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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.....

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.

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.