Unity for RPG?

Would Unity work for an RPG? When I say an RPG, I mean an old-school style rpg with the following sort of features:

1. Conversation trees
2. Quest state system
3. Melee combat
4. Missile combat (Arrows, rifles, etc)
5. Player states
6. Scriptable AI system with multiple state machines
7. Swimming, crawling, crouching, jumping, climbing, etc.
8. Player levelling system.

I guess what I'm asking is - is this doable in Unity either A) builtin, B)Scriptable, or C) Not doable at all?

Thank you

 

B)

 

Of course that is doable in Unity. However you will need to supply all the character animation states, the skill to program the various state machines and AI... and level design/asset creation... time, amongst a myriad of other things required to make a game.

But Unity will allow you to EASILY put all that together and glue it together with scripts.

Cheers.

 

Thank you for the responses. I see that Unity supports C# for scripting, that is really sweet.

 

Think "scriptable' as an answer to your question, and as said, the graphics part is easy IF you have considerable talent/friends to take on the assets which are critical in an RPG.

Funny though, when you say "old school" I think Wizardy or Ultima ||-V or maybe Phantasy Star for SEGA Master System, or Final Fantasy II(IV), but I don't think that's what you had in mind. lol. (I'm only 35! Honest!)

 

Hahahahaa

I had *exatly* the same in mind about the old school comment. "Swimming in old school - eh?"

:-D

But yes - all scriptable and doable

 

The earliest RPG that I think I've played with all that stuff included (except crouching) is X-Men Legends, and that's from late 2004. I'm interested to know what the OP had in mind, too.

 

wizardry on the apple and tunnels of doom on the Ti99a were personal favorites.
Both could be written with php / html / css / JS nowadays.

 

I can still remember opening the boxes for Ultima ][ and ]I[. Thinking to myself, "This thing comes on 3 110k floppies. The game has got to be HUGE!"

Hard to say which was my favorite though. Flying the spaceship to PlanetX, going down the whirlpool in my ship, walking up to the drive-through window at McD's, etc. They all had their moments, up until the cheesy Ultima IV where you had to be a good guy.

Yeah I guess i'm dating myself too.

 

Haha, I'm probably older than most of you - I'm 45 now. I wrote an RPG for SSI back in the old days (1992!) that had all of that except for #7. Of course it wasn't as sophisticated as games are now.

 

so are you a wrinkle or a crumbly ?

 

Well when I`ll finish mine project i`ll be 45 too so wherez the beef

 

If I'm not mistaken (acronyms are my nemesis) you're talking about "the bard's tale" class of games? well, i'm 36, my apple //c served a long time playing the tune... la la la....

 

Good, you know what you're in for. IMO, it's one of the toughest genres to make (regardless of game engine).

 

Yeah unfortunately it is one of the hardest to make just because of the amount of content usually needed. Me and my friends are working on an RPG story right now, almost done! We have found a character designer, but are really looking for a 3d modeler and animator now that would like to work with us.

If anyone else is working on an RPG with Unity I would love to share ideas/concepts, etc. I just started with Unity two weeks ago, so I haven't gotten far. We mostly just have story and gameplay design down so far... hardly anything at all is implemented yet.

 

The content is not what I was referring to. It's the hardest because of the enormous amount of game states needed.

I really wouldn't recommend doing an RPG for your first Unity project (unless you have a LOT of prior programming experience).

 

Thanks for the advice man! Me and my friends' dream is to finish the RPG that we are working on, so I think what we are gonna do is experiment with making some smaller games to get some experience with everything at first.

Also, we are going to start out simple as far as game states go in the RPG, and then slowly build upon the initial work. I know it is gonna be hard and rough though lol. I can only thank Unity for existing because it is going to be a lot easier than anything I have found.

 

We did Ravensword in Unity, and it's more than up to the task.

Stories are hard though, as others have mentioned. You have a bunch of states to manage, and many of them only change once in the game, which makes testing very time consuming. One bad state and your players are trapped and unable to complete the story. That's when the pitchforks and torches come out.

Stats design is also a huge deal, balancing things, managing difficulty, etc. Ravensword has a very simple stats system, and it was still quite a chore to get dialed in.

