TIGSource Forums

TIGers,

I'm currently embarking on a text-based type of game that combines elements of tactical RPGs and the visual presentation of text adventures (i.e. Fire Emblem + Captain Tsubasa, at its simplest). Actual in-game visuals will be a series of pre-made, highly detailed animations on par w/ GBA size/palette/resolution parameters. Now that I'm thinking of beginning actual work, which engine should I use? I'm trying to steer away from Game Maker for once, but most text adventure engines might not be able to handle the vigorous visual workout the game entails (again, GBA standards), and I have no idea as to the difficulty of creating one for the game from scratch.

I, for one, know absolutely nothing about programming, so I ask you, the denizens of Technical, to recommend a good engine for this type of game.

quick question, why the No for gamemaker? if you let us know what you are and are not looking for. it will be much easier.

Will you need a text-adventure-style parser? I think there are Tetris games written in Inform, although I'm sure that doing this is horribly complicated.

Trying to stay away from Game Maker only because makes me feel the full brunt of my inadequacy, and may be ported to other platforms in the future.

Hmm, yeah, Game Maker can't be ported, but if you wanted to port it to the GBA then C++ might be the way to go.

If you're not programming in C/C++ you're going to have portability issues later. And even then you can still make thing hard for yourself.

Cymon -- you mean for porting to GBA specifically, not to other platforms in general, right?

If that's the case, no, I might be looking to port to the DS.

In that case it is probably a good idea to check out what tools would be available on the DS, and get a sense for what the constraints are.  This page might be a good starting point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_DS_homebrew#Programming

Holy crap, I need an adult.  :wtf:

Don't let all the stuff on that page scare you :)

If you have no experience with programming, making something for the DS will be a LOT of work. If you want to learn how to program though, it's doable! Everything you need is included with devkitARM (http://www.devkitpro.org/downloads/). You will have to learn C and/or C++.

Actually there is also MicroLUA, which I haven't tried myself but I think it's possible to write full DS games with (in LUA, of course).. no idea how powerful or fast it is.  There is also some DS Game Maker thing but as far as I know it's extremely basic and not good for anything. So really there's no easy way to make something for the DS. :)

There is quite a bit of confusing stuff to learn for DS coding, mainly stuff to do with the hardware itself... Then again, because there is no OS, your program has complete control of the hardware, and the entire toolchain is self contained, it's simpler than coding something for PC or Mac in a way (using C anyway.. I'm sure there are any number of other languages/tools which make things on computers way easier).

So yeah, I reckon if you want to learn C/C++, the DS or GBA is an okay place to start.  But for starting to learn programming from the beginning, probably not so good...  The game you want to make sounds like it'd be hard to do, to me anyway...interesting idea though :)

Anyway if you want to be scared, the best DS tutorial I know of is Patater's Manual - http://patater.com/manual ...  The most active GBA and DS coding forum is, I think, http://forum.gbadev.org and there's also http://forums.devkitpro.org/ which is the home forum of the people who made the toolchain.

[edit] oh and don't worry about all the stuff about Passthrough devices and such in that Pateter manual, afaik that's all pretty much outdated now, if you have any kind of current DS slot 1 flashcart.. putting your homebrew on the DS is just a matter of putting the microSD in your PC and dragging the files across..

Wow, thank you! :) I always depended on other people to program for me, but since most of my close friends only know Game Maker, I suppose I'll have to read up.

And...I suppose getting a DS might be good, as well. :-[ Will the fat one work fine, or do I need a Lite?