[RuneLancer]

Hrm... wouldn't that cause severe game mechanics issues? Unless by "engine" you mean the fluff and purdyness, whereas the core of the games would remain the same? Because I'm quite curious (though definitely interested) in knowing how games that can be significantly different in terms of mechanics would be able to share data. Or, more importantly, graphic/sound data specific to, say, individual characters present in one game but not the other.

Would there be, say, a basic template saved game format that all entries must respect, perhaps with a little leeway for additional scenario data? I can see something like that working pretty well, frankly. :)

The mechanics behind this idea really interest me. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing it come together. It's gonna be pretty dang sweet. :P

(Note that I just got home (6 am) from a pretty nice, alcohol-and-partying filled friday night. Any incoherance is beyond my control at the moment, so I appoligize ahead of time. :) )
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[Terry]

Sorry I didn't get back to this thread sooner. I haven't been feeling well this week.

It looks like there's a lot of confusion over what exactly is meant by a "shared world" rpg. That seems like as good a place as any to start a discussion.

My view of this is of several games with the same maps, battle system, mechanics, everything. Though each differs by what their NPCs say, what extra locations are available, and so on. Each of these games would have to allow you free exploration of thier worlds, as opposed to dragging you along a story driven path. Each game would have quests which you could do bit by bit, and some overall objective. More Baldur's Gate than Final Fantasy, basically.

And then the cool twist is that you could save your game, and load it up in someone else's game. Before the contest everyone would agree with some gimicy situation - for example, each game is set twenty years apart and loading your game up in someone else's game would represent travelling through time - or say, each game world is a parallel version of another - a representation of what that time and place would have been like if a certain person had never lived, for example, or if certain technologys had existed before hand.

That was my original idea - the appeal of this approach is the essentially the technical challenge of it. It's also pretty original (or I think so, anyway).

Mandrake's idea is pretty appealing as well though. That is (if I've understood you right), that we decide on a game world like before, a backstory and history and people and everything, then we all go our seperate ways and interpret what we have in our own way. The games would probably end up being a lot more fun if we took this approach, it cuts out a lot of technical issues, and it's still a pretty interesting idea for a compitition. Plus, it means no restrictions in terms of mechanics, development system, and story telling approach, which is definitly a pro.

I'd be happy to take either approach. Nephilim's idea of a character generater would work very well with the first case (I think the traits idea is pretty cool). And even if we go the second route, there's no reason why a subset of the compeditors couldn't team up to make a shared world of the first kind.

So, em, anyway - a show of hands - which way should we approach it?
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[Mandrake]

Explanation of how we use the term Compo-
RPGDX for a long time had coding marathon competetion, where about 3-4 times a year we would take a weekend (or sometimes a week) and try write a game from scratch. It's possible, and some people have done it. Usually there is a restriction to make the compo have a theme.

By making the shared world more complicated, we are moving this away form being a theme and being too much of a restriction to be any fun.
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[Terry]

Fair enough - but just because we've approached compos here that way in the past is no reason to continue that way in the future - after all, the last three compititions here (including the "funny" compitition that never got off the ground) have been complete failures, and they used very basic rules.

Seeing as so many people here are more technically inclined than artistically inclined, I think there's a very good case for having a very technical contest like the one I've suggested. It may even get more participaters.

(and anyway, I think we could do both. Some people collaberate, others don't, but we can all use the same shared world.)
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[RuneLancer]

Hrm, but isn't a weekend awfully short? Even assuming that there are absolutely no interruptions (such as having to go places or having events to attend, work, exploding dog/cat accidents, or whatnot, and of course, barrring sleep), that's still roughly 48 hours to think up, code, produce/find media for, test, debug, and polish off a game. Short of making something really basic (unless that's the intention of the contest?) it seems pretty hard to actually pull it off...

Of course, I've never been here before for any other contests, so I don't know. Maybe the fact most of my social life occures during the weekend makes it sound like weekends are shorter than they actually are, or maybe I have too big a vision of what should be expected. :P Just wondering though...
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[Nephilim]

[Mandrake]

Well, traditionally speaking our best compos were weekend long ones. Those had the most people enter and the most people submit near-finished projects (with one or two being finished). The point of the compos is scaling back, and trying to force yourself to simplify.
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[Terry]

October's approaching - we should really start discussing content.

