Hello,

I want to begin working on a small hack n slash project. (2D, Top-down adventure game, Sort of like the old Zelda games)

Here are the things I would like to have in the game:

1 - A Preset overworld with Towns to buy things

2 - Dungeon Entrances in the overworld that Lead to the randomly generated Dungeons. (Is that Possible?)

3 - Character Customization (Things such as Hair style, Male or Female, Hair Color)

4 - Inventory system

5 - Random loot chests in dungeons

6 - New Armour and weaponry you can put on

7 - Classes (Mage, Warrior, Thief, Archer) With skills that you can level up (Lets say that you are a Mage, You have a skill tree with some moves you can unlock with level points)

8 - An attack bar (1-4 Bar that you can put skills in, When you select a move you will then start to use that instead. Say you had your first move a novice Fire Spell, your second a Novice Ice Spell, ect, If you press 2 on your keyboard, or mouse scroll it will select the 2nd move, and when you click to attack you will use that move)

9 - Buyable Houses?

(You can buy homes around in towns and furnish them, use chests ect?)

10 - Overworld Map with fast traveling (You can travel to towns or your houses if possible)

.

I have to ask: Have you coded anything more complex than "Hello World" ? If not, I would suggest you scale back your ambitions a bit, until you understand game programming better [ LINK ]

1: That can be accomplished with a simple map, coupled with event triggers

2: The algorithms are a bit tricky to figure out, but it is very possible to make random dungeons ( 'The Binding Of Isaac' is an example )

3: 2d is a lot easier than 3D - as all it involves is image overlays .... HOWEVER 3d is perfectly possible, but a bit more complex

4: That is just an object array that displays the graphics of each slot

5: Figuring out how to program "weighted probability" ( rarity ) is a bit tricky, but not imposable

6: see #3

7: Both independent and shared attributes are relatively easy

8: see #4

9: That can be accomplished using zones and triggers.

10: An overworld map is nothing more than a graphic. These can be pre rendered, or they can be rendered from your "random" dungeons". How you implement it is up to you.

Making different points "clickable" is not difficult.

Is it possible?

Yes. However I would not recommend it as a first game project.

What should I use to make it?

Whatever framework or engine that fits your needs and with which you are most comfortable.

Will it be easy?

Not for a beginner, no. But it sounds perfectly doable:

• You need NPCs that buy and sell items and items will need a price. The overworld map needs to be loaded somehow.
• Procedurally generated dungeons can be as easy as selecting random rooms from a predefined set, putting them next to each other then putting some monsters in it. It can also be very hard and can lead to eternal tweaking because the algorithm is never "quite right".
• If you only let the player customize their gender and hair that should be easy. First draw their body without hair and then the hair on top of it. If you want to show any equipped items like armor, you can draw that somewhere in between, you can draw the head separately on top of the armor and a helmet on top of the hair. If you have a lot of equipment to show it can get complicated to find out the correct drawing order.
• An inventory system does more than just hold items. Not all items might go in all slots, some items might have a different effect when equipped (armor would increase the player's defense). Some items might be used and have effects. Also consider that NPCs and chests may need their own inventories.
• You could just make chests a kind of monster that doesn't move or attack. It would then just fill its inventory with random items and drop them when "killed". Or you could implement a way to access the chests' inventories.
• Weapons and armor can just be drawn as mentioned above. They will need to have different effects or they would be pointless. Some weapons/armor might not be usable by all classes.
• You will have to design a skill tree for each class and a system that executes these skills.
• The attack bar should be easy, just store which skill the player has selected.
• For buyable houses you need a system that can change a map in game and save it.
• Fast travel map is just a clickable image, when the player clicks a town you'd just load that map.

Don't forget that you also need monsters/NPCs which need some form of AI. And don't even think about multiplayer.

From a game design point of view you should ask yourself what is fun and what is not. This can make things easier for you. Do you really need 4 different classes or would it be enough to have say a melee class and a ranged class? Do you really need complicated skill trees? Is a buyable and decoratable house fun if I have no one to show it to? Things like that.

Hi,

In my opinion, this is too ambitious for a raw beginner. If you are at least intermediate level in a coding language, then all that would be a good basis for a game, but for a newbie it would be overwhelming. You need to make non-game applications for a while. After that, make very simple games for at least a few weeks.