RPGWatch GameDev Group

[Aubrielle]

Are there any other Watchers working on game development right now? Anything from learning an engine (Unity, Unreal, CryEngine), 3D modeling, animations, music/sound, to producing a whole game.

I ask because I'm learning CryEngine (it's free now), but it's occurred to me that I'm gonna be spending a lot of my time making assets, so I've gone back to try to learn 3D modeling again.

Are you making a game? Do you want to make games but don't know how? What skills do you have? Let's all support and encourage one another…I bet nobody can make RPGs like we can.

 

[Steven Peeler]

You probably don't mean people that have already shipped RPGs, but there are probably a few of us, like me, that read the RPGWatch forums often.

 

[Ripper]

I wonder if starting with Cryengine, all the coding that goes with it, and creating your own 3d models, might be a rather mammoth undertaking. Might it be worth considering something like RPGmaker, where you can get down to creating characters and stories without years of work upfront?

 

[Black Rune]

First of all, good luck with you endeavors on the way to success.
An RPG from the Watch should be a ton of fun, and I can already see the title of the the game..."The Watchers", naturally.

I am working on some music for an upcoming Sci-fi/Advanture game.
Well,for the DEMO actually. And hope I can share some news with the Watch, when the DEMO will be complete and ready to release to the public.
Anyway, this is new to me, never made music for a game,but it is coming along well,the DEV is pleased with the material I provided.
That is more or less my experience with game design so far.

 

[Caddy]

That's why I liked Unity, for their large asset database, full of both free and pro assets. Even most of the smallest indies have someone else doing art so they can concentrate on the code (Unless you're Lionel Gallat). I went the easy route and didn't even touch art, since the game is single player text MUD (SUD?). Download link here: Shadows of Kalendale if anyone wants to try it out (player guide is included). It's been a work in progress for years.

Been dabbling off and on with Unity as i'd like to eventually turn it into a 3D Tile based/turn based RPG (Already created a random dungeon generation algorithm which works quite well).

Watchers getting together to share their experiences would be great. I would love to see other peoples work. There's some great talent and imagination on this site.

 

[Couchpotato]

I used to make free RPG Maker games & NWN modules years ago, but haven't touched a game engine since then. Anyway as said before 3D modeling and music take a huge chunk of your development time. It's easier to use freeware assets and music.

 

[Lucky Day]

I want to get into Unity again when I get some time again in a month or two.

Cross platform development with C# is a real thing now that Xamarin is built into Visual Studio.

The only thing I don't like is Unity seems to be its "own thing". It has its own way of how things should be built and the language, whether C# or Javascript is just underneath.

I may, horror of horrors, just go back to straight Android Java again to do my own thing.

 

[GothicGothicness]

Well, I already have a recruitment thread for my game in the forum for it

I have completely given up on creating a 3d-game though, I'll never get a budget to make such a game. So mine is 2d, and I've written the engine from scratch, it was a good decision, thinks has been going much faster since I gave up making the game in 3d.

I do know quite a bit about game development though, mostly programming, but also 3d-modeling and Unity / Unreal engine. So ask away if you have any questions and I'll reply if I can. I have barely tried CryEngine though, so I don't know much about that.

 

[Silver]

I've coded a game launcher in visual basic for Might and Magic 1 to learn the language and also for convenience since I want one launcher to be an all-in-one point for things like maps, manuals and different game versions like mac, dos. Early games differed quite alot depending on platform they were produced on.

This meant I had to work out how to launch and config a gog and dfend dos game so that users (me) can easily change the installed paths for the programs and configs when changing machines without going into the code itself.

I've also been following an online tutorial that is showing me how to make the rudiments of an rpg. I've just gotten to the stage where you get to create the title screen. There was/is a lot to learn but I'm really liking visual basic. I'm thinking Maya or Blendr when I start to look at 3d graphics packages but I have no idea for music. This is a spare time hobby project thing at the moment.

 

[Aubrielle]

I wonder if starting with Cryengine, all the coding that goes with it, and creating your own 3d models, might be a rather mammoth undertaking. Might it be worth considering something like RPGmaker, where you can get down to creating characters and stories without years of work upfront?

Definitely, and some really great games have come from RPGMaker. It's (comparatively) easy to use. I think my problem is that I'd want really good anime-quality character portraits…and I don't know anyone that could draw those for me.

