Hi All,

Does anyone know of, or have a favourite, RPG style game made in GameGuru Classic. The internal team are curious about how many games have been created with a strong RPG element to them. As you might guess, we want to make sure MAX has a sufficient depth of RPG logic you can draw from, but it makes sense to find the RPG masters within the Classic community as they will have some very enlightening stories to tell (about developing such a game in GameGuru)

Just for clarity, I generally consider RPG as First Person Role Play Games where you play the role of a protagonist who follows a narrative or story, and relies more on character interaction and general adventuring, rather than the out and out shooter genre. With the exception of maybe arrows and crossbows, I would also consider the game a shooter if it used projectile weaponry.

I think the closest thing you'll find to an RPG in GG is T-Bone's impressive "Guild of The Peculiars" game, but even then it lacks a lot of "RPG" elements, like dialog trees and quests. GG is really poor for making anything that isn't an "out and out shooter" (and depending on who you ask, not even that!) because it feels like you're actively fighting hardcoded logic in the engine to do so. So it's a bit of a paradox.

The very first thing I did with GG was make an XP/Level system, and made a "discovery" system where when the player found a new location, it would show up some text showing the name of the place and award some XP, much like the Fallout games. However when I realized how little support there was for an RPG style game, and just how much was required for even a basic small RPG (quests plus a quest journal, dialog trees, fast travel/map, randomized loot, etc.) I gave up. I wouldn't consider myself a "RPG master", but I can give my two cents if you wish to hear it.

Hey there i was getting a lot of ground work for twin worlds. Although my scriptiing was not the best i had help from the boys on here like Small g

Wolf and cybernessence's creations are fantastic and a few others were on the make. However none finished due to restrictions.

I stopped work on twin worlds as im waiting for max to be completed before taking up the task again. It is crying out for the proposed dlc

Twin worlds had traps, jumping platforms (like in tomb raider and a bit of oblivion/skyrim) . i had some good villains and a few good world quests but this was without
character advancement exp.
Character advancement and statistics are essential to rpg
main stats were in rpg
Hit points
Dexterity
Stamina
Magic points
Intelligence
Charisma
Armour class

Classic i think lacked the whole possibility for rpg genre's. Not large enough world. there were some Fantastic scripts but the system would be the same principle as buying lots Of different models. they dont fully sit well together. so i guess what i recommend is have a full one Dedicated working rpg system creator for max in a dlc. that gives the options for character choice (maybe you create in the character creator) and to build up characters and spells and weapon damage and armour, good inventory and a map system like belidos has done. Nice touch. This i will put money on it have a huge amount of interest and make you a hyped product

Anyway, I think that an RPG is not an RPG without a third person system included in the game engine.
Ciber is doing a very cool game in third-person mode.

Anyway.. Yes i did go on lol, i did a 15 hour shift so thats my excuse.

3rd person.. Nope i never 3rd person on skyrim or oblivion or any rpg its not essential. Rpg games are more immersive in first person view. i used to do table top role-playing games with my mates in the 80s you became the character you created. Its almost an internal visual. I think lee is asking about rpg games first person and for virtual. Im sure 3rd person will happen in the near future

I think that rpg should have xp system
dodging /rolling animation
dialog and quest system
visible health bar on boss fight
stats
magic
third person camera
the perfect rpg for me is dark souls and i would like to make something like that

I worked for a while on an RPG style type of game and have put it off due to the impossibility of creating a reliable standalone file,
I decided to wait for better times, now with GGMax, there are high chances that I will remake the game from scratch.

The game (aquarelle world) is about a boy apprentice sorcerer, who is commissioned to recover the stone of the sacred fire that has been stolen from the village. Along the way he interacts / talks with villagers and especially magicians, who force him to solve puzzles and complete missions to gain experience and knowledge in the art of magic, for example, he has to solve a Magic square.

For some reason when I tried the game I felt that I was missing something, I had a boy that I did not see, talking to people who did not see him either, it was as if they were talking to the invisible man, executing actions that would be much more shocking if you could see the protagonist physically executing said actions, such as crossing a river on a zip line, or swimming, etc.

