If you want to write a Role Playing Game, but don’t know how to program, or just want to learn how to program in C#, then you’re at right the place.
These lessons will take you from a complete beginner, to being an author of a Role Playing Game, for free.
This isn’t the world’s greatest game. In fact, it’s very short and kind of ugly.
However, as you create it, you’ll learn the most common C# programming practices and techniques. Then, if you want, you can improve the game, adding more features and your own special touch to it.
NOTE: If you already know the basics of C# programming (classes, properties, functions, “if” statements, etc.), you might want to look at the newer “Build a C#/WPF RPG” lessons. The code in those lessons is more like how I would write a “real” professional program – using better design and architecture.
One of the awesome students here created a PDF document of the lessons. You can get a copy of it here. You can also download the source code files for the lessons here. Thank you, Mark!
SECTIONS
Lesson 00.1 – What is in these lessons?
Lesson 00.2 – General information about programming in C#
Lesson 00.3 – The parts of Visual Studio
Lesson 01.1 – Defining classes and objects for the game
Lesson 02.1 – Installing Visual Studio Community 2017
Lesson 02.2 – Building the solution for the game
Lesson 03.1 – Building the first screen
Lesson 04.1 – Creating the Player class and its properties
Lesson 05.1 – Creating objects from classes
Lesson 06.1 – Creating the remaining classes
Lesson 07.1 – Inheritance and base classes
Lesson 08.1 – Setting properties with a class constructor
Lesson 08.2 – Using class constructors with derived classes
Lesson 09.1 – Using your classes as datatypes
Lesson 10.1 – Creating collections of objects
Lesson 11.1 – Using a static class
Lesson 12.1 – Add the remaining UI controls
Lesson 13.1 – Functions, procedures, and methods
Lesson 13.2 – Creating functions to handle user input
Lesson 15.1 – Getting random numbers for the game
Lesson 16.1 – Writing the function to move the player
Lesson 16.2 – Refactoring the player movement function
Lesson 16.3 – Functions to use weapons and potions
Lesson 17.1 – Running the game on another computer
Lesson 18.1 – Future enhancements for the game
Bonus lessons (enhancements to the game)
Lesson 19.1 – Scroll to the bottom of a rich text box
Lesson 19.2 – Use a calculated value for a property
Lesson 19.3 – Clean up the source code by converting foreach to LINQ
Lesson 19.4 – Saving and loading the player information
Lesson 19.5 – Changing dropdown default values
Lesson 19.6 – Increase maximum hit points when the player gains a level
Improving SuperAdventure’s code quality by refactoring
Lesson 20.1 – Refactoring the SuperAdventure program
Lesson 20.2 – Binding a custom object’s properties to UI controls
Lesson 20.3 – Binding list properties to datagridviews
Lesson 20.4 – Binding child list properties to a combobox
Lesson 20.5 – Moving the game logic functions from the UI project to the Engine project
Adding a vendor to locations (with buying and selling items)
Lesson 21.0 – Plans for adding a vendor to locations
Lesson 21.1 – Adding a price to game items
Lesson 21.2 – Create the vendor class and add it to locations
Lesson 21.3 – Add a button and create its eventhandler in code, without the UI design screen
Lesson 21.4 – Completing the trading screen
Use SQL to save and restore player’s game data
Lesson 22.1 – Installing MS SQL Server on your computer
Lesson 22.2 – Creating database tables from classes
Lesson 22.3 – Creating the SQL to save and load the saved game data
Creating a console UI for SuperAdventure
Lesson 23.1 – Creating a console front-end for the game
Final refactoring (cleanup) of the SuperAdventure source code
Lesson 24.1 – Make the SuperAdventure source code easier to understand and modify
New game features
Lesson 25.1 – Select a random monster at a location
Lesson 26.1 Displaying a World Map
Lesson 26.2 – Hiding Unvisited Locations on the World Map
Bug Fixes
Lesson 99.1 – Preventing duplicate quests
Lesson 99.2 – Setting CurrentWeapon when the player has multiple weapons
I’ll be sure to seek your advice if I run into anything else, thank you for your help Scott.
Scott, with your help, I’ve created an RPG in Windows Forms and would love for you to tell me what you think!
