What the title says.
Thinking about making a(n initially) basic RPG in Visual Basic. I've made a one world-screen, random battle, random skill one before, for a college project, but I'm thinking about trying something better.
Placeholder for the old version was Link from Minish Cap (6 sprites for every direction, for walking animation). Think of that for sprite size/camera angle.
Minish cap sprite sheet

This is just a fun "Lets do something constructive and not waste away my day just playing video games" exercise for me.
I'll share it with all you guys.

Also needing: A town sprite. Think of how big villages are in FFIX compared to the character on the world map.
Monsters, for a combat screen.
Maybe weapon/armour sprites. Same size as the character.
Spell sprites (Heal, fire, slash, ect...)


To Do:

Movement.
Battle system.
Enemies. And them having different attacks.
Secondary Statistics
Bonuses
Levelling up
Equipment
Saving
Shopping
Items dropping
Monster scaling
Multiple areas

Also taking suggestions for features and stuff. I'll try tackle stuff as it gets suggested.

Battle system?
Real time or turn-based?

Turn based.
It was: You hit attack. Upper damage bound was strength, lowest was 1. Dexterity was simply an attack multiplier (However many more times dexterity you have is how many attacks you do, or how many hit you. Eg: I have 6, they have 2. I hit three times with every attack).
It was hastily put together, and each bit of code was just an addition, with no cleaning. Hell, running speed and magic power were the same variable to save time.

I could probably make it much better this time round.
Eg: I have 1.2x as much dexterity. For every 5 attacks I do, I get a free attack.

At college, I'll email myself the file, zip it up, try find a way to send it to you guys without the crashing when it tries load the images...

Sounds like fun!
If I have any free time I might make some slimes and stuff.

What file format? PNG? BMP?

I don't really think it matters... I think I used PNG and Jay-Pegs last time... all the enemies were googled images of sea creatures.

How it worked last time was just like Pokémon's combat, without movement, or bars, or the ability to see your own character...
Hoping for something more like FF1-6 with this, this time.

It's going to take a lot of thought and logical thinking to get anything more than what I currently have. Very basic coding skills don't mix well with ambitious projects.

Also, loves <3

EDIT: I'll get the general bits set.
Deciding what the basic character stats should be. Strength is a given, but I'm not sure whether to go for purely Str/Dex/Int(/Luk), or Str/End/Agi/Spe/Int/Wis/Luk, or what...
Also, ideas for skills would be nice.

What version of VB are you using?

Visual Basic 6. The only programming language that I know.

So about what size would you want the monsters to be? About the size of your link placeholder?

Attack/Dexterity/Defense/Evasion/Magic/Intelligence/Magic Defense/Magic Evasion/Luck?

From the size of the Link placeholder to, like... 4x his size for something really bad.
I think, for combat, side facing is what's needed.

I'm having stats be player-selected, so they sounds like secondary stats mostly.

Also not yet sure how equipment is going to work.
Or saving.
Or if combat animations are within my grasp.

Also neglected to think about backgrounds...
I really need to start thinking. To the morning! Work shall be done then!

Eight buttons, 5 text boxes and 4 labels have been made to date. Lines of code: None.
I'll get down to business tomorrow. For reals.

EDIT:
Also needing small icons to show: Head gear, chest gear, hand gear, weapon, shoes, shield...
Think: Minecraft's equipment icons, to show you have nothing on.

Menu navigation is done. Character creation is done. I can either try create the movement from scratch, or I can wait until midweek when I can email myself my old code.
I think I'll put a ToDo in the OP...
This thread has turned into my personal blog.

Also, MLC, I've not just ignored your suggestions. Most of them are now secondary skills, which are affected by your primary skills, as well as the items you're wearing.
Now I just have to think of a damn way to have items interact with skills.
I've already thought about having a separate bonus for each of them (Eg: Attack Power is made of 0.6 * Str + AttackPowerBonus), and I'm sure I can make a simple "If HeadItem = "Berserker helm" then AttackPowerBonus = 5", but what I'm wanting is randomly generated shizz. Or at least not having to store every single item in the code. A possibility is having a seperate file with all the items in, but what I'm looking for is to have items be made of several parts, a-la Borderlands. Well, as in, it'd be a Spiky Berserker Helm Of Additional Life. And I'm not sure how to store these. I can add all the suffixes and prefixes to an array... As well as the base item types (Helmet 1, Helmet 2, Helmet 3)... But still thinking of how to store the bonus values associated to each item. It should be obvious, upon picking up an item, what it's going to do. The Shitty Skullcap Of Greater Life Reducing should be avoided at all cost. I don't want it to randomly assign a siffix/prefix, but then also assign bonuses randomly. Otherwise the SSOGLR could end up being your best item.
Also, monsters scaling to player level. Should be easy enough.
I'll have to have more thinking about how Arrays can fit into all this.

Slight bumpdate.
This is the original project, with it's rather basic features and complete lack of balancing (I swear it was more balanced before I started fiddling).
Yellow square is town. Black box was different for every mob... I lost the pictures when emailing the work over, so I could re-use my code.
Battles are random, and turn based.
Skills are random.
Level up at +5 xp, level down at -5 xp.
When you level up, you get a single random skill.
*hopes for mild interest*

Called Box Game because it started originally as a "move your box over their box, repeat" game.

EDIT:
Move with the arrow keys.
The program persists after you close it. Close it with Task Manager - Need help sorting this out.

EDIT:
File lower down

Could you also make a list of sprites you need? Maybe I can make some.

EDIT: sizes would be nice, too.

Main character walking:
North/South/East/West. 6-10 frames of movement per direction including a standing frame? 20-30 pixels each way. If a few people do a character each, that'd be awesomesauce.
Some monsters. Be inventive! Or comically clichéd, I'm none too bothered. From 10 to 100 pixels
A town. 50 pixel square?
Hand/Chest/Weapon/Hat/Leggings icons. About the same size as 4 of the Font Colour squares here, when making a post ---> Or about 20-25 pixels square.
Possibly a background. Something woodsy, and more if I really get going. 300x500
Spell icons? An explosion, a stabby icon, some nice + life looking stuff... 40x40

The game has a dependency on some files in your user folder; I can't run it.

Damn, though turning it into an .exe would mean it'd take the files itself... Hmm...

EDIT:
Give this one a go.

Well, that one works.
I got a runtime error when I tried to buy Doubleslash.



EDIT: when I gave myself tons of money and bought tons of strength potions I got
Runtime error '6':

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