But I understand what Lee wants and I will stick to the script, it is about how to equip GGMax with what is necessary to develop a video game that moves away from the stereotypes of shooting everything that moves and that's it.

That seems like a very successful decision to me, and I have always preferred this type of game, I am more of TombRider, Syberia, style.

Well, Mr. Lee prepares to provide GGMax with a good inventory system, as this is essential in an RPG game.
Pocimas, which regenerate health, elixirs that provide the player with the necessary capacity to create spells, others give extra strength, and the inventory must keep a record, for example, of the strength, dexterity, knowledge, etc. that will accumulate the player throughout the game.
In my game, the player finds a magic cloak that makes him invisible, which will allow him to obtain a magic elixir with which he can go down to the underworld, etc. Waiting for GGMax to continue developing it, although as I said before I will start from scratch, that is, redoing most of the entities and using PBR + surface map, and so on.

Edit to add some vid.

Inventory
Because the player can end up with the inventory full up, I decide to code and create an inventory bank, when the player get some of those banks along with the game, he can save items there to get enough room, or he can take any entity from there if needed.

RPG has absolutely nothing to do with 3rd or 1st person, an RPG is entirely about content, it's nothing to do with cameras and views. D&D is an RPG and there's no cameras at all in tabletop games, Ultima Online was an RPG, Diablo was an RPG and they're both 3rd person point and click games.

What defines an RPG is the ability to immerse yourself in the game and interact with the world, mechanics like dialogues, quests, puzzles, inventories, character sheets and such are what Lee needs to focus on if he truly wants to be able to represent the RPG genre in Max.

RPG's;
I think a very important aspect of diverging into multiple genres of game-play,
Lee is #1, to have the feature of >>Spawning assets<< on the fly via script, the same
way Sprites are done. That would be a very good help to get other things going.
And I should mention that YES, I am in the early stages of trying to do a RPG
game in GG Classic!

It would be a 2d- 3d endless world combo. Big project, real-world work has slowed
it down. But as 3com mentions above; Concern #2-- a very big concern is
>>Stand- alones<< and the issues that can occur whenever delving into a highly
customized map creation. One of your guys might want to practically specialize in
that itself. And number #3 would be >>levels that retain the memory<< as you move
between them. That's why I'm trying to make only a procedural, one level game.
But I think others would not be too privy to that strategy.

>>More Text options!!<< more fonts and sizes, and could you possible go into the
>>entire ASCII table<< for text?

Also... // edit #1 //
Take a look here: function PromptLocal(e,str) -- where are the x,y,z offsets?! What's
the use of text in one spot?? I now realize that if I where to add a second object that
was offset from first object and then Hide(e) second object, a person could use this
in the offset position they desire. These work arounds for everyone are not so clear
at first.
Someone posted this for me to GitHub perhaps 6-8 months ago. What the use of it?
Putting something like a name or health bar (in TEXT) *above* an entity like is pretty
common in many game types.

Will keep mulling over more RPG idea essentials.

Okay.. // edit #2 //

I added a few months back some code to GamePlayerControl to help with swimming.
I posted that here in the forums, not just my own- BTW.
It was awkward, but just ONE thing would help tremendously to get swimming
movement much better. {{ForcePlayer ( angle, velocity ) where angle is the angle and physics velocity to push the player}}

It only moves Player HORIZONTALLY.
Where is the *Vertical Angle*?! As it is, I was using JetPack thrust to compensate, and
TransportToFreezePosition(), etc But it was stop and go instead of smooth swimming!
Just adding a Vertical Angle to ForcePlayer would probably take care of nearly
everything. One little tweak.

@ Belidos
I understand your point of view, however, I personally prefer the third person, although I understand that it is not a requirement.
I personally prefer to play all games that are not just killing and kill, in the third person mode. But this is only a personal taste, it is not a dogma of faith at all.

I'm 100% with you in that, i cannot play games in first person, 3rd person is a must have for me to play a game, and preferably isometric 3rd person at that. I'm hoping that Lee will at least add the current GG classic 3rd person implementation in for release, with that at least we can do some basics in third person, but if even that isn't in the release i doubt i will be bothering to make any games in Max until some sort of 3rd person is added, first person's just not for me.

