Making Serious Games

Hi everyone,

I am pretty new to RPG Maker, but i consider it for making a Serious Game with it.

What is a Serious Game? A Serious Game is a game where the fun is not the only purpose of the game. What that means is, that the game tries to provide Soft Skills, Skills in a certain Job/Activity (like with a surgeon simulator and stuff), and so on.

My Question now is: Is it possible to access Data like "How often has the player tried a certain Quest? Where is he struggling? Where did he spent his time in the game?" And other data that helps psychologists analyse the play style of the player to find out where he has problems or where the learning effect of the game failed to show, etc.

Is that possible with RPG Maker and if it is, can you give me advise on how i get this data.

Thanks for your Help in advance!

Greets from Germany

Lex

Whatever the finer points of implementing what you want, it will require a thorough knowledge of variables.  Here is a link to a tutorial on that: http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/10099-variables-guide/

However, you will need more than just that, so I suggest you follow this link: http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/14727-a-starting-point-for-new-users-v08/?hl=+starting%20+point%20+users to Andar's excellent compilation of useful information for those new to RPG Maker.  In particular, you might want to follow the link he gives to GrandmaDeb's list of tutorials which she has arranged in categories.

yes, but only if you program the game to remember that. That is what ksjp17 meant by using variables.
For example, you can go to a transfer event and add a control variable command there to add one to a variable "Map XY entered", and then you can count later how often the player has gone to that map. Similiar things are possible everywhere in the engine - in some cases you might need scripts, but in most cases you only add to variables you defined yourself whenever the player does a certain action.

You could use variables every time he does something wrong and then he given the save file and analyse it in debug mode to check, I guess.

Okay thanks for moving me into the right Forum, wasn´t sure about it!

And thanks for the Tips and the recommendation for guides to follow for getting me started. Okay that´s the point i wanted to know if there is the possibility of going "deep" into the programming aspect as to set flags or increment variables every time a certain action has been done. Okay that should help a lot.

Thanks everyone.

Greets