RPG in Progress

After launching a couple action games in a row, I decided to take a fresh turn towards a new title.  I am currently working on a Role Playing Game!  While the game is in it’s first week of production and does not even have a name yet, I wanted to talk about a little bit of the production and story behind my project.

Coding an RPG is interesting, and unlike any other game development I have run into.  The core of the gameplay comes from number crunching and character development via several variables.  Many variables, in fact.  These different variables make up the entire character… the strength of a sword, the swiftness of an enemy, and so forth.  A good RPG somehow manages to micromanage every one of these variables, while steadily increasing or decreasing these variables over time to change difficulty.

Many of my games are smaller titles with just a few variables, in the realm of 50-100… the level, score, and so on.  But in this game, I am already nearing about 4,000 variables just for the core buying/selling engine.  And the managing of these values is really important, because if any of these values goes crazy, it can change the entire game!   So as I develop the game, I have to be careful to make sure all the numbers are in their right places, ready to go when the player needs them.

Taking place in the Middle Ages, the gameplay of this RPG is very open-ended.  Your life is not railroaded through different scenarios like some other RPG’s out there.  Instead you are free to travel where you want and handle your life as you want.  If you want to be a thief, then go right ahead and steal.  If you want to make tons of money and amass an army, then it is at your whim.  While the main part of the RPG is to journey and have monetary gain, how you do it is up to you.  You start with barely anything, and it’s your job to figure out what to do with your life.

I am very excited about this title, because I have never made an RPG before and it should be interesting.  I’ll make a few more updates as I make progress on this expansive game!

T-Rex picture above is completely irrelevant, but was fun to make.