Data Management

The Import/Export page in the Studio sidebar is the hub for JSON export/import and project-level RPG Maker imports. There are also in-context importers directly inside the zone editor for maps, tilesets, and sprite sheets.

JSON Export#

Export all your game definition data as a single JSON file.

• One click — downloads a timestamped JSON file.
• What's included — 25 definition tables: items, abilities, mobs, skills, recipes, resource nodes & spawn rules, mob spawn rules, loot tables, status effects, zones, world config, NPCs, quests, achievements, pets, pet abilities, pet traits, mounts, crafting stations, world events, skill XP rewards, crops, biomes, and wild pet spawn rules.
• Selective export — pass a list of table keys to export only a subset.
• Not included — player characters, inventories, chat logs, and other live runtime data. Media assets (images, audio) are referenced by ID and not embedded.

JSON Import#

Import a previously exported JSON file.

Important: JSON import is additive. The importer uses INSERT ... ON CONFLICT DO NOTHING, which means:

• New rows are inserted.
• Existing rows with the same ID are left untouched — the import does not overwrite or merge into them.
• Rows in the database that aren't in the import file are never deleted.

If you want to fully replace a table, delete the existing rows from the admin CRUD page first, then import.

The import result report lists:

• Rows inserted per table.
• Skipped tables (unknown keys or empty arrays).
• Per-table errors (parse failures, constraint violations).

RPG Maker Import (Whole Project)#

The RPG Maker Auto Import modal ingests an entire RPG Maker project folder at once. Supports MZ, MV, VX Ace, and VX — the modal auto-detects the version from the project's System.json / System.rvdata2 / System.rvdata file.

An RPG Maker U2U project imports through the same window, in the desktop Studio and in the online editor: its maps keep their heights, terraces, blocks and events. See Bring Your RPG Maker U2U Maps.

It works in both editors, by two different routes. The modal picks the right one for you and shows only the controls that can actually work:

The hosted route exists because a project's data alone runs to several megabytes — far past what a single request may carry — so the browser parses it into compact data first and sends your art directly to your project's storage. Same importer, same results either way.

How to Use#

1. Open Import/Export → RPG Maker Import (or the Studio shows a banner when it detects an RPG Maker project folder next to the app).
2. Point it at your project — the folder that contains the project's data folder:
   • Desktop Studio — Browse… opens a native folder picker, or paste the path directly, then click Scan Folder.
   • Hosted editor — click Choose Project Folder… and pick the folder. Your browser will ask you to confirm before it reads it; nothing is uploaded until you start the import.
3. The importer reads the project's data/ directory and reports what it found.
4. Pick an import mode:
   • Append (default) — adds new rows without touching what's already there. This is the safe option and the one you want for a re-import.
   • Replace — deletes existing RPG Maker–tagged rows before importing, for a clean slate. This is destructive: anything you have edited on a previously imported row goes with it. Only pick it when you genuinely want the earlier import gone. Replace only ever removes rows an earlier import created — a zone you built yourself is never deleted, even when it shares a map's name — and before it runs, Review & Delete… shows you exactly what will go ("This will delete N zones, M chunks and K events") with a separate Delete & Import click to confirm.
5. Toggle which categories to import. You can disable any of these individually:

6. Click Import. It returns a per-category count + any warnings. In the hosted editor the art is uploaded to your project first, and the modal names the step it's on — a large project takes a few minutes, so leave the tab open. Art already in your project is recognised and skipped, which makes a second import over the same project much quicker.
7. When it finishes, the modal offers Reload Game Data so the running game server picks up the new content without a restart.

How Skills and Enemies Come Across#

Skills become abilities that do what the skill did:

A formula with no flat part — a.mat * 4 — imports as Base Damage 0 with a Scaling Ratio of 4, and still flies, bursts and volleys like any damage spell.

Weapons and armour bring all eight parameters. Six copy straight across (Max HP, Max MP, Attack, Defense, Magic Power, Magic Resist); the other two are rescaled, because the engine stores them as fractions:

Items imported before this change carry the raw numbers (a LUK 160 ring reading Crit Chance 160 — always a critical hit). Re-import in Replace mode, or fix Crit Chance and Attack Speed on those items by hand.

