[golrien]

for a while (I think now 13 months), me+quickbeam were making some kind of crazy RPG game, with me doing the coding and him doing pretty much everything else. the other day I think he realised how much work this would actually be, and noticing how I was actually getting pretty near finished on the engine front, suggested I should shop it around as a fancypants RPG maker. being the excellent coder that I am, it's all very flexible code anyway, so it really shouldn't be impossible to make it into something decent.

It's written in C++ w/allegro, it runs on.. well, I only test it on linux and windows, but in theory it'll run anywhere. It's not a half-assed job, it's all scripting system, GUI whatever. it's not really finished, but, well.. the basic engine is pretty near done, the editor is basically done, the scripting junk is maybe 25% done, so shouldn't turn out to be total vapourware.

I'm far too lazy to provide all the support that fools want, so I'd pretty much be wanting to setup a website and community forum and whatever (probably on sourceforge, unless bjorn wants to give some away here :) and basically let it manage itself.. I've got little against open-sourcing it, and it's fairly clean code, but I do have a pretty weird style and also, it's a bitch to build (needs Jam and all this).. so for a while at least, I'd be the one doing bugfixes, feature improvements, that sort of thing.

anyway, whatever happens, it won't be done for a while, so I was wondering if there'd actually be any point in me turning it into a customisable rpg junker thingo, or everyone is just like "I'd rather code my own engine and not finish that too!!"


ps. this screenshot is from march sometime, the whole thing is nicer and whatever now, but it gives you an idea of the functionality (tile artwork by me :):

[Ironshanks]

Well maybe my opinion is biased because I'm not a coder in the least, but I'd be interested.

Of course it really depends what your engine offers. I mean there are quite a few RPG makers on the internet, but not many that are actually complete.
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That's not a broken link, it's a PICTURE of a broken link. It's really very conceptual.

[golrien]

Well, I was planning (haven't actually started coding this bit yet, which is always a bad sign) a pretty flexible way of exposing game objects to the scripting engine, so theoretically it'd be possible to code all sorts of addons and junk. Of course, it's running under a VM in the game, so fundamental changes would have to be in the engine code just so they were fast enough, but it wouldn't be limited to just stuff like

MAKE CHARACTER MOVE UP 2 SPACES
MAKE CHARACTER SAY "TROUSERS"

[Jocke The Beast]

I always keep looking for new rpg makers so yeah, It would be of interest. I've mostly messed around with RpgMaker2000 OHRRPGCE, never created a complete game using them though. In my opinion it seems hard to satisfy the need of the users when making a rpg maker. Like me, I want zelda-styled battles or strategic-styled battles (as in earyl SSI games like Champions of Krynn and others) and I havn't seen any rpg maker that provides that.
Good luck!
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Jocke The Beast

[Bjorn]

Sure golrien, rpgdx.net would be happy to host your site about the RPG maker thingamajig. You can always host your site here and use the CVS service from SF.

Man that GUI looks crazy, good to hear you've made improvements to it since March. I'd like to check it out on Linux, so awaiting your source code. :-)