Considering coding a rpg game, but how to?

[durine]

How r u all? I kinda been gaming my whole life and you know what I realised? Many game devs or their bosses arent as knowledgeable about gaming (or passionate) as you would think they are. Many games I played look like whoever made them had no clue how to keep a player, so one would think that they didnt play much in their life.

 

Anyway, this and generally lack of entertainment from gaming lately (its because i played a lot) made me want to create my own RPG. This is the only (well,almost) genre ive been playing so this has to be game i will make lol. But how to do it? I know programming from school but all we were doing was just showing text in our 'application'. Seems like it didnt bring me closer to coding a game at all.

[Salerno]

It's good to have goals. Suggest you start hitting google to learn about it. Possibly a good start is https://www.gamedesigning.org/ which also gives some isight to some tools here https://www.gamedesigning.org/career/software/.

[SteveK]

It took a team of 100 people 6 full years to produce Skyrim, and that would be considered old hat by some today, especially compared to the Witcher 3. Therefore it's not coding you need to be worrying about, it's a bankrolling a huge team of professionals for several years to produce your game.

[Matzzon]

1 hour ago, SteveK said:

It took a team of 100 people 6 full years to produce Skyrim, and that would be considered old hat by some today, especially compared to the Witcher 3. Therefore it's not coding you need to be worrying about, it's a bankrolling a huge team of professionals for several years to produce your game.

That was exactly the bottom line. Everybody with a lot of cash can make a game.

[OneMoreFarang]

27 minutes ago, Matzzon said:

That was exactly the bottom line. Everybody with a lot of cash can make a game.

And let's not forget that they do this mostly to make a lot of money.

And how do they make a lot of money? They have to sell that game to a lot of people.

And how to sell something to a lot of people? Those gamers must be motivated to buy it. They must like the game or look at good reviews, their friends recommend it, etc.

So I guess we can assume game development companies talk to lots of gamers and find out what they want. Because that is what they will buy and that is the only way these companies make enough money to pay for the game development.

QED

[SteveK]

34 minutes ago, OneMoreFarang said:

And let's not forget that they do this mostly to make a lot of money.

And how do they make a lot of money? They have to sell that game to a lot of people.

And how to sell something to a lot of people? Those gamers must be motivated to buy it. They must like the game or look at good reviews, their friends recommend it, etc.

So I guess we can assume game development companies talk to lots of gamers and find out what they want. Because that is what they will buy and that is the only way these companies make enough money to pay for the game development.

QED

Make a good game, and you can make millions. But we aren't talking about the Atari 2600 anymore, you need a company of professionals to produce a modern RPG, and even then there's no guarantee your game will be well-received. Skyrim cost over $100 million to produce, and that was 9 years ago.

 

If you want to produce an RPG which will take the world by storm in 2020, you're gonna need a budget of $250 million.

Edited February 9, 2020 by SteveK

[codebunny]

Hah... do you know how many games that have huge development teams die on their ar$e in development, never turning a profit?

 

The essence of a good game is simple - addictiveness. You don't need these vast investments in staff and infrastructure, you need good vision and leadership.

 

If you really want to know how to make a game, you need more than just a bit of coding at school, you need vision and stamina, because depending on what you want to achieve you will have to through a lot to get it, but if you go get it, it's worth it.

 

I know people who can help, but are you worth putting in front of them?

what do you have to offer?

[OneMoreFarang]

39 minutes ago, codebunny said:

Hah... do you know how many games that have huge development teams die on their ar$e in development, never turning a profit?

 

The essence of a good game is simple - addictiveness. You don't need these vast investments in staff and infrastructure, you need good vision and leadership.

 

If you really want to know how to make a game, you need more than just a bit of coding at school, you need vision and stamina, because depending on what you want to achieve you will have to through a lot to get it, but if you go get it, it's worth it.

 

I know people who can help, but are you worth putting in front of them?

what do you have to offer?

He could just apply for a job at one of the existing game companies.

And if after a month or two he decides he can do everything so much better then they do then good luck with that.

But I guess he is afraid that they will just take his wonderful ideas and then do it without him. 555

[wolf81]

I'm a software dev, but mostly build "boring" business apps, since that's where the money is. Like you I still, at some point, want to focus on game programming. I tried a few times in the past and got quite far, but never finished any of the projects. The furthest I got was a quite complete Bomberman clone, but still quite buggy.

