Hello! I... really want to make a JRPG with GDevelop

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Hey everyone, I’m very much new here. You can call me Ark! Aspiring game dev
here, also going to make my own music and sounds with Cakewalk Sonar. I’m also a digital artist and have been for a few years, I also read/write. So I have a few skills. Except for music… and programming… but that can wait. I’m using GDevelop.

The thing is. I want to make something kind of big with GDevelop, a JRPG. I love dragons dearly, and have a spiritual connection to them. I want to make a successor to Breath of Fire 3, or something like it. Doesn’t HAVE TO be exactly like it, I’m fine with Earthbound/Dragon Quest style battles. I just don’t know if I can do it in GDevelop. I should move over to RPG Maker MZ.

The sad part is… if that’s the case, I wasted 3 weeks of my life learning GDevelop then. I even wrote down lots of notes and even events I can use. About 60,000 words or so. But I think RPG Maker MZ just has everything set up so it’s an easier process to get started.

So far, there isn’t enough prefabs to work from. And it would also take way too long to draw sprites from scratch without templates to make it easier.

I’m not sure what to do. I feel awful because I really like GDevelop, I had a great time learning about it for nearly a month. But I’m starting to realize that I don’t want to start small, that is a trap for all aspiring devs. You shouldn’t end up in tutorial hell making “pong” and “breakout” infinitely. Please pursue what you really want to make or you’re going to burn out instantly.

What I want to make is an emotionally resonant story about dragons, and people who can turn into them. So there’s already a complicated mechanic that I don’t know how to get working in GDevelop. There’s not enough games where dragons are the main characters and it is a DEPRESSING and ANGER INDUCING state of affairs for me, to the point I actually want to cry. It’s ridiculous that AAA devs can’t even see how cool and appealing dragons are… well, they do, but they are always things you have to KILL instead of BE. I want to BE the dragon. Please, let me be a dragon!

Sigh… well, consider this just a “hello” from me, and also what I want to make with GDevelop… which I might not be able to make. Ugh.

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Funny, I picked up GDevelop from RPG Maker because I found RPG Maker too limiting in what kind of mechanics I could do, and even with plugins the result was clunkier and more complicated than using a general purpose engine.

RPG Maker is a specialized engine good for making a specific type of game- turn-based, grid-based (J)RPGs, and has a lot of systems and templates pre-built for you, saving you time. The flip side is customization is far more limited, which is why you often see people say “All RPG Maker games look/feel/play the same”, because they’re all working from the same templates.

You CAN make an RPG in GDevelop, Scallion RPG is made in GDevelop, but it requires you to make the systems from scratch (or the more basic templates). It takes more time but your game will be far more unique and customizable.

Some other things to note:

  1. RPG Maker costs money, and you’ll find a lot of plugins (necessary to customize your game), especially for MZ, cost money.
  2. RPG Maker is on the decline with every new edition selling less than the previous one. The company’s last two engines (Unite and Action Game Maker) flopped.
  3. RPG Maker rarely gets updates or improvements after the first couple years. Their effort goes into making or supporting their newest engines. When they do update them, it often breaks compatibility with plugins. The new engines end up having LESS features than the old ones since they don’t come with all the old plugins.
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Hi Ark,
I also played for years with FL Studio (I only tried Sonar a couple of times), I used RPG Maker (but only very old versions), and now I’ve been using GDevelop for 5 years!

The answer would be quite obvious: if you want immediate results and to publish your RPG, then of course the versions of RPG Maker that allow you to commercialize your games are the most efficient solution.

The problem arises if you want to create something more custom — like expanding the gameplay, managing multiple types of scenes (such as options or extras), enabling in-game purchases, or even server connections…

In that case, GDevelop is highly, highly recommended. So try both until you have a clearer idea of which system fits your type of game best! Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to find software that suits every goal!

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That is really sad to hear… because I actually grew up with RPG Maker, although I didn’t do much with it. It was mainly RPG Maker on the Playstation 1, the very first one, then RPG Maker 2000 and others on PC.

I’m sure it’s still a great engine. I already have it and I can use it. But making what I want in GDevelop seems too hard, there isn’t enough tutorials for what I want to go for…

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I realize that with the 3D platform tool in GDevelop, I could make isometric views similar to Breath of Fire 3, then easily texture them. Or, I can try to go for isometric tilemaps. Right now, I’m just struggling to figure out how to do this and to set it all up. I need to start learning how to just do quick, easy, sloppy, ugly prototypes just so I can place them and test mechanics or systems.

