I was just thinking into the future as I plan out my want to do program projects in the future, and I was just wondering what you guys think about RPG/Action Adventures as a game to develop, maybe to sell on cart or just to release a ROM of. It seems that now since we know how the NES's RPG/Action Adv. games were popular now maybe we could take the good out of each one and put it into one mega-awesome RPG game that would be amazing......
And something else I might want to add, It would probably attract alot of non-NES gamers in because not that they don't like the NES but because those RPG gamers play every RPG for every system it seems
I was just wondering what you guys thought, I was thinking it would be pretty darn cool to have something a little more original then just a platformer or a puzzle game, because a RPG can be a very emotional game with a great storyline.....
I need to finish my project before I start thinking ahead like this but I just don't like to keep such possibly amazing ideas in my head
Famous last words:
"I'll go write an RPG!"
Seen it happen too many times.
I think it's more work than almost any other type of game. Designing for balance and play-testing would be non-trivial, and to make it open-ended would take some good design work to make it not stupidly hard or boringly easy. The system programming doesn't seem all that bad, once you have a solution for using permanent states for stuff that is usually off-screen (events, treasure chests), but I imagine there will be plenty of other issues to run into. Bug testing a game that takes hours to play could potentially (inevitably?) be really repetitive.
Yeah technically, it doesn't sound like too much to handle, but creatively it sounds like a truly massive effort. One person trying to handle it all sounds like a lifetime's work.
Yeah tue and it would be a pain for all of those events :/
And I tink those words are also "I wana make a game!" because thats where alot more failure happens, before anything happens at all XD
I think you should DOOOOOOOOO it. I love RPGs and I would not mind of buying your game if you make it a decent RPG XD.
I think it's a great idea. Know what you're getting into, though. Way back in highschool (approx 10 years ago), I tried to make a Dragon Warrior style rpg in QuickBASIC. I did not finish the project, because I had exceedingly unrealistic ideas of how long it would take to complete. When I got into NES programming, I almost started with an RPG as my first project, but observed that successful homebrew developers (in most cases) start with simpler projects before moving on to more ambitious ones. I didn't want to start quite as simple as a puzzle game so I chose a platformer as my first project. I hope some day to make a more sophisticated game like an action adventure, though.
Am I the only one that thinks RPGs are piss easy compared to other genres?
The only thing that makes them take longer is the content (more text, more enemies, more maps).
The actual game engine is like infinitely easier.
Yeah I am just thinkiung into the future if I do a RPG game after my first WIP....It depends on how much I improve or if I should do another easy game before getting into a RPG.
Yeah it did seam a easier game engine, but one problem is that each character in the game saying different things per level, that'd take a TON of nametables and such and would just be so annoying :/
Well we'll see but I was just thinking maybe we could maybe make it as a group project, have a couple of people write the program and have others write the story, not that others want to do a RPG too but it would be neat to see such a community project someday. I really want to play a better RPG then Crystalis and can't find any
Well well see what ever happens in the future I was just tossing the idea into the stew.....
Quote:
The only thing that makes them take longer is the content (more text, more enemies, more maps).
You say it like the content create itself once you have a working engine.
That's the
hard part of game development. Anyone could whip up a good enough engine for any kind of game really. But making a good game takes so much more. And making a good RPG even more so then many other genres.
Quote:
That's the hard part of game development. Anyone could whip up a good enough engine for any kind of game really. But making a good game takes so much more. And making a good RPG even more so then many other genres.
I fully agree with the first part. Altough writing a RPG engine sounds easier to me than an action game engine, as you don't have to deal with AI of enemies : The enemies will do stuff like physical attacks and cast spells, and you won't have to deal with them moving around (which is hard).
One thing which is very important is that
you should have enough elements for a whole game before coding it. That's what I did really wrong with my first project : Dragon Skill. I only had elements for one level, coded it, and found myself kind of "trapped".
Also I don't think NES RPGs are that popular... in fact most are a bit annoying to play by todays standard. Even FF3 which is without a doubt the very best has not very intuitive menus, and some parts of it are ridiculously hard if you don't have a FAQ/Walkthrough.
I am planning myself to write at least 2 RPGs for the NES (one tactical and the other turn based with random battles), let's see if they ever get completed.
