School project: C++ RPG game.

Hi everyone.

I've been browsing your forums for a week or too, looking for information about RPG games.

I'm very new to the whole C++ thing, but feel like im getting a hang of it. As a part of my examn project this year, i've decided to program a simple 2D-Rpg game (if possible!). Let me just tell your about my basic idea, then ill get to the questions.

The game:
I would like to make a very simple 2D inviroment, where the player will be controlling a character. I will then implement a few tasks and quests along the way, where the player must conquer some monsters and/or pick up various items. Im hoping it will be possible to make a field/area on the screen where the actual gaming will take place.

Here are my questions:
1. I've read that its possible to implement paint-drawn bitmap images into a visual studio c++ inviroment. Yet i dont know what tools to use, or how this will work exactly? I was thinking that i could draw a landscape/scenario in paint, and then put it into my screen as a wallpaper, so that the graphic wouldn't do anything but just be there.

2. As i mentioned, i would like the action to take place in a part of the screen. Is it possible to make a coordination system for me to work with? Fx. when the character is on x2,y3 and the left-arrow on the keyboard is pressed, he will then move to x3,y3? This would also allow me to put down certain objects and monsters at specific locations.

3. Is it possible to put images as background and then put another image (fx. a coin) on top of that, and make that piece of graphic interactive? (so when the character steps onto the coin, and fx. enter is hit, the coin will be removed and added to an inventory?)

I know this might sound like a big project for a rookie, but im willing to put alot of time into it, and hope i could make something work!

**EDIT** I realize that RPG's are pretty much text based, and im aware that alot of the images/animations will not have a function besides beeing pretty. So alot of this will actually be code i suspect, yet i would like to have a landscape and such just to spice things up a bit.

Thanks in advance.

- Karlsen

re: School project: C++ RPG game.

You can use the tools provided in visual studio to make small bitmaps. They are very primitive so it might be better to us a real program like Adobe to create the bitmap then copy it to your project tree.
Assuming you are doing this on microsoft's platform your window already has a coordinate system starting from the top right corner and increasing in both the x and y dimensions toward the bottom right. If you paint your little character sprite in the middle of the screen and hit an arrow button you can capture that key press and then update your character's bounding rectangle to a new location.
Yes, you can place a background image on your window, that is fairly simple. To put another image on top of it you are going to be looking at blitting which is very hard to do. You might find libraries to help you with this if you decide to use DirectX.
If you were an expert, and starting from scratch, you could plan to spend about 40 hours a week for 4-6 weeks on a project as simple as this, just to have a working prototype. That doesn't count quest building, tradeskilling, or other common RPG features.

Doog luck.

re: School project: C++ RPG game.

Thanks for your response and Wow!

Judging from your response i really think this is too big a mouthfull for me after all. I might be better of doing a text-version of the game instead!

Could anyone say how hard text-based c++ RPG's are to create?

Greets Karl

re: School project: C++ RPG game.

Are you going to do a classic leisure suit Larry style RPG with verb-noun commands?

Or are you going to do a simple story tree where you read some text and then type in a keyword to continue on?

re: School project: C++ RPG game.

If you want to do the 2D RPG look into using a game library for c++ (i like alegro, but some of the other people here have listed another one that i can't remember right now. Also, microsoft has one, but i haven't herd much about it). You can use a tool called Mappy which allows you to create your map or import a bitmap and it will break it down. Seeing how you don't know anything about these libraries it would take quite a bit of research and testing to good the basic idea down, but after you get the hang of it you could put a project together fairly quickly.

re: School project: C++ RPG game.

I havent made up my mind on that one yet tbh.

I think the simple story tree where i can use some rand. functions to call some actions. But i still have to figure out the best way to make the game completeable... If anyone has a good idea for that do tell :)

**EDIT**

Just thought of an idea! The game itself might be that entertaining when played more than once, but if i could somehow make a map, which would just have to be a static image, and then somehow just make an X ON the map to show the player where he actually is. And then perhaps i could black-out the pieces of the map the player havent discovered yet.