[Mandrake]

Take this post at face value- it's another idea I have for something that I think would be a lot of fun to work on. But, much like the idea for Virtual Convention, it might be months, years, etc, before I start actually doing anything with it (if anything at all). So, I'm basically putting this idea up here in hopes that others will find it as interesting as I do and I can get some interests enough to create a momentum where it would be impossible not to work on it. The reason why I bring this up here is because I believe that this could be a really good community project. Something different. Something new.

Something that should be lots of fun to work on.

The idea? A convergance of concepts. Take in the graphical niceties and Human Interface Design of console RPG's circa the 16bit/32 bit era. Throw in a bit of world design/exploration of the old ASCII roguelikes (Nethack, Angaband, etc) and mix. The scope of this idea is large though, and something I think that would be interesting is to take this time to really put forth the community itself into the work as a whole. Build a world together. Design the intracacies.

Of course, this is something I think should be along the lines of the ASCII rogues in terms of source- ie: it should be open source and a strong community project. Maybe use SVN or something along those lines to use to create a game tree.

Here are some primary ideas to get everyone onto the same page:

The structure of the "group" working on this system should be hierarchal in terms of decision making power. The main leader (or director) should have final say. Beneath him should be a board of about 4 people, who can negate the director if he's nuts.

There will be A LOT needed to be done outside of the scope of just programming. We will need art (sprite and otherwise), we will need a website, level designers, character designers, world designers, class descriptions, a website (very detailed, depicting the world at large), and idea people. We will need music and sound effects. What I want to create here is a fully developed interactive world that is very immersive.

We will need to settle on one cross platform library, and settle on it. I suggest Allegro for graphics and DUMB for music. Most people here have used these libraries. If anyone disagrees, please explain why. Also- just because you don't have experience with these libraries does not mean you cannot help out. You can still code enemy AI, scripting, whatever, or help out in other areas.

We need a format for maps/levels. I suggest we use Tiled, for many reasons. I also suggest we use XML for all data handling (to make it easier to export characters to webpages, and etc).

I DON'T think this should be multiplayer. I think this should be single player.

Ideas? Discuss. If you want to help, please say so.
_________________
"Well, last time I flicked on a lighter, I'm pretty sure I didn't create a black hole."-
Xmark

http://pauljessup.com

[Mandrake]

To expand a bit more on this post here:

The idea is to take an idea like the Jiall world building project and put that into the context of a game. Instead of just designing a world collabratively but just leaving it open with no specific implementation of the world, I want to do a collabrative world design within the implementation of a game. The game being an open-ended exploration RPG (like Rogue, NetHack, etc), but with the graphics and learning curve of console RPG's. All of this done collabratively.

Some things I think we need to decide on before we move on:
How will characters work (ie: classes, stats, magic). I think that magic should have several schools that *work* differently. For example, alchemist need to find base materials and use them to brew potions. Rune Scribes mark the ground with chalk. They choose the runes, and the combinations produce effects. Scroll Spinners can write powerfull enchantments onto scrolls, and then use them once in the game. Summoners, well, summon monsters (but need to capture them first).Tattoo wizards can tatto onto themselves and others mystical symbols that grant abilities. Craftsmen can imbue items with words of power. Witches and warlocks can do complex magic (usually involving drawing complex circles of power onto the ground with a stave or another blunt instrument) that takes a while to cast but when finished have very powerful effects.

How will NPC interaction work? Should the player have Karma? How will races work? Will a race of a player give him nagtive charisma when talking to someone that is a bigot against that race?

Should we include pets? What will pets do? How will they work?

Combat- I think in this game real time combat might be better (since it will just be a solo player attacking, rather than a party of players), but include levelling up and etc (ie: more RPG elements in the combat than a simple Zelda game).

The scope of creating a game like this is large- but the idea is to get a nice team together to create a large open-source hybrid world. A place to show off the talents of everyone in the RPGDX community itself. Something maybe to spurn on everyone in their solo projects. But also something that will keep people coming back to it. Something that won't get boring after a few plays.
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"Well, last time I flicked on a lighter, I'm pretty sure I didn't create a black hole."-
Xmark

http://pauljessup.com

[biggerUniverse]

I don't think that your idea is new (Graal PlayerWorlds comes immediately to mind as something in our genre, but also http://www.secondlife.com), so how it is executed is what becomes important.


