Good section on saving overall!

[Steve_Mudge]

I had asked this question earlier, but it may have been to early to ask.

I am a beginner game developer so please bare with me.

In my past I programmed a LOT of state!, moving data for business… (IT’s how I made a living, I was always the band-aid for CFO’s in Corporations) Excel VBA is what I used to get the CFOs the data from Web apps. Export from one web app, open and have the VBA distribute the data(state) within the Excel Workbook on the correct worksheets that the state lived. (before web was as fast this was a BIG deal as real time data is better to have)

What I am getting at is this…

In an RPG game what are the basic States that me as a developer will want to track.???

I am hoping to get a list of the properties that are normally tracked in an RPG.

I know there is a lot of variety for how this can be accomplished… so a list of basics or possibilities would help me understand RPG state(s) for game development…

This would help a newbie like me know what data I should or more importantly could be focused on.

Thanks in advance.

PlayerName,
Health,
Location:
currentScene,
position
Equipment:
currentEquipmentInUse,
currentList available,
Weapons:
Sword,
Bow,
unArmed
currentWeapon
Ammo:
Arrows,
Etc…
Etc…

This is my current guess of some of the basic data I would want to save…
Does anyone have a generic list of data to track for a RPG?

Thanks in advance…

[Yee]

I hope you don’t hate my answer, but here goes nothing.

There’s no such thing as basic data to track for RPGs. If you go and search for something like what you are describing you’ll find it, that doesn’t mean is a convention and a simple question can prove that. What if you are making a game that doesn’t have bows? What’s the point of saving data for arrows? I can repeat that question with every item on your list.

The answer is far more complicated because you are missing a huge question that should come first. What’s the experience you want to give to the player? Based on that you can decide what to save and what not to save. Do you want a realistic experience? Then you should probably save the equipped items but no inventory that holds 20 more blades. Do you want a simpler experience? Maybe you’ll need 3 stats instead of 20 and no equipment. Do you want an action RPG? Maybe remove levels entirely and focus on hand-eye coordination and equipment.

You are approaching game development as if it were part of the tech industry, is it not, your end goal is not to create software for a company, is to create an experience for a person to enjoy, that changes everything. Remember, game development is part of the entertainment industry making its priority quite different.

If you want to create systems that will save you some time in the future, what you need is to create, for example, a saving system that can save anything so it can be used across multiple games of multiple genres, if you create a system that at its core is design to save arrows and weapons then you’ll have to deeply modify it each time you want to use it instead of simply adding some minor lines of code to save whatever you need with that particular project.

Hope this helps and gives a better insight as to how game development differs from other areas that might be similar but in reality, are nothing alike.

[Brian_Trotter]

I think this is well said.

This really is nothing like the database style work you’re thinking of. The more features you add to your RPG, the more things you’ll find that need to be captured (and the more you’ll discover which things actually don’t need to be captured).

I understand your need for the well ordered list, but I think you’ll find, the list will get in your way more than it will help you. It certainly did when I first started game programming. I would focus instead on what data truly needs to be saved in each module as you encounter it.