hello all. joined yesterday. first post. kind of nervous, so dont be too mean. i started work on a Nethack SLASH’EM/Eamon/Holocure-like RPG last night in inform 7. what i i’m looking for both inspiration and pointers as to what to do exactly. i have big plans for this, and i realize its probably going to be absolutely terrible at first, but i intend to make it decent and eventually good over the course of an intedeterminate amount of time. i also have a lot of time on my hands to work on it.
the idea is that it will be many interconnected dungeons with a wide variety of enemies and loot.
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i also would like to implement character selection.
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first heard of it yesterday. will check it out.
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Welcome and good luck! Sincerely. RPGs are bit more rare with Inform7, probably due to the headache of combat, which, while surmountable, presents a decent headache for potential RPG authors.
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i think the challenge of making it would be fun though. ive seen source codes for combat systems in Inform 7. though if theres an easier IF authoring tool to do combat and everything else, what would it be? ive seen ADRIFT mentioned here.
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Big, popular Inform7 RPGs with parser and combat:
Treasures of a Slavers Kingdom
Kerkerkruip
The Little Match Girl 3
Flexible Survival
Black Knife Dungeon
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Oh, no, I’m not trying to dissuade you! I’m just pointing out there are fewer preexisting examples, that’s all!
Here are some polls showing RPGs done in IF, some in I7, some in other languages:
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thank you!
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I’d also add Reliques of Toti-Alph – as an overall design it’s got strengths and weaknesses, but it implements pretty robust DnD style combat (including a spell system), and its source code is available (though it might be a bit out of date at this point).
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If you want to be slightly lazy, rather than updating all that code, you could just install the version of Inform used to write it. All of the old Inform versions are still available for download. Depends on what features you need whether updating that source is a good use of your time.
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Victor Gijsbers has said a lot about the development of Kerkerkruip that you’d probably find very interesting. I did an interview with him that might still be on this forum… You’ll notice that in order to create a compelling text parser roguelike, something well-suited to the type-and-read format, he had to invent some mechanics that (as far as I know) had no direct precedent in any “graphical” RPGs.
For The Little Match Girl 3, my initial goal was to recreate Fire Emblem in text. As I turned it over in my head, I realized what I specifically wanted to create was the “character sheets” of Fire Emblem; I wanted the player to get to look at a bunch of cool stats and see how this character was good at one thing and this other character was good at a different thing, and form a strategy based on that information. (This isn’t the most Fire Emblemy thing about Fire Emblem, but it’s how my brain worked.) Because I started out by deciding what stats would be cool, the combat mechanics and character abilities were designed based on, how can I use those stats? Here’s the instruction manual for that game.
I designed a completely different combat system for Mud Warriors. One big factor in this design was that I wanted to write the game fast, so I had to come up with something simple. But it was also a game about throwing mud-balls, and so while I wanted Accuracy and Evasion to be big factors, I didn’t want to be worrying about Attack and Defense as well. I considered that the main actions of the game were >PICK UP MUD and >THROW MUD AT KID and I came up with a system that was suited to that.
I guess my advice is, ideally before you start coding your combat system, consider what type of experience you’re trying to create, so you can pick mechanics that lend themselves to that experience. But you should definitely write your own combat system, because it really is a lot of fun.
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oh my goodness, thank you! i will definitely be looking at those too!
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