I also think it would go nowhere as single player game. MMO is the only way to keep people involved, IMHO.

EDIT: If you can get an engine together, even a simple one, perhaps people could start adding to it.
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We are on the outer reaches of someone else's universe.

[Mandrake]

Hmm. I guess I didn't explain it properly- with Graal you don't have the level interaction with the world as you do with nethack/angaband (it's more towards console style game in absolute), I'm talking about striking a balance here. Create a hybrid game- the simple interface of console RPG with the complex world of an old skool rogue like. Second Life the universe is collbratively being built constantly by everyone who plays it. I'm not talking about that either.

Why single player? Why not? I'm not talking about marketing something, or selling. Just because one thing is the next big thing doesn't mean that every game should be like that. There is something to the single player experience...that cannot be replicated in an MM exp. Mainly immersion factor. In an MM game, you will have somebody destroying your immersion factor.

What I mean is that I think we should collobratively design the background and the world itself, much like the Jiall project and then build on it from there into a game whose sole purpose is the exploration of that world. It's not a constant colloberation.

Edit:
Yeah, I do plan on probably building the engine first and moving on. But I thought this might be a nice brainstorming thread. Maybe this would be a good thing to use Gia with...
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"Well, last time I flicked on a lighter, I'm pretty sure I didn't create a black hole."-
Xmark

http://pauljessup.com

[biggerUniverse]

Ok. Then I just didn't fully understand what you were after.
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We are on the outer reaches of someone else's universe.

[Mandrake]

Well, even if it had been done before (after reading more about Graal online it does allow for more interaction with the world than most MMORPG's, but not the level of the old skool games did.), doesn't mean it shouldn't be something I or anyone else can/would do.

But, I don't know if making it an MMORPG should be what keeps people interested in working on it. I mean there are so many MMORPG's out there- I just have something against doing something in a market that flooded.
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"Well, last time I flicked on a lighter, I'm pretty sure I didn't create a black hole."-
Xmark

http://pauljessup.com

[Mandrake]

Well, I think the first part of the engine I would do (which wouldn't be something I work on until after Thanksgiving is over- I have too much running around and too many other things I would want to work on during that time- including wrapping the release of Gia 2.0 and the website for Gia) would be the character creation engine. A sort of Avatar builder.

What I want to do here is have the player build a character and name them, choosing a race/class combination and maybe even some abilities/traits. Then they would choose eye/hair/clothing ala the sims, allowing for unique character combinations (but instead of the sims 3d- style, it would be sort of a 2d Final Fantasy 2(4j) FF 5 style of graphics). Then they would choose weapon (based on class) and armor (based on class), and a zodiac sign.

I picture the game using a paper doll method to create the characters/npc's. Where they are built on a base *dummy* (which is different according to gender/race) and that is built on top of with hair color, eye color, weapon, clothing, armor, each *peice* having an exact pixel cordinate that is overlayed ontop of the main character sprite.
_________________
"Well, last time I flicked on a lighter, I'm pretty sure I didn't create a black hole."-
Xmark

http://pauljessup.com

[Terry]

(just getting my two cents in before this thread is flamed to ash)

I think this is a great idea! I'd be more that happy to help out.

I've got a ton of questions though, which I'll post later on once I've got this stupid assignment done...
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http://www.distractionware.com

[Mandrake]

ask away, when you can.

Anyway, I think I should explain things maybe a little differently. What I want to do is have a large massive RPG game, that is non-linear and allows a single PC to explore everything. You can design your PC, choose their class and gender and how they look. YOu need to keep your character fed, and they need to sleep. IE: a very detailed old skool rogue like game experience, with a very modern GUI and graphics (well, not very modern. About as modern as the mid 90's FF's).