The amount of work needed for content IS pretty insane. If you feel safer as an artist than as a programmer an RPG could be for you.
Nevertheless, I don't recommend choosing a too ambitious project either. No need for a 20+ hours RPG that may or may not bore people to death. Don't try to write the most epic story ever, keep it modest and sweet and instead add a unique twist to the gameplay that makes it fun. That's the kind of game I'd like to play, anyway.
What I'd like to see is a 2-player mode. Walking around together would be super cool if you can spare one sprite palette or make both players use the same. If that doesn't work you could at least have some characters in battles be controllable by the second player like in later Final Fantasy games.
I'd love a decent action battle system, though. Thinking of Seiken Densetsu 3, but a little less dependent on character stats and more dependent on the player's skill.
Disch wrote:
Am I the only one that thinks RPGs are piss easy compared to other genres?
The only thing that makes them take longer is the content (more text, more enemies, more maps).
The actual game engine is like infinitely easier.
It certainly seems that way to me. Seems very straight forward to make a turn based type RPG. But something more like Secret of Mana SNES is probably quite a bit more work than something like Final Fantasy NES. So it depends on the RPG style and how involved you choose to make it.
65024U wrote:
Yeah I am just thinkiung into the future if I do a RPG game after my first WIP....It depends on how much I improve or if I should do another easy game before getting into a RPG.
Yeah it did seam a easier game engine, but one problem is that each character in the game saying different things per level, that'd take a TON of nametables and such and would just be so annoying :/
Well we'll see but I was just thinking maybe we could maybe make it as a group project, have a couple of people write the program and have others write the story, not that others want to do a RPG too but it would be neat to see such a community project someday. I really want to play a better RPG then Crystalis and can't find any
Well well see what ever happens in the future I was just tossing the idea into the stew.....
Does it have to be a big RPG? And if it's just distributed on rom, why not makes it in chapters? That way, start off with a fairly short/small RPG. You know, something akin to Hylide (not being shitty, but being short). I think you can beat the NES version in less than 2 hours once you know where everything is. Something like that. But Memblers is right, it'll be more about content and design, than technical prowess. At least you don't have to worry about physics and gameplay mechanics like you would an action game (which tweaking to even get a decent level of play, is a bitch IMO).
Yeah well the hardst part would be changing custom stuff that happens for each level which if we tried I bet it wouldn't be too hard ar all, just have a tabel with a certain 4 bytes that have the Map number, X position, Y position, and the 4th byte a certain action that needs to happen maybe? Like you have to find something hidden do like 4,20,20,1 where 4 would be the map #, 20 and 20 would be X and Y location and 1 would be a flag that means "Just stand on that spot" or 2 would be "Talk to the person who begins moving on that location", If we break it down like that and make lots of subroutines that are smart and can read the maps it shouldn't be too hard at all....
Gosh I need to be focusing on my other project which I need to make a sound engine for T.T Lol it's okay Im not trying to work on it at all yet, I'm waiting for summer so I don't have to worry about school stuff and can program it for long periods a day so I know better how my program works....I think you guys will love my ghetto game on the drawing board, it'll be very very fun and push sprites per screen limit to the max I think.....I need to work on my math to see how many characters I can get falling (Hint hint) ^_^
Disch wrote:
Am I the only one that thinks RPGs are piss easy compared to other genres?
The only thing that makes them take longer is the content (more text, more enemies, more maps).
The actual game engine is like infinitely easier.
Agreed 100% absolutely. Seriously, the hardest game type I think to write is something like the newer Castlevania games, which is what I'm going to move onto after my current project. They're really really hard because you not only have the complex platforming aspects, you have the RPG aspects to include as well. Oh, and not to mention if you're ambitious and want to have really impressive graphical effects on top of that. An RPG by itself though is so simple to make an engine for. The map engine usually doesn't scroll more than one direction at a time, rendering enemies isn't hard, as battles are usually one screen, and certainly rendering 16x16 pixel sprites on screen isn't hard sounding to me. Of course, I'm thinking of a game like Final Fantasy so it might be harder for a game with more complicated mechanics.
RPG is the one indie project that'd be cool to do, if done right.
The only problem is doing it right would be an immense amount of work.