Enemies bring their rewards, not only their stats:

• The import report lists what didn't fit — a formula that reads a variable, a skill that calls a common event, a state or item the project doesn't have, an enemy that scaled across a level range (it arrives at the bottom of the range).
• Re-importing never overwrites your edits. Append mode skips skills and enemies that already exist.
• Replace mode only prunes imported zones, and shows the count first. Only zones, items, mobs, abilities, states, tilesets and actor NPCs that an earlier RPG Maker import created are deleted; a zone you made by hand that shares a map's name is left alone and the summary tells you so. The confirm step shows the exact delete counts before anything runs, and each delete step is all-or-nothing: if one fails, the import stops with a message naming the step and nothing has been removed.

How Switches and Variables Come Across#

RPG Maker keeps switches and variables in two separate numbered lists. Your game has one list of event variables, where an on/off variable is a switch. The import fills it like this:

• Every imported event points at the same ids. "Control Variables 12" in an RPG Maker event becomes a change to variable 5012, and a page condition on variable 12 checks variable 5012. Don't renumber imported variables by hand, or the events stop matching them.
• Why Player scope: an RPG Maker save belongs to one player, so a switch like "Talked to the guard" is that player's progress. Change a variable to Global in Events → Variables if the whole world should share it (a world boss being down, a gate everyone opens).
• Text does not come across. RPG Maker lets a script put text in a variable. An imported variable is always an Integer, and the import never creates a text variable — see Variable types.

How Battles, Scripts and Plugin Commands Come Across#

Three kinds of RPG Maker event command cannot do here what they did in RPG Maker. The import keeps all three, marks them in the event editor, and counts them in the import report.

How the troop of a battle comes across:

Can Escape and Can Lose are carried over as they were ticked in RPG Maker.

Where you see it:

• In the import report. When the import finishes, the Warnings list has one line per map, for example Map "Forest": 2 battles converted (no battle is fought yet: each counts as a win); 3 script commands and 1 plugin command will not run. There is one line for the project's common events too. The Import Summary adds the totals: Battles Converted, Script Commands Not Run and Plugin Commands Not Run. A map with none of the three has no line. The map editor's one-map import (Import RPG Maker Map) shows the same line for its map, first in its list of warnings, named after the file you dropped (Map "Map003": …).
• In the event editor. Each of these commands carries a badge in the command list: Auto-win on a battle, Not run yet on its If Escape and If Lose branches, Not run on a Script or Plugin Command. Open the command to read the full explanation. See Battle Processing.
• In Project Health. Every event and common event that holds one is listed — see Project Health.

Things to know:

• A battle's rewards are given without a fight. Whatever your event does under If Win (gold, items, a self switch, a quest step) happens as soon as the player triggers the event. Until turn-based battles for players are available, guard anything valuable another way, or leave the event switched off.
• If Escape and If Lose do not run yet. Their commands are kept exactly as imported.
• Scripts and plugin commands are not converted for you. Rebuild what they did with event commands. One script is converted: the common bag-size call ($game_actors[1].base_inv += 5) imports as Change Bag Slots. The Script condition of a Conditional Branch and the Script operand of Control Variables are different: those run, in the event expression language.
• Import troops with the events. If you import events without ticking Troops, each battle names a party that does not exist; Project Health lists those as warnings. It does not stop a publish: the publish check lists them and asks for Publish anyway.
• Publishing an imported project. Commands that never run and battles that count as a win are not listed one by one in the publish check. It shows one note with the counts and does not ask for Publish anyway over them.
• Your game server has to be up to date. What an event does in game is decided by the game server. A server that has not yet updated to the release that introduced Battle Processing does not know the command and runs the commands for every outcome one after the other, whatever the editor's badge says. Managed servers update by themselves when nobody is online; if you host your own, update it before you publish an imported project.
• Projects imported before this version still hold battles and plugin commands as comments that read [MZ Code 301] …. In those, no battle starts and the commands for every outcome run one after the other. Project Health lists them. Import the project again to convert them (see the Replace note above: Replace deletes what the earlier import created).

What Else Gets Imported#

Along with the toggles above, the importer also reads:

• img/parallaxes/*.png — parallax backgrounds assigned to zones.
• img/characters/*.png — character sprite sheets, cut into individual characters and linked to imported events.
• Tilesets.json — used to map each RPG Maker tileset ID to the correct ED5 tileset definitions so imported maps render with the right art.

