BladeDragon
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Well, I think the most important thing to point out is that, you posted a help question that most everyone here is annoyed with, because the website is supposed to be a little more easily navigable to find what you're looking for, and especially to get newbie help. Believe me, I ask questions daily if I get stuck from lack of ease finding things here, so you're not alone. Let me see what advice I can give you though...
First of all, Grenideer is pretty correct, you need to have a bit of an idea on how you want your game to look, feel, and play. The big thing I've found about Verge is that it gives you the graphics of an SNES (pretty close anyway), and no limitation, it just depends on your programming skill, and how much time you want to devote to being original. If you're a coding guru, or want to do something along the lines of Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 3 or later (That's 3 US I'm talking about btw), Robotrek, Fire Emblem, Warsong, or basically emulate any game that is a non-Phantasy Star-like interface, with FF3-style animations for characters, then you're going to want to read all the info you can on a Verge 2.0 or later engine. (Don't pay attention to details on what I mean when I say that just yet, I'll explain further on). If you don't mind your menu system having been designed for you, the engine coded for you, the character animations already laid out, and their movements predetermined and scripted, so that all you have to do is code your own game events, storyline, and battle system (practically), then you'd want to choose Verge 1.0 (again, don't pay attention to what to do just yet to get these, I'll explain further).
Now, after you've decided what kind of game you're going to make, as most who visit this site have, then you'll have to realize what it's going to take to make the game. First, and foremost, is storyline and scripting, probably what you've done already, or have a good idea in your head, this is usually what I'd recommend as the first step, since it doesn't matter which engine you pick, it has to be done some point along the way. Second (and I'm going in ascending order of difficulty here, in my honest opinion), is music, which must be in .XM, .S3M, .MOD format (.MOD being most compatible from my personal experience), the reason I say this as second most difficult is that 1) If you're not going to go through the hassle of making your own music, as I certainly don't, it's a simple task of browsing the web and listening for fun to what you like, until you find a suitable soundtrack. 2) The music can provide inspiration for the other areas that have to be done. Now for the third most difficult, the character design / animations, which you'll need a PCX/BMP/PNG editor regardless of which Verge you decide to choose, both Paint Shop Pro, and Adobe Photoshop are great programs to use for making your game graphics in Verges. If you decide to do a simpler, predetermined game design, with Verge 1, then for character designing, there's a great program you can use that will give you a great view of your characters animated while you're designing them, this program is known as ACE CE, designed by a Verger named Rayn some time ago. This file can be found at the Verge Source (http://www.vergesource.com/) under the Files directory, since I don't think anyone's kept track of Verge 1 files here on the Verge website anymore. Here's another important thing to remember, if you're going to design your characters and sprites for Verge 1, all the pixel sizes are 16X32, that's 16 pixels wide, 32 pixels high, no exceptions to be made to this rule. If you decide you wish to use a Verge 2.0 or higher, then you can make your characters and sprites as large as you desire, or as small as you wish, with no limitation to the number of animations for each (an incredible feature to be more original with, but it's all about what suits your needs). So, now that brings us to step 4, and this is one that is probably going to be the least fun, and take the most time, in my honest opinion, and that is drawing your tile sets (That is, the maps on which your characters are going to move) For Verge 1, you must use a destinct 256 palette in order to create your maps, no exceptions to this rule, and all of your pictures, characters, and ANYTHING graphical appearing in your Verge 1.0 game MUST be made with this palette, another great reason to use those 2 paint programs I've mentioned, since you can apply the aforesaid palette in 2 clicks of a button. The tile engine that both Verge 1.0 and all others use, consists of any size file you like, but must have 16X16 pixel tiles. As of yet, NEITHER Verge 1.0 or Verge 2.0 (or later) can use a different tile set that I'm aware of, so for now, you've got a pretty set path to follow to make tiles. The difference between making maps with Verge 1.0 and 2.0 (or higher) is that 1.0 requires your maps to have the palette that I mentioned before, whereas 2.0 and later Verges may consist of any number of palettes your heart desires, but can only use a maximum of 256 original colors. (Meaning you could have an entire palette of 256 shades of green to make a forest or grassy field, versus 1.0's palette which consists of 7 shades of blue, 17 shades of red, etc.). Last but not least, you're going to need to know how to program. This is the most strenuous and time consuming, but it will depend GREATLY on which Verge you choose to work with to determine how much of a pain in the ass it's going to be to learn