Some things to consider about starting a game project

[Marduk]

I've been mostly a lurker. Lots of good work here, and I think I can safely call myself a fan of Gorepete and his work. With that said, I were a professional programmer, and I do have some ideas for a game. However, I'd like to pull on some experience here before starting out.

First, a quick description of the game I'm thinking about.
Setting: Future fiction. Setting similar to the Judge Dredd setting. One huge city - too huge to map out, really. Life is very easy - too easy, some might say. Citizens turn to the strangest fads and kinks to keep themselves entertained - personal modifications, crime sprees, etcetera. You do have Judges that keep things under control, more or less... mostly less.

The player's role: The problem is that this is very ambitious. To start with the plan is to tell the story of two street judges, but leave the player free to play either a street judge or a citizen, of either gender. Playing a street judge would leave a lot less room for personal modifications and sex - at least of the voluntary kind - since that sort of thing is highly discouraged. For citizens, though, anything that can be done by highly advanced surgery or mutations could work. There's certainly anthromorph - based street gangs, alien artefacts, weird and wonderful sports (due to previous food shortages, the most illegal underground sport is eating contests.).

Interface: Despite my many qualities *cough*, one thing I'm not, and that's an artist. Sorry. A text - based interface like in Corruption of Champions, or RPG maker - could work. The game style would be part life-sim, part adventure; as a citizen you are more open to determine your own path, as a judge you would be handed cases to deal with (or just patrol and see what pops up).

Combat: I have had it up to here with 'You hit for 5 damage' 'you are hit for 8 damage', 'next round' kind of deals. I've been thinking about it a bit, and I'd like to try to make a system based on STATES. You can be in the open, enemy is in the open. This is state 1. State 2, you are in flimy cover, enemy is in the open, State 5, you are in flimsy cover, enemy is in flimsy cover, and so on. Your options in each state depends on your skills, coolness under fire, speed, weapons, suppression level. (If applicable, not sure how many details should be abstracted or not.). The system handles just one enemy at a time, with additional enemies are handled by low-damage, low chance to hit attacks 'from the sidelines'. Both yours and your enemy's actions can affect each state, a sort of paper-scissor-stone thing.

(You are in cover, enemy is in cover. You try to lean out and aim, he tries suppressive fire. You are forced back into cover and miss your shot, unless you make your coolness roll, in which case you have a decent chance to get a telling shot in.).

The idea with the combat system is to make your choices relevant and result in potentially exciting descriptions of the combat. I'd rather have it skill based than level based. (Although level is a good mechanic to gauge suitable opposition.).

So... what tools, if any, exist to make something like this? RPGMaker could work, I guess, but I am not sure if it has a flexible enough interface, and it seems like it has a lot of aspects I would not be using. RAGS seems stretched allready to make Cursed!. Suggestions?

Before you ask:
No, I'm not interested in a crew here.
No, you probably won't see anything about it for a month or two at the earliest, other than possibly more questions and musings.

Regards,
Me

[BlueLight]

So if you are programming in java i got a MapPanel class that i would be willing to share.
Basically what it does is this. You update the map by sending a 2 dimensional array of char. The layout manager is updated to the size of the array and then the char is decoded.
The decoding updates a class variable of a 2 dimensional JLabel. The decoding continues by putting the char[][] though 2 forloops with a case statement which decides what picture goes where in the JLabel[][] array.

This would allow you to have basic graphics. It needs about a days worth of work to get rid of the quirky bits.

It was design to use files outside of the jar based on where the jar which normally breaks convention and to make the updates seamless, i have a quirky way of updating graphics which as I said, need me to mess around with it for a day.

[Marduk]

Thanks for the offer, Blue, but it's a little premature.

I was planning to deal with the 'map' by having a (variable) list of visitable locations, so not sure how that would help. I was hoping to dig up a complete tool, like...

RAGS - (Rags Game Development System) - free, but seems a bit buggy.
GameMaker (YoYo Games) -> demo game at: https://apps.yoyogames.com/gravemaker/play (Interesting, but not free. Demo game worth a look though, it's fun.).
RPGToolkit (?)
RPG Maker XP (Too 90's console game style for my taste, but could work - how modifiable is the interface?)
Panda3D (3D point and click game? Not a good match.).

Others? Remember: Text with buttons. Not much in the way of graphics.

And if any of you has experience in using them, which would be the most compatible with the outline above?

Regards,
Me

[ker]

RPG maker's interface itself is not adjustable from the normal creator, but you can add in scripts that can do nearly anything. They're based on Ruby (meaningless to me).

There is a huge community of people who make games using RPG maker, and there is a huge number of scripts available.
http://www.rpgmakervx.net/index.php?showforum=26 is a great resource of them. I haven't done any interface mods myself beyond a party system so I can't recommend anything to you, but the potential is there.

Note : RPG maker is not free, but if you're serious about creating something, the amount of time you'll have to give will far exceed what the creator costs. There is a trial version available.