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I don't know any programming languages, and all I've used in the past is RPG Maker. But it's gotten to the point where, even with the latest version, VX, some of my game ideas, while not necessarily COMPLEX, it's gotten to the point where I'm cutting great big chunks out of my games to fit the engine, when things like Game Maker and Construct out there.

So just HOW difficult is Game Maker for a complete beginner who wants to make things like Zelda with inventories and dialogue boxes and inventory and things like that? What about an RPG battle system with action elements (a la Mario and Luigi)? GML looks intimidating, and something I'll have to spend years learning in order to move beyond recreations of Pong.

I know my post reads as if I'm 'in a rush' to create my Zelda-style game, and that I'm dismissing the learning curve or whatever. But it's kind of difficult to wear every game-making hat, and although I am passionate about art and design, the programming aspect is the one thing that doesn't click with me. I want to be realistic as to how much it takes to get to grips with the program. Like, I could open RPG Maker now and with just my basic level art, sound, writing and design skills, remake Dragon Quest 1 in a few months.

Advice, please?

If you don't care about cross-platform compatibility maybe sometime in the future, I would recommend looking at Construct instead. The event system is probably easier to wrap your mind around and requires less writing while being easily as powerful (and most likely even more powerful) than GML, plus Construct is fully hardware-accelerated.

Of course figuring out the game logic and creating events is still programming and work that requires thinking, testing and debugging. I personally love Construct's style of coding and I can basically always do exactly what I want with the events. You can also integrate Python code into your code easily if you wish, but it is by no means necessary and you probably wouldn't want to do that anyway.

Also, Construct's built-in behaviors (like 8-direction movement) are great to work with and saves a lot of time when you don't have to craft completely custom movements.

I fiddled with Construct a few months ago and it surprised me how quickly I was able to get a very very simple (but rubbish) platform set-up going.

I think I have mental issues when it comes to programming. I dismiss things on the basis that they're 'too difficult' without knowing the actual work involved. With Construct, for instance, creating a top-down Zelda game with Construct shouldn't be any more difficult than the 2D platformer. Well, at least when the running around at the top-down angle hitting things is concerned -- it's the creating inventories and interfaces that scares me.
RPGs are even scarier. Battle transitions...inventories...PARTY MEMBERS. Eeek.

Hey, that Shut up and Jam Gaiden RPG was made using Game Maker IIRC.

Easier than biting your elbow, but harder than biting your knee. :durr:

I'm almost certain that was made using RM2k3
Edit: I was wrong. It was game maker.

RPGs are probably one of the harder video game genres to program. Game Maker can make almost any 2d game you can think of (within reason). But the problem is that it gives you a framework and nothing more. RPG Maker can make RPGs with minimal effort because that's what it's designed to do. GM wasn't designed for any single genre in mind so it's going to take a lot more set up for RPGs which require usage of databases. You're not going to get by without some heavy GML programming.

That being said GML is VERY easy to learn in relation to other languages and it most certainly won't take you years to learn the basics (that really goes for any language) but rather maybe a couple of days of dedication. The thing I remember most about learning programming basics is that it has a very steep learning curve but not a very long climb. You just need to keep at it. One moment you'll be completely lost and the next something will snap and it all makes sense. If you start GM you're going to have maybe a week of headaches but in the end a lot more power than RPG maker has. Just start with something simple and work your way up. Look at other people's examples. Try changing it around a little.

As much as I hate the GMC (http://gmc.yoyogames.com/) they're actually very responsive about answering detailed questions and a good place to learn game maker.

An alternative to GM is construct (http://www.scirra.com/), which shows a lot more promise than GM but it's still in the beta stages.

I'm making an RPG with construct. Here's what I can tell you about my experiences:

Prepare for the long haul. Regardless of whether you use game maker or construct, RPGs probably have more stuff that needs to be coded than any other genre of game.

Prepare for it to be even longer if you've never coded something like this before, since you'll invariably do some things wrong and have to recode them later, which has happened to me repeatedly because I've been basically learning to program while making this game.

So far I've been working generally part-time on my game a year and two months. Like 20 hours a week.

As for making it in construct, I wouldn't want to make it with anything else. There are no places where construct limits me, I can make exactly the game I want to. I find it easy to understand and follow the flow of logic. In fact, I find the code SO easy to understand that about 95-98% of my code is uncommented. It's also a lot of fun.

With construct, you can do pretty much anything (in 2D). It definitely won't hold you back. If you have some crazy idea for your battle engine, you can make it.

There are some bugs in the editor in construct, and range in their level of annoyance. however, even the most annoying of them is not enough to get me to want to make my game with something else. Construct is still in beta and does still have bugs, but they get fixed routinely.

There are also a few quirks to learn about the engine, like how objects aren't fully created and accessible via events until the next run through the event sheet so you only have the event where you created them to edit them until then, but these are very few and far between. I would be surprised if game maker didn't have any of these.

Even with these annoyances, again, construct is great fun to work with, and I wouldn't make my RPG with anything else (I have tried GM and quite a few others). I highly recommend giving both options a try to find what works for YOU. If you're going to be putting in the amount of hours necessary to make an RPG, then you're going to have to be working with something that you enjoy working with or you'll go crazy.

i Have contribute to pixel "perfect game" engine on RPG MK 2000
Game like bomberman, megaman or zelda have been greatly reproduce on RPG maker.

