Android RPG hobby project enters Alpha testing phase

I’m always keen to read the thoughts and experiences of developers on the development of Android apps and games.  I’ve recently come across an interesting blog by a hobbyist developer going by the name of Ben. According to the blog, Ben is an RPG fan who was disappointed at the poor examples of the genre which were available in the Android Market, so he decided to code his own one. The result is, or rather, will be, an RPG called DefileDroid which is similar in looks to the old top-down Zelda games. The RPG officially enters the Alpha testing phase today.

Ben is using his blog to detail the work he is doing on the game, documenting the obstacles he’s come across and how he’s overcome, or worked around them.  Ben has plans to introduce a number of neat features in his game, including the ability to hire mercenaries to join your party, and an “Ability Development System”, which is inspired by Everquest’s Alternative Advancement System.

I’m inclined to agree with Ben, the quality of the RPG games available on the market at the moment is pretty damned poor.  In fact, at the moment, the best RPGs you can play on Android are arguably all old NES or SNES games played on emulators.  So I applaud Ben for his efforts to set this right.  Also, Ben comes from a background of playing DnD and Everquest, so I’d be willing to be that this will be closer to a proper RPG than some of the charlatans that claim to belong to the genre.

I put a few questions to Ben regarding his background and the games that inspired DefileDroid:-

I took a Microsoft Visual Basic programming class in college. It was a single semester, extremely basic – extremely different than Android. Mind you this was 7 years ago, so I’m not entirely sure that it helped. I had to unlearn similar functions of the languages and relearn them the Android way.

My inspiration for defileDroid would likely be Everquest (my first RPG and ruiner of relationships), DnD for all of the obvious reasons, WoW – while I talk down to it often, it had some great things so I am trying to glean equally the good points and bad. And outside of that a full gamut of console RPGs – a little name dropping, Final Fantasy games have always been a favorite.

The features I would like to but currently just don’t have the programming smarts to (expect to see both of these eventually) are : Animation. As all of my character images have been acquired through free distribution license images and then run through Photoshop for minor changes to make them unique to the game, I don’t exactly have the graphics skills to make them do much. Also the code to do it, while I haven’t looked into it yet, seems doable, but would require a good 3 weeks to get working properly at my current knowledge base and how much time I am able to invest in it’s production.

Second feature being a “Mod System” – it’s been awhile since I’ve played it so forgive me if I misspeak, but I’m pretty sure WoW has a gem system with which you’re able to place in an item… this was actually a system set to be a part of the game from day one and was only recently removed. I have all of the ideas for the individual Mods, images for all sorts & rares – the problem comes with my database, while working absolutely as it’s supposed to, is so painfully cluttered that I couldn’t find a logical way to actually place and remove them as well as have them add to the value of the items etc…

Both of the above features I would love to see and are on the list to be implemented in the future, but for now it just can’t be done.

All going well with the Alpha test, the game will hopefully enter the beta testing phase in a couple of months.  If you’re interested in finding out more or have any interest in RPGs for Android, check out Ben’s blog.  It looks as though he’s still keen to hear feedback and ideas from his potential playerbase, so if there’s something you desperately want to see in an RPG, get active on the blog and maybe your suggestions will make it in to the final release.