How hard to make would that be ? [Question from a beginner]

[Jeenah]

Hello there, i’m coming here to ask some general questions about godot, because i’m actually completely lost.

I’m just starting my research to see what game engine could be the best for a game i plan to create.

I’ve got some experience with RPG Maker, but the structure of the engine itself doesn’t suit what i intend to do. (Well, i do not think it would suit)

First … I do not have a lot of coding experience, i can generally guess how it works, but that’s it. I’m unable to code (Yes, i know it’s a BIG issue), that’s why i intend to keep it simplistic in its core.

Not a lot of systems and features, but deep enough features to make them interesting, for hours. Well, i hope …

The game itself would be a story driven roleplaying game with a “POTENTIAL” part of roguelite (In the form of randomly generated expeditions to completely replace an open-world, which would be too annoying to create, fill and map out, also it would take probably way longer to make all the maps than just create a seemingly randomly generated expedition). IF POSSIBLE ! Details below.

The main elements for the game would be the following :

• Party management (The classics with items, weapons, armor, etc …)

• Inventory + Classes and customization + levels (Not limited, there would be no max level)

• Turn-based combat with a 10 square high x 17 square length grid (Like Heroes might and magic battle map.

• Side-view battler with AOE spells and targeting for attacks. (NO MOVEMENT POSSIBLE FOR UNITS DURING COMBAT, YOU PLACE THEM BEFORE AND YOU GO INTO BATTLE WITH THE SET FORMATION).

• Unit placement in the party manager (Each side would have 10 x 7 squares of space to place units, which units having size depending on what they are) (A dragon would be 3 x 3 squares, a wolf 1 x 2, and a regular human would be 1 x 1, while a mounted warrior would be 1 x 2, a lesser drake would be 2 x 2 squares of space).

• Unit placement would be important because the unit in front would block the damage for the units in the back (An arrow would need to go through the first row before hitting the one behind, same for spell, depending on the spell).

• Scenes, and dialogues / events would be showed like a visual novel, so it’s the easiest part with characters appearing, disappearing, expression changing, etc …

• Expedition system to simulate an open-world/side-quests for the player to grind levels, search for gears, drops, or just enjoy battling with the party. (Or test compositions). The player would just click on “Go on an expedition”, choose the place/region, and would go through random encounters, or directly choose a route to fight monsters and bosses).

• This part DOES NOT NEED TO BE RANDOMLY GENERATED IF IT IS TOO HARD TO MAKE ! I can create the expeditions, loot and encounters by hand, then have the game randomly choose one to give to the player (Honestly, it could be even better because that would allow me to create some special expeditions only discoverable by luck). There’s a way to do it easily in RPG Maker.

And that’s pretty much it … I’d say this game could fit as a mobile game, i do not intend to have high quality graphics, just something generic, even AI generated since i’m very poor (Sadly). If i had money i would hire people to help, but i cannot

For the story itself, it would unfold in chapters with characters getting available during each chapters, and some having full fledged arcs dedicated to them specifically.

Planned characters as of yet : (Core characters, as of now, but i intend to make the roaster expansive, just like gasha games who can pump out character endlessly LOL)

• One necromancer lady (That comes with at-least three summons if added to the battle party, to be chosen between a dullahan, skeleton archers, warriors, or mages).
• One red dragon
• The MC (Ofcourse) - I don’t know if it’s gonna be possible to make his appearance customizable.
• Kamille (Basic adventurer)
• A witch
• One normal white wolf (Yes, the animal, nothing special)
• One fantastical phoenix
• One red demon wolf

So, do tools even exist to make this thing feasible without breaking my head and sanity ? I’m gonna create concept arts to show my vision, but that’s the very core. I cannot make it more simple.

The main screen of the game will probably look like every mobile game like raid shadow legends (Raid Garbage Legends i’d even say, ha ha) : Probably a fixed image of a peaceful camp or a random place, depending on where the player is situated in the world or how far they are in the story) with the buttons for : “Story” - “Expedition” - “Party” - “Inventory”

If they’re in a town, they’d be able to sell / buy items, of-course, like in any rpg.

Thanks in advance for your help, because i’m lost. And RPG Maker wouldn’t be able to handle a massive 10 x 17 grid. It would be hell in terms of unit placement.

[dragonforge-dev]

If you are unwilling to learn how to program, then Godot is not the engine for you.

