Any interest in an RPG game kit?

I've got an educational project I've been thinking about lately, which is built around a Roguelike game.

I've also been thinking a lot about JRPG-style games for some time. And then just yesterday, @HaruEQ posted this thread asking about people coming to Unity from RPG Maker.

I bought Rog (a Roguelike starter code asset) last week, but haven't been super happy with it. I'm probably going to go with my own code instead. And if I'm going to do that, it would only take a bit more care to polish it up enough to be a general JRPG/Roguelike starter kit.

My goal would be something you can just launch and immediately start building your world. I'm a big believer in "building by walking around" — that is, you have an avatar right away, and because it has the special "creator" scripts on it (or on some object it has equipped), you have access to the world-editing tools. But apart from those special powers, editing your game is no different from playing it, so it's seamless to try things out, tweak, and try again. (The creator tools would include saving and restoring the game state, of course, so it's quick & easy to try things out.)

Under the hood, all world objects would be prefabs built out of a library of components for handling things like containers, quantity items (e.g. coins), weapons, damageable things including monsters, AI, etc. So it would be easy to modify a behavior, or add a new one, without having to muck about with the rest of the system.

My current plan would be to use sprites for all the objects in the world, but to make heavy use of recycling pools. So common building blocks like walls and trees would be pulled from the pool when they appear on screen, and recycled when they go offscreen for efficiency.

GUI hooks would be designed for the modern Unity UI system (though I suppose you could hook something else up instead). It would make extensive use of UnityEvents for updating the UI when something happens in the game, or (in the other direction) triggering actions on the game objects when something happens in the UI.

The engine would be turn-based, but allow for quick auto-turns when just walking from point A to point B for example. Combat could either be right on the map, Rogue-style, or switch to "battle mode" a la Final Fantasy. In the latter case, your battle mode could represent a whole party of characters, despite having a single character on the map (and same for monsters).

Finally, map mode would support both isometric and orthogonal (perpendicular) styles.
(image credit)

So!

1. Is there already something like this in the Asset Store, and I've just missed it?
2. Is anybody excited enough about this to kick around ideas and help me make sure I'm not missing anything?

Thanks,
- Joe

 

This asset has an "edit in game" feature, but sounds pretty limited compared to the features you have in mind:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/25657

 

That looks pretty interesting. It's called "RPG Map Editor" but with features like pathfinding, fog of war, and a character animator, it sounds more like an RPG kit to me! Perhaps only lacking combat and inventory. I'll definitely give it a look.

Thanks,
- Joe

 

The ORK Framework is practically RPG maker for Unity.

 

Everything in the showcase is using 3D models. How does ORK work with tile-based pixel art?

 

No idea. I always use 3d models. But the way I understand it, it is no problem to use 2d with it.

 

Most of the RPG kits I've seen are focused on combat and all the databases that go into combat. Even then, they all seem monolithic and to firmly entrench you into their pre-established workflow (i.e. replicating that one pop up window that contains 90% of all the work done in RPGMaker). Maybe they include a quest tracking system just to wrap up a saving function, but anything else is usually open to other solutions, so no map solutions or dialogue systems.

 

ORK Framework supports 2D. (For an example, see Dead Gear.) It has all the expected RPG functionality (inventory, turn-based and realtime combat, quests, dialogue -- although I may be a bit biased in preferring the Dialogue System's integration with ORK for dialogue), and a good visual scripting system, but it doesn't come out of the box with in-game world editing.

 

There's also plyGame: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/9694. It's got a visual scripting thing and dialog/item/quest systems. The examples seem to be oriented toward more of a Diablo style RPG, but maybe it could be adapted for other rendering styles. I wonder how hard it would be to extend ORK Framework or plyGame to work *with* RPG Map Editor?

On the other hand, maybe it's just as easy to use something like RPG Map Editor for the sprite tiles and just code up your own game systems for what you really need.

 

I'm having that exact feeling myself. I'm playing with RPG Map Editor now; it is not a full RPG framework, lacking inventory, stats, any GUI at all, and much in the way of combat. But those are all fun to code and, to some extent, fairly game-specific anyway. Having RPG Map Editor handle the editing and efficient drawing of the map, plus some facilities like path-finding and character animation, really takes a load off. I'm having a blast hacking out the rest of it whenever I can sneak off to the computer for a few minutes!

 

I think that "modify stuff as you walk" is not the right idea in case of unity engine.
You see, when you're in play mode, the editor pretty much treats scene differently, and once you exit the play mode, it discards all changes that happened. To bypass that, you'll need to make fairly complicated framework that will bypass usual editor and construct scene dynamically everytime you start play mode. That'll be major pain, a lot of work, and you'd gain nothing from doing it this way in the end.

If you just want to make an rpg, It might make sense to concentrate on finding good map editor, not on "edit world as you walk" feature.

 

PlayModePersist. It's $20.

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/188

 

I disagree. It's not that painful, nor that much work, and you gain a great deal. For example, it means that you already have a level editor that can be a major feature of your game. It also means you can have your 11-year-old, who is still a bit overwhelmed and dangerous with the Unity editor, creating games using the same skills he uses to play them. Finally, if you decide to make a multiplayer online game, you'll be able to continue editing the world (and even let some set of users do so) while people are playing it.

Back in the MUD days, initially all world creation had to be done by editing separate config files and rebooting the game. Online creation was a major innovation that quickly swept aside pretty much all more primitive MUDs that didn't have it. I find it curious that the same never caught on for graphical RPGs — there is no technical reason to avoid it.

Well, in this thread, I was interested in making a good game system, and this would be just one feature thereof (and one I already had prototyped).

But, as it happens, I've found a good map editor — RPG Map Editor — and, as it also happens, it has exactly this feature!

Cheers,
- Joe

 

It is, especially if you had to code it, and needed to add multiplayer to it.

Since you found an asset that can already do that, no point in discussing it.

If you had to code it, it would've been worth it only if it was a planned central feature of your project.