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Windows Monster Catcher RPGs

krb

Member
Are there any tutorials for creating monster catcher RPGs, like Pokemon or Nexomon? I'm a novice programmer and might be thinking about using another game engine to create my own original games.

I started out with Pokemon Essentials for RMXP, but the creator of it hasn't released it for commercial use. It can only be used to create free projects. Plus, the games developed might be too much like Pokemon to be considered original works.

I may have a few other questions:

How difficult would it be to:

Create a turn-based battle system like Pokemon
Set up a way to add monsters to your party, like with Pokemon
Create custom battles, like with Undertale

What would I need to do to make sure the game I design is legal, my own creation, and able to be sold on sites like Steam?
 
So each of the things you mentioned are going to be relatively technically difficult for a novice. I know that @Rob has some tutorials aimed at the sort of subjects you are talking about:



They're not exactly what you are asking for, but they should be at least give you a little idea of what direction to head in. On that note, definitely go through @samspade's tutorial series, Introduction To Coding Fundamentals in GML:


If you're going to create anything even slightly advanced, you'll need to get a good grasp on how to code properly in GML and while it might seem less fun to be learning this kind of thing, it will serve you a million times better in the long run than any "How to do X" tutorial will.

That being said, I would very much advise not aiming for a Steam launch. Your first few games are going to be mediocre at best, and more probably hot piles of garbage. This is the natural progression of things and it's almost never worth it to try to charge people for the stumbling attempts at games that you make as you go through the journey from a novice to experienced coder (in fact, it could be viewed as contemptuous of your audience, depending on the quality level of the game). Your first priority should be learning to make good games, not trying to sell anything.

Once you've become proficient at coding, game design, polish, etc and have at least a few projects under your belt, then you can start considering launching something professionally within the overall gaming eco-system. But until then just have fun and make stuff. There's a lot less pressure that way and you're way freer to explore and experiment! Onwards and upwards my friend.
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
It would be basically zero effort to get the core mechanics up and running if you used my Monster Collector Engine, and that's OK for commercial use (there's not a single Pokémon asset in it to worry about and I've tried to design everything with plausible design deniability). There's no real functionality for Undertale-style custom battles in the engine as-is, but nothing's stopping you from reading the monster data from any object you want so it's possible to add that kind of stuff in theory.

There's a bunch of public discussions about how to add new functionality in the support forum (e.g. separate front and back sprites), so you might wanna skim through that to see if the code sounds like it's within your skill level.
 

krb

Member
It would be basically zero effort to get the core mechanics up and running if you used my Monster Collector Engine, and that's OK for commercial use (there's not a single Pokémon asset in it to worry about and I've tried to design everything with plausible design deniability). There's no real functionality for Undertale-style custom battles in the engine as-is, but nothing's stopping you from reading the monster data from any object you want so it's possible to add that kind of stuff in theory.

There's a bunch of public discussions about how to add new functionality in the support forum (e.g. separate front and back sprites), so you might wanna skim through that to see if the code sounds like it's within your skill level.
Thanks. This looks sort of like what I had in mind.

Do you have a Discord chat for this product? Is there a way to chat about interacting with variables, bug fixes, etc.?
 
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Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
Thanks. This looks sort of like what I had in mind.

Do you have a Discord chat for this product? Is there a way to chat about interacting with variables, bug fixes, etc.?
I check the comments of all my projects once per day and try to give as exhaustive replies to questions as possible (there's a lot of questions for how to do common Pokémon things for this engine in particular and chances are your questions are already answered there). I prefer having the information public so it's easy to access for everyone without external tools... most of my userbase is on the other side of the planet so it'd take a while to get answers if I needed to give custom replies from scratch every time someone runs into a problem.
 
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