If I was to ever get into SNESdev, RPG might be something interesting to look at nonetheless.
Okay so the hardest thing to get right is the balance.....Hmmm :/......I just wanted to have a good story, maybe include some inside jokes if this does happen XD
Well schools out in about a month, I'm going to try to get some programming done eventually as I haven't done any in a couple weeks....Once I get the sound engine done that I really need to work on, then I can start working on some engines and I'd love to do a simple RPG then just expand, expand, expand.
Heck not even a RPG game 100%, maybe just more of a quest game "Fetch me ye item: (Item name here)" and find someone that you have to get something else for and then once you do like 3 things you have the items to trade off to the other people and get the items the other needs, make it a chain in some parts, I've never really seen a game do that, it's usually just one at a time.
Quote:
Okay so the hardest thing to get right is the balance.....Hmmm :/......I just wanted to have a good story, maybe include some inside jokes if this does happen XD
In fact nobody here has ever completed a full RPG (and the ones who completed full games completed like really SIMPLE games) so the trurth is that nonbody really knowns. You'd have to ask someone who completed many different games to be sure which genre is easier/harder.
I fooled around with RPG maker for the PS a while back and I thought the balancing things was pretty difficult. Somethings to think about:
Modern RPGs tend to have a smoother leveling flow. The monsters you fight in one area are balanced enough that when you travel to another you are already leveled up enough to fight them.
On the contrary, older RPGs focused heavily on leveling up and had large gaps in monster strength. Remember the bridge in Dragon Warrior? Ever get unlucky and end up getting your ass handed to you by the first monster party you met in DW or Final Fantasy? Also, sometimes you'd have to level up until you got a spell you needed. Again, with Dragon Warrior, I remember a certain heal spell.
I made a choice (probably a mistake) of having variable party members you could gain or lose depending on your actions. That means I had to test the dungeons for balance with each party iteration.
You have to think about balance, but honestly I don't think you'd have to think about it anymore than you should for any good game.
Ian A wrote:
On the contrary, older RPGs focused heavily on leveling up and had large gaps in monster strength. Remember the bridge in Dragon Warrior? Ever get unlucky and end up getting your ass handed to you by the first monster party you met in DW or Final Fantasy?
DW, yes. Then again that game was 99.9% grinding, and 0.1% actual game.
FF, I disagree. It's a lot more balanced than people give it credit for. Maybe you have to fight around a
little bit for LIT2 or something before you go to the Marsh Cave, but after than you can sail through the rest of the game without any grinding and it plays very fairly.
Disch wrote:
FF, I disagree. It's a lot more balanced than people give it credit for. Maybe you have to fight around a little bit for LIT2 or something before you go to the Marsh Cave, but after than you can sail through the rest of the game without any grinding and it plays very fairly.
I only had it as a rental as a kid (I think it was like 60 bucks) and the farthest I made it was beating Astos, so I guess that explains it. Never tell your friends about a great rental where there is only one save.
Well, it helps if you know your way through the dungeons too, and which enemies are especially dangerous, and which enemies are worth spending your magic on.
And it depends on the party you have, too.
So I can see it seeming like it's too difficult for someone if they've never played it before.
But that's kind of typical of every genre besides RPGs. It's like there's some unwritten rule that if you ever actually die in an RPG, then it's too hard. But other games you can die in all the time and it's no problem.
What dish says' heavily depends on who you have in your party. If you have 2 or more fighters, what he says is definitely true. If you only have one fighter a thief and 2 mages a lot of level building is needed. If you want to go without any fighters... good luck.
Also this was about FF1, but FF2 has really really terrible balance, the game is barely playable (it was so obviously rushed and barely tested). I think a hack on romhacking.net fixes it tough.
65024U wrote:
Heck not even a RPG game 100%, maybe just more of a quest game "Fetch me ye item: (Item name here)" and find someone that you have to get something else for and then once you do like 3 things you have the items to trade off to the other people and get the items the other needs, make it a chain in some parts.
So in other words, you're cloning Animal Crossing for GameCube. That's a worthwhile project in its own right.
I was thinking soemthing like Zelda 2, better graphics, and no stupid action fighting screens :/ Maybe something FFish im not sure but I'd rather make a questing game instead I guess it would be better classified as.....A save game feature in a homebrew would be sweet, too.
