I made a group here at egroups.com, but you may have wanted to use sourceforge ...I'm not sure which one would be better for this



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What a plight we who try to make a story-based game have...writers of conventional media have words, we have but binary numbers


Edited by - Nazrix on March 7, 2001 2:17:53 AM

You guys could always take over Goblin''s sourceforge and EZboard if you want... I don''t have time to maintain it anyway.

Just e-mail me if you''re interested.


People might not remember what you said, or what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel.
Mad Keith the V.

I look away for a day, and see what I miss!!

Sounds like quite a challenge to me. I a bit hesetant to get involved myself, I''d like to, but I''ve got a lot of things piling up at the moment (argh!). I''ll watch/occasionally comment on ideas, until I got more time then get involved a bit more (if thats ok).

What I think you probably should be looking at (first) is more an engine that allows all the ideas to be implemented rather than a full-blown CRPG. That way you (we) are not going to get bogged down in "Genre", "Storyline", etc.. etc.. arguments. Plus which the engine can be reused, and if its done in the right way, i.e. modular (i.e. capable of being totally uncoupled from the engine with no ill effects), then ppl can write units (if its ever coded) that can be used for thier own CRPG as well.



NightWraith

Well, it seems some people here like the idea

Myself, I was thinking about a modular concept. NPC-generators, quest generators, conversation generators, action generators, a graphic shell, etc. etc. In the end we would not only have a game, but also have loose parts we could each use in our own projects. And the game would be easy to update. Say, you want things in 3d, someone could write a 3d-shell. Or do you want a different kind of quests? Work on the quest-shell...

What do you think of this?

Wouldn''t it be helpful to create a list of the desirable features everybody''s after. Also, define dependencies of each module. Try to make each module completely independent if possible, but if that is not, then define a hierarchy where a module higher up is only allowed to call upon modules lower in the hierarchy.

Also, if one adopted a DLL style interface, I think people could use a language of their choice.

Anyway, here''s a partial and incomplete list that I encourage people to add to. Cut & paste to modify and add to it, and then post the new list as a response if you want to. Links to to the topic which discussed it would also be helpful, but I''m too lazy to do that right now.

Nazrix''s inventory bulk management system.
Wav''s history generator.
Character trait generator
Conversation
City & architecture generator

Ok... I've modified the last one.. two seperate things in my mind...

Nazrix's inventory bulk management system.
Wav's history generator.
Character trait generator
Conversation
City generator (we talking random maps here?)
Architecture generator <- could be a slight problem this one as it is directly linked to sprites and/or textures and models.

Add now to add...

Interactive NPC AI (in that NPC's respond to the world and not just the player.. all part of a "more responsive world")

There was something about a UI on here somewhere I think in Wav's "Rails" post, but I cant find it right now....

Oops *ahem* hit Post before I'd done typing...

As to the coding

We'd have to define the interfaces between units/modules/whatever you wish to call them before we start on that of course..

NightWraith

Edited by - NightWraith on March 7, 2001 11:19:15 AM

You just jumped over the hill

The modular system can not be devided that easily into inventory and architecture and stuff. There have to be some more... distinct groups first. Start with deviding them into general groups, and then start to get more specific, ending up with indeed inventory and such...

• Nazrix's inventory bulk management system. ( I'm not sure if this one's necessary. It seemed as thought it would be fairly easy to implement as far as the coding goes, didn't it? )
  
  
• Wav's history generator. (more specifically, the emergent plots/events from the game system as we talked about in the Strategy as the Main Plot post.....or will that be seperate? )
  
  
• Character trait generator (Bishop, do you mean in terms of attributes of NPCs?)
  
  
• Conversation (more specifically, the ideas of converstaion as an action as in this post on Gamedeveloper.net and in this post on my forums )
  
  
• City generator (we talking random maps here?)
  
  
• Architecture generator <- could be a slight problem this one as it is directly linked to sprites and/or textures and models.
  
  
  
  I'm not claiming to be an expert by any means, but with most of things, couldn't we just have them output using very generic means such as text? Then we wouldn't have to worry about whether peole use these things for 2D or 3D.
  
  Nightwraith, from what I understood the Responsive World concept was not so much about the NPCs as the world it self...the trees, rivers, etc. Although, I think that is far too integrated into the specific game to really do it as a group.
  
  Also, MKV offered for us to use this ezboard if anyone's interested.
  

Need help? Well, go FAQ yourself.
What a plight we who try to make a story-based game have...writers of conventional media have words, we have but binary numbers


Edited by - Nazrix on March 7, 2001 3:18:22 PM

Edited by - Nazrix on March 7, 2001 3:25:06 PM

quote: Original post by Nazrix

• Nazrix's inventory bulk management system. ( I'm not sure if this one's necessary. It seemed as thought it would be fairly easy to implement as far as the coding goes, didn't it?

Easy, hard, why not? I see a query / modify system. A set of functions which answer if something fits, what's in X, and change location of Y. That sort of thing.

quote: Original post by Nazrix

Character trait generator (Bishop, do you mean in terms of attributes of NPCs? )

Character traits: Something along the lines of Wav's topic.

I don't visualize graphics as necessary. I see all of this this as providing data via a query system. What the application does with the data is up to it: rendering, simulation, whatever. For example, the city map: Application requests a map with certain attributes and features and calls a function to get it. The function returns some map data. There might also be a function to return what is to the north, south, etc.





Edited by - bishop_pass on March 7, 2001 3:51:47 PM

Edited by - bishop_pass on March 7, 2001 3:54:42 PM

quote: Original post by bishop_pass

I don''t visualize graphics as necessary. I see all of this this as providing data via a query system. What the application does with the data is up to it: rendering, simulation, whatever. For example, the city map: Application requests a map with certain attributes and features and calls a function to get it. The function returns some map data. There might also be a function to return what is to the north, south, etc.

Sounds good to me




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What a plight we who try to make a story-based game have...writers of conventional media have words, we have but binary numbers