Hey, a buddy of mine told me that "Programming an RTS Game with Direct3D" by Carl Granberg was a huge help for him when he programmed his 2D games, he almost convince me of buying it, but I'm not particularly interested in 2d.

Maybe you can give it a try, I mean, read some reviews before you buy it so you know what's about.

good luck.

What are the issues you need help on? There's only one RPG-specific book I know of which has mixed reviews (though is still 4 stars overall). The criticism is that it's very much a beginner's and doesn't get into much detail on the actual implementation of the RPG side of the game. It also sounds like it's 3D, which means they talk quite a bit about the basics of DirectX. You'd do better learning DirectX from a dedicated DirectX book.

So it really depends on what you're looking for. If you need help on the RPG side, you're kinda stuck. I don't know of any books that talk really in-depth about it. Besides, with a subject as big as RPGs, you're probably not going to find what you need in a single book. Game Coding Complete is around 1000 pages and we only had the space to scratch the surface.

If you have specific questions, feel free to ask. The Sims Medieval was an RPG / Simulation game, so I'm quite familiar with how RPGs are built.

-Rez

That sounds good, go ahead and post those UMLs and we can definitely be(at least the pros here) of a lot of help.

What software are you using for the UMLs?

Originally posted by Michel
A book that covers which systems I need to implement will do excually, I got a bit of an Idea what systems I'm gonna need, but I think, knowing myself, halfway the project some system 's gonna bite me in the ass and I'll have to review my intire architecture. So It's just for reference, I have the book: Game engine architecture by Jason gregory, but it says in chapture one he doesn't cover RPGs.

You're not going to find a book that covers everything you want. RPGs are just too different from each other. As for some system biting you in the ass part way through development, there's no avoiding that. I guarantee you that this will happen. It's part of game development, especially for inexperienced programmers. I've been programming for 17 years and I've never made a game where this didn't happen. Just yesterday I had to refactor the way Sims choose actions and animations from within socials. It's part of the process of making games (or really any reasonably complex piece of software).

-Rez

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Originally posted by kaykry
I've noticed that some game companies stick to one style of game. I just started playing Clash of Clans and I noticed that they also make a farming game. I'm wondering if it would be a good idea to stick with one type of game until you have perfected it rather than creating a host of unrelated games.

It's an interesting choice. The Sims team basically makes one kind of game over and over with a few tweaks. The Sims Medieval was basically The Sims 3 with an RPG element thrown in. However, we pretty much build every Sims game from scratch every time we make a new one.

Contrast that with Planet Moon Studios. We built a number of different games of completely different types and genres all with the same engine. The trick was building upon what was already there. Each game added some new tech which was then reused on the next project. Of course, the games that Planet Moon did were relatively simple compared to something like The Sims. Our largest team had less than 50 people on it.

As another example, take a company like Bethesda. The only possible way they can put out HUGE games as fast as they do is by reusing that engine. This is great because it allows them to focus mostly on content creation which is by far the biggest problem they have. Unfortunately, it also means we have to deal with the same bugs over and over and over. Compare the pathing in Fallout 3 or Skyrim with the pathing from Farcry 3. The difference is night & day.

One way isn't necessarily better, it just depends on what your goal is.

-Rez