Holy crap, this makes me want to do one even more but is just......Looks too insane XD Make me not want to do one now
http://www.piersolar.com/pier-solar-news.php
Wow, that game looks really impressive. Thanks for the link! I wonder if there are any similar projects currently in development for the SNES? I haven't looked around much.
65024U wrote:
Holy crap, this makes me want to do one even more but is just......Looks too insane XD Make me not want to do one now
http://www.piersolar.com/pier-solar-news.php
Do you know how long that game's been in development? Like 5+ years.
Dwedit wrote:
Famous last words:
"I'll go write an RPG!"
Seen it happen too many times.
When I started to learn NES development, I was thinking to make an RPG, but now I want to build a OS for it.
If Contiki didn't have a dramatic change in project scope from
version 1.x (for classic home computers) to
version 2.x (for networked sensors), an OS for an NES + PowerPak + NES232, similar to the one on Doctor PC Jr, might actually have been viable.
But yet programming NES RPG's only took a team of a couple people a couple months to 6 or so, Not very long for development, even though they did do it 8 hours a day 5 days a week for a job.If I do one, hell will freeze over if it's 1/10th as complex as that at release or any other, but then from there, just add on to the game's engine and make it alot better over inital release.
Yeah I'm pretty sure Dragon Warrior 1 and Final Fantasy 1 were developped by 4-5 people at most, and not even all of them were full time workers. However the credits for Final Fantasy 3 are already pretty long (although again most of them might not have worked full time all the way along).
Hmm that is true, they probably all weren't
I wonder why with that Pier solar game, 5 years of development, and sidequests are JUST getting put in :/ I mean.....5 years? Am I the only one that thinks it should have been LONGGGGG done, or atleast a proto version of the sidequest system added in? Well as long as it's a great game (Which it definently seems like) I guess it doesn't matter....
65024U wrote:
Hmm that is true, they probably all weren't
I wonder why with that Pier solar game, 5 years of development, and sidequests are JUST getting put in :/ I mean.....5 years? Am I the only one that thinks it should have been LONGGGGG done, or atleast a proto version of the sidequest system added in? Well as long as it's a great game (Which it definently seems like) I guess it doesn't matter....
People have their own lives and jobs, it's not like they're on it full time. And if you can't invest time in it constantly, you have periods where you'll go six months without doing anything.
I've been mildly interested in NES dev for about 5 years now with several game ideas in mind and I don't have anything to show for it!
I can definitely understand five years or more, especially when it's just a forum effort. It can be hard to convince everyone on the team that one person's ideas take precedence over the rest.
UncleSporky wrote:
65024U wrote:
Hmm that is true, they probably all weren't
I wonder why with that Pier solar game, 5 years of development, and sidequests are JUST getting put in :/ I mean.....5 years? Am I the only one that thinks it should have been LONGGGGG done, or atleast a proto version of the sidequest system added in? Well as long as it's a great game (Which it definently seems like) I guess it doesn't matter....
People have their own lives and jobs, it's not like they're on it full time. And if you can't invest time in it constantly, you have periods where you'll go six months without doing anything.
I've been mildly interested in NES dev for about 5 years now with several game ideas in mind and I don't have anything to show for it!
I can definitely understand five years or more, especially when it's just a forum effort. It can be hard to convince everyone on the team that one person's ideas take precedence over the rest.
Yeah but at this rate, if sidequests are just getting in, thats gona be like 7-8 years from init. develoment to release :/ I don't think any game in history has went that long from making to release, except unreleased prototypes XD
And look at the development team, thats like 10 people and apparently they definently know what they're doing (now?) :/
It is a great game though, just walking around in the demo now.....^_^
My #1 project, Dragon Skill has been in development since 5 years and 1 month (started on March 2005). I expected to complete the game in about 2 years and now 5 years later it's still far to being complete. The engine is completed, but the big issue is that actually creating enemies and coding their AI ended up infinitely more difficult than what I originally expected. The very hardest thing is bosses, you have to come up with an attack pattern and this is really difficult.