+1
Yah, that way we would have at least the basics, so we can try our best, I really need 3rd person to make a serious project, till now I only dedicate myself to expressing ideas on paper, well, on maps, with the hope that someday I can develop a game based on that idea, and with the meshes that I have modeled until then, so I will have the work in advance.

Ye i hope it gets added also.
Im a big fan of the isometric style

An awful lot of discussion about camera style...as nice as 3rd person is to have as an option, an RPG it does not make. If Lee wants to have RPG style games in GG Max we need a LOT of stuff; like proper faction support (imagine an RPG where everyone in the world is allied to the same faction that is hostile towards you and you only!), inventory menu/system, dialog trees, spawning entities via script (so the world doesn't run out of enemies or loot if you play too long), quest system along with a quest journal to select active quest(s), a map menu with quest markers, XP and perks/skills, etc.

A few QoL features that would be amazing to have for an RPG could be some way of separating the hands from the weapon viewmodel (Ex: If you equip leather armor, your hands are swapped out for a version with leather gloves to reflect that.), extending the lip sync system to allow for "emotions" (if you tell a villager you found their son killed by goblins, they shouldn't be staring at you emotionless! When you put in a line and it generates lipsync data, it could also ask you for what "emotion" their face should be making from a drop-down. Maybe you could also choose what gesture the NPC would make when speaking that line, so if they say "The cave is this way!" you could select "Point to the right" gesture.)

It seems like this is asking for a lot, but an RPG (especially a modern one) is all about being immersed in a believable digital world. If Lee really wants to have RPG games in GG Max there's going to need to be a lot of systems to support it, especially since GG Max is meant to have a "AAA" look and feel to it.

Good thoughts fearlesswee.

Isometric = Anyone's custom script which Lee cannot guess how they want it.

Start here::
if g_Scancode == 23 then MoveForward (e,v) end
SetCameraOverride ( i ) where i is 0-off, 1-position only, 2-angle only, 3-posit angle
SetCameraPosition ( c, x, y, z ) where c should be zero and XYZ are 3D coordinates
SetCameraAngle ( c, x, y, z ) where c should be zero and XYZ are euler angles

So isometric is easy enough. What I would like to see ((and also again
something our fine community can supply themselves)) is some VOXEL
assets. Doesn't have to be an entire world, just a *complete set* of
objects that can be broken (or spawned again-- see my request above).
Mostly walls, floors, cubes, windows, crates, rocks, jars, etc in a variety of styles.
When I say broken, I mean NOT exploding, but just crumbling to the floor.

64 bit will supply the needs of a pseudo voxel kit (breakable assets).

Yes very true and not really the info Lee is after and Yep i got sucked into that as well

+1 LOL

I am working on an RPG game as mentioned above. Though its on hold due to classic engine bugs. It does have full inventory system, experience leveling, attribute bonus based on wears, character creator, magic, chests with loot, drop loot, pick ups, weapons, armor, trading, barter, dialogue trees etc, etc.





However its very difficult to continue working on it in GG as these system rely heavily on the Lua commands to work. Generally each new Classic build generates new bugs that break key component of the mechanics that makes this type of game not possible to maintain in GG without incredible patience. For instance there were 2 bugs I had to wait about 6 months until they were fixed and then another 5-6 after for a fix for a new one that was introduced. Its about a year just to get a very simple function working again due to that hang up and I'm actually currently waiting on yet another bug to be fixed that was also new.

I'm fully capable of doing just about anything in Classic to mimic the things I like about RPG games, scripting wise. There is actually nothing missing for me. Dialogue system are extremely easy to make as well with multiple choice. Did these a long time ago, since then have improved to have quests etc, seen other members do the same.

(these are old embarrassing WIPS, ive since made more more superior methods)



I would say it is possible to start an RPG but you'd have to be willing to let go of one or two features and stick with only one build of GG, as each new one will drastically limit you. I would not recommend this workflow for anyone so be careful what features you want to have, they will most likely break in the future. I've put in a lot of hard work and sleepless nights on a game that no longer works and I don't feel comfortable about each new potential fix as with the past each new fix brings new breaks for this type of game. While i see some bug fixing going on, my fear is never that they wont get fixed, but what new ones will come that will affect the game.