You can download the executable from the following link.
https://zachdegeorge.com/2018/05/17/zrpg-2-0-update-6/
Thank for for all your great tuturoials!
Cool! I’ll check it out this weekend.
Unfortunately I got to this point and it all went wrong.
Cutting and pasting the code from Git caused unrecoverable code errors in the generated form code. I had an error message saying that I had not created a method for rtbLocation_TextChanged.
I could not find a way past this and it is either a choice of giving up or starting all over. Not a fan of starting all over. 🙁
What lesson did you get to? Can you upload your solution (including the directories under it, and all the files in those directories) to GitHub or Dropbox, so I can look at it?
Hi Scott,
I just wanted to say immensely grateful I am that you have created and shared this walkthrough/guide. I am not finished yet, but I am rolling along with it. I have wanted to learn computer programming for some time now. Your book has really inspired me to do it. Are there any other guides you’ve made like this one? Programming other various games to further learn C#?
Thank you for reading,
Dan
Thank you Dan,
I don’t have PDF versions for anything else. But, I do have lessons on C# Design Patterns (general solutions to common programming issues), a WPF version of the SuperAdventure game (that uses better programming practices than the Windows Form lessons), and just started a new “refactoring” series where I will be improving the code quality of the Windows Form SuperAdventure game – and describing how/why the changes will improve SuperAdventure’s quality.
Semi-Novice here but… I was able to add Armor items that add additional defense during battles (including a function to ensure that the defense amount is never less than zero resulting in negative damage being done):
Armor.cs:
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
namespace Engine
{
public class Armor : Item
{
public int MaximumDefense { get; set; }
public Armor(int id, string name, string namePlural, int maximumDefense) : base(id, name, namePlural)
{
MaximumDefense = maximumDefense;
}
}
}
—–
Example items:
Items.Add(new Armor(ITEM_ID_SHIELD, “Shield”, “Basic Shield”, 4));
Items.Add(new Armor(ITEM_ID_LEATHER_CHEST, “Leather Chest”, “Basic Leather Chestpiece”, 8));
—–
damageToPlayer int calculation:
int damageToPlayer = CheckIfLessThanZero((RandomNumberGenerator.NumberBetween(0, _currentMonster.MaximumDamage) – RandomNumberGenerator.NumberBetween(0, defParse)));
—–
Zero check:
private int CheckIfLessThanZero (int input)
{
if (input < 0)
{
return 0;
}
else
{
return input;
}
}
—–
Happy to share the code with everyone or even work with anyone to make this a little better than a novice could add.
Thanks for sharing Chris!
In the damageToPlayer calculation, is “defParse” from the MaximumDefense property of the player’s armor?
There’s also a cool trick you can do with the CheckIfLessThanZero function. There is a Math.Max function that will accept a list of integers and return the largest value. So, the function below will return 0 when “input” is less than 0. Otherwise, it returns “input”.
private int CheckIfLessThanZero(int input){
return Math.Max(0, input);
}
Yes it’s from the MaximumDefense property in the armor, parsing into an int for the function (I may have overthought that a little bit and there is likely an easier way to get the value.)
Will update the Math.Max function. A lot easier to code that way.
Because the MaximumDefense property is an “int”, it should always have a value – it defaults to “0”. So, you should be able to use it without any parsing.
When I got to lesson 11.1 and copy/paste the World.cs static class into my game I got 18 errors that were all similar to this:
CS1061 ‘Quest’ does not contain a definition for ‘RewardItem’ and no accessible extension method ‘RewardItem’ accepting a first argument of type ‘Quest’ could be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)
Is this expected?
That error message is saying the Quest class does not have a RewardItem property.
Check your program’s code with the code in Lesson 10.1 – especially the code for the Quest class in step 4. Make sure the RewardItem property exists, its datatype is Item, and it is public.
If that doesn’t fix the error, can you upload your solution (including the directories under it, and all the files in those directories) to GitHub or Dropbox, so I can look at it?
My solution is located at: https://github.com/PretendObject/SuperAdventure
The errors are all related to name differences.
In the Quest class, the property “RewardItem” is typed as “Reward Iten” (an “n”, at the end, instead of an “m”). In the Location class, the “LocationTo” properties are named “LocationToThe ” (with an additional “The”).