Another issue I'll soon run into is memory usage : Even tough I only coded about 1/3 of the enemies I'd like to see in the game and 2/3 of levels, and about half of the music, $8000-$e7ff is taken and only $e800-$ffff remains free (aproximatively) so only 18% of ROM space remains free. This is yet another problem anyway and is not related to time it takes to make the game.
For an RPG, there wouldn't be this issue because monsters would do simple things like attack and cast spells. However, there would probably be other things that you'd think they are easy before actually doing them, but that turns out to be infinitely harder. I haven't ever gone far in the development of a RPG (all I did is a lame attempt when I was 14ish before I decided to do Dragon Skill instead) so I don't know, you'd have to ask someone who did a complete RPG engine.
The reason I stopped doing it is that I was really bad at coding stuff back then, now I'd probably be able to code a RPG engine when the need will arise.
Bregalad wrote:
My #1 project, Dragon Skill has been in development since 5 years and 1 month (started on March 2005). I expected to complete the game in about 2 years and now 5 years later it's still far to being complete. The engine is completed, but the big issue is that actually creating enemies and coding their AI ended up infinitely more difficult than what I originally expected. The very hardest thing is bosses, you have to come up with an attack pattern and this is really difficult.
Another issue I'll soon run into is memory usage : Even tough I only coded about 1/3 of the enemies I'd like to see in the game and 2/3 of levels, and about half of the music, $8000-$e7ff is taken and only $e800-$ffff remains free (aproximatively) so only 18% of ROM space remains free. This is yet another problem anyway and is not related to time it takes to make the game.
For an RPG, there wouldn't be this issue because monsters would do simple things like attack and cast spells. However, there would probably be other things that you'd think they are easy before actually doing them, but that turns out to be infinitely harder. I haven't ever gone far in the development of a RPG (all I did is a lame attempt when I was 14ish before I decided to do Dragon Skill instead) so I don't know, you'd have to ask someone who did a complete RPG engine.
The reason I stopped doing it is that I was really bad at coding stuff back then, now I'd probably be able to code a RPG engine when the need will arise.
Ahh well the other is a little bit more but still, your one person. They're ten, and if each person coded one program over a 5 year period.....dangggg
So breglad, is bankswitching out of question because you could store the music in another part of the begining of the next ROM's space (33K Bytes In).....Im sure you know this but it seems like it may need it? Im not sure how much a full ame's music would be for such a game :/
Well if I really get out of space I'll have to switch from mapper 3 (CNROM) to mapper 66 (GNROM) or maybe even mapper 2 (UNROM) but it's not the case yet.
If you can spare some vertical blanking time, you're not using DPCM, and you're not using all your CHR ROM for tiles, you can always load small amounts of data from CHR ROM like Milon's Secret Castle does.
Recently I came to the conclusion that there is really no reason to use CNROM rather than UNROM. It's not like CNROM allows for sophisticated CHR bankswitching tricks, due to the huge size of the banks. Because of this, UNROM is more versatile because it allows you to distribute the available space between CHR and PRG freely, and you can also do CHR-RAM tricks if you want to.
This is getting out-topic, but yes I'll be able to load data from CHR-ROM. I'll have to first draw all graphics I want to use in the game so I see what's free tough.
An issue is that sprite definition easily takes up a whole lot of ROM space for little things.
You're probably going to notice stuff like I have during long-term projects, by the time the game is ready to be built, 32kB EPROMs could be more expensive than much larger ones. Not long ago I had even seen 2Mbyte EPROMs going for just a couple bucks.
If you can get by with CNROM, that's cool though. Loading data from CHR-ROM isn't uncommon, but I wouldn't do it if it ever looks like it could be a limitation (consider what amount re-usability of your code you might want for bigger projects later, for example).
Writing an RPG is really something that requires a team effort... I might be interested in helping plus assisting to organize it; lately, I was pondering on porting some old PD Apple ][ and C64 TBAs to Family BASIC.
Does anybody know how to convert Family BASIC code into Mapper-0 ROMs? I have Family BASIC v3, which has a backup battery, as far as I can tell. There must be a way to compile the code or adapt it to cartridge format, and this could potentially open up a completely new method of writing simple games and apps.
-Xious
Xious wrote:
Writing an RPG is really something that requires a team effort... I might be interested in helping plus assisting to organize it; lately, I was pondering on porting some old PD Apple ][ and C64 TBAs to Family BASIC.