There are a lot of suggestion I could throw that would have improve making an RPG. Currently there are a few issues with using a mouse in Classic (not sure if Max has them) whereas you can click off the screen and start activating icons off your desktop..

As seen here in this test I was doing:


For first person its great using the mouse as a pointer when interacting with NPC or your inventory so you can interact with items during trade or click on dialogue trees. But there are some odd mouse behaviors present currently that I think would require some improvements. As a work around you'll need to create some scancode short cut keys and do make use the arrow keys during interactive situations.

I have other games that use strong RPG elements not displayed here, however they all suffer from a few remaining bugs (some of which I see fixed now on github not yet released).

@Teabone
Wonderful work. As GG goes, those are nice custom features.
I would agree on the concern that GG gives when getting more into
customization. There's is a whole lot of good in GG lua, and there are
enough roadblocks in place as well when a creator goes out of the
standardized bounds. Very strange with the cursor anomaly.
Are you running into memory glitches with that last video?

@GubbyBlips , nope, I have this problem whenever I activate the mouse. Which is unfortunate for my dungeon crawler which requires the mouse cursor. I cannot pin point if it was related to duel screens or not. Once I find out I intend to expand on my original github report of the issue.

My game Ignite is not an RPG really, but because it doesn't have any enemies and no weapons in the traditional sense, I wanted to implement a few RPG-esque elements to add variety to the gameplay. A simple example was collectables; I want the player to be able to collect a number of scrolls throughout the game and each time they do, a new section of a picture puzzle is revealed. Getting this mechanic to work level to level caused poor AmenMoses a lot of headaches because Game Guru lacks a persistent LUA environment; all variables including globals (apart from hardcoded stuff like ammo) get reset upon loading a new level. This is how Game Guru handles this sort of thing out of the box:

>Level 1 loads: PlayerHasScroll1 = 0
>Player collect scroll #1
>PlayerHasScroll1 = 1
>Player finishes level, loads level 2
>Scroll script is reloaded, PlayerHasScroll1 is reset to its default state, which is 0
>According to the game, player no longer has scroll1.

This makes it incredibly difficult to do that most fundamental of RPG mechanics, an inventory. The only workaround Amen found was physically write the data to a text file outside of Game Guru and have the script access it as and when, which seems not only massively inefficient but also makes the script very vulnerable to people just hacking a text file to add the inventory items they want.

I also want to echo previous comments about factions; we need allies, and not just ones that hang back and mime doing attacks to one another, they actually need to do damage to one another.

Spawning and culling entities on the fly is a must too.

Other features you might want to consider adding are things like armour, resistance to certain attacks, traits, skill points, basically ways to modify how your character plays during the game (beyond just max health and running speed).

Also, RPGs are all about feeling like you're in a living, breathing world, this means life needs to go on around the player even when they aren't directly there. So NPCs, particularly passive ones, need to be able to chain a series of actions together rather than how they currently behave, which is to do one behaviour when they see the player or until the player arrives. Following waypoints is not good enough, we need to be able to define types of waypoints (e.g. go here, wait for 5 seconds, go there, sit for 10 seconds, go there, chat to the blacksmith for 15 seconds). Yes this could all be scripted by hand, but telling users that completely defeats the point of making it easy for non-coders like me to use your software; your entire MO should be ease-of-use and practicality, not burying functionality deep within LUA. I hasten to add you're already doing wonderful things by opening up some of this in dynamic LUA to us mere mortals, but there's always more that can be done.

AE

I mentioned memory because...
Seemed like something is not recognizing the activity called because
your character animation stops going for short durations.
Or something needs always active on?

Now to mention the mouse-- and NOT the Windows taskbar selection,
because that probably is something Windows related- too weird for me.
But what about where your green marker moves?
(I'm assuming the green, blinking marker is supposed to follow your
Mouse coordinates?)
What I know about ActivateMouse is that it will always reset 'X' and 'Y'
at zero-- or nearly zero. So in your game do you call ActivateMouse
multiple times, or only once? You may have to re-align the targeted
intent to the new 'X' and 'Y' whenever it's called.