Then, since it's completely non-linear and open source, if someone want to say, add in a new race, they can. Or a new village, or a dungean. Or let's say your playing and you think "hmm. If I eat the Fire Dragon's corpse, I should be able to breathe fire", you can open up the game's scripts and edit that sort of thing in. Or hey, I think it would be cool if I could turn my character sheet into HTML, just write a script that does it. I want it to be open like most Open Source tools are, in a way that's really hard for a linear story based RPG to do. A sort of collabrative world building taken to the next level.
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"Well, last time I flicked on a lighter, I'm pretty sure I didn't create a black hole."-
Xmark

http://pauljessup.com

[Aptyp]

Aren't there enough Rogue-likes that have a GUI shell already? The idea doesn't strike me as terribly original. Beside the fact that most games just don't get finished.
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http://www.livejournal.com/users/megaton_game/

[Mandrake]

It's not just a gui shell around a rogue type. It's a rogue type that is bringing over the look and feel and the playing style of console RPG's. Consider if Dragon Warrior had the depth of Nethack.

This is a game that will never be finished. You can't beat it. You're not supposed too.
_________________
"Well, last time I flicked on a lighter, I'm pretty sure I didn't create a black hole."-
Xmark

http://pauljessup.com

[Aptyp]

This game won't ever be finished for other reasons as well :D
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"Megaton" CRPG:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/megaton_game/

[Mandrake]

let's see here. I have a complete Toolset I've created. One that people are using. I started RPGDX. What do you have under your belt? Anything finished? I can show you my unfinished projects, and bet they are more complete than your's. Until you finish something, you have no right to talk.
_________________
"Well, last time I flicked on a lighter, I'm pretty sure I didn't create a black hole."-
Xmark

http://pauljessup.com

[Aptyp]

I happen to believe that rights are bullshit, so that's not going to shut me up. Besides, people can't even finish their decent console RPGs, and you want to do something a lot more complex. It's not impossible, of course, but you don't really strike me as the type to succeed where everyone else has failed.

Actually, I have a finished game I built in 2 days made on the engine I'm working on, and since it's a rather straight-forward shoot-em-up with little variety, and politically incorrect to boot, I only showed it to a few people. But I don't flaunt it like it's my fucking ticket to be a condescending asshole to people you don't even know. Why? Because I'm comfortable about the size of my penis.

Now if you have any good argument that would convince me that my skepticism is misplaced, let's hear it. If not, the degree of completeness of your unfinished projects isn't going to dazzle me.
_________________
"Megaton" CRPG:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/megaton_game/

[Mandrake]

I'm not asking you to be dazzled. I'm asking you to STFU and go and bitch and moan in a different thread. If you don't think I can do it, great for you.

I'm so happy that you can finish a simple shooter with the engine you made. From what I've seen, your engine doesn't strike me- at all. It looks just like every other game maker out there. You are trying to tell me that my idea isn't original (which it probably isn't- but I don't care. I work on projects that strike my interest), and then you link to an engine in yr sig that's about as original as a cookie cutter.

Your engine, your way seems bland and boring. What? Not getting enough attention? Need to get some from mister Mandrake? Ok, so let's see here- I have two finished projects (one of which I don't work on anymore. But as the guy who wrote Cathadral and Bazaar once said- A good Hacker knows when he is bored and moves on, passing the torch. Or something like that), both being used by a fair number of people. It's no bit torrent (I think he has users in the upwards of 50k range?), but it's a pretty nice legacy. So....how many people are using your engine? I also have a novel finished and published. While it wasn't a best seller (or even a seller at all), it is finished. So, that's three things now. I also am mature enough to realize that anything worth doing takes a really long damn time. Years.

So far, I have a better track record than most.

Now, if you would do me a favor and stop trying to make your ego bloat abit more, I would like to actually turn back to talking about the engine.

Note- the other reason I decided to work on this is because I seem to work better when I'm designing community tools, rather than a solo video game project. I tend to get more done that way. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's just because it's more interesting to me to create projects others can be creative with as well.

Is this a big project? Hell yeah, it's enormous. Will it ever be finished? No. But I will be happy once it's playable and out of Beta. Do I expect anyone to help me? Nope. I never do. I always plan from the outset to do the work myself.
_________________
"Well, last time I flicked on a lighter, I'm pretty sure I didn't create a black hole."-
Xmark

http://pauljessup.com