Does anybody know how to convert Family BASIC code into Mapper-0 ROMs? I have Family BASIC v3, which has a backup battery, as far as I can tell. There must be a way to compile the code or adapt it to cartridge format, and this could potentially open up a completely new method of writing simple games and apps.
-Xious
Compiling code seems to be possible, have you looked into nbasic? It's true that a lot of the stuff made with it doesn't work right on an NES, but it's not because of any fault in the compiler. It's NMI routine is just an RTI though, it would be a good idea to add-in something there (I can hardly fathom
not using it).
Family BASIC I'm sure would use some kind of interpreter and store all the BASIC commands and syntax in a special binary format. It seems that maybe it's related to HuBASIC by Hudson, it's maybe better documented than Family BASIC, but might not be much help either.
Maybe there is another BASIC interpreter written in 6502 with source available? There are tons of small computers using the 6502, so I'm sure there must be something like that somewhere.
Microsoft wrote the BASIC interpreter in most of these old computers, such as the Apple II Plus, but I don't remember any Microsoft BASIC interpreter being free software. I considered writing my own, but the 72-pin NES has no keyboard, so one would have to enter the programs on a PC.
tepples wrote:
Microsoft wrote the BASIC interpreter in most of these old computers, such as the Apple II Plus, but I don't remember any Microsoft BASIC interpreter being free software. I considered writing my own, but the 72-pin NES has no keyboard, so one would have to enter the programs on a PC.
Or do it TI-83 style where you bring up a menu full of commands every time you want to insert one.
That ought to be slightly less painful than "INPUT PASSWORD:" style.
Yeah, lists of symbols to pick from should make things much better. Whenever necessary you could bring up the lists of commands, variables, constants, and so on. And numbers shouldn't be that annoying, seeing as there are only 10 different symbols.
tepples wrote:
Microsoft wrote the BASIC interpreter in most of these old computers, such as the Apple II Plus, but I don't remember any Microsoft BASIC interpreter being free software. I considered writing my own, but the 72-pin NES has no keyboard, so one would have to enter the programs on a PC.
To clarify, I was meaning there is probably a BASIC interpreter for a hobbyist computer. Instead of being lazy this time I looked it up and found at least this one:
http://members.multimania.co.uk/leeedavison/6502/ehbasic/index.html It's not free for commercial use, but I'd bet the terms to use it in a game are reasonable enough. But anyways Xious mentioned porting old stuff, which
probably means it's not something one could turn around and sell.
Yeah it would be nifty to type it up on an NES, but cross-development has many advantages, as you know.
Maybe this would be best done with a user interface like
Scratch?
p1xl wrote:
Maybe this would be best done with a user interface like
Scratch?
Lol welcome to the forums....And we program our own engines
Programming Languages are our enemy!
Heh, well, I didn't mean use Scratch to try and write an NES game. I meant, build an NES interpreter(as in coded in asm) that *looks* like scratch. It could potentially use less input from the control pad then picking keywords from a list.
(Thanks for the welcome
)
p1xl wrote:
Heh, well, I didn't mean use Scratch to try and write an NES game. I meant, build an NES interpreter(as in coded in asm) that *looks* like scratch. It could potentially use less input from the control pad then picking keywords from a list.
(Thanks for the welcome
)
But it's just a different system, Programing the NES is harder but seems more worth it to me becuase I...it just feels better when hand made, like you didn't use someone elses tool to help you ^_^ But Im sure someone else here who likes this stuff would love your suggestion....
Time to go start me new topic
^_^
Quote:
Programing the NES is harder but seems more worth it to me becuase I...it just feels better when hand made, like you didn't use someone elses tool to help you ^_^
Just to say I agree 100% and feel the same as you here.
Bregalad wrote:
Quote:
Programing the NES is harder but seems more worth it to me becuase I...it just feels better when hand made, like you didn't use someone elses tool to help you ^_^
Just to say I agree 100% and feel the same as you here.
Yeah, plus it;s another thing, that you can trust your program 100% ^_^ I hope people know what I am saying so I don't look like I am against it completely, but I just like knowing exactly what it's doing and how to do stuff......Especially with crashing and stuff :/ I don't want it doing funky stuff to peoples programs...