What Gets Split Up#

Your project's art rarely arrives in the shape you want to work with. A single character file holds eight people; a face file holds eight portraits. The import cuts them apart for you, so what lands in your library is the individual character, not the sheet it came in.

A file whose name starts with $ holds a single character, and the import respects that. A ! prefix is remembered on the asset but does not change how it is cut.

Split characters are trimmed to their artwork, using one frame size for the whole character rather than trimming each frame separately — that is what stops a walk cycle from bobbing as it plays.

What This Changes About Your Imported Maps#

Imported map events point at the exact character they were authored with. Before, an event using the fifth person on a shared sheet showed whoever happened to be first. Dialogue portraits work for the same reason: a Show Text command that names a face now shows that face.

Imported actors arrive with their walking sprite and their portrait already set, taken from the character and face their RPG Maker record names. If you have since chosen your own sprite or portrait for one of them, re-importing leaves your choice alone.

Packing Art Into Texture Atlases#

An import can add hundreds of separate images, and until they are packed together your game fetches them one at a time. So the import finishes by packing them.

• Leave Pack imported art into texture atlases ticked (it is on by default) and the import packs only the zones it touched, showing its progress as it goes.
• Untick it if you are importing repeatedly and would rather pack once at the end from Assets → Atlas Packer.
• If packing fails it is reported as a warning, not an error. Your project still works; it just loads its art less efficiently until you pack it.

Importing the Same Project Again#

Re-importing is the normal way to pick up importer improvements, so it is built to be safe and quick:

• Split assets keep the same identity, so nothing is duplicated.
• Nothing you have added or edited is deleted or overwritten — re-importing only fills gaps.
• Art already in your project is recognised by its contents and is not uploaded again.
• Sheets already cut are not cut again.

Warnings You Might See#

Collision and Tile Properties#

Each tileset carries the tile flags you set in RPG Maker's Tileset tab, and the importer brings them across:

Passage is resolved exactly as RPG Maker does — upper layers decide first, and a ★ tile falls through to whatever is drawn beneath it.

RPG Maker's four passage arrows are four sides, not a yes/no. A bridge blocks its two long edges so you can't walk off into the river; a cliff top blocks the drop; a counter blocks its back. All of those are tiles you stand on, and only a tile blocked on all four sides is one you can't — and a tile blocked on all four is solid: nothing may stand on it or move through it.

Diagonal movement honours those sides. A diagonal step is a shortcut across one of two L-shaped routes, and players may only take it when at least one of those routes is open — so nobody slips between two tree trunks or around a fence corner that is shut both ways.

The same flags also land on the imported object definitions themselves — the B–E sheet cells that appear in the Objects panel. An impassable tile imports as an impassable object, ★ becomes draw on top, and Ladder / Bush carry across, so hand-placing an imported object on a new tile behaves like the original did in RPG Maker. Object definitions created by an earlier import are all-passable — re-import to refresh them.

Re-import to pick this up. Maps imported before this shipped were written without their collision, and importing only ever writes new data — it never revisits maps already in your world. Run the import again over the same project to replace them.

Regions#

Region IDs painted in RPG Maker (the R layer) come across as biomes — the same system the zone editor's Region layer paints. Every region number used anywhere in your project becomes a biome named Region N with its own color, and each imported tile keeps its region assignment. Switch the zone editor's layer toolbar to Region to see the imported territories, and repaint them with the same brush you use for hand-authored regions. Renaming or recoloring a Region N biome is safe — a later re-import keeps your changes.

Maps imported before this shipped carried their region IDs as hidden tile attributes only, so the Region view showed nothing. Re-import over the same project to bring them into view.

VX and VX Ace projects need their RTP. Those versions keep the standard tilesets (Outside_A1, Dungeon_B, …) in a shared Run Time Package rather than in the project, and a sheet the importer cannot find imports as blank terrain. It looks for an installed RTP, an RTP folder placed inside the project, and the ED5_RPGMAKER_RTP_DIR environment variable — and names every sheet it could not resolve in the import warnings.

