I''m a high school student, working on a graphical RPG in VB6, very simple. It''s very simple, you walk around in fields, go into caves, and battle enemies at random. How many levels should I make it? How many spells should I implement?

these are the type of things you must decide, since it is your game. from the little you told us, it doesn''t sound as if you have much of a storyline planned; if this is the case, maybe you could use randomly-generated levels.
as for spells, you need enough to make a mage worth playing (if a fighter can play for 10 hours and still be collecting neato weapons and stuff, a mage should not learn his last spell after 3 hours and only have those to use from then on). or, you could keep them fairly simple, but allow a higher-level mage to use stronger versions of the same spells, or combine spell effects.
sorry if this is very vague.

--- krez (krezisback@aol.com)

Well, since its a independant venture which you probably won''t sell neccessarily (not counting donationware), it''s really your time to shine. Make the RPG as long as it needs to be. I''ll give a for instance. Chrono Trigger on the SNES wasn''t a very long game. It had some replay value through NewGame+, but if you count up the plot events, there aren''t as many as your standard Final Fantasy game. When you move up to commercial production, you won''t have nearly as much freedom, so take advantage of it now and write the story that interests you, and write the game that interests you. Some of this advice by the way was recently given by Nintendo''s Miyamoto, so its obviously worth something.

:: Inmate2993
:: William C. Bubel
"Please refrain from bothering Booster."