CREATE YOUR OWN RPG WITH DANTE 2!

By D. Lardenoye

Chapter 1 - HOW TO CREATE AN RPG

STEP ONE: GENERAL SETTING

Before you start your RPG, you need to think about a couple
of things - there is absolutely no point to go sit behind 
your MSX straight away without thinking things through and
start designing. That is fun for a short while, but soon you
don't know which direction you want to take your RPG and 
then the fun ends really fast. Think about in what 
environment you want the game to take place. You probably 
have some awesome idea in mind. Realize that a game in a 
medieval setting should have a completely different 
atmosphere than a game taking place in the future. If you 
have thought up a general story line, you can start thinking
about what the intro demo roughly should look like (remember
that the intro can't get too elaborate). 

STEP TWO: PLAY BOOK

From your general setting of your RPG (main character, your
objective, the game environment), you now are going to 
create a 'play book'  for the game.  You don't need to put
in very specific stuff like where you set up a certain trap
or what monsters are in which spot. You need to describe 
what your main character encounters from the beginning to 
the end of the adventure. Especially note the locations
your hero can go to, the most important people and 
conversations and things like that; the events that form the
actual story. These locations are the ones you need to focus
on now. Try to split up the game into these locations. Take
into consideration that a specific location (either a 
forest, a village, a cave, a maze et cetera) will be a 'map'
in Dante 2.

STEP THREE: MAPPING

Now take a lot of graph paper and start drawing overview 
maps for the different locations. Take into consideration
that locations can border on another and therefore make up
one big "super map", but this is by no means necessary. If 
you already roughly know the number of maps for your game,
you can also estimate how big your RPG is going to be (10
maps per disk). Also realize that if you make a village that
takes up the entire map, you also need a second map for all
locations where you can enter the houses. Very small 
locations you can combine on one map. If you know precisely
what each location looks like, you can also think about the
monsters that roam there or about NPCs.

Traps, teleports or treasure chests should also be placed
now. Do note that your map doesn't get too varied. You can
make up a map in Dante 2 from a limited amount of 'tiles'.
Try to distinguish objects, like a tree, a shrub, a type of 
floor, et cetera. You also need to think about the limited
color palette.

You now are roughly done with the design phase. Make sure 
that everything is worked out as detailed as possible and
that you have as good of a mental picture about how 
everything needs to look as possible. The time has come to 
start working in Dante 2 itself.


CHAPTER 2

DANTE 2 - THE SYSTEEM

Dante 2 itself consists of only one disk, which is 
accompanied by a data disk 1 with the sample RPG "The legend
of Lidorune".  After starting Dante 2 you get a main menu 
with the following options:

GAME
CONSTRUCTION
OPTIONS

"Game" start the sample RPG or an RPG you made yourself.
Starting the sample RPG is fun to do to get a great 
impression of the possibilities of Dante 2. Don't you have a
Data disk 0? Then you should choose "options". Here you find
the following options:

"Adjust screen" - center the screen.
"Music test" - plays the default songs - listen to all of
them and determining which fits in with your game design and
where. 
"Sound test" - similar for the sound effects.
"Create Data disk" - With this option you can create a Data
disk (0-15). On disk 0 (which you always need,) the general
data of your game is put, like the intro and end demo and 
the screen setup. The remaining disks contain the game data.
Are you intending to create an RPG right away, then you'd
better create plenty of Data disks already. 
"Create Sample game disk" -  creates Data disk 0 for the
sample RPG. By the way, you need EMPTY formatted disks to 
create all the Data disks.
"Backup Data disk"- backs up a Data disk.
"Make MuSICA  System  Disk" -  create a MuSICA system disk, 
to create MuSICA music with. Not really user friendly.
"Return to title screen" - back to the main menu.

In closing of this issue a list of the general controls to
Dante 2:  cursor/ joystick           - move cursor
          space/ trigger button A    - select option
		  [note: at some points you can double click] 
          GRAPH, N/ trigger button B - cancel selection
          SHIFT  - as long as it is selected, the cursor 
		           moves at double speed.
          SELECT - toggle mouse controls on/ off.

Next time we will be looking into designing the intro demo 
in Dante 2. C U!

Dennis