Most of the best ideas for games I have swirling around in my head are 2.5d isometric ARPGs, and I decided to try CryEngine for its environments (it's such a gorgeous engine). I know I won't be cranking anything out and releasing it in six months or anything, but I could release something eventually, and in the meantime maybe I could design games just for me and any interested friends. I've even considered ripping assets from bigger games, just to learn with (not to publish, obviously).

You probably don't mean people that have already shipped RPGs, but there are probably a few of us, like me, that read the RPGWatch forums often.

Experienced developers like you are invaluable! Your advice is always welcome!

 

[lostforever]

I am always making a RPG… but mostly in my head! I once had an idea for an RPG and it was called Escape from RPGWatch! The end boss being DArtagnan and his uber attack will be "Wall of Text". If its critical hit, then you get 1 shotted! Also there will be no real way to defeat him. After certain time, he will get bored and leave and you can finally escape!

You will come across other forums members as encounters including Aubrielle herself. She was supposed to be a random encounter! At that time when I had this idea, you weren't regular here and you used to "come and go" hence the random encounter Myrthos was the only NPC and called "Myrthos the Jailor" but he will set you on quest to escape!

Each forum section was supposed to be a "zone". Politics, Religion & other Controversies was supposed to be an optional but extremely hard zone with members who are no longer with us as hard boss fights!

It was supposed to be 2D only and would have looked like an old roguelike game. I was going to write everything from scratch in C++ since the aim was to learn the very fundamentals of graphics/game programming. I went far as coding the rpg rules but stopped for various reasons. But one day…..

Other than the lack of time, one of the biggest thing which is stopping me writing basic 2d roguelike is art assets. I can't do them myself since I have zero artists bones in my body. Is there place where you can get free/open source assets? I don't plan to sell the game.

My main interesting is game programming and the engineering side of things, for example how to get the game loop going, the game engine, the AI, the interaction between graphics card etc etc. But games are visual medium and that always get in my way!

 

[Aubrielle]

You will come across other forums members as encounters including Aubrielle herself. She was supposed to be a random encounter! At that time when I had this idea, you weren't regular here and you used to "come and go" hence the random encounter Myrthos was the only NPC and called "Myrthos the Jailor" but he will set you on quest to escape!

You should make me a helpful NPC…"the enigmatic priestess" or something. I'm widely feared by fiends and trolls as a champion of the oppressed, but I live in a tower that's hard to get to, and I rarely visit town. Or something.

 

[lostforever]

You should make me a helpful NPC…"the enigmatic priestess" or something. I'm widely feared by fiends and trolls as a champion of the oppressed, but I live in a tower that's hard to get to, and I rarely visit town. Or something.

I will remember this if I ever make this game

 

[Steven Peeler]

If you are going to use the CryEngine, you should probably at least check out Amazon's Lumberyard stuff since it is based on the CryEngine and still free.

 

[Aubrielle]

If you are going to use the CryEngine, you should probably at least check out Amazon's Lumberyard stuff since it is based on the CryEngine and still free.

Yeah, I'd heard that. I guess I hadn't checked it out yet since CryEngine is 100% free/royalty free now as well...

 

[forgottenlor]

I've been working with RPG Maker VX Ace for close to four years now. I can't really say I've completed a whole lot with it. I made 2 three hour games for my daughter as an attempt to get her into rpgs. She finished both with me helping her out, but she's still never actually wanted to play an rpg on her own. I started to make an epic rpg maker game that was supposed to be around 30 hours, but realized I didn't want to invest the 1000s of hours needed to complete it. I also abandoned 2 attempts at a dungeon crawler, because they weren't any fun to play. I'm currently working on something that will probably be around 5-6 hours. I'm about 2/3 finished and guess it will be about an 80-100 hour time investment. That's fine I enjoy playing around with the engine and seeing what it can do. If I ever finish it, I'll probably let people download it for free. Anyways this rambling does have a point. Making an rpgmaker is a massive time investment, but I'm sure its nothing compared to making a game in Unity or Cryengine.

 

[lostforever]

This thread got my urge write a game going again. I am learning SDL so that I can write a simple 2D tile based RPG! After a week of trying, one of the thing that stuck me was that, getting good art assets are harder than writing code. Anyone I hope I stick with it this time rather than giving up after couple weeks :lol: