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good engine for RPGs

Started by andrechan Apr 5, 2012 at 4:01 PM 3 replies 2.3k views

Original Post

Apr 5, 2012 at 4:01 PM

Hi ya'll. Need help with a little something.
We just opened a small studio, and our first title would be an RPG. Let's say a JRPG looking title for that matter,rendered in 2d with much content that could have it running for 80+ hours.

Im looking for an Engine you guys could recommend that can build that.
According to my one of my programmers, during an engine selection meeting, game maker is viable since we're releasing it on Steam, so we'll only need but one .exe
But I know that a flash game cannot support an expansive game, because all its layers are in one file. So applying that logic....

I'm worried that the file will be in GBs in its completion and running everything on one exe file will slow it down.

Im not really a programmer, so I dont know much.
So, if it does slow it down, then can you guys recommend a nice engine for us that's kinda cheap as well?

Please dont go easy on me in terms of programming talk.
Just do your techtalk, and I'll relay whatever you post here to my team,

Thanks.

Toadhead

Apr 5, 2012 at 4:41 PM

Dont go easy on you? Well... give up!
Actually you shouldn't give up, but you should alter your expectations.

Building an RPG requires a large amount of work, even a very simple one. Your best bet is something like RPG maker but even than it will take a long time before you can release a decent game. I'm not sure what kind of licenses these programs use, I doubt you can release it on Steam or use it for commercial games.

If you realy want to create a good and commercial RPG, you'll have to program it yourself (as a team ofcourse, one programmer would be too less if you want to release it within a few years from now). Expect a budget of thousands of dollars and some years of (full-time) hard work.

Good luck!

andrechan

Apr 5, 2012 at 5:06 PM

I wont go into budget details and team details, but yes...We can do it in a year with the amount of people we have and I have confidence that we can make a quality game.

Can someone just explain to me though, how creating our own engine would be better than using GM if it's only 2d and (im no programmer) basic Jrpg only need scripting.

Servant of the Lord

Apr 5, 2012 at 6:01 PM

Graphical engines are usually used for 3d games where there are alot of performance and compatibility and math concerns.

For a 2D RPG (assuming non-isometric tiles), the only thing an 'engine' needs to do is drawn images onscreen. That's basically any API out there. Pick your language of choice, pick your API of choice, and spit some tiles onscreen.
Many new programmers think they need an 'engine' (because it sounds cool). Unless your game is 3D, you don't need an engine.

Depending on the size of your project, I most sincerely doubt it will be multiple gigabytes in size. It'll probably be quite a bit less than 250mb (and that'd be a HUGE 2D game) when you're done with it, without optimizations and compression.

You also mention 'running for 80+ hours'... are you talking about an online RPG? That changes things dramatically (in terms of project complexity).

GameMaker is an option - if you have familiarity with it, go ahead and try it out and see if it works for your project.

Toadhead

Apr 5, 2012 at 7:11 PM

I have to agree with Servant of the Lord here. I write my games with C++ using SFML (www.sfml-dev.org), it offers basicly anything an "2d game engine" could offer, such as creating a window, handling mouse and keyboard input, drawing text/images/basic shapes and playing audio.

But really.. just pick whatever language and API your programmers are most familiar with!

Instead of an engine you could look for open source RPG's, you might want to look into something like http://www.gnu.org/software/freedink/

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