Other challenge I find with Mouse coordinates seems to be to make all
monitor resolutions work satisfactorily.

I was just about to celebrate that removing ActiveMouse from my main loop, solved the issue with the mouse. Unfortunately that did not work. Seems to come and go. Again have not tried recently with single monitors though. Reason why I have ActiveMouse call more than once, is due to the ESC menu deactiving the mouse on close. Might be able to hack some way in to active the mouse after that. I actually am planning to completely replace the ESC menu with my own. SInce I'm working on my own save and load system. As AE mentioned this is required if you plan to make an RPG in classic with multiple levels.

For now the cause for the cursor interacting with windows while in Test Mode is still a mystery. However a cursor is pretty integral to most RPGs and especially my current game project. So hopefully we find out whats causing the issue.

Similar to what Avenging Eagle said with his "PlayerHasScroll1" example, GameGuru should load weapon stats onto the next level too.

For example in the Fantasy DLC I believe it comes with a script, I can't think of the name maybe weapon_power, when the player finds an item with this script attached it increases the power/stats of your weapon. But then when you go to load into the next level this stat bonus is completely lost. Which defeats the whole point of having the script in the first place.
Which most users probably discover this only after they have taken the time to set the script up with the correct weapon, correct bonuses to gain, placement in their level, etc. Only to build their game and then discover that loading into a new level wipes the bonus clean.

ALSO, RPG games typically have a lot of abilities, items, potions, food, elixers, weapons, spells, inventory, etc. Players have to be able to have a customize keybindings menu option in a standalone game. I don't think any game dev can create the perfect keybind layout that every player will be happy with. It is one of the benefits to playing on mouse and keyboard compared to a controller. And most RPG players use some sort of gaming mouse, which I have friends that swear by the razor naga for RPGs. For people like him, it is not a good first impression to play an RPG and not have a basic function such as custom keybinds.

Here I can say about my project and that I have already done a great job by implementing the trading system, inventory, dialogue tree, quest log, saving variables between locations, magic, alchemy, getting debuffs, as well as applying them to enemies. Yes, it was very difficult to do, but it worked, only you had to, for example, dig into the controller script to add the ability to increase and decrease your movement speed. The only major problem for me is that the engine does not support the large open world well. I haven't even placed the logic everywhere yet, but on my Gtx 1650 it already produces a maximum of 30Fps. I would also very much like to see a convenient work with parameters, so that we ourselves can add and enter by opening the object's parameters. Well, it would not hurt not only to change the textures in the engine without restarting it, but also so that you can change, at least, the same glow parameter. And it hurts so much, but you can still implement it))

More on topic to what Lee was talking about in terms of story telling and etc,

While a lot of this is possible in Game Guru, we are very limited in what we can do via text commands. for instance in Game Guru there are no Lua commands for Text bodies just text lines. So for a paragraph of text you need to create dozens of lines of Text Commands. You also cannot make any characters of text within a text line a different color. For example below:



We also do not have support for text alignment right justifications. We have just Left and Center.

What I think is amazing about AppGameKit is the amount of Text supporting commands we have. Its amazing really. In fact I recently got back into AGK and was able to produce a mini-RPG in a matter of two weeks, with story and text options all made possible with the amazing list of text supporting commands:

https://www.appgamekit.com/documentation/Reference/Text.htm

The absolute MOST important thing we need for Game Guru Classic/Max for making RPG's is the ability to use line-breaks. For example something like \n. Being able to display text on screen is fundamental in story telling and its just not a fun process in Game Guru. If something as simple as line breaks was added , people would be cranking out all kinds of storyteller projects and games with story and choice.

Wow, a huge amount of AGK text commands. Sounds good.
Something like... ? for various resolutions and text tools-- an interesting thought-
though probably overbearing in complexity for an engine? is what if you
could have something called a TextToSprite function;

new_text_sprite =
MakeTextToSprite(c = 90, 220, 40, t = "We went for a ride in the old jeep."..,b
"We saw all the cows leaving the pasture."..,b
"Who opened the gates to let them out?!"..,b
"We called for backup from".., c = 155,80,255, t = " Roger."
, c = 200,200,200, t = "Then all of a sudden we heard a huge roar!"

