Im Gathering a group of friends in order to produce a small project, thats basically a way for us to learn more and develop something we really desire to accomplish...

we would like to build a true complet Tactical battle RPG. Like the ones that we all know and love from consoles such as Disgaea, Final Fantatst Tactics and tatics advanced, Tactics ogre, Onimusha Tactics, Front Mission, and so on so on...

The main focus is that this sould be a pc game with simple usage of the mouse...

We rather work with the basic 3d maps with 2d characters on the 3/4 view of a 45º angle camera...

Its really heavlly based on Final Fantasy Tatics, as we took this as our "target for quality" ... of course, if 3d is too harsh, 2d can be done...

The one help that i would like from you guys here, are some advices... what programs should we try to focus to achive these goals? What languages?

We are thinking about DarkBasic or Gamemaker (http://www.gamemaker.nl/) or EasyWay (http://easyway.sourceforge.net/joomla/index.php) to build this

but we could use some help... tips, tutorials, websites, other engines, programs or anythign that could help us in actually working with functional tools that are good for us to learn how to use and to make our goal a real quality game

Any help is appreciated,thanks in advance

in case you dont know "what" our goal looks like, here are some screens

http://easyway.sourceforge.net/joomla/index.php











[/img]

Well have you tried rpg maker? I personally hate it but then i never took the time to learn it (rpg maker 2003, or rpg maker xp) I'm learning C++ code and using dev-C++ for the programming. good luck

Edit by GMan: Please do not discuss piracy

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If you can't be a good example, be a good warning

RPG maker (like most game creators) churns out games that are merely clones of the original concept defined by the toolkit creator. It doesn't really allow any flexibility beyond some simple scripting. If you want to create a fairly unique game, you really can't rely on tools like that.

That said, if you know how to use it, it can be a good tool for a rapid prototype that you then use to more firmly develop your ideas

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God must love stupid people, he made so many.
theraje: 'God doesn't love stupid people, they're just easier to make'
http://sharedillusions.blogspot.com

Actually, RPG Maker XP lets you do quite a bit with its Ruby editor, but that's if you know Ruby, which I dont care to learn <_<

I seriously do not recommend using ANY game creation programs like Game Maker, and I really dont think Dark Basic is very good at all. What I do recommend is, at the very least, learning C# and developing it with SDL.NET (http://cs-sdl.sourceforge.net), that way you can even easily implement a scripting language, such as Lua (with LuaInterface, cant remember any specific links for it) or FusionScript (http://www.binaryphoenix.com), of the two, I recommend FusionScript, as it's easier to implement, and it's compiled <<

Make no mistake, no matter what you develop this in, it's going to be difficult, and you may not get to your final goal, motivation and resources plays a big role in indie game development. Hope I've managed to be of some use <_<

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.: United States Marine Corps :.

If it's not going to be advanced, I'd recommend plain old C, Java, python...

You could also try looking through the Wiki in the Game Engines section and try to make something using a good cross-platform library. Remember that not everyone runs Windows.

Really thanks for all your input, right now this is the most friendly board i've seen to receive my questions

Actually, after some study i came across the OGRE Engine... seems powerfull and quite complete.

Basing myself on games like Tactics Arena (www.tacticsarena.com) or on Plain Chess games, i belive that it can be done with this engine... althought i still dont have a friggin idea about the "how to" part of it

it just REALLY Bugs me that we dont have many (almost none) Tactical-RPG games for PC... mainly because when well done they are always fun and addictive... and also, its mechanics are a tad easier to build than an average RTS or RPG game

My friends and I wanted to code a tactics RPG. The idea for it is very... interesting, to say the least.

I would tell you what it is but the link with the descriptions and stuff died and I don't feel like typing it again. It took 3 pages last time. <_<

So, you picked ogre? I don't know much about it actually, but it looks promising. If you use OpenGL instead of DirectX you could get your game to run on Windows, Linux and Mac. There are a gazillion free OpenGL tutorials on the net that can help you.

