
egm
gamedev
indie games
game engine
no-code
2d
devlog
Sep 06 13:58
The Scene Is a JSON File
Level required:
Observer
egm
gamedev
indie games
game engine
no-code
2d
devlog
Subscription levels4

Observer

$3 per month
You’ll watch how the editor and engine are being developed.
 
▪ Access to Discord and the #guild channel + the “Observer” role
▪ A weekly developer diary text post on Mondays
▪ Project status updates
▪ Participation in polls
+ chat

Creator

$7 per month
Early builds of the editor, work-in-progress stages, and content that won’t make it to public channels.
 
▪ Everything from the Observer + the “Creator” role
▪ Early access to prototype builds
▪ Exclusive development screencasts as they become available
+ chat

Researcher

$11 per month
Maximum access to track progress and the ability to influence the process.
 
▪ Everything from the Creator + the “Researcher” role
▪ The ability to propose and vote on ideas
▪ Participation in alpha testing
+ chat
Subscription Spots Are Limited

Guardian

$18 per month
You believe in the project and help it grow. Your name has been associated with it from the very beginning.
 
▪ Everything from the Explorer tier + the “Guardian” role
▪ Your name listed in the “Guardians” section (on the website and in the About section of the builds)
▪ Monthly text-based Q&A (the developer answers questions in the Discord channel)
▪ Access to draft documentation and design files
+ chat
Limited (50 remaining)
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