Eldiron is a cross-platform creator for classic retro role-playing games (RPGs). Its primary goal is to enable the creation of RPGs reminiscent of the 1980s and 1990s while incorporating modern features such as multiplayer support, procedural content generation, and more.
Eldiron natively supports 2D (like Ultima 4/5), isometric, and first-person RPGs, allowing developers to craft a variety of experiences effortlessly.
Eldiron is open-source and licensed under the MIT License.
| 2D Example | 3D Example |
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- Design 2D maps in a Doom-style editor using vertices, linedefs, and sectors to create textured polygons.
- Quickly paint with tiles using the Rect tool, which automatically generates the necessary geometry as you work.
- Import your tilesets, define animations and metadata, and expand your tile collection. You can easily set tile properties—such as whether a tile is blocking—at any time. Visit our Patreon Shop for a growing collection of tilesets; your support helps the project thrive.
- Access all commands in Eldiron Creator through the Action list. Available actions update automatically based on your geometry selection or UI state, ensuring you always know which commands are ready to use.
- Program character and item behaviors, as well as advanced shaders, with intuitive visual node editors.
- Eldiron Creator is cross-platform, available for Windows, Linux, and macOS in the download section of the GitHub repo. Each release includes builds for all platforms, including the Web. An Xcode project is also provided for specialized iOS, macOS, and iPadOS builds.
Eldiron is free and open source under the MIT license — your support is greatly appreciated.
- 3D editing is seamlessly integrated into the editor, allowing you to create new geometry or extrude and edit surface profiles non-destructively.
- Render your scenes in 3D using the new GPU-based raytracer, featuring ambient occlusion, shadows, transparency, PBR materials, and day/night time simulation.
- The Action system is fully integrated with the geometry workflow, displaying all available actions for your current selection.
- Edit and extrude surfaces non-destructively, including carving holes for windows, recesses, and reliefs.
- Choose from isometric, first-person, or orbit cameras for flexible editing views.
- Paint with tiles on 3D surfaces using the Rect tool.
- Gizmos, visual helpers, and a new GPU-based renderer are in active development.
3D editing features are currently under heavy development.
- Create behavior visually with a node-based event system using simple drag and drop.
- React to world events (like a character entering a sector or a conversation starting) by breaking complex logic into small, manageable tasks.
- Choose from a wide range of built-in events and commands.
- The node system generates Python code. If you prefer to code directly in Python, an integrated Python editor is provided!
- Pixel art tiles are the foundation of all your projects, in both 2D and 3D. Import them from your tilesets or create and edit them in the integrated tile editor.
- Draw with tiles using the Rect tool—even in 3D, you can paint directly on surfaces.
- Tiles in 3D are rendered with PBR materials (Roughness, Metallic, Opacity, Emissive). Material attributes can currently be set with the Set Tile Materials action; soon you'll be able to paint directly with materials inside the tile editor.
- Focusing on tiles makes Eldiron both easy-to-use and powerful, recreating the look of those beloved games from the late 80s and 90s.
- Soon the tile editor will support procedural tile creation for fireballs, explosions, bricks, and more.
Eldiron provides powerful tools to make world building intuitive and fun.
If you have Rust installed, you can build Eldiron Creator simply via
cargo build --release --package creator
Linux:
Make sure these dependencies are installed: libasound2-dev libatk1.0-dev libgtk-3-dev
The source and all assets I commissioned for Eldiron are licensed under the MIT.
Unless explicitly stated otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in Eldiron, shall be MIT licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.
If you’d like to support the Eldiron project, please consider joining my Patreon, join my GitHub Sponsor or send a Donation. Your support helps me continue development, commission tilesets, host databases and forums, and more.