If it's your first time using a language, I would stick with something much simpler than 3D, or graphics altogether. Try just getting your head around it, then try a simple 2D game, then another more complex one, then you might be able to tackle 3D.

Programming is tough, but don't give up!

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GMan
Black Ninja Games
Imagine ASCII art here!

oh, right... if this is your first game (I don't know if it is or not) something as advanced as ogre might not fit your needs. Try allegro or clanlib?

Nice of you to mention allego and not sdl !

Yeah my suggestions to you esmo is to start learning c/c++ and either allegro, sdl or opengl.

Your just beginning programming, and i dont want to discourage you, but it takes years to become good with programming lanagues.

Your best bet is to start small.

Download www.codeblocks.org, install that, then install allegro. Allegro is much easier to install then sdl, as it's "All in one" rather then "All apart" like sdl is.

Allegro has several example programs which you can look at and learn from.

If you have IRC.

You can connect to irc.freenode.net.

You can join many diffrent programming channels from there, mainly #gpwiki and #allegro. I think #sdl might be there also...



One last thing, Final Fantasy tactics was the best.

I would love to see a game like that for the computer. Speicialy if it was online

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http://www.moon.templarian.com/

Learn allegro or SDL, and then learn opengl along with that if you want 3d or hardware accelerated 2d OpenGL on its own won't do you much good as it is purely a graphics API

Also, SDL isn't exactly 'all apart', it just has a plugin mechanism to the main functionality. The main functionality is always available and consists of:
2d video
input
events
sound (although not particulary good api for it)
cdrom
BMP loading

Extensions available include a better sound api (although still not as good as something like OpenAL) and much better image loading support.

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God must love stupid people, he made so many.
theraje: 'God doesn't love stupid people, they're just easier to make'
http://sharedillusions.blogspot.com

Dont forget the font plugin...

theres goes 3 extra things you have to install and get working, which most some people(including me) have or had problems with.

I never had a problem with allegro.

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To be honest, im not a big fan of either. I use SDL though, but I abstract it all away in my own library first.

Me and my friends have been thinking that it would be really sweet if someone could make a tactics RPG that lets other people actually customize it. I'm thinking of something similar to The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind/Oblivion and MUGEN. I'm guessing it probably would be easier to customize too. I would love to make the game but i don't know anything about how to make a tactics game. I could do it however if someone did a basic outline for me. I am fairly quick at learning and expanding from basic outlines.

game maker has its uses, I use it to prototype blocks of code or functions that i want to make in c++ because it has a runtime debugger that lets me watch the variables or instances that are in the program, so i can see if everything is working properly. as far as i know visual c++ does not have somthing like this, except break points or that watch window which only updates when your stepping through the program. if anyone reading this does know of functionality that i described for game maker, that is in visual c++ pls tell me i'v been dieing to know, im using visual c++ btw. anyways the point is, it helped me gain a good understanding of general game programming, and it shares many similaritys that you encounter in c++.

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at the enrichment center we believe that if at first you do not succeed, you fail...

I wonder... if I want to make a game like Rune Factory (without the farming bits, of course), which program should I choose? This is my first time too, but I've learned HTML and VB before... and Ren'py too (though I don't want to use it since I don't like the program).

Thanks for the information.Which one is best to use? please share. My sister is really good at this, but she could not help me. So I am wondering if someone here can help. Thanks.

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Thanks

I recommend Allegro with C/C++ as language. It runs on both Windows and Linux. It is easy to use, but still powerful.

If I was not creating my own game engine, I would use Allegro. Also, there are dedicated good pages for this engine:
http://alleg.sourceforge.net/

http://www.allegro.cc/ (< people publish their Allegro games here - some of them with source-code).

Good luck!

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"Life finds a way." - Ian Malcolm
My WebBlog: PixelDeveloper
English is not my native language, so excuse me for any writing mistakes.