Advice - Top Down RPG - Where To Start

News & General Discussion
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Hiya guys. I havent done very much with Unity before but ive made levels and i can create models and character and environment art and figured I’d give Unity a go and try making a game.

My game idea, to get me going, is something of a Top Down RPG.

Using only sprites to populate the world.

Character Movements - Up, down, left, right, combinations for diagonal movements.

Interactions - Varies on the tool equiped.

For example with a sword equiped you could attack.
With a hammer you can break down certain structures.
With a pickaxe you can mine and dig.

So interactions would be context sensitive but based on the equiped item.

Because its top down there would be no need for physics… atleast not in the traditional sence.

My idea for a world is a tile / sprite based world with a huge variety of different tiles.

I have many more ideas for the game but I have no idea where to start as I have not been able to find any useful tutorials that are focused on the topics and in the direction I want to take this idea.

I want to make a Top Down Sprite Based RPG.

Like Pokemon for example… but 100% down… Not isometric or at a funny angle… 100% down… so from the sky all you would see is your characters head… etc etc

What I am unsure on is… if the world is grid based do I want my characters to snap into the grids?
Do I want a large grid or a small grid… For example… 1 tile = 1 character or 1 object size … or
5 tiles = 1 character. Which means that the character would have more freedom of movement.

Maybe its getting too complicated. In all honesty I do not know how to start.

I have to make a game for my uni work for games design and in all honesty I have gone off the idea of games design but I want to atleast do a decent job at making a game…

I have to choices…

I am a good 3D modeler so I could jsut make 3D models and throw all that into the UDK and do some Kismet stuff and make a FPS puzzle game… easy peasy…

But I would feel better If I made everything myself… even if it means its going to take longer and be more difficult…

Bah xD

Anyways. Just to add.

I was thinking of making it either spirte based or even 3D based but all cube like. For example… a TOP down version of minecraft but with a higher cube density…

So lets say 1 cube from minecraft from the top down view , would be 16 cubes in my game…

So still a cubicular feel to it but with a greater number creating a more detailed feel… And see as it would be only 2D… there would be no verticle aspect to the world I think the game would function fairly well.

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Rather don’t use a tile based system, I only say this because unity is very powerful in 3D and 2D rendering so you could basically make the game work in 3D with an Orthographic camera looking straight down at the scene.

You could use prefabs for your “tiles” so that they are easily replicated, but the question is do you want the game to generate randomly or are you going to have a fixed world?

If you generate randomly I suggest using a psuedo tile based system so that the character will not snap to the tiles but the other tiles will snap to each other.

This game sounds easy to make ^^ Contact me on a PM and we can skype in terms of getting you started (2-3 hours and we could have a working proudct with spirte easily, also if you need a programmer to make this game I could help on a revenue share basis (contact me atomicdomb@gmail.com))

also go for what is easier for you to make art wise, both sprites and 3D objects work amazingly in unity and the difference in code between the two is neglicible, seeing as it is more a difference in approach sense not a difference in work load sense.

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sounds cool however the RPG aspect sounds like way to much work for your first endeavour… what about just creating A “Action Adventure” as creating A RPG takes time this is just a suggestion but whatever you decide good luck with it buddy