Unity for RPG?

News & General Discussion
1

Would Unity work for an RPG? When I say an RPG, I mean an old-school style rpg with the following sort of features:

  1. Conversation trees
  2. Quest state system
  3. Melee combat
  4. Missile combat (Arrows, rifles, etc)
  5. Player states
  6. Scriptable AI system with multiple state machines
  7. Swimming, crawling, crouching, jumping, climbing, etc.
  8. Player levelling system.

I guess what I’m asking is - is this doable in Unity either A) builtin, B)Scriptable, or C) Not doable at all?

Thank you

2

B)

3

Of course that is doable in Unity. However you will need to supply all the character animation states, the skill to program the various state machines and AI… and level design/asset creation… time, amongst a myriad of other things required to make a game.

But Unity will allow you to EASILY put all that together and glue it together with scripts.

Cheers.

4

Thank you for the responses. I see that Unity supports C# for scripting, that is really sweet.

5

Think "scriptable’ as an answer to your question, and as said, the graphics part is easy IF you have considerable talent/friends to take on the assets which are critical in an RPG.

Funny though, when you say “old school” I think Wizardy or Ultima ||-V or maybe Phantasy Star for SEGA Master System, or Final Fantasy II(IV), but I don’t think that’s what you had in mind. lol. (I’m only 35! Honest!)

2 Likes
6

Hahahahaa

I had exatly the same in mind about the old school comment. “Swimming in old school - eh?”

:smiley:

But yes - all scriptable and doable

1 Like
7

The earliest RPG that I think I’ve played with all that stuff included (except crouching) is X-Men Legends, and that’s from late 2004. I’m interested to know what the OP had in mind, too.

8

wizardry on the apple and tunnels of doom on the Ti99a were personal favorites.
Both could be written with php / html / css / JS nowadays.

9

I can still remember opening the boxes for Ultima ][ and ]I[. Thinking to myself, “This thing comes on 3 110k floppies. The game has got to be HUGE!”

Hard to say which was my favorite though. Flying the spaceship to PlanetX, going down the whirlpool in my ship, walking up to the drive-through window at McD’s, etc. They all had their moments, up until the cheesy Ultima IV where you had to be a good guy.

Yeah I guess i’m dating myself too.

10

Haha, I’m probably older than most of you - I’m 45 now. I wrote an RPG for SSI back in the old days (1992!) that had all of that except for #7. Of course it wasn’t as sophisticated as games are now.

11

so are you a wrinkle or a crumbly :)?

12

Well when Ill finish mine project ill be 45 too so wherez the beef :stuck_out_tongue:

13

If I’m not mistaken (acronyms are my nemesis) you’re talking about “the bard’s tale” class of games? well, i’m 36, my apple //c served a long time playing the tune… la la la… :slight_smile:

14

Good, you know what you’re in for. IMO, it’s one of the toughest genres to make (regardless of game engine).

15

Yeah unfortunately it is one of the hardest to make just because of the amount of content usually needed. Me and my friends are working on an RPG story right now, almost done! We have found a character designer, but are really looking for a 3d modeler and animator now that would like to work with us.

If anyone else is working on an RPG with Unity I would love to share ideas/concepts, etc. I just started with Unity two weeks ago, so I haven’t gotten far. We mostly just have story and gameplay design down so far… hardly anything at all is implemented yet.

16

The content is not what I was referring to. It’s the hardest because of the enormous amount of game states needed.

I really wouldn’t recommend doing an RPG for your first Unity project (unless you have a LOT of prior programming experience).

17

Thanks for the advice man! Me and my friends’ dream is to finish the RPG that we are working on, so I think what we are gonna do is experiment with making some smaller games to get some experience with everything at first.

Also, we are going to start out simple as far as game states go in the RPG, and then slowly build upon the initial work. I know it is gonna be hard and rough though lol. I can only thank Unity for existing because it is going to be a lot easier than anything I have found.

18

We did Ravensword in Unity, and it’s more than up to the task.

Stories are hard though, as others have mentioned. You have a bunch of states to manage, and many of them only change once in the game, which makes testing very time consuming. One bad state and your players are trapped and unable to complete the story. That’s when the pitchforks and torches come out.

Stats design is also a huge deal, balancing things, managing difficulty, etc. Ravensword has a very simple stats system, and it was still quite a chore to get dialed in.

19

I think that would be wise. My first Unity game was pong… you can’t get much simpler than that!

20

Yeah earlier today I’m just trying out making an rpg. Not a project, just building up experience, then i’m going to try some racing work.

FACT: A rpg is way harder then a FPS Haha

ANyway design your story, and build the game in small area. Its alot easier to just branch off in an rpg to expand the game.