Before you can get to the point where you are able to design an adventure and
build an RPG with Visual Basic, you will need to learn the language. My goal with
this book is to teach you just what you need to know in order to make this happen.
You will learn what you need to know to construct an RPG. You might choose to
use a product such as RPG Maker (on the PlayStation 2), rather than writing your
own RPG with Visual Basic. That is certainly a good alternative, but wouldn’titbe
better to have complete control over how the game works? Certainly you can
create many complete RPGs of your own design with RPG Maker in the time it
takes to build just one RPG from scratch by doing all of your own programming.
But in the end, you will have learned a promising skill—game programming! In
addition, you will have complete creative control over how the game operates, and
will be able to make many games from the same code and tools.
Pacing and Experience
This book reads like a hobby book, with no pressure and limited goals, because the
primary purpose of this book is to help you to have fun learning about game
programming. Typing in long source code listings out of a book is not fun, so I
don’t ask you to do that in this book. Instead, you will learn by studying the short
examples in each chapter, and over time you will get the hang of it. There is no
memorization required here, as I’mafirm believer that repetition and practice is
the best way to learn, not theory and memorization. The Celtic Crusader game is
built from one chapter to the next, with new features and gameplay elements
added in each new chapter. You will learn to create this game completely from
scratch in a very short amount of time.
The finished game in the last chapter includes all the source code to make your
own RPG with the features described above, including combat with monsters and
enemy NPCs; treasure and gold drops; creating items with the custom item editor;
picking up item drops; managing inventory with drag-drop; equipping gear with
buffs (stat modifiers) such as armor and weapons; creating NPCs with the
character editor; rolling new player characters; saving the game; creating the game
world with a custom level editor; and creating quests with the quest editor. Whew!
That sounds like a lot of work, but we make all of this happen in the pages of this
book, and you will have a playable, customizable RPG game system by the time
you reach the last chapter! In fact, why don’t you flip to the last chapter now to see
what it looks like? I ’ ll wait here for you to return.
Introduction xv