That is a common reasons for this error message. It also happens if a property is not public, and you try to reference the property from a different project – the default is “internal” (only visible inside the same project), if you don’t explicitly add “public”, “private”, or “protected”.
Let me know if that doesn’t eliminate the errors, or if you have any questions about the solution.
Scott Lilly you are awesome! Thanks for catching my typos and wrongly named variables!
Hi Scott!! Thanks for this tutorial (Learn C# by Building a Simple RPG), the pdf version is gorgeous an I am definitely trying it out.
I have a question though: could this tutorial be used to develop my game dev skills with game engines?
One of my professional goals is to develop a “serious” RPG and use it with learning purposes, but I was considering using a game engine (I actually have chosen Unity, for several reasons), since it seems to accelerate the creation of something my boss would be exited about.
My main concern is to learn how to code properly, with a decent SOLID architecture, and most game engine books (as well as the courses in Udemy, for example) have highly superficial explanations about scripting. Would you recommend something else? Are you developing anything related to game engines?
PS: the pdf version is really awesome and I have seen published books that are poorer designed and written.
You’re welcome, Felipe.
The lessons in the PDF are mostly for new programmers to become familiar with the basic commands and concepts of C#. If you want to see a version of the game that has a better architecture, you might want to look at the WPF version here. But, those lessons are also more about C# programing, and not focused on creating a great game.
I like the Unity programming videos from Quill18 and Brackeys. From what I’ve seen, Unity does make programming games easier. But, that also means you might not need to learn some of the best practices for writing C# programs.
I suggest you look at design patterns and the C# videos from Tim Corey and Mosh.
For books, I like “Game Programming Patterns”, “Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship”, “Extreme Programming Explained”, and “Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code”. These books should help you learn the difference between “good code” and “code that works (most of the time)”.
Hi Sir,
Your website is just amazing. Thank you for all your efforts.
Whats your opinion about Tim Corey’s youtube channel. I feel he is giving so much quality content. Would you recommend any other such sources like him for learning programming(not gaming programming)
You’re welcome.
I like Tim Corey’s channel. He does a lot of excellent videos. I also follow “Programming with Mosh” and “Fun Fun Function”.
Hey Scott, I’ve been using your tutorial to help myself learn the basics of coding and so far I’m loving it, and I thank you for your hard work. I just hit a road block on trying to save and reload player data from the xml file created in chapter 19.4. I have gone through and double checked that all my code is correct, and the PlayerData.Xml shows up in the file location, yet everytime i open up the game it just creates a new player and ignores the xml file. Any help is appreciated, thank you.
Hi Ethan,
Can you upload your solution (including the directories under it, and all the files in those directories) to Dropbox, or some other file-sharing site, so I can look at it? Please make sure it includes the PlayerData.xml file.
Hey Scott sorry for the delay I have been very busy with work and have not had time to get on. I appreciate your help and here are the requested files LINK REMOVED FOR PRIVACY
thanks
I think I found the problems.
First, line 246 of Player.cs should be like the line below. You want to save the CurrentLocation.ID to the XML file. It was just trying to save CurrentLocation. In C#, when you do that, it writes the name of the class (with its namespace). If you open up the PlayerData.xml file, and look for the CurrentLocation node, you should see the problem. You’ll need to delete the current PlayerData.xml file, and let the program create a new one with the ID stored in that node.
currentLocation.AppendChild(playerData.CreateTextNode(this.CurrentLocation.ID.ToString()));Second, line 99 of Player.cs should be like the line below. Notice that it is “i < quantity". Right now, it has "1 < quantity", which can cause the program to go into an infinite loop if the player has more than 1 of an item in their inventory.
for(int i = 0; i < quantity; i++)Let me know if that doesn’t fix the program, or if you have any other questions.
Those fixed the solution, thank you for your help!
You’re welcome!
Hello Scott, thanks for this tremendous work. If you could add somewhere the “objectives” if the game…I mean it’s not bad to follow your steps but if it was possible to know the requirements at first and then “try” before comparing to your “code”, that would be great. Thanks again Scott
You’re welcome. I’ll take a look at adding an “objectives” section, but it’s been a while since I’ve had time to do much work on the lessons (work has been very busy for a few months).