• IconSet.png (img/system or Graphics/System) — imported once as an icon sheet, and every item, weapon, armor, skill and state keeps its RPG Maker icon as a reference to its cell on that sheet (24px cells for VX Ace, 32px for MV/MZ). No slicing into hundreds of files — one sheet serves them all, in the editor and in-game alike. You can re-pick any icon later, from either place an icon is chosen: in the Media Manager, open an image and press Pick icon cell; on a small inline picker, press Sheet. Both open the same grid — type the cell size once (e.g. 64 for 64×64) and click the cell you want.

VX Ace and VX Projects#

VX Ace (.rvdata2) and VX (.rvdata) projects import directly from the Data/ folder — you do not need to export them to JSON first. Point the folder picker at the project root (the folder containing Game.rvproj2) and the importer reads the binary files itself.

Two differences from MZ/MV are handled for you:

If a single data file is corrupt, the import no longer stops — that file is reported under Warnings and everything else still imports. Check the Warnings list after any VX-era import.

The RTP (why a map can import with no terrain art)#

VX and VX Ace projects don't ship the standard tilesets. Sheets like Outside_A1, Dungeon_B and Inside_A2 live in the shared RTP (Run Time Package) that RPG Maker installs once and every project borrows from — your project folder only contains the art you added yourself. Check your project's Game.ini for a line like RTP=RPGVXAce.

The importer looks for each referenced sheet in this order:

1. Your project's own Graphics/Tilesets folder.
2. An RTP folder placed inside the project (handy when sharing a project with someone who has no RTP installed — copy the RTP's Graphics folder to <project>/RTP/Graphics).
3. The installed RTP (Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Enterbrain\...), plus the Steam install location.
4. The folder named by the ED5_RPGMAKER_RTP_DIR environment variable, which overrides all of the above.

In the hosted editor, only option 2 exists. Steps 3 and 4 look at the machine running the editor, which there is our server, not yours — it has no RPG Maker installed and never will. So before importing a VX-era project on the web, copy your RTP's Graphics folder into the project as <project>/RTP/Graphics. Your browser then uploads the borrowed sheets along with the project's own art — and only the ones your tilesets actually name, so an RTP's hundreds of unused sheets cost you nothing.

If a sheet can't be found anywhere, the import tells you: you'll get a warning naming the sheet, the tileset that uses it, and — when the RTP simply isn't installed — what to do about it. Maps that use a missing sheet still import with their full layout, collision and events; they just have no art to draw the terrain with, so they open looking empty. Install the RTP (or point ED5_RPGMAKER_RTP_DIR at it) and re-run the import to fill them in.

Custom B/C/D/E object sheets that aren't the stock 512×512 are accepted too, as long as their size is a whole number of tiles.

How States Map#

RPG Maker state semantics translate onto real engine behavior, not approximations:

VX Ace stores stat modifiers under features; they import the same as MZ traits, so a VX Ace Poison keeps its authored drain rate. A step count entered while Remove by Walking is unchecked is ignored, exactly as RPG Maker ignores it.

Known Limitations#

• RPG Maker BGM/BGS audio is not imported automatically — add it through the Media Manager if you want it.
• XP-era tilesets are auto-converted to the VX/MZ quarter-47 layout during import.
• Ruby Marshal formats (VX Ace / VX) are read through a built-in Marshal parser; extremely obscure custom plugin data may not round-trip.
• VX Ace has 3 tile layers to MZ's 4, so nothing lands on ED5's topmost tile layer from a VX-era map — you can still paint it yourself in the zone editor.
• State traits with no engine equivalent (skill-type seals, attack elements, special flags) still import the rest of the state and note the skipped trait codes under Warnings.
• Element resistances are matched by element name. A state that resists "Lightening" finds nothing if your project's element is called "Lightning" — the import warns and the rest of the state still lands. Rename either side and re-import to connect them.
• A state's own turn count only becomes a duration when RPG Maker would use it. With Auto-removal Timing set to None the state has no clock at all, exactly as in RPG Maker: it stays until something removes it — walking it off, leaving combat, or taking damage.

RPG Tools Import#

Separate auto-import flow for projects from the RPG Tools editor (look for a data/ folder with Stats.json and/or Items.json).

