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Major game components

Asked 2009-07-12T14:25:07.343
9

I am in the process of developping a game, and after two months of work (not full time mind you), I have come to realise that our specs for the game are lacking a lot of details. I am not a professional game developper, this is only a hobby.

What I would like to receive help or advices for is this: What are the major components that you find in games, that have to be developped or already exists as librairies? The objective of this question is for me to be able to specify more game aspects.

Currently, we had specified pretty much only how we would work on the visual, completely forgetting everything about game logic (AI, Entities interactions, Quest logic (how do we decide whether or not a quest is completed)).

So far, I have found those points:

  • Physics (collision detection, actual forces, etc.)
  • AI (pathfinding, objectives, etc.)
  • Model management
  • Animation management
  • Scene management
  • Combat management
  • Inventory management
  • Camera (make sure not to render everything that is in the scene)
  • Heightmaps
  • Entities communication (Player with NPC, enemy, other players, etc)
  • Game state
  • Game state save system

In order to reduce the scope of this queston, I'd like it if you could specifically discuss aspects related to developping an RPG type of game. I will also point out that I am using XNA to develop this game, but I have almost no grasp of all the classes available yet (pretty much only using the Game component with some classes that are related to it such as GameTime, SpriteBatch, GraphicDeviceManager) but not much more.

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2 Answers

9

You have a decent list, but you are missing storage (save load), text (text is important in RPGs : Unicode, font rendering), probably a macro system for text (something that replaces tokens like {player} with the player characters name), and most important of all content generation tools (map editor, chara editor, dialog editor) because RPGs need content (or auto generation tools if you need ). By the way have links to your work?

I do this exact stuff for a living so if you need more pointers perhaps I can help.

answered 2009-07-12T14:35:25.903
2

There are hundreds of components needed to make a game, from time management to audio. You'll probably need to roll your own GUI, as native OS controls are very non-gamey. You will probably also need all kinds of tools to generate your worlds, exporters to convert models and textures into something suitable for your game etc.

I would strongly recommend that you start with one of the many free or cheap game engines that are out there. Loads of them come with the source code, so you can learn how they have been put together as you go.

When you think you are ready, you can start to replace parts of the engine you are using to better suit your needs.

answered 2009-07-12T14:38:58.690

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