I'll look at Freebasic and Python while i'm pondering what would actually make Paradroid a good RL.
Paradroid was a brilliant game. There's the remake Freedroid, as Ancient mentions, and also a Freedroid RPG, although I don't know how much that game borrows from the original C64 game.
When I started out making
my RL, several years and rewrites ago, I was at a similar point where you are now, I think, with minimal experience in programming. I went for Python, and I'm mostly happy about that choice, but it's not without issues. I have two current headaches:
First: Python has garbage collection, which is great, but that doesn't mean you should just happily code away with no regard for memory allocation (as I did). For instance, say monsters/NPCs need to know in which map they are originally spawned. Don't put a direct reference to the home map in the Monster instance! Instead, do something like assigning each map a numeric value and let Monster.home_map be an integer, so you can look up the actual map in a global dictionary (same goes for individual monsters etc). My code is currently a mess of cross-references, which means that even if Python does garbage collection automatically, none of my garbage gets collected. I need to get around to rewriting huge chunks of the game to eliminate what is in pratice a memory leak.
Second: Python can actually get a bit slow. If I have dozens of monsters acting, calculating what to do and maybe using area attacks and stuff, there is a noticable lag. Similary, my clumsy map generation code usually needs about a second and a half to spit out a map. If you're a skillful coder, this shouldn't be a problem, and it's always something you can find practical solutions for then and there. But still, I thought I'd mention it. In light of this, I might have considered Java, or even C/C++, if I was starting today.
Anyway: Go for it, and best of luck.
As always,
Minotauros