[gertkeno]

Inventories and Turn based combat will probably be the most complicated part, and they can get pretty complicated. They have in common a model/view relationship, some data will exist in your project and must be represented in a multitude of ways. An inventory consists of items which must be counted and stored, but also exist as rendered objects and/or functions, similarly “the grid” must hold what object occupies what space, while animating transitions in a non-grid fashion.

Grid based movement you may be able to drop as a feature or hack around it to get close enough in our non-grid world.

Inventories can be huge systems with complex parts including grids such as in Resident Evil 4, or much smaller systems only listing items and their count from top to bottom with only an Icon to represent them and some action function programmed in if needed. Given RPG Maker I’m assuming you’ll do fine with a list of items.

Those were the two concrete systems we see a lot around here on the forum, they are semi-well-defined enough to talk about complexity. Your other systems such as “Expeditions” and “Side-view battler” are not well-defined so it’s hard to assess how difficult they would be to implement.

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You can learn programming, and in my opinion Godot may be a great way to learn. Try some smaller projects out first, it’ll feel better to get something up and running where your large project will take some time in general and multiply by only just learning the engine. You will have to re-write large portion of your project, this isn’t a bad thing yet can be disheartening when starting out.

[clocks]

There is no way around programming, especially with the features you describe in your post.

[Dad3353]

Good evening…

From reading your description, I would say that RPG_MV would be ideal for this adventure. I recognise just about every aspect in your resumé, except for this size ‘limitation’ that you have seem to have issues with. I have made several RPG games of exactly this sort, and have many maps of 40x40, some 40x120, and many other sizes too. I don’t see what problems the map sizes could cause, as far as RPG itself is concerned.
I have published a fully-playable version on a web site, freely available to try out, if you want to see some of what’s modestly possible with RPG; here’s a link…

Rachdale Cheese Demo, RPG made with RPG Maker MV…

… and would be willing to help in any way reasonable in seeing if this could be a better way forward for your Project. Have a look at the web RPG and advise if I can be of any assistance. The Source files of my Project can be made available to you to play around with, if it can help you. Meanwhile…

Have a splendid day.

Douglas

[HyperJragon]

As someone making a story driven minimal mechanics game, you still need to learn to code. If you don’t learn how to code you can’t make a game in Godot, that’s all there is to it. Especially with slightly more complex systems.

[Jeenah]

Hello there ! I’m not an English speaker so i guess i didn’t explain properly what i meant by “Size limitations” … It comes to the battlescreen itself.

Since i want to have a grid system, the battlescreen is too small. I’ve checked for RPG Maker plug-ins that add grids, but one of them is in abandonware, completely left by its creator (The site and tutorials for it aren’t even up anymore) and the other ones are clearly not enough for what i intend to do.

With the basic battlescreen of RPG Maker, just 3 characters and a dragon is already filling the space quite a lot, and i intend to have up to 10 characters at the same time (Just for the player’s side), while the enemy side would be even more cluttered (The main enemy are gonna be hordes, so lot and lots of fodder).

Just from this screen, coming from another of my projects, which i had to completely ditch because it was too hard/complex to make, and too expensive, its easy to see the problem i’ll encounter. (Unless there are tricks to solve it ?)

There will probably another dragon character to join the player’s party also and i do not want to have limitations on how powerful the hero’s party can be, because the lore of the game will mean to throw everything to survive (Its something i find very stupid in most games and RPGs. You gather armies, allies, numerous people to help you destroy the MOST DANGEROUS evil throughout the game, and your party is … Four members … Waw ! So lore accurate bro ! While 95% of the gathered forces stay behind in the tents ? XD)

Or maybe the story “Implies” that they are fighting, but that’s just a cheap trick. We’re lucky the Lord of the Rings didn’t “Imply” the battle for Minas Tirith, or else i think the movies would have been quite boring.

Also developing a game for 10 years isn’t something i’m interested in. I’ve seen many people work on games for years, just for those games to be thrown under the rug on release which is very sad, but that’s how it works.

I still thank you for your help and i’ll check what you sent with great interest. i’ve seen a lot of RPG Maker games already, some have parts of the system i’d like to have.

Symphony of War The Nephilim Saga has the grid system i’d like to implement (You choose the positions of your units before going into battle), BUT ! The grids are very, very small. If i remember it’s 3 x 4 or 5 ? Nothing in comparison to the 10 x 6 per side i want to have. (And after pondering about it during the night, it seems i’ll even have to go 11 high x 7 length for each side).