In this episode, I talk about how I got my RPG Maker project started, how I built my Game Design Document, and my roadmap for future development. Join my indie game dev journey.
RPG Maker Development: Getting Started
Hello and welcome!
I’m CyborgPrime from MakeYourOwnRPG.com and CyborgPrime Games and in this article, I am going to talk about my plans to create my dream game.
That isn't to say it's the game I always dreamed I wanted to make, but rather it's been a dream of mine to create my own indie game from start to finish and release it for sale to the public.
I have a lot of programming and multimedia production experience, so I do not doubt that I have the skills to create a game of my own.
I'm not sure if I have the self-discipline to take the project from concept to delivery. Although I have brought several projects to completion, I have never finished a computer game project.
Who Am I?
My name is Frank Succardi, on the internet, I go by the name CyborgPrime. I am a multimedia artist, programmer, and gamer with many years of experience. I am a commercial producer of sci-fi gaming expansions, maps, adventures, and tables.
I'm the author of Realm Crafter User's Guide and over 35 gaming titles.
You can find my digital products listed on DriveThruRPG and CyborgPrime Games.
Although I have a lot of programming and media experience, I have never finished a game program before. I normally write utility programs for the RPGs I like to play.
Starting My Indie Game Dev Journey
I've been a gamer my whole life. When I was a kid, my family would play board games and card games. When I grew older I got into RPGs and video games. When I became an adult I got into customizable and collectible card games and I started producing gaming content for my favorite games like Traveller, Champions, Shadowrun, Top Secret, Gamma World, and more.
At the beginning of last year, I posted some blog posts and videos about a game I am tinkering with called "Cosmic Drifter". Those posts generated a lot of interest - a total of over 20,000 hits on my website! This positive feedback and widespread interest were way more than I expected.
I started a prototype in RPG Maker MV last year. You can see a video about it here: Cosmic Drifter Prototype
I am starting over with RPG Maker MZ.
I decided to give creating my dream game a try and see what happens. At the very least, I will come away with valuable lessons learned and the opportunity to help others. At the very best, I will put out a small, commercially viable indie video game, helping other indie devs along the way.
Join me on my game dev journey, and together we will learn what it takes to produce an indie computer adventure game!
Why Am I Doing This?
I like to make games and am interested in creating bigger and better games using platforms like CORE, but I want to start small on RPG Maker MZ and take the lessons learned to help me with my CORE projects and other future gaming projects.
I like to practice and improve my skills by taking on independent projects of interest.
I like to document things as I go along and share them on my blog and YouTube pages to help others.
I love the Traveller sci-fi role-playing game, and I want to bring that flavor to a computer adventure game of my own.
My Game Vision
I want to make a story-driven adventure game with elements of trading. Something similar to Star Trader but with more roleplaying and storytelling.
Gather a crew, fight enemies, travel to other planets, make money, and uncover the story of your past while making your way in the cosmos.
Getting Started
To begin, I will need a few things:
- RPG Maker MZ
- Visustella's Wave Pack #8 (quality of life plugins for RPG Maker)
- A Game Design Document
- Graphics creation software
RPG Maker MZ will be the game platform I will use for this project. Why? Because it is easy to use, easy to produce assets for, and easy for fast prototyping. RPG Maker games have a bad reputation, but that's mostly because many producers use built-in assets rather than creating their own. I've seen great games that were either created with RPG Maker or could easily have been created with RPG Maker, all used custom graphics assets. RPG Maker is also extensible with JavaScript, making it ideal for easy customization using common, off-the-shelf tools.
Visustella Wave 8 Collection is a great pack of quality-of-life plugins that will add a lot of great functionality to my project.
Game Design Documents are important, especially on larger projects. Your Game Design Document is a roadmap to your game development process. It describes where you want to go and how yo plan to get there, If you make changes along the way, be sure to update your design document.
It helps to keep the original game vision as well as the current game vision so you can see if you are wildly veering off course and decide if that's what you want to do before you waste a lot of time developing a dead-end branch.
You can find the design doc for my game "Cosmic Drifter" here: Cosmic Drifter: A Traveller-Inspired Video Game.
For graphics creation, I will use Photoshop and Illustrator.
Join My Game Dev Journey!
It's nice to have company on a long trip.
If you want to follow my production progress, check my blog at MakeYourOwnRPG.com.
You can also join the CyborgPrime Discord server, where I post my progress and interact with the community.
Click here for more articles in this series about my indie game dev journey.
Your Turn. What Do You Do?
Are you developing a game of your own?
Tell me about it in the Comments Section. I'm interested in your game development journey.
If you found this article helpful, please give it a good rating, thanks!
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