@Jesse_Rioux I completely agree with you, Pre-CU SWG is one of my favorite games to date. I’m actually working up a model for a fantasy game that has a lot of the same features: In-Depth crafting, skill based not level based, player housing / cities, etc. That has always been my ultimate goal, and one I will see done one day 
1 Like
@EricPhillips, nice words of wisdom on the creative process. Seeing this I realize that if I do work with a team, it’s important to work with people that allow team members some freedom in their styles. I have been on teams like that in the past, and the results have been exceptional. I’ll just do my best to stay away from micromanagers, which hopefully won’t be too difficult since I’m just doing this as a retirement hobby. It was a whole different story when I was living paycheck to paycheck.
@EricPhillips That is a large undertaking, I wish you the utmost success in that endeavor and would love to see it come to fruition, specially if it’s something you release to the world.
@Jesse_Rioux Thanks. Oh I know its a huge undertaking. I’m not even remotely kidding myself on that. I am yet undecided whether I will attempt to put together a indie team to help me build it, or demo it out with all the bells and whistles I want, then approach another game company.
@Stephen, I also worked in graphic/web design for many years as part of marketing work. I did the design as required by the project, but in retrospect the ones I did bottom up were by far the most creative and well-received. I didn’t use rapid prototyping though, just played with pictures and graphic elements till a good design came together. Re story, characters and visual design, let’s just say I don’t expect to get through this without asking for creative help at some point, lol. Best of luck learning programming!
Hello everybody!
Right now I’m adding the final touches to a retro platforming game I’ve been working on for a long time. I’ve coded that in a different engine and I am switching to Unity for my next game. Currently I’m taking the Learn to Code course on Udemy, while also planning the game.
My next game is going to be a tactical RPG. You know, you have a party and battles are turn based. So it’s not in the same category as the RPG being made in this course. But I think I will learn a lot of useful stuff about Unity, RPGs and game development in general.
1 Like
I havent put a plan in place here yet because tbh creating an RPG was the reason i started learning to code.
I actually started working on an RPG/FPS from zombie running i just didnt implement anything further than getting networking working as for me that was a core part of an RPG i wanted to make (Yes i succeeded in local and multiplayer server based networking although couldnt test it externally but i believe it would have worked no issues)
This said however i stopped because the unreal course came out and i got into that more than unity.
What stopped me going further than this surprisingly not the storyline or inventory system but more that a quest system escaped me. I know its a UI with most likely buttons with transparant backgrounds but the interaction for the point and click method was too far beyond me to work out as i want both systems in mine.
If you look at Rappelz (Before they broke it) thats where i intend to go but i dont expect to see an end product until at LEAST 2018/19
Just like to add here a big thank-you to @EricPhillips for all the work he has put in to collating information on assets and also the books on building an RPG as these will help everyone. Good job mate!
I’m looking forward to this course.
Not sure what I want or expect just yet, beyond finishing the base unity course before this comes in March.
1 Like
I played Rappelz not long after it launched. It was… interesting. I have yet to find any online game, fantasy or otherwise, that had great core mechanics like SWG Pre-CU. There is quite a few things I like about WoW, but there is a lot I can pick apart. There was actually a game that originally started as a WoW clone, Runes of Magic, but went its own way shortly after. I think Eve Online could be the greatest Sci-Fi RPG of all time… but they do not have any ground content (Dust 514 didn’t count). If they had planets you could fully explore, Eve would blow almost any online game out of the water. I look for a game that is complex, in-depth, and will pull me in right away. BUT, it also has to be able to get the attention of my wife… who has different likes than I do. I’m picky like that lol.
1 Like
I started rappelz in about epic 3 on the US servers back when it was the Yeti servers (before the many server combines), They now have it so its basically a single player game and i can run a character from 1-155 in 3 days which on my first character took 4 years!
Thats what i mean by they killed it in a desperate attempt to draw players in to catch up with the main player base and all it did was create high powered high levels newbies who did not have a clue how to play their class.
I am hoping to avoid that same mistakes.
My ex of 3 years (Now my current girlfriend again as she asked me back 3 days ago YAY!) also plays rappelz and still plays to date so this course i hope will explode my skills and come up with something great!
The ball is in GameDev.tv’s hands 
My favorite single player RPGs have been most of the Final Fantasy series, Chrono Trigger, some of the Zelda series.
Final Fantasy - Magic/Elemental weaknesses, lore, mob families weaknesses, healing systems, combat varied from menu based to live action or queue.
Chrono Trigger - Loved the combos.
Zelda - Best dungeons ever. Great puzzles. Wii added some great player interaction with swinging a sword, shooting bow/arrow, etc.
Dream RPG would have been the scale and graphics of FFXV with much more interactive dungeons and puzzles and a better active combo combat system (God of War-ish) and a better epic story. Their combat wait system is terribly implemented.