how to code. Verge 1.0 gave about 60 different functions (hopefully you know what I'm talking about when I say functions, if not, they're code for your computer that can perform multiple tasks at once, or can take a great deal of code and make it all useable with a simple line of code, known as a function call). Verge 1.0 has already designed the save game code, the menu code, the textbox code, and the follow code (that is, the code that makes 2 characters follow your main character when you have multiple party members in your RPG), this is a HUGE relief compared to what a later Verge is going to require of you, so if you're doing a lone project like I am, and not too compitent in programming, or confident in your artistic talent, but want to be original in everything, Verge 1.0 is the best way to go, time is a good reason to choose 1.0 as well. Now, if you're willing to put in a lot more time, and spend a great deal of your time reading documents, then by all means, Verge 2.0 or later is GOING to give you anything you can imagine, bother strategy or RPG, action, or shooter, you can literally make any genre of game, and any style to that genre that you wish, but it will take a lot more time on your part, because all the simplicity found in Verge 1 is gone, and now you have about 90+ functions to learn, that are going to do bits and pieces of what 1.0 did for you, and those 4 very important codes that 1.0 has finished for you already, are up to you to design from scratch, or from the kindness of another's code, or game. Hopefully this helps you out a bit more than a cynical flamer would, and if you find any more questions regarding what I've listed, let me know. Now onto the true help of the engines.
To find Verge 1.0 and its documents.... On this website, click on "...engine files" under Verge 1 on the lefthand column, and download everything you see there. There should be several readme, or .txt, or .doc files inside of those zipped files, to give you a little understanding of what you're finding.
To find Verge 2.0 or higher, now this gets a bit trickier, so in order to properly help a newbie, let me know if you want to deal with a higher end Verge, and I'll walk you through another choosing process, because this one has about 6 current choices beneath it now at the moment. So just reply to me if you decide to go this route.
Hopefully this helps to any newbie.
~Blade Dragon
Posted on 2001-04-29 22:57:50
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BladeDragon
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If I remember correctly, when I did my first demo in V1 for Trebezia a long eon or two ago, there are really only 2 things that a person would have to think a long time about what to do, 1 of which is the input of commands, via a uniquely designed menu inside the battle system, and 2, a way to do battle animations. The biggest issue with V1 was that last part, for me anyway, since there wasn't a single battle system out (and I don't think is out yet) for V1, that demonstrates any attack animation that was larger than a special frame of your walking animation. 16X32. Every Final Fantasy, 2, and even 1, had attack animations that were larger then the original character size, and no document has recommended how to do get by this with Verge 1's engine. It's by sheer fluke that you might stumble upon that heavenly line of code like I did, which was the PlayVas (I think it was) or PlayFli. But who's going to assume that what a Vas or Fli file was is a series of animations stacked vertically on one another, seperated by no buffer, in any paint shop program, and saved as a PCX? The document at the time I made the engine said "Use to play FLI in entity map layer" or some such thing. Anyway, my point was really this, if it weren't for these 2 things, Verge 1 is so much easier to use, it's practically worth overcoming these 2 obstacles to make use of easier code to make the game. =)~ That is after all why most of us found this site, since we all needed the easiest programming tool on the net to make our RPGs come to life. If Verge 2 had the simplicity in mind that V1 did, which is a series of fairly self-explanatory functions, I'd still say V1 is best. But that's just my honest opinion, being code heavy as many describe V2 or higher really negates the whole purpose that Verge was created, which was to be an easy to use role playing game engine allowing non-programmers to make a decent looking game. If you look at Verge nowadays, Speed's programming way too far ahead of himself, and all the utilities that go along with the engine haven't even caught up with the core engines yet. We all wanted hi color, and we got it. ^_^ In the engine that is. But you can't use your VSPs made with BMP2VSP until someone makes a map program that allows hi color VSPs to be laid down. So I think the small detail of a few quirks in the Battle System area of V1 are able to be overlooked to make up for the ease and simplicity of the code. Frankly, if I were to make a suggestion, it would be to take Verge 1's coding, and change only several things. Allow you to define your own menus, size, shape, content, and so forth, Allow your sprites to extend to any size like V2 and higher is capable of, allow you to incoorperate hi color, and create a little easier method to handle battle system design for true beginners. If you made those 4 changes to V1, wouldn't that really kind of make for the ultimate RPG engine? Just a thought...
~Blade Dragon
Posted on 2001-05-01 19:22:18
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