Emaki: 10 Painted Scroll Scenes for RPG Maker MZ

Emaki is an RPG Maker MZ plugin that paints what the player did as a Japanese handscroll: 16 figures, 10 compositions and 6 pigment sets, all drawn in code.

Commercial use in your games is included, and no art is needed: the plugin draws every figure, cloud, roof, wave and brushed letter itself. Each act your game marks becomes a scene in ink line and flat mineral colour between bands of gold cloud, with the act's own words brushed on a text sheet beside it. The player unrolls the scroll from right to left on a lacquer table, and it grows as the game goes on.

Your words choose the picture

Type an act into the Paint an act command, or tie it to a switch or a variable your game already uses. Emaki reads the words for a composition, a cast and a season.

• Composition: audience, vow, procession, battle, crossing, siege, labour, banquet, judgement or pilgrimage. "The siege of Akasaka keep" gets a palisade and a watchtower.
• Cast: name someone and they are in the picture. "The monk and the fox" has both. The demon appears only when the words call for him, so a straight samurai story never meets him.
• Season: "The first snow at the border gate" is painted in the snow set, with the snow falling.

It reads words, not sentences, so "The bridge at Uji" has no bridge. You can always choose the composition and the pigment set yourself.

What is on the scroll

• Sixteen figures, each with its own silhouette: lord, retainer, court lady, mounted warrior, monk, farmer, boatman, archer, messenger, child, elder, demon, fox, merchant, shrine maiden and swordsman.
• Five grounds: bare paper, pine shore, waves, a mountain path, and a temple floor with its roof blown away.
• Six pigment sets: mineral colour, ink and wash, gold leaf, autumn with leaves in the air, snow, and an aged scroll browned and foxed.
• A brushed hand for your titles, 26 letters and 10 digits, and a vermilion seal on every act.

Built for a real save file

Each act is painted once and frozen into the save, so a later update can never repaint a scroll a player already has. A scroll keeps from 4 to 200 acts (40 by default), and the next act is painted a slice per frame before it comes into view.

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Compatibility: the question you actually have

Tested against RPG Maker MZ with the stock scripts unmodified, verified by running the plugin in the real engine rather than only in tests.

Plugin Manager order: EmakiRender.js, EmakiCorpus.js, EmakiFigure.js, EmakiScroll.js, EmakiScene.js, EmakiBind.js.

This order reads sensibly in the list and nothing depends on it. Each file finds the others the first time it needs them, so any order works, including EmakiBind.js first (the order the in-engine and fresh-install tests load them in).

Core methods extended: 2 by saved-original prototype extension, none replaced: Game_Switches.prototype.onChange, Game_Variables.prototype.onChange.

Because nothing is clobbered, Emaki co-exists with other plugins that patch the same seams, including large suites.

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In the download: six raw, readable JavaScript files, a Readme listing every word the plugin listens for, and a licence for commercial use with no royalty. Read the full documentation before you buy.

From the same studio

• Arras: the same idea woven as a Norman hanging, for a European setting.
• Barrow: every death carves its own marker.
• Chronicle Core: branching quests, choices and faction reputation.

Written with AI assistance: the code, the graphics, the store images and the cover were made with AI tools. It contains no audio and no narrative text of its own.