There are tons of great ideas on this board everyday. Does anyone have any working demos of any of the systems discussed? Also, if some of the people on the board with good ideas want to write articles detailing the systems (and send them to me ), I would greatly appreciate it. If you''re interested in doing a guest article for The Next Level send in submissions to impossible.

This is the best that we have in relation to this topic. Have a browse through it if you want. It only has a little bit of stuff about implementation. I never really got far enough down the programming path (before my HDDs lost thier partitioning info) to be able to implement most of the ideas in their own right. It is far too big a task to bother trying to implement them ALL in one game, but I am sure some of them would work well together

Enjoy

-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft - The future of RPGs Thanks to all the goblins in the GDCorner niche

There aren''t any working demos, because most of the ideas tossed around in here are concepts that either

(a) make far better books than games,
(b) are impossible to implement with current technology, usually because of insane AI requirements, or
(c) are way too ambitious for amateur developers to complete.

Sad but true. There are good reasons why most of the ''new'' ideas don''t already exist in playable form.

quote: Original post by Kylotan
There aren''t any working demos, because most of the ideas tossed around in here are concepts that either

(a) make far better books than games,
(b) are impossible to implement with current technology, usually because of insane AI requirements, or
(c) are way too ambitious for amateur developers to complete.

Sad but true. There are good reasons why most of the ''new'' ideas don''t already exist in playable form.

Ya know, while I''m guilty of some of the above (ugh! mainly c ) I gotta say in defense of us wanna-bees...

It''s damn hard to build a game-- ANY GAME!!-- when you only have a few hours or so to do it, everyday... Professionals make a ton of progress because they get paid . Try doing anything, especially anything innovative, on your own free time and you quickly discover that if you''re not a boy genius, it takes lots of time. Coding is like building a house with molecules instead of bricks!

Now, if I could cut out this pesky sleep thing, end my social life, disconnect my phone, get an IV drip, and stay off this board, I could probably complete a Wolfstein 3D clone in... oh, about a year...


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Just waiting for the mothership...

LOL
I''ll quote that !

Runemaster

"Coding is like building a house with molecules instead of bricks!" - Wavinator
"Damn, and I thought you were a cannibal..." -Selkrank, to dwarfsoft
"Romania, a quite large but totally unimportant country just outside Europe. Soccer, beer, no vampires." -Diodor

Hehe, well considering I''ve tryed many times before, I know the difficultly in building a full game. I''ve produced a few pretty cool looking demos, but I''ve actually only made one game in my years of adventures in coding (a weak text strategy game I that I made for as a tutorial for a friend).

It seems like it would be possible to implement a lot of ideas on a small scale (like in a text, or 2D RPG) and have them working at decent quality.

Now that I have downgraded my project graphic specs to 2D Zelda style, I think there will soon be a lot more progress in what has been discussed before... Sure, only the simplest of the simple (like some of the magic system ideas) and then work through the minor NPC stuff to the Fighting systems. From my knowledge of programming it shouldn''t be that hard to implement most of it, but it is just having a working model on which to build these test cases to start with...

-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft - The future of RPGs Thanks to all the goblins in the GDCorner niche

In that case it would probably be best to design something that is very modular, maybe even with a scripting language. Speaking of that, what are your thoughts on a generic RPG engine. Something like a CRPG version of GURPS or FUDGE?

Oh, Wavinator, trust me, I know the problems only too well. I am one of the worst when it comes to never finishing my personal projects. But the reasons I gave above are partly why I often suggest that most of the best designers are those who know some programming... because they have a good appreciation of what is possible, and pick the best ideas that they know can be done, rather than the best they can think of (which often can''t be done.) That way, they''re getting good stuff released for us all to enjoy and build further ideas upon. A good idea in practise is worth 10 great ideas in your imagination.

Maybe some of the guys who specialise in RPG design should try picking up an RPG maker to prototype their ideas in, without having to worry about much of the coding stuff? (I suggest this quite often, but few seem to bother )

Impossible
I believe MKV was attempting to create such with ''Goblin'', but I believe that it died (there hasn''t been much action on the Forum or on the mailing list for months) [if anybody knows differently, then please tell (MKV?).

Eventually I wish to objectify my game (once it is complete) so that it will be useful for being able to script additional components, models or ideas into it to see what is plausible and what is complete insanity to try.

I have recently been looking into how Eiffel converts its .e files to .c files and I have come up with a workable scripting language that should have the basic power of C (with a bit less, because I can''t be bothered programming those too advanced functions )

Kylotan
I agree that most people want to just run off and write their own stuff, and that is a part of their desire to make games instead of try to implement untried ideas. Some RPG engines written by other people are probably really good at what has been proposed, but I think that you don''t have a feel for someone elses program like you do for your own.

Also, you get less satisfaction (IMO) from trying to learn somebody elses scripting language than by just coding straight out or using your own scripting language.

</RANT>

-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft - The future of RPGs Thanks to all the goblins in the GDCorner niche