Role-playing game specifications

Here is a run down on the design elements of the role-playing game engine that I will be developing.

First off it will be a single character game(I might expand it so that others may join your party.) It will be a skill based game instead of a class based game. In that way the player will be able to have more control over their character and they can choose how their character will develop. The character (and all other NPCs and creatures) will have six abilities. They will be Strength, Stamina, Agility, Speed, Intellect and Luck. Strength will help measure how much damage a character can do. Stamina will help determine how much damage a character can take. Agility will help in deteriming attack success and evasion. Speed will help a character strike first in combat. Intellect will determine the power of spells the character can cast. Luck will measure the ability of the character to have critical hits. I'm still working on the skills that a character will be able to learn.

The game will have a simple inventory system. Equipment will require certain levels of ability. For example a character with a low Strength will not be able to wear heavy armor and a character with low Intellect will not be able to learn sophisticated spells.

There will be three types of maps for the player to explore but they will all use the same tile engine to be displayed. The first is the adventure map where the player will be able to travel between towns and dungeons. Towns will have buildings the player can enter to buy equipment, rest, find quests, etc. Dungeons will be where the character will fight monsters. They will all behave relatively the same.

Combat will take place on a seperate screen. It will be a simple turn-based combat system. There will be an intiative roll that will be modified by Speed. The one with the highest intiative will go fisrt.

There will be a quest system where you will be able to find quests to perform. The quest system will be done using XML. It will use a content processor, importer and exporter so that the quests will be compiled into an XNB file.

I'm leaving right now to see about an adapter for my laptop. Hopefully they will have one and I will be able to start the tutorial on the tile engine. So check back soon and hopefully the tutorial will be up shortly.