Open Import/Export → RPG Tools Import, browse to the project folder, pick Append or Replace, then toggle categories:

Map tile images and object images are pulled from the project folder automatically, added to the media library under /rpgtools-tiles and /rpgtools-objects, and wired up as ED5 tileset / map-object definitions. On hosted (Studio Web) projects the importer only keeps the images your maps actually reference and streams them to Supabase Storage as content-addressed URLs (not inlined base64), so imports stay within upload limits.

Character Sheets Are Cut Into Per-Animation Sheets#

An RPG Tools character or equipment sheet is one enormous image — around ten thousand pixels square — holding every animation the pack ships. Your game only ever plays one animation at a time, and a sheet that size has to be shrunk before a graphics card will accept it, which is why imported characters used to look soft.

The import now cuts each of those sheets into one small sheet per animation. You do not have to do anything: characters and equipment pieces render at full resolution afterwards. Creature sheets use a different layout and are imported as they are.

If a sheet is too large to cut where the import is running, it is kept whole and the import says so — the character still works, it is just the older, softer result.

Packing Art Into Texture Atlases#

Same as the RPG Maker import: Pack imported art into texture atlases is ticked by default and runs once, after every map has finished importing, on only the zones the import touched. Untick it to pack later from Assets → Atlas Packer.

In-Zone Importers#

These importers live inside the zone editor so you can bring in a single map or a single tileset without running the full project import.

Per-Map RPG Maker Import#

In the zone editor, File → Import RPG Maker Map opens a modal where you can drop:

• A single Map###.json.
• Optionally, Tilesets.json from the same project so blocks resolve correctly.
• Optionally, the matching img/tilesets/*.png files so missing tileset definitions can be auto-created.
• Optionally, img/characters/*.png files so event graphics render with cropped character sub-sheets.

You can also map RPG Maker region IDs to ED5 biomes before applying.

Per-Map RPG Tools Import#

Same idea for RPG Tools: drop a single map .json plus its catalog .json. The modal auto-matches each tile image to existing ED5 tilesets by tag or name, falls back to creating new fake tilesets from media items, and flags any unresolved tiles so you can pick something manually before applying.

Static Tile Import#

For one-off tile art (not from RPG Maker), Static Tile Import in the zone editor lets you:

• Upload a single PNG and slice it into fake tileset definitions (select the cells you want).
• Upload multiple PNGs in batch mode — each file becomes its own 1×1 static tileset.

Imported tilesets land in the media library under /imported-static and can be tagged to a biome.

RPG Maker Tileset Spritesheet Import#

Separate from the whole-project flow, the RPG Maker Importer Panel in the zone editor takes a single RPG Maker tileset PNG (A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, or B/C/D/E) and:

• Auto-detects the sheet type and dimensions.
• Lets you pick which blocks to import.
• Supports per-block overrides for waterfall and overlay autotile types.
• Converts XP-era tilesets to VX-layout quarter-47 on the fly.

A3 roofs and walls. An A3 sheet alternates rows of roofs and wall sides. Both are drawn the way RPG Maker draws them: each block is a 2×2 tile piece, and its edges follow only the four direct neighbours (up, down, left, right). Roof blocks import with the Roof autotile type and paint on the floor (or overlay) layer; wall-side blocks import as Wall tilesets. You can also pick Roof (RPG Maker A3) by hand in the Tileset Creator's autotile type list for any 2×2 roof-style block.

Gotcha — roofs imported before this fix. Roofs imported earlier were stored as ground autotiles and drew their bottom third from the wall row beneath them on the sheet. They are repaired automatically when your project's database updates (desktop: on the next start; Studio Web: on the next site update). Your game server picks the fix up when it restarts on the new version, or when you Publish. A roof you marked as an overlay or changed to another type by hand is left alone — set it to Roof (RPG Maker A3) in the Tileset Creator.

Export-Less Authoring (Assets from Scratch)#

Not an importer, but worth mentioning alongside asset pipelines. The Studio includes:

• Pixel Editor — paint pixel art with layers, frames, onion skinning, palettes.
• Sprite Editor — assemble a character sheet with standard (idle/walk) and combat (attack/hurt/death/cast) animation presets.
• Tile Maker — crop a sheet into a tileset definition with collision and terrain-tag metadata.

When importing a sprite sheet, the Sprite Import dialog maps each animation row to a named animation slot:

Anything authored in these editors goes straight into the media library and becomes selectable from every content form (items, mobs, NPCs, tilesets, etc.).