 

I think that would be wise. My first Unity game was pong... you can't get much simpler than that!

 

Yeah earlier today I'm just trying out making an rpg. Not a project, just building up experience, then i'm going to try some racing work.

FACT: A rpg is way harder then a FPS Haha

ANyway design your story, and build the game in small area. Its alot easier to just branch off in an rpg to expand the game.

 

A single-path story actually isn't that hard to manage inside an RPG system. The trick is to have a solid set of barriers to keep the player in a controlled environment. If you know all the places a player can go in any single state of the game, you'll find it much easier to test in theory before the arduous testing in practice.

I'd also recommend having a central state script that all other scripts refer back to. It'll save you some accounting trouble.

 

Initial game ideas are always the biggest. I wanted to make a turn-based strategy RPG but have since shrunk the idea down to a simple platformer with a few simulation elements and branching paths... in other words, a story / quest based game, but without any more stats then [quest x is completed / y items collected / z is destroyed]. In fact I could probably do away with a full inventory at this point, and just hardcode the few standard items I have directly to certain keys.

It still feels ridiculously complicated, but at least my programmer is now happier. I originally wanted the burden to fall to the programmer, since I am not quite confident of my skills as designer / artist and the sheer amount of models I have to create and animate. Usually any form of strategy or RPG elements extend the life of the gameplay while reusing the same maps or tiles -- I just didn't want to have to build this huge level only for the player to breeze through it all in 2 minutes FPS-style.

But with a quest system, at least a player will spend longer on a map going back and forth seeking out NPCs to talk to and items to collect. It's an annoying cheap trick targeting OCD people, I know, but what else can I do? I'm trying to save on art assets and code complexity at the same time, so I'm trying to find ways to make players stay in my world just a bit longer.

In addition, I want the resources to be light enough so the same download contains the basic and full version via serial key activation -- this will save me from having to email pirates to take down their rapidshare / megaupload links or whatever... In fact, I would encourage them to spread my game to as many hands as possible (with the hope that they wouldn't be able to crack the activation scheme). So with this in mind, designing the game primarily as a platformer will enable me to break it into stages with checkpoints (main quests completed) and thus have the save game from the basic/demo game simple enough to be loaded for the full game. If I had all these accessories and stats to keep track of, as well as a total open world (instead of stage-like levels), I would not be in a position to release in a try-before-you-buy-scheme, or even a demo at all. That's why you don't see GTA / openworld game demos, and the few RPG demos you see are severely reengineered from scratch to take place somewhere in the middle of the story (and with the caveat that their game saves are not compatible with the full version).

 

That actually sounds like a pretty cool idea booger. Do you have much game to play around with yet or is a lot of this still concepts in your head? I'd love to help playtest this and give feedback when you get to that stage.

 

I'm working on a very simple RPG in Unity right now. As long as I don't go out on a tangent and add unnecessary features like Limit Breaks, ATB meters, or Sephiroth it should be fine.

Really what makes RPGs difficult to make is not the mechanics - actually, I'd venture that the mechanics are easier to create in an RPG. You do need more assets, however.

 

Asvarduil

If you ever want to share any ideas or work or anything since we are both working on RPG's, I would be fine with it. Right now we have a 5 person team working on ours, with me learning Unity, doing programming and music, 2 guys mostly working on the story, and 2 others doing art. So we've got a lot of work ahead of us, lol.

 

I'm 48 and have been programming since 1979 or so... As a hobby until I went professional in 1988.

 

Heehee Alano - PM sent

One of the things I'm looking at with NAFRPG's design is how a timer can shake things up. Sure, every RPG has the two key Timer scenes - the beginning where you have a ludicrously easy task that must be completed within five minutes (it takes thirty seconds), and the ending escape scene that must be completed within ten minutes (it takes five...). Now, I understand the fun of a game comes from beatability. However - Challenge is also a key part, no?