My dream RPG, which I’ve been thinking about alot recently, would be one with procedural generation, competitive/asymmetrical multiplayer, and multiple win conditions, so you can play it over and over for quite some time. Imagine if, somehow, you could pack the adventure, discovery and combat of a Zelda game into a 4-ish hour round of assymetrical multiplayer. People playing the good guy and the bad guy. Imagine the hilarity that would ensure as your friend tries to kidnap a princess to summon an ancient entity to destroy the world and you’re still trying to find the fourth piece of some legendary weapon 
Options that may not even be present next game.
I’ve been waiting for an RPG of grand scale that encourages players to participate in each others stories on a level more involved than co-op hack and slash, but the industry apparently can’t think of it. We’re still stuck on the concept that adventure RPG games cannot be multiplayer, and that multiplayer can only be capture the flag/team deathmatch/push the point game modes. Obviously there’s not much I can do by myself, heck I’m not even from the coding part of the forum, but I’d just like to see the industry come up with some hybrid ideas such as this. The concept of an MMORPG but without needing to put 759 hours in to see the result, and not resorting to a lane-guarding arena game.
3 Likes
@McFuzz I like your concept! There is nothing saying a ARPG cannot be multiplayer. I personally think the concept of co-op for quests on one side, but a multiplayer faction on the other side causing mayhem would be interesting
1 Like
Precisely. There’s also the trope in Adventure-RPG games where a villain/miniboss turns to the good side, and it would be great if you could do that as well. And, on the other side of the spectrum, corrupt a hero to turn them evil. You see it in games all the time; has the feature ever been present in a multiplayer game? NO IT HASN’T. They’ve had 30 years to implement gameplay like that and they ****** haven’t lol.
Adventure games stories like Zelda and Uncharted always act like it’s a race against time, and in singleplayer games you can’t -really- force that urgency on a player, because the player has to win. And normally, even if you do nothing productive for 10 hours of gameplay, nothing comes of it. When both good and evil are player controlled, victory becomes an equation of skill/experience against risk-taking and a little bit of luck, rather than just being a matter of time. My point is, the industry keeps resorting to these cliche’s but doing nothing with them, and it’s disappointing to see the Medium of Videogame’s potential go to waste.
I remember playing WoW for the first time, it was really one of the first MMORPGs that I’d really sunk my teeth into, and I remember being disappointed that a game with factions like it did didn’t have some way to allow defecting.
I was the kind of player that would run his brand new Night Elf all the way to Elwynn Forest in order to roleplay as a Night Elf raised surrounded by humans or whatever haha. I wouldn’t have expected to be able to instantly defect, but a questline would have been a nice addition and would have raised some interesting PvP encounters.
I don’t think that the industry hasn’t thought of doing branching story lines, it’s just the sheer complexity behind branching storylines that makes it impractical on a cost/benefit point of view.
From running a private server of FFXI myself, I have tried to code new missions and quests that branched out based on your job, choices, and other inputs. I can tell you that it is way more trouble than it is worth.
Star Ocean was a game that had multiple endings but it was just an ending. They diverged at the very end based on choices you made and allowed for certain scenarios. While a “if you chose this, this cutscene will play” scenario is easy to implement, having unique stories would be really hard.
If that were the case, you would end up with a very bland story unless you developed each potential storyline in full.
Just from a visual perspective, you will end up with this on just a single player branch.
http://i.stack.imgur.com/AicIb.png
Each of the bottom row in that picture would require unique story lines/dialogue/cutscenes and that is about a mid range complexity. Then if you add another player in the mix plus their own choices, it will seriously increase the number of stories you have. The earlier you do it the more work you run into.
Not saying its not possible. With enough time and money, you could do it. Unless you came up with a way to have the story procedurally generate somehow and still be coherent, that would be amazing.
I think the most I have seen in terms of branching at the start of games, especially MMOs are just jobs/classes.
Each job/class has its own story line but it is usually linear or very little branching after that.
Some games will also use a fame/popularity rank to determine what you have access to but if you think about it, it is still linear.
If rank 1 give access to item a
If rank 2 give access to item a and b etc.
SWTOR had light/dark side rank but each NPC you ran into for quest/missions would flag based on that ranking. That is easy to do.
I honestly think a small morpg persistent world server could acomplish this due to the fact that there would be no “end”, just a constantly evolving story. You obviously would have to have a faction system in place, and a dual quest system. The npc quest givers do a quick faction check and assign quests based on the result. It would be difficult yes, but very possibly rewarding.
2 Likes
Agreed. I posted something similar above. I believe something along the lines of what AION did. Might have changed since then but the gist was:
2 Factions, ranks within factions. If you were the top rank in that faction you had access to certain skills. So I’d say, the top player in the faction could be the head bad guy and can only kidnap the princess… while the rest of the faction gathers items or causes mayhem to cause the world to plunge into chaos lol.
Raiding villages etc?
Other side tries to stop them, rescue said princess.
Ending would be the defeat of the main bad guy or summoning of said evil entity.
3 Likes
I actually like the thought… I may attempt the challenge. But, more importantly this proves why I love this community… pooling ideas always gets creative juices flowing 
2 Likes