So it's definitly possible to stay in RPGmk. But by the time you can make a platformer with scrolling on rpgmk you should go to C++ straight, you will have all the basic knowledge to improvise something playable (even if the code would not be top par)

This is something you can do by clicking change variable > charac (chhose the vent to check) > whether Scene x/y or X/Y coordinate (don't remember).
Then you can compare and perform traditionnal custom collision. To get more power, use image for the main character (pixel perfect placement) and moving event for everythings else (but checking pixel perfect position)

Inventory is already manage by RMK. At least a custom cms is something greatly documented and not more difficult as checking switch and displaying the correct image.

Dialogue are already manage, but most advence people use image instead for effect.

Pixel perfect scrolling is a bit more difficult, as must pose a dummy fixed event that would get the relative position of the screen regarding the map, and create a code that move the screen regarding this position.
The easy way is to use the hero event with void graphics as marker, and use an image that update the hero position as the image cross tile boundaries. But it tough to balance as the screen would only move step by step.

Do note that Joystone wants to make a Zelda-like game. Making one like that shouldn't be nowhere near as hard making a full-fledged RPG, since Zeldas are more like action adventure games (as stated in the topic name as well).

Because of this, I think you shouldn't have too hard time with the inventory either if you're going to have one. I mean, the usual Zelda inventory is something like this:

(http://i40.tinypic.com/155ibgk.jpg)

In other words, every item has a static place in the inventory, and items that you can have multiple ones of show the count in their slot. Doing something like this would be quite simple, since you don't have to worry about item placement / item swapping / anything. So at least that aspect shouldn't cause too much of a headache code-wise.

It was at first, but then they ported it to GM because they wanted more flexibility. That's what I heard anyway.

no. it was in fact made in game maker. it started out as a rpgmaker project but he quickly realized it'd be impossible to make it as he'd like to in rpgmaker, and converted to game maker.

oops, w broom beat me to it.

anyway, learning gml is not something that'd take you years to do before you could do anything past pong. that's a ridiculous overstatement. even c++ wouldn't take you that long. you can learn a programming language in about 3 weeks if you work at it.

Joystone - You say you don't have a particular passion or like for coding. This is not a bad thing. You have many other skills and that is just great.

However, unless you develop a sudden lust for learning code, design patterns, etc.. - do yourself a favor and either: a) stick to using premade engines, or b) find/make a friend who is fluent in code and likes to program games. There are many of those individuals on this very board.

Programming is like art - anyone can do it to some degree, but your dedication and passion to it will show through in the final product. Why spend all your time drawing, designing and composing for a masterpiece only to collage it to construction paper with elmer glue and staples?

Unfortunately I have not looked into Construct, but I've heard good things and seen some impressive titles come from it. However, as a beginner, I doubt than any of the systems you want to code are going to be easy for you, no matter whether you choose Construct or GM.

If you have a basic understanding of some programming (if statements, loops, arrays) then you can get a basic inventory system off the ground in GM quick easily. If not, you'll need a week or 2 to understand the basics. You must sacrifice ease-of-use for extendability. If you put the effort in to learn, you'll get a good result =)

Personally, as a user of GM for many years, it is very noob-friendly, and I would recommend you start there, even if just to compare with Construct. If anything, it'll give you a good idea of resource management and some basic understandings that I'm sure are requirements for Construct too.

Good luck.

-Tv

With previous experience from web development (PHP and JavaScript) and some scripting languages (GML and BlitzBasic, mainly), it only took me four days of learning until I could make a Breakout clone with SDL without any help, when I first started out with C++. The learning curve has quickly increased its altitude since then.

After my initial start in Klik$Play and after that MMF i found DIV and startedt to work in the newest incarnation (Fenix) (with only spanish help files and errors)

Since i don't speak spanish i was very glad someone pointed me to Blitzmax.
After that working in c, c++, flash and whatever is all very possible. because blitzmax is so great.

oops back on topic: I believe GM is simple, unless you want something not so easy then it might get alot harder then something that appears harder at the first look, that might be simpler to learn in the long run.

I started programming when I was 7 years old. I had no books, nobody to teach me, no manual, I started programming in QBasic out of curiosity. I learned what statements, loops and conditions are experimentally.

You can learn it too if you put your game on hold for a while and give some love to programming.

Construct and Game Maker both involve programming. They both support written and point-and-click programming. However, Construct is designed so that most developers don't have to use the written variant, and Game Maker is mostly used with GML (written variant). So that might be crucial difference for you. Construct is all point-and-click and it has one of the best point-and-click programming styles I've ever seen.

(However, I recently failed to remake Machinarium mini-game in Construct and just made it in AS3)

Construct's point & click programming still involves quite a lot of writing in the form of expressions, though. True, you could technically make up all expressions by just point & clicking around the objects, put it's a lot faster to write them when you know the functions 8) But the point & clickability certainly helps when you can't remember the exact function you want to use.

Also, what sort of minigame did you fail to recreate? If the gameplay is in 2D (or simple 3D), it shouldn't be too hard to do it in Construct.