Ok that had nothing to do with Unity per se. Back on topic, though, Unity is probably one of the easier engines with which to piece an RPG together, especially if the scripts are written correctly. Once the assets are made (always a time-eater), the programming job is greatly reduced by the scripting system's modular nature. The only thing I think would be really excruciatingly hard to accomplish is an MMORPG - let's face it, good networking is hard to nigh-impossible to accomplish with the best of tools.

 

Oh , a thread I am going to like

FPS is the only thing I dream of making I have a complete story in mind that I have developed over the course of a couple of years so now it boils down to putting it all together.

MY first hurdle was the dialogue. For this I created the Unity Dialogue Engine and I think everyone who has seen it will agree that it makes an RPG instantly that much easier to do. Next thing, would obviously be the battle system. Honestly speaking, PRGs are based around storytelling and fighting. Surely you would agree that that takes up 90% + of the game! So I started working on the Turn Based Fighting mechanic thinking that once that is done, creating an RPG would simply boil down to constantly calling the UDE and TBF and voila...

Of course, the next thing you would need is flashy graphics. If you are developing for desktops or consoles then I don't believe you can get away with not delivering flashy graphics and cut scenes. Sure, gameplay is most important, but if the graphics don't lure the people to try out the gameplay then what will... So content is vital and one can never have too much...

Now, having said that, the thin that I am still struggling with is the stats system. Unfortunately for me, I need to come up with a valid, solid and reliable stats system if I want to create a turn based fighting system because how else will that work? So I have to do that part of the game before I can finish off the current part of the game. A 2 for one deal... :/ Ouch!

What bothers me is how to determine the upgrades in player stats, enemy stats and weapon stats in such a way as to not go overboard, while not making it so easy as to render it utterly meaningless...

There is the HP, the SP, the XP, the Luck, the X, the Rage, the Special, the delay between being able to cast spells, the relation of weapon upgrade stats to player upgrade stats and of course the upgrades / base stats of the enemies as the game progresses. Figuring out the formulae for these I find to be the hardest part of creating an RPG.

For example, I was thinking of giving the enemy a power equal to the sum of your party's power, then dividing it with the max number of players your party can contain and then multiplying it with the main protagonist's level. This would mean that while you are at level 1 and learning the ropes, the enemies are at 1/4 your power and easy to defeat. At level 2 they are at half your level and at level 4 they finally match up to you. OF course if you now have 4 party members then they are still at 1/4 your strength (providing your party members are of equal strength). At level 8, again, presuming your party is all at the same level, it would mean the enemy is now as powerful as you are (stats wise), although the power is divided amongst the enemy party members. After level 8, the enemy will become more powerful than you and you will require more powerful magic and a couple of healing ointments and such.

This is a first draft and it sound like it might work so I would like to give that a go. Enemy Power = (all party power / max party members) * player level. simple enough formulae to implement throughout the game so no need to hardcode the fighter's values (apart from the odd boss or two) but what about the SP and Luck and XP etc etc etc. What would be a decent enough formulae to bring all of them into consideration?

 

Gargareth wrote:

"I'd also recommend having a central state script that all other scripts refer back to. It'll save you some accounting trouble."

Would you have any links about this subject? I'm realizing its importance and need to learn more about it.

Thanks.

 

Not sure if we are talking about the sae thing here, but I personally create an emum containing the different names of my states and then I create a file names globals.js and inside I have a variable named

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. static var Playmode : ePlaymode = ePlaymode.MainMenu;
3.  

In my other scripts I simply reference Globals.Playmode to test for what I can and cannot do. For example, I modified the SmoothLookAt script to only work when Globals.Playmode = ePlaymode.Playing.

But that's just me. Not sure how anyone else does this.

 

Rpg can be done always, the problem is the scope, you can do very quickly simply boring game interesting or ugly or boring long. If you want to do something really innovative gameplay perspective of mechanisms (AI is the limit today RPG, a good real-time combat can give a lot of work), it is sufficient to generate quality content that is not an insoluble problem.