 

I also want to make an RPG someday and did some work in that regard. So with all this said, let me tell you the following.

 

Software development is hard. Game development is especially hard. 

 

If you want to make an RPG and you don't have millions to spend, you probably should first try to make an RPG in an Ultima style, for example. Limited animations, turn and grid based, simple sprites, etc… Assets for such a game can be downloaded for free from the internet from various sources. For example from the game Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (assets can be downloaded here and it's royalty free). Or you could for example download assets from other existing games and use that during development. But 3D is hard and if you're just starting out, it's best to avoid.

 

But I should also note RPGs can be complex. Trying to properly implement AD&D rules will be challenging for sure (but legally could be problematic anyways). There are also alternative rulesets our you could create your own.

 

You probably would want to focus on a very simple basic game at first. Perhaps just a rogue like with randomly generated dungeons. No real story, just combat. Just finishing such a game would be quite a feat already.

 

But to be honest, if you've never programmed, you should probably focus on some other, simpler games first. One recommendation I read before is that aspiring game programmers should start (from easy to hard) on the following games:

- Tetris: just to understand the basics of the game loop and capturing input 

- Breakout: for understanding collision detection and level design

- PacMan: for understanding basic AI

- Mario-like sidescroller: scrollable screen, more complicated AI and collisions, etc…

You should also think on what engine or framework you'd like to use. There are many choices and some (Unreal, Unity) are more complicated than others (LÖVE, SpriteKit). But you can initially forget about 3D engines in my opinion. Try to use the simplest engines possible that are still powerful. There are also tools like Gamemaker, which are probably really easy to use, but might be limited in some ways.

 

You also NEED to read the following excellent book: https://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/contents.html

That book will explain some patterns that are immediately relevant when starting to work on a game like Tetris (eg for pretty much every game you need to use the Game Loop and Update patterns) . If you want to start program an RPG without knowing the basics, it'll be very hard for sure, probably impossible to finish.

 

 

 

Edited February 10, 2020 by wolf81

[ChaiyaTH]

If you want to make the original RPG games that are text based on the web, you can do almost everything with HTML, CSS, PHP etc.
There are actually even many pre made games in these programming languages, you could get for a few hundred and then start adjusting entirely.

 

It is easier to learn to code (read and adjust things) than having to write everything from scratch yourself, so I guess that could be your first challenge.

If you want to buy a maffia RPG game script I can help, just send me a PM. Will cost less than 5K baht on average.

[tgw]

have a look at twine, sugarcube for an HTML-based framework

[CraigInBangkok]

If you are serious I think you want to look at a game engine which gives you a basic framework to build your game in. If you know C++ (or even if you dont) have a look at unreal engine or unity(which is C# I believe). Unreal or Unity is what most indie game devs use and even some of the bigger AAA studios use unreal  ... I have 20 plus years experience in the vfx industry and  I've been doing a solo project for the last couple of years in unreal. Its a huge task and its not really the coding that is so difficult for me, it's more 3d asset creation models/animations and making eveything work together that just takes so much time. I can also tell you that its great to have ideas but how they work in game is another thing and every time you add more functionality your game framework becomes exponentially more complex, so plan it well and try to keep it as simple as you can. 

 

EDIT ... I can say the great thing about Unreal is the community, the unreal slackers discord channel is great at helping all skill levels. I'd also add, if you plan to go 2d avoid unreal and go with unity.

Edited March 11, 2020 by CraigInBangkok

[WhatsNext]

I know this is an old thread but it was very entertaining, its like saying "i like flying, can you point me how to build an airplane, thanks !".

[Pravda]

There was a good doc on Netflix about this very subject... Forgot the name. 

 

In a nutshell, creating a simple game from your basement takes years of development which will probably give you long term health issues due to poor diet, stress and bad hygiene. Most people in this documentary were quite determined and some of them became millionaires, but that's not something I would want to do unless I'm 100% passionate about it. 

 

Have you seen bandersnatch? 

[Motoko]

To OP: design and coding are different things. If you want to design an adventure game, there are tools downloadable online. This is something I started a few times, but never finished, despite some effort into world building and characterisation.