Here are a few suggestions for debate:

Contest duration: Two weeks. The first week is the "contest" week - essentially, when we make the games, and finish them. After that week, everyone shows what they've done, and optional week two starts - where we try to coordinate the games to reference each other, and make sure they don't contridict, that sorta thing. If you feel you need less time, use less time. This isn't *really* a compitition with winners and losers, after all, more of an indie RPG promotion drive. :)

Plot: To simplify the reference week, everyone should post thier plot outlining major events in thier game, just before the contest begins.

Setting: Only one setting has been suggested, a traditional medieval one - so let me expand on that. Rainer Deyke (I think, unless my memory is failing me) once suggested on this forum that he'd like to see a Medieval RPG without the Medieval RPG cliches - I think that's worth a shot here.

So let's set it in the middle ages, but the middle ages with peasants and beggers, towns covered in mud and no sewage system (as opposed to spotless villages), strip farming that covers the country, dominant religious buildings that essentially govern everything, and social classes that you are born into, and can never escape. I would also suggest that we use absolutely no magic system at all (maybe a skill system to make up for that), and that there is only one race.

These are only suggestions. Feel free to change everything.
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[Adam]

Sounds cool but i don't want to start another full blown project till i finish my other one. I would be willing to be some kind of secondary coder if somone wants me.

This idea has sparked one of my own, what if there was one core, and everyone could make kind of plugins for it. So the core would already establish stats and maps and such, but people could program their own battle or map engine dll that could be selected on startup.
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[Terry]

I've had an idea for my contest entry that I'm pretty happy with.

Just so I know, who else is thinking of entering? Right now I feel like I'm the only person who's really that interested...
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[RuneLancer]

I'd be interested if I had the time to do so. Right now, I'm right in the middle of moving (and constantly hitting problems; right now, after having moved my bank account to another bank, I'm stuck trying to get a checkbook to sign a check for my landlord, but the bank is being so horribly slow. They're probably deliberately slowing down the process as I've already gone there twice to explain how pressing this was. Their current excuse? "Well, it's in the mail, so you should be receiving it any day now. :)" )

Perhaps next contest I won't be so caught up with stuff and I'll be able to shut myself up in my appartment for a whole weekend, brew a few pots of coffee, and have an old-fashioned college-student-trying-to-pull-off-writing-a-program-over-the-weekend set of allnighters (god, I miss those... Been a few years :( )
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[DeveloperX]

I would enter if I didn't have so damn many things to do already. :\

Between having to find ways to pay my bills, and attempting to get things done with Frozen Utopia, CCPS Core (local team), rebuilding my system, and social events, my time is all but taken up.

I have 18 projects that are behind schedule due to my computer issues I've had lately, and I am desperately trying to get them back on track.

Bills have been a massive problem, though I'm making ends meet......just barely.

I wish I could enter, but I seriously doubt I will get the chance, so, goodluck to all participants.
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[Nephilim]

Normally, I'd be interested, but the months leading up to Halloween are pretty much taken up with preparing for scaring the crap out of the neighbor kids with our yearly Carnival of Souls. (If you're interested, check out our site.)

Once Halloween is over, my availability for things like compo's goes up quite a bit, but even then, with a new little boy, it's hard to eke out the time. That's why I liked the idea of the shared game world - I could much more easily devote time to helping flesh out the game world than I could to doing the compo.
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[DeveloperX]

[Ren]

See, I knew this compo was going to be too large. I'm all for compo's, but like mandrake I prefer the 48h game-making marathons where you can do it really intensely, and then everyone submits something really odd and often unplayable. Anyway, wasn't the original idea to have it when (if?) the new RPGDX is finished? There will have to be some spontenaity about the thing, and not everyone can get a week free.

On a tangentally related note, i've got two mini-rpg's sitting on my HD that aren't really on the 'net in any real way. I wonder how many people have crazy broken compo entries lying around that they never showed anyone?
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