This seems far too ambitious for a first project. Starting with your "dream game" project is a common mistake. Often times the project is so grand in scope and beyond the dreamer's skill level that they quickly become overwhelmed and frustrated to the point of quitting. Many of us have been there (myself included). Work up to your dream game by learning the skills on smaller projects so you can do it justice. 

Cool start on the pixel art. Instead of Paint, check out Paint.NET. It's free and has a lot more features than basic old Paint.

- Eck

6 hours ago, waxxy said:

What's the easiest way, what are the best options for a combat system, effective design, examples I can work with, stuff like that I guess?

That's pretty broad. Can you narrow it down to more focused questions?

On 25/07/2017 at 0:44 PM, waxxy said:

Or would it still take over a year?

Assuming I'm understanding your description of the game properly, your project would likely take an experienced developer at least a year.  Tweaking and fine tuning procedural generation to get a satisfying randomised world can take a lot of fiddly work, and you'll also have a reasonable amount of content creation to do, along with all of the basics that make a game.

That being said, I don't think it's an unreasonable project to work towards at all, and it's certainly something a solo developer could tackle with a bit more experience.

Like Eck, I would recommend working up to it with smaller projects so that you can develop your skills before tackling your dream project.  Breaking it down into smaller components is actually a great idea, and there are some parts of your idea that should be reasonably easy to achieve with a bit of work.

I see that you've started on some artwork (take a look at The Total Beginner's Guide to Better 2d Game Art for some tips you can apply to any 2d project!), but do you have an engine or framework in mind for creating the game itself?

Moving this topic to For Beginners for now, as you don't seem to have any specific design questions right now and are more looking for general 'getting started' advice.

In terms of getting a random world that works, this can be done by programming an algorithm that matches objects, and graphic tiles together based on a set of rules to generate random maps. You would have to have rule sets in place that allow certain tiles to generate around each other with objects based on valid conditions based on their layers. For example, if you have a land tile, water tile, and bridge tile, you wouldn't want something like water, bridge, water, land, bridge, water, water, bridge (from left to right) on layer 1 if your object tiles on layer 2 are house, sewer tunnel, ladder, dock, ect... and they're unable to support those tiles, and your player cannot travel properly through those settings. I'm afraid this is far beyond beginner game development.

You can also do this with batches instead of single tiles for the maps to make it easier. You pretty much make small chunks of the map that can fit together like a puzzle that generally work together in any order. Layer 1 would be your graphical tiles, and Layer 2 would have interactive stuff, objects, ect... You can also make different variations of Layer 2 which can go on top of your Layer 1.

Layer 1

Batch one - Land, Land, Land, Land, Hill, Land 

Batch two - Land - Small Bridge with Water Under - Land - Hill - Land

Layer 2

Batch one variation 1 - Road, Road (Trees), House, Empty, Hill Cave (Trolls), Empty

Batch one variation 2 - Road Block (Bandits), Tent, Burned Down Convoy, Road with Sign, Hill Path, Road

Batch two - .....

ect...

Then you can just set each batch to a number in an array, and randomize certain batches that match the environment change to render your random map.

Layer 1 [ 1, 5, 6, 2, 1 ]   Layer 2 [ 1, 5, 6, 2, 1 ]

I cannot comment on what would be a good combat system because this answer should really come from you. Think about some games you've played, which system did you like? You can always port that combat system into your game.

I strongly suggest you get a few basic games under your belt before making the dream game, the last thing you want is to hit a brick wall and completely become discouraged and quit. If you're not really into the programming aspect, you can still make games using drag and drop with Game Maker as well.

https://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker

30 minutes ago, Rutin said:

In terms of getting a random world that works, this can be done by programming an algorithm that matches objects, and graphic tiles together based on a set of rules to generate random maps.

That remember me of Dungeon Architect, so I link this video which explains how it works-->