A few friends and I want to make an RPG. None of us have much programming experience, (except for the litte bit of C++ I know) and none of us have made an rpg. I know it would take years, but can anyone post ANYTHING they know that would help us, and any suggestions for going about it. Thanks!

Sure, heres a few things:

-Make sure you have a well written and detailed design document before programming the game- if you go through the proccess of programming and designing at the same time, you forget where you left off and or give up when you can''tcome up with something.

-Design your charecters well- write a page, at least, about each charecter in your story( that is significant, not just an NPC who you see playing a board game.. ). If you know what to program/ draw, it will be alot easier and be done in a shorter amount of time.

-Organize your data well-I have never programmed an RPG but I can imagine the .cpp file''s being quite long. Put alot of your stuff in header files, like the LoadBitmap code(if you learn an API, which I will get to).

-Dont just base the whole thing on one set story-let the player feel free to go wherever he/ she may want, and always ( or most of the time ) have something waiting for them to do there.

-Learn an API- this is a graphics and input/sound/netowrking etc "tool(?)" There are only two that I knwo of:

Direct X and OpenGL. Direct X includes Input, Sound, Networking, the works(including graphics, d3d) and OpenGL is just for graphics. I suggest suing DInput and Dsound and OpenGL for graphics. A good book is: "OpenGL Game Programming" by Kevin Hawkins and Dave Astle, two members of the staff here at gamedev.net

Good Luck.

PS-The most important part is to have fun doing it. Don''t let anyone make you feel like your doing bad, or your going to fail. Its only your first game. If you finish it, you should feel happy, whether it is succesful or not.

You are going to need to know C++, but dont worry. The best way i have found to learn anything overly hard is to start with a very complex objective (making a full-scale RPG in your case) and just do it the best you can, make mistakes (not on purpose, they happen), and learn from them.

If you did 100 things right, and 1 thing wrong, then found out how to get that 1 thing right, you will remember it 3x longer then the other 100 things.

Also, keep a notepad with you, so anytime an idea pops into your head, write it down, whether you use it or not does not matter. Even if it is a programming formula you came up with to make a charecter walk a specific way, it may turn out to be a solution to one of your problems.

And, like BenHanson said, do not be frustrated by your mistakes, learn from them.

From personal experiance, dont start giving jobs for the arts and world until you have an engine. Chances are you''ll have to redo them because doing something in the engine is too hard. It will take a long time just to get the engine, but get the other members interested. Set up a newletter and meeting for every week. You HAVE to keep the members interested. If one guy leaves, morale drops. If one guy joins, morale increases. This is pretty much the base.
There are many articles (much on GameDev.net itself) on lots that will help you. If you read a heap of them, this info is nothing new, but do research. You''re doing well with asking people. And yes, have fun while doing it, otherwise you got nothing to give in return to your members, and they wont give anything.

Their is a really good book which I am currently reading called "Swords and Circuitry: A Designer''s Guide to Computer Role-Playing Games" by Neal Hallford.

As the title suggests, this book is dedicated solely to the design of CRPGs. It does not provide any coverage on programming or api specific lingo. It does provide clever incite to the development process, with extensive coverage on the design document.

Hope this helps.

Thanks everybody! Just one more thing; does anyone know a site where I can learn more about programming or making an RPG besides Gamedev? Thanks again!