I myself since I was working almost 12 years in the rpg project (now I'm 25, I started early with PnP and Basic), now I have more than a thousand pages Gamedesign (count without pictures tables, etc., standard side has 1800 characters I think). It is true that I lost a lot of time programming, now I just want to complete the design (and assets) and then something propramming (rather, find a programmer because I missed the train and long programming I am not tired), a great thief of time in last year was also a proposal revolutionary AI system based on psychology (any other game mechanisms are opposed to baby-easy). In this issue, which does not mention them here, no dialogue, all just a description of the mechanisms and the environment where the game takes place. Even though it is true that the game is to a large extent from the real environment, so I became largely archaeologist and historian, focusing on the Viking period.

Makes me happy, kind of old grease is still in the industry, programmed and not sitting somewhere on a warm pile of gold. Actually, most rpg mechanisms have been used in games already at 85 and since then much has changed, rather than going in to be added. Necessary, but also say that the interface of those old games were terrible, text parsers and commands is hell, so immersivity these old games were pretty miserable. Today we needed something with a depth of old games and modern technology and control and some new mechanisms

 

This all depends on your team of course, myself and 2 other friends started with good intention several years back for making an RPG game, talk about scope creap, too much to drink and way to much pizza at the gatherings lead to little done. We have our story line complete for a single player game with as much as 6 potential player endings depending on the paths the player takes during the quests. We took an approach similar to Ultima where your player decisions during the course of your adventure enabled or disabled quests and depending on how you completed them also effected the surroundings.

This of course lead to a total of 3 years of documentation just for the storyline. Ideas ran amuck at times, sometimes nothing got decided, while other times we got plenty done, but didn't write it all down like idiots, was fun nights though. However, the story is done but lack of interest in making it a 3d game came about by lack of skills. We finally decided that although coding wasn't the issue, the sheer amount of time for modeling and animation would kill us, and we have no financial backing, it is just the three of us working full time to support our families, and trust me when I say wifes were not happy with late nite coding.

The main system we finally finished was the humanoid battle system, I wrote that and finished it over a year ago. It took some finite tweaking to get it just right based on equipment and skills of the player, over 6 months of coding and testing and recoding until finally a player was able to properly duel another player based on skills and timers. It isn't just a swing and hit system, there are point based systems for every conceivalbe point on the body including fatal blows and crippling effects.

One of my all time favorites was the ability to hit someone with a maul and they go flying through the air, they take damage from the blunt blow to where ever it hit, then damage when they landed, and anyone they landed on. It is a system that mimics Lord of the Rings movie with the mass battles, I wanted to have a look and feel to a real battle system, not just a hit and damage to player health system, I wanted a rip your arms off system, slash through the chest, take that head off, chop off a leg, etc, and I made it.

Now it is dusty and useless because now we really need more models that can handle that havoc on the body and ragdoll systems in place to handle it, the time involved is simply not worth it. Stastically speaking, people lost their arms in battle more than anything else with the system based on attack positions of humaniods anyway. No one ever goes for the legs, and when they go for the head, it is typically always blocked by an arm, until that arm is useless.

I would say start small, but I dream to big myself so I know how hard it is to just stay simple.

 

We are developing an action RPG for iPhone with Unity:

http://www.monzini.net/AncientQuest.html

But it's a Huge work...and i'm not sure is a right choice with few developers. :wink:

 

zumwalt@ - If the fight is yours really that good, so you can quickly make a fighting game like Soul Calibur or something like Golden Axe in 3D, like Conan the hack and slash. Slightly larger nut is FPS with a good fight, something like Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.
In my opinion, the minimum size of the team for a good rpg about 10 people and the game can not be too long (Risen now made 15 people). Five, six hours good gameplay is better than 80 hours of borring game.
Of course, if the iPhone doing so attaches any crap, because there is competition, but the RPG to the iPhone is hell no proper controls, would be at least better PSP or Nitendo DS, then you must be a member of their network to developers is to have money.

 

as one of my pet projects im reworking soulblazer/soulblader. for fun. im not realy planning a release its just for fun to learn maya and unity. i havent gotten to the scripting part yet but im getting there. i got some of the assets modeled already, im kinda takeing a break from it for a bit to work on the artistic side of 3d for a bit of fun.

 

We are working on.

And made almost everything listed. But the biggest problem is not the coding but game design, story, quest as RPG should be interesting at first as we guess.

 

This thread is older than my nephew.