My name is Michael, and for the past year, I've been developing my first game with BYOND. It's called Rising Empire, and it's quite a growing RPG.
When I first started working on it, I knew nothing about BYOND coding. I took examples and compiled them together and called it 'Kingdom Build'. It was going to be a building game. Until a player named Madjarjarbinks logged in, and offered to code, map, icon, etc. for my game. With him doing most of the coding, it got quite far, yet at one point, he had to leave for a few months and I coded for myself. The last few months have been quite productive in my learning BYOND.
My question is, was tackling an RPG as my first game with BYOND any kind of intelligent? Or should I stop the game and work on something simpler? Creating Rising Empire (Kingdom Build) has taught me a good bit about not only coding, mapping, etc., but working on it I've learned how to manage staff members, create forums, host behind a router, and at one time, how to create a website!
Most people think that you should start out with small simple games, yet I started out aiming for something big. It's gotten me this far, and I'm still going with it now quite competently. So is not making an RPG as your first game really the way to go? Or should you start with an RPG and work on it?
You can view my game, which I host 24/7, here:
http://games.byond.com/hub/Michael3131/RisingEmpire
(I'm not trying to advertise my game, I would really like to know people's opinion on this.)
ID:152289
 May 30 2007, 4:36 pm
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Yeah, I'm not sure you can go much farther than being popular on this site.. I could be wrong though.
I have to agree with the varying levels of difficuties with coding. Many times you code simple things to avoid having to code harder more complicated things. Anyone else have an opinion? | |
As long as you don't get ahead of yourself. You can have a grand plan in your mind, but make sure you work on one part of it at a time and keep track of what you have done. Also it tends to be helpful to make test worlds to test various aspects of your RPG, such as combat, magic, or banking.
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As far as it being a learning experience, it doesn't really matter what you start with, so long as you can get results that you can see and work with quickly. I started off on BYOND working on Maeva. That was back in 1999. As I learned more, I ended up completely redoing it, without ever having finished, several times over. Now I'm not even using BYOND for Maeva anymore. As I learned new things though, I got ideas for other projects and kind of jumped between a few. To my recollection, Mine Bombers and Bomberman Arena have really been the only things I've actually released. I personally just enjoy developing games, I would definitely like to finish all these projects I've started or just envisioned, but the process of making them is fun, too.
If your first project on BYOND is going to be an RPG, chances are, you'll be remaking large portions of it. The very storyline and idea of Maeva has evolved over time. It originally started out as basically a copy of someone else's MUD, now it has it's own fully fledged storyline, characters, and gameplay. If you're not satisfied with how your game turns out, you can always start a new one, with the knowledge you've gained. Good luck! | |
It is definately not a bad thing to start out with an RPG. In fact, that is probably what most people should start with.
The features that Byond has built into it make it especially oriented toward the RPG genre. If you do not have anything elaborate in mind, they are exceedingly simple to make, and if you know what you are doing you can make a simple RPG with Byond in under an hour. I think the question as to what you should or should not do as your first project should be one of scope, not design. If you come in wanting to start right into a massive game then you are likely to get frustrated, ditch it, and walk away. One of the things that really helped me before was that I made lots of little games. I quite often create games where the initial intent going into them is to whip up something quick, in just a few hours, that I can play with some people for the rest of the week then forget about it. I have so many folders with so many projects on my computers and disks that I cannot even remember what many of them were for, let alone try and take them further. And I also have a project called "test" whose only purpose is to test out ideas, and the "test.dm" file in that folder is constantly emptied and started from scratch again as I have a new idea I want to toy with. I think that, if one of your main goals is to get better at programming, one of the best things for beginners is to have a large scope of experience, not a small scope of experience on a large project. Of course, depending on your prior programming experienc and knack for the skill, you may well be able to just learn how to do something then be able to apply it easily to many different concepts, which is what you should be aiming for from a programming perspective. In the end it all comes down to what you enjoy doing. Although I have a billion and two projects, I had one main project that I continually came back to, started over and redid in other forms, and evolved over time; and it was a heck of a lot of fun working on that during the learning process. The bottom line is to work on what you have fun working on, and if you want others to play your game with you to make it hospitable as well. | |
rpgs are a great way to start. Know why? because they gain loyal fan bases that keep you motivated. Simple games never do and rarely hold your interest. Its frustrating to learn off of a OnlineRPG but, youll get addicted to byond faster and that will help your long term learning curve.
