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Hi there. This is lachjames with his FIRST POST EVER! Aren't you exited? I just don't know how you guys at the forum coped without me for as long as you have. Anyway, I am considering creating a Star Wars RPG based on KOTOR and KOTOR 2 as my first project. The game mechanics are based on a D20 system (which shouldn't be too hard to replicate, just make some basic integers for the weapon statistics, throw in some random numbers and there you have it).

Anyway, I'd like some advice. I would like to first get some basic knowledge of this language (you didn't really think that this RPG would be my first GAME ever, did you? Just my first project). I know some Visual Basic.Net, so looking at this code isn't as daunting as one of my friends had suggested (of course, he uses *Game Maker* coz he'd rather focus on the sprites than the actual coding, unlike me). Once I have a basic knowledge of the file system, I would like to get to work.

First of all, I would like you to know that I have the Dark Game Studio Bonanza special on the way right now. I also have the capability to buy any extra plug-ins or programs that I need (within reason).

I have played through KOTOR and KOTOR II many times and have gotten a great feel for the gameplay system and the storylines that Bioware have set. Those clever people at Bioware... Anyway, I was going to make the story based around the story of Star Wars TOR, as the idea of an MMORPG as the next KOTOR game doesn't excite me at all, really. Of course, I'll play it, but I'd always rather sit down for a good 60 hours and play through a single-player masterpiece than be PvP'd by some lvl 70 n00b who wants to show off how awesome his level 24 force lightning is.

I am willing to buy the upgrade from Cartography Shop to 3D World Studio if it will help. Unlike my friend, I am not the best modeller in the whole entire world, so I will need a good place to get decent, royalty free (I plan to give away more than 100 copies of my game) models. I would also buy character shop if I needed to, to rig up any models that I need.

Money isn't the largest consideration here; quality is. I want to make the best game possible regardless of the time it takes. And I would love any help that I can get with suggestions about storyline, combat, even donating a lightsaber or blaster model. And PLEASE don't give me all the junk about how I need to work up to making a full game. I know this, that's why I'm gonna take it one step at a time and work on different stages at a time. Thanks for any input.

- Lachjames

p.s. I would love to be able to share this software with my friend so he can make games with me - I do the programming and he does the modelling. I think we would both jump at the chance to do this. Would I need to buy a seperate license to do this for him so we would both have Cartography Shop and any modelling software that I choose from The Game Creators, or can we both use the same license. I want to be a law-abiding person, so I understand if I need to buy a license each. I would do that if the need arised.

p.p.s. Does anyone know if Cartography Shop or 3D World Studio supports Dual or Quad-Core processing (I have an Intel Q4550 2.66ghz that I want to make as much use of as I can). Also, does any of The Game Creators' software have multi-monitor support - I have a great dual-monitor rig that I use for all my video-editing and would like to use for design if I had the chance. Thanks again.

There's a pinned thread of various tutorials/links which you'd most likely find helpful. It appears you've already had a little experience in BASIC (VB.net), so you should have a head start. Remember to plan things out with projects as large as you are talking about. If you have a two-man team, things should be considerably more manageable.

An RPG is a large undertaking and *will* take a lot of perseverance (I know you specifically asked not for comments like this but a large amount of newcomers don't immediately realize how complicated things can get with large projects).

Having said all that, I wish you the best of luck!
- Z

Before buying everything you think you might need use the Dark Game Studio Bonanza to see what it has first... that way you won't waste any money on something you ultimately won't need.

The license for Darkbasic Pro is that it can be used on any computer you personally own. If you have 3 computers at your house you can put Darkbasic Pro on all of them. If you want it on your friends computer he needs to buy it himself... or you buy him his own copy to use.

Thanks for the quick replys. I'm in Melbourne, so I posted and went to bed, but you guys really helped. As for the perseverence, I have 2 weeks of holidays now and another 8 coming up, so I have plenty of time to mess around. Thanks for wishing me luck.

- Lachjames

Sorry, forgot to mention, is there anywhere that gives tutourials on saving/loading? As this is one of the highlights of an RPG (do something, revert to a game save and do it again a different way), I *NEED* to know how to do it. Also, will the XGui system work for a full GUI with menues and such, kind of like the ones in KOTOR and KOTOR 2? Thanks again.

- Lachjames

BatVink has an excellent tutorial on Tokenizing, one in a newsletter (I think) and one he posted as a response somewhere in this forum. Search for tokens, ini files, and saving on the google search thing. I forgot what it was in response to.

Open File is your friend. If you've programmed before, you know variables are just places to store data. If you want to save a game, all you do is save them to files, then you read those files later and note that "Level1Complete=TRUE" if you want the player to continue.

It gets complex from there, such as hiding data so players don't mess around with it, but start with basics.

There are many ways to save data the quick way is making an array of the data and use SAVE ARRAY and LOAD ARRAY... the only bad thing is it won't work with UDT's.

Another way is the one Feiting Shadow mentioned with OPEN TO WRITE and OPEN TO READ commands. The only bad thing about using OPEN TO WRITE is the file cannot exist and therefore has to be deleted before it will save.

Yet another way is to use memblocks until you're ready to save the data to a file. They do make your .exe double in size though but a lot of people use them anyway.

The best way (the one I use) is to use IanM's Matrix 1 Utilities Plug-in which has datafile save/load commands that allows saving and loading of data without having to first destroy the file. Huge data files for games/applications just aren't possible without IanM's great plug-in.

Here's a link to IanM's Free Plug-in... it has many more commands that are necessities too:

https://forumfiles.thegamecreators.com/download/1794671

Thanks again for the replies. I must look into that plug-in that Grog suggested. I downloaded NickyDude's PDF on learning DarkBASIC and have gone through the write/read file tutorial. Seems pretty straitforward, but I have yet to actually use it in a game (or make a game at all - still on tutorials). Thanks a lot.

- Lachjames