Eschalon Book II from Basilisk Games

This post is a part of the How to make RPG’s series, which shows you the different ways on how to make Role Playing Video Games.

Creating an RPG all by yourself is a huge undertaking. To finish such a project, a lot needs to be done, and that’s probably an understatement. Let’s go over everything:

Program the entire game

You need to write your entire game from scratch. Of course you can use game engines, but the game itself needs to be programmed by you. And remember that programming the game doesn’t only include coding the game, but also coding the graphical user interface, resource management, loading and saving the game, etc.

Create all the art

When doing everything yourself, this also means you need to create customs art for your game: characters, environments, background art, … . Items like characters also need to be animated. And it doesn’t stop there, your game also needs music and sounds. And don’t forget the menu graphics!

Design the game

For game designers, this is the most fun part: make RPG Characters, think about the plot and narrative hook, write the dialogues etc. RPG’s really depend on this, so you need to put in some extra time to write everything down.

Is that all?

That should be it to create your game. But if you want others to play it, or even pay for it, you also need a website, marketing materials, contact game review sites, find beta testers, … .

Reality Check

Torchlight from Runic Games

Creating an RPG like this is a huge undertaking. Want to make it 3D, with multiplayer? Then forget that you will be able to pull this off all by yourself.

If you don’t know how to get started on creating an RPG, or if you don’t know which programming environment, game library or art tools to use, then forget it!
Creating an RPG by yourself should not be attempted if you are new to game development. But lucky for you there are other options. Don’t know how to program? No problem, you can still create your own RPG. I will explain this in the last installment of our How to make RPG’s series.

Conclusion

As you can see it takes a huge amount of work to create an entire RPG. But of course there are advantages by doing it this way.

Avernum 6 from Spiderweb Software

Advantages:

1. Total control over development environment and target platforms.
2. Total control over asset tools.
3. Total control over every detail in your game.

Disadvantages:

1. You have to be a good (or even great) programmer, with prior game development experience.
2. You have to be a good artist.
3. You got to have lots of time available.

To finish your game, you will have to be extremely motivated. Here are some tips if you want to go down this route:

1. Assemble a team so you don’t have to do it all by yourself.
2. Use an existing graphical engine so you don’t have to write that.
3. Use existing tools (for example a map editor).
4. Use an easy programming environment (Flash, Python, …).
5. Keep it small:
   1. Do it in 2D.
   2. Forget Multiplayer.

So, who is brave (or foolish) enough to go down this route?