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If you want to make an isometric game why wouldn’t you start with the isometric template?

When I’m making a game in GDevelop I pick a template to start with then often check multiple other templates to see how they did their mechanics. The templates typically only show how to do one or a few different mechanics at a time so I will refer to several.

It’s up to you to tackle one mechanic at a time, find a sample template, YouTube video, forum post, etc showing how to do it, and piece them all together to make your game.

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Oh wow! Thank you, that will help me a lot!

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Now how do I open this on the desktop app? I need the images and objects as templates to draw over… Or at least as a reference for how to size custom assets. I’m a digital artist after all, I can draw some 2D HD at this resolution.

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You click where it says GDevelop Cloud and pick desktop app instead

Screenshot_20251105-004706_Chrome
Screenshot_20251105-004706_Chrome1439×1749 189 KB

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Sadly, I can’t select it. I don’t know why.

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Search for the template in the desktop app itself

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Alright, I managed to get everything ready. The only problem is that I don’t think I can animate this many sprites… it’s way too many for me, and I also suck at animation by the way, it’s not something I do. Having to do a frame for every direction seems painful…

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I suppose what I can do is lower the animation frames for each direction. Perhaps 3 or 4 frames. Sigh. I gotta try. I really want to do this… but then I see how much work it’s going to take and I just want to give up. This happens in cycles during this whole process. But literally no one is making a game like this right now and never will, so someone’s gotta try, and it has to be me.

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Hey!
You wouldn’t need to manually make a left direction, and a right direction. You should be able to just flip the character horizontally! :smile:

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GDevelop has a habit of doing this when it updates, don’t know what the cause is…
Just reinstall the app, it should work fine.

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Now I’m starting to lose faith in my self to do this. It happens VERY OFTEN during this process, since I just started.

The thing is, I don’t know how to do RPG stats and how to set them up, or how to get them to work. I haven’t even started doing prototype sprites or animations yet, so maybe I shouldn’t worry about that right now. But this is pretty concerning. I refunded RPG Maker MZ because I didn’t like hearing about the state of that company and their lack of support… but those systems are set up already to make creating a RPG much easier than GDevelop. But I also don’t want to waste the time I invested learning GDevelop. Sigh, I really have no idea what to do.

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It is quite frankly too overwhelming and I don’t think I can do it… it seems way too difficult…

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You can claim all you want how flexible GDevelop is, but there is literally no extensions to make basic RPG stats, and I don’t think anyone figured out how to get stats to work in combat. I know about global variables and structures, I was able to make a few. But then I realize that this should be much easier to do than this…

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Hi @Arkveveen …9hours ago you were cock-a-hoop! and eager to blaze an JRPG trail!..nothing’s ever straight forward in life, so let’s break it into manageable molehills rather than trying to run up the mountain.
Try to think about the elements that you need and how to achieve each one. There are thousands of extensions to help achieve your goal …and this forum houses some of the finest minds in the history of game development, and erm people like me!
So let’s put each of those hurdles onto the track and post each one in turn in the ‘how do I section l’

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Well, I don’t even know do the tilemaps for an isometric game in GDevelop, let alone even set it up.

Yeah, I have major mental and emotional issues. This is the first time in my life I ever tried to tackle something like this, when I’m usually just a digital commission artist for a living. Self-employed. I have a lot of free time to make games because of this.

But being autistic, and having mental health issues, like anxiety and depression… and also very severe executive dysfunction problems… really makes this harder to do. I just didn’t do enough research on GDevelop. I only started to use GDevelop because it’s a '“no code” thing. I don’t want to code. I am not willing to PROGRAM FROM SCRATCH what every stat in a RPG even does, that is ridiculous and too hard, you also don’t have any tutorials about it.

But you know, at least I learned about variables and programming concepts through the no code events system, and all those tutorials. It just feels sad that I might’ve wasted my time… although I wonder if I go use RPG Architect, it would still require some coding for it. Since I think I might go use that, since it also has 3D isometric RPG stuff with 2D sprites which is perfect for my needs.

And because I have issues, I also have CHOICE PARALYSIS. So when you offer me a ton of things that I don’t even know what they do… I’m going to basically do nothing if there is no tutorial for it.