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You haven't seen SilkWizard then, look him up.
But honestly from myself, I have never released anything and have shown what I have coded over the years to few. I have folder after folder of incomplete projects or snippets of things I've made that were to be in systems. I also have a nice "test" folder which has so many different things coded into it that it's almost overwhelming to sort through. Coding an rpg from the beginning gives you the chance to learn about handling login, images, etc.. Alot of the core functions can be learned from the basic rpg as well as advanced functions as you delve deeper. | |
Most people think that you should start out with small simple games, yet I started out aiming for something big. It's gotten me this far, and I'm still going with it now quite competently. So is not making an RPG as your first game really the way to go? Or should you start with an RPG and work on it? An RPG is fine to start out with, it's what I did (see Enzignia). It helped me to learn a lot of the basics. I pretty much stole all the source code from Kunark's RPG TUTORIAL 2, then customized, then reworked it, then pretty much rewrote it all once I knew what I was doing (partially, I was noob, afterall). But Enzignia, as is likely with most first games, sucks. Quite simply: it sucks hard. Don't feel disappointed if your game sucks too, I moved on to other games, some small and stupid, others not so much, and now I'm learning other, more major languages and systems. I'm not a CS major (though it is my minor) and I've found it quite possible to get a firm grasp on programming via BYOND, and inasmuch it's quite possible that your first game will be an RPG, and it's quite possible it will suck. But keep at it. It's a lot of fun and a lot of work, but it's great to see a creation come to life. | |
Speaking from personal experience, and my name around BYOND since I joined back in 1999 has been pretty synonymous with "vapourware", you should absolutely not make an RPG as your first project unless you're planning on never releasing that first project. I tried to make an RPG as my first project. Nearly eight years later, I still have yet to finish it or even release it in a playable state.
The only way to learn DM and make a project is to take a base like A Step BYOND and tweak it into something different. Once you're qualified enough to do that, you should start with something very small and well-defined, like a puzzle game. Puzzle games are extremely easy to make in BYOND. The only games I've ever "finished" were puzzle games, including a minor implementation of the classic "Stones" game (where you take either 1, 2, or 3 stones and try to make the other person take the last stone), as well as a backwards implementation of "Knight's Bridge" from Ultima VII (I had treasure chests being pushed the wrong way, and it took reading the rulebook again in Exult to realise I had made a big boo-boo). | |
Jtgibson wrote:
Speaking from personal experience, and my name around BYOND since I joined back in 1999 has been pretty synonymous with "vapourware", you should absolutely not make an RPG as your first project unless you're planning on never releasing that first project. I tried to make an RPG as my first project. Nearly eight years later, I still have yet to finish it. You clearly are OCD, or you don't know when to quit lol. (either thing isn't necessarily bad on its own terms). The only way to learn DM and make a project is to take a base like A Step BYOND and tweak it into something different. Once you're qualified enough to do that, you should start with something very small and well-defined, like a puzzle game. Puzzle games are extremely easy to make in BYOND. I agree with starting with a source, but your first project doesn't have to be something small, if my first idea had been something small or generic I wouldn't have had the desire necessary to persist through the thick and thin. But then, to each his own. | |
Sounds like you've learnt a lot from the experience. Good idea or not, it turned out pretty well for you, so why worry about it?
In general I wouldn't encourage someone just starting out to take on a large project; smaller is usually better. But hey, if it works for you, go for it. The only unbreakable rule is that there are no unbreakable rules. | |
Crispy wrote:
Sounds like you've learnt a lot from the experience. Good idea or not, it turned out pretty well for you, so why worry about it? But if you said the only unbreakble rule is that is there no unbreakable rule dosent that make that rule unbreakable | |
1.Original force you to broaden your ideas and force you to programme new and hard things.
2.Non-Original force you to programme things that a Fan-Based game needs. For example certain complicated Jutsu's on Naruto, but I don't think there are any >_<
Hmm and to begin I suppose and RPG would be a nice choice to begin programming especially an Original one =)
RPGs are full of simple and complicated programming so you get the goods from both sides so your guarenteed a good learning experience so carry on if you like and who knows you might make a famous game... On BYOND at least >_<