how to make RPG's?

Hi,
Does anyone know of any good RPG tutorials or resources. Basically I want to know how to go about making an RPG.

Thanks,
Rick

What do you want to make it with? Special game software for RPG creation exists, although since you're posting on this board I assume you want to use C.

Anyway, here's the prescription I gave someone else if you're using C. Start off making sure you understand all the basic elements of the language and environment, especially graphics and sound, by creating a bunch of small test programs. Then make a loose plan of the game's mechanical system, and gradually throw in more and more detail and programming specifics. Then make a stripped down version of the game engine (i.e. a text-based, turn-based combat system). Then get to work on the real thing, adding in all your specifics until you're done.

As for resources, www.gamedev.net is probably the best general site I can point you at.

Here is something that I am actually not sure about.
I have got a simple system like you said mapped out. Basically it consists of 4 classes.
Character - Each Character, player or enemy is derived from this class.
Magic - Object represent a magic power e.g. fire, sleep, and Character object can contain Magic objects.
Battle - you give these class 2 parties (e.g. hero and a monster) and it goes through the battle until there is a winner returning states.
Game - Contains the above classes to run my rpg.

I have got this far so that you can have a battle with a monster and if you are successful you will move on to another.

What I am a little puzzled on is how do I contain a story within my rpg as opposed to turn based monster slayer game.

Keeping it text based (and not final fantasy style - which is the effect I hope to achieve). The only way I can think of doing this is to have cout's and battle sequences between them. But I can see my game ending up with lots (hundreds) of couts if the game is large. Is there any kind of engine I could build for the text part of the game (like I have for the battles) or am I going bout this wrong???? hope someone understands wat I am talking about.

Rick

You could use external files and read in the story from that, its seems to many people that RPG is a good first game, its fairly hard depending on the complexity of the story you want.

Well, I don't want to design the program for you, but:

Other than a class for your enemies, the main thing you need some classes describing your 'field' - the environment your character moves around in. Since you want a text based program, that's pretty simple - a single 'area' class. Then you need things to actually interact with. I can think of two you'd want. Call one 'event' (this would be traps, special one-time-only messages, and things) and another 'item'.

Code:

---

class area
{
  private:

  area *north;
  area *south;  //pointers to all adjacent areas
  area *west;
  area *east;

  char *introtext;  //text that appears when you enter the area
  char *looktext;  //text that appears if the character looks around

  item *items;  //array of items to pick up in this area.
  event *events;  //events that you can trigger in this area.
  enemy *enemies;  //array of enemies to fight in this area.

  public:
 //member functions to interact with all the
 //member objects - you can probably fill this in.
}

---

The event and item classes would be simple. A name, a description, a trigger command (what you type in to cause the event to occur or to get the item), and a few variables to describe the effect (i.e. HP +10, or a dialogue with an NPC appearing on screen) should be all you need for both. You can choose how you want to represent these things.

You may or may not want additional objects and/or variables, depending on the complexity of your game.

Edit: formatting

For the text problem you could probably just make a image file containing all the letters/characters you'll need to make words (I have some) then with the letters/characters evenly spaced in the image split the image up and take each letter making a function so that you can read the story from a text file when appropriate and have the text you got from the text file be outputted in the letters you got from your image file. I hope that wasn't too confusing.