This would turn this text into a sprite panel with text colors, background colors
customizable, some font selections, and of course then you could scale it in any
manner at any time as well as simple, quick placement on the screen anywhere.
An upgrade to the old TextPanel...
I know, too complex, but wishful thinking!

OMG that's such a good point, Teabone, and something that's caused me no end of frustration when trying to code pickupable 'notes' for my game.

+100 for more text controls.

AE

Absolutely agree.

@ Teebone

that is awesome the dungeon game with the 4 characters and all the stats thats what twin worlds is lacking the inventory and characters etc.

my hat goes off to you. going to follow this WIP

only have 1 monitor but i've not had any issues with the mouse commands.. i can double check your code if you like? but yes i recommend adding some extra code to catch the escape key press rather than calling ActivateMouse() every frame

MakeTextToSprite( just write your text here for a sprite created instantly magic! )
"I know, too complex, but wishful thinking! "

NOT too complex, but +1 for wishful thinking...
QBasic had this in the 19 hundred and 90's

Let's see;
"
GET (x1,y1)-(x2,y2),spritearray% 'upper-left, lower-right, arrayname

All the command does is give the upper-left and lower-right coordinates of the sprite, along with the name of the array in which QBasic will put the screen information.

With the sprite information loaded into the array, the PUT statement can be use to place the array anywhere on the screen, as with the following statements.

PUT (1,1), spritearray% 'upper-left of sprite at 1,1
PUT (120,50), spritearray% 'upper-left of sprite at 120,50
PUT (72,230), spritearray% 'upper-left of sprite at 72,230
"
https://www.garybeene.com/qbasic/qb-tutor-sprites.htm

Addition +2;
This would be useful for a whole lot more. Let's say we use it not just
for entering text, and turning that into a sprite, but any square of the
current screen (any size), so you could put up your character standing
in the grass, and capture a pic of it, then transfer that to a bulletin
board hangin on the stop of the dusty trail --

/--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /
/ ..... (((*/*)))
/..........l l
/......./ L
/ WANTED -- this Ogre is suspected of being the culprit that took /
/ all Mrs. GreenSquashes Chickens. Reward 200 Rambucles! /
/---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------/

I like how GG works now. I am getting Max anyway.

But I think we should have more control over text. text is really important. Right now for different resolutions you have to set where the text will appear manually. Also, some functions to display text over objects in third person kinda like prompt local does for first person. Leting people use text everywhere, not just on screen would be a big change.

Another thing that would be cool is a script we can use to detect mouse clicks on a 3d object from 3rd person no matter the height or direction of camera. This could open so much doors. Yes someone could make this. But even with my understanding of lua and my girlfriends math degree we could not come up with a 100% useful script. With this, people could make rts games, basically any game thats point and click.

More custom character options. I see Max is gonna do a little better here. But wanted to point out that more options for custom characters and tutorials on how to make parts would help people make different looking characters for their game.

I am working on a game called warehouse tycoon using GG. here is a little video I did showing some sounds. and here is link to my thread post in 'work in progress'

Link to thread: http://forum.game-guru.com/thread/222256

I would just like to add that Preben has done some magical work this past couple weeks. He has fixed fundamentally every bug associated with the mouse in Classic that I was experiencing. These were core issues that we had no real way of working around. The fixes should be ready for the next update.

The Fixes:

- The Mouse Cursor will lock to the main monitor and not click on Extended Monitor screens
- Mouse Scroll Wheel Input has been fixed
- Modified load screen pages can now have text on them without the background PNG tearing

For the ESC menu mouse deactivating the cursor when resuming the game, I replaced "DeactivateMouse()" at the end of the gamemenu lua in the very last line of that script with ActivateMouse() and that solved that problem. Thankfully it wasn't a hardcoded element causing that problem.

@T-Bone - How I dealt with the issue: