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I'm a novice, but I'm shooting big. I've already got the entire story ready, and I have the concept of the game in my head...

So, how would I put an RPG system in a sidescroller game?

You really should start smaller and not try to shoot for the moon when you're just learning about Darkbasic.

To do an RPG you need to use arrays to store all the stats of your main character and arrays to store the hp of the bad guys and the damage amount their weapon deals.

Arrays, typed arrays, array that can be filled using function, dynamic arrays, arrays and a side order of arrays.

They are vital, the more you know about them the better, if you know everything about them then you'll already know what they can do.

Every enemy, every weapon, every spell should be stored in an array of some sort, depending on how you organise your game. I assume that one thing you'll want to do is upgrade weapons, so you might have a few variables for an array full of weapons, and these are usually best assigned as types. Then when factoring how much damage a weapon does, or how fast the animation runs, or the likelihood of the weapon getting damaged, those arrays come into play, along with player stats for strength and agility. It is possible and actually quite fun to have traditional platformer action, add in a weapon and the ability to upgrade it is almost a no-brainer. Really the only 2 aspects of that you have to really worry about is the speed of the attack, and the damage dealt, your looking to arrive at those 2 figures after some math. I would have a starting set of parameters for each weapon, then by upgrading the material you could make it faster and lighter, stronger, make it deal more damage etc etc.

I think this is pretty prevalent in the Castlevania series, the whip and armour can be upgraded, and with replacement graphics I think it would work really well. With 2D you can go to town really, as a completely unique sword for instance would take a few minutes to create whereas in 3D it would take about a day.

I think you could do worse than playing some classic platfrom adventure games...
GODS (Bitmap Bros, Amiga + ST) - This is a real gem, has a distinct and classy style to it. There are shops to upgrade weapons and buy health etc, it is quite arcadey, but really it's the style that is unique in Gods, a damn pretty game even when limited to 16 colours.

Beast2 (Psygnosis, Amiga + ST) - This one is much more puzzle orientated than Gods, it actually has some 2D physics puzzles and was possibly the first game to have that level of interaction. It has a distinctive style too, but only as distinctive as Psygnosis' own style, which tended to be copperline background, jet black parallax layer, then the platforms over that. What I liked about this game was how tangible things were, items had a much more believable form than with other games.

If you can make a platformer first, with some good item handling, 2D physics maybe, then I would concentrate on that, then add the RPG elements later - but only after working out how things will actually behave in the full game, you can't really tell until you get some demos put together, nobody ever sets their game brief in stone .

Noooooooooooooo!! *noob falls into bottomless RPG pit*

Please don't try this yet you will only waste time. Even if you could do it, it would take so long to make that by the time you're near the end you'll be such a better coder that you'll want to re-write the whole thing.
Make a couple of oldschool arcade games first and hone your skills, look at other peoples' work on the forums to learn from and get inspiration.
If you like, focus on one aspect of the RPG you have planned and make a game out of it, but keep it simple and manageable.

I shot big and it fell on me and squished me I didn't code for a year because I got so frustrated with a project I wasn't ready for.

I understand that pain, man.


And I also totally aggre with Obese, NONONONONONONOONOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! DONT START WIT AN RPG!!!!
The reason being that Ive been coding for the past 3 years or so and still havent learned enough tricks of the trade to make a good, well organized rpg......

Personally, I think that an RPG is easy. Where does the difficulty come into it? Arrays are quite simple, and one of the first things that you learn in Basic languages. I'm sure that I could have written a RPG as my first DB project.

start small like a game with 2 ships missiles and a bullet
and make the enemy apear randomly around the top of screen and you shoot it and an animation of an explosion apears
this was one of my first ones that i made and its cool
its a good way to start if you need any help email me

RPGs are very hard, to even start coding the game you'll have to create many editors and to create those editors you'll need more experience first.

If you insist, my advise would be to not create anything new but to copy exactly (or as close as you can) an existing game. Try something like the Final Fantasy titles, not the latest ones, I'm talking old ones and simplest it can be like the FF on the GameBoy, black and white and all.

Even those early games are very hard to code! If you can manage that then you're skills will definately greatly improve.

I wouldn't say RPGs are very hard, just very big and unless you have a good style of programming it will get very buggy. So like most everyone else start simple, a snake game would be a decent starting place if you want to learn a lot about programming with one game. (A snake game uses arrays so it'll give a good understanding on them)

My first game was a full fledged RPG with story/40+areas/3 characters/intergalactic travel and a card collecting mini game.

It's all about patience, whatever you end up doing.

That's cool, I'd love to play it if you dont mind, would be a great motivator to actually see a finnished RPG.