Perhaps this is the wrong section and perhaps I’ve been searching too directly, but, are there any good tutorials for creating basic ARPGs, especially for beginners?
I’ve been having trouble trying to figure out how to go from the top-down template to, well, anything I want, and I figure I’d need some guidance if it’s available. Basic guidance because I have no background in game development.
Hi Howell2010.
First off, you’re probably not going to find a tutorial like that. Secondly, it’s sort of the wrong question to ask. Don’t worry though - you’re not the first person to make this mistake, and others will follow… So, this is for you and everybody else asking the same question.
There is a straight-forward solution: split your Big Question into lots of very small questions. Make a rough plan of your game and identify the features it needs, then look for documentation and/or tutorials for each of those features instead. Complete tutorials for [insert game type here] are typically nowhere to be found, unless it’s something very small and simple (e.g. Match3, Space Invaders, or something along those lines).
ARPG is quite a nebulous term, but in general it encompasses pretty much every single standard feature that has ever appeared in videogames over the entire history of the medium. In other words, the exact opposite of “very small and simple”. Since you mentioned the top-down template, I’m going to assume it’s something comparable to, for example, Fallout 1 and 2: third person, view from above, quests, weapons, NPCs, and so on.
If this assumption is correct, you can start making a list of features that you’ll be likely to need, then figure out how to execute them, one at a time:
The point is that any non-trivial game is composed of a large number of different systems, each of which is a massive tutorial in and of itself. Your job is to understand how to build those systems, one at a time, isolate them from one another as much as possible, and then put them all together to form the complete game.
Once you’ve successfully subdivided your overall idea into a number of smaller and simpler systems, it’s going to be much easier to find individual solutions for them here in the forum, on YouTube, in the UE Wiki or the engine documentation. Some of them are even available as ready-made solutions in the MarketPlace if you want to go down that route (e.g. inventory systems, mini maps, etc), but it’s worth pointing out that you still need to understand roughly how they work in order to successfully integrate them with the rest of your systems.
At any rate, if you’re new to game development, it would be wise to start smaller.
Much, much smaller.
Forget ARPG for now, and start making a really simple game for which a full tutorial is available. Join the monthly game jam. Try implementing utterly trivial ideas, one at a time, and always make sure you truly understand what you are doing and why, as opposed to merely pressing buttons. Embrace - nay, revel in - failure.
tl;dr: This was probably not the answer you wanted, but it’s a good answer 