Keenspace The RPG

Xaviar · Post by **Xaviar** » Sun May 16, 2004 4:01 pm

Yeah, most of this should probably wait for the chat

As for getting a pre-made engine... It'd be nice, but I could do without. The only thing I'd really ask for is a simple graphics engine I can build from...

But whatever..

Faub · Post by **Faub** » Sun May 16, 2004 4:58 pm

My only intention with that last post was to make you think about this on a much lower level than you have been. Bob the play, Kisai the super being and War the villianous bad guy don't make a game.

Find out from each other what you CAN accomplish then from that decide what you WANT to accomplish.

I think a Keenspace game would be cool but it seems to me that there isn't a single person in any of the game threads who is taking this seriously enough to get it completed. No rules have been laid down about what will be decided by the chat session. People are just assuming they're going to work it out and that isn't going to accomplish anything.

I know I shouldn't be complaining because I haven't asked to be part of this. I just browsed over the thread and everyone has their own ideas of what this game is supposed to be. In more than half the cases I had no idea what anyone was talking about (mainly because I don't play any of these games and nobody gave any examples).

The way I see it, there's a lot of work that needs to be done before the chat session. Putting it off until you need it will only ensure that it never gets done and that would be sad because this is a good idea.

My two cents are in my previous post. Please take those questions seriously in the chat session.

Faub · Post by **Faub** » Sun May 16, 2004 6:11 pm

robp wrote:Meow. I will answer your first question here, but you should pester orion and such about the specific RPG engine elements.

I personally use FreeBSD. So obviously, I use most of the GNU tools. My language is C, with the SDL library. I debug with GDB. I do placeholder graphics using gimp. I use mingw32 as a cross-compiler, and I have a mingw32 environment for specific debugging there. This is my personal development environment, but I don't think this is what you were asking

What I hope is to provide a few tools for people to work with. I have written command line stuff for manipulating certain PC attributes, and a tool for editing a dialogue/menu tree, and something to create the animation structures for things. These aren't terribly user friendly. I have a map editor in engine, that I intend to seperate out. Most of this crap needs to be cleaned up so other people can use it, which takes a LOT of time.

I have NO intent of addressing the rest of your questions, and for this reason: No one else seems to have written stuff. My hope is that by making an initial offering, someone else will take the reins and be able to add in scripting (which essential IS the game), and get an idea of what they are trying to do. Failing that, people will realize that writing a game is HARD. I'm quite aware of this, I don't know about other people

*reposted with permission from a PM he sent me regarding my first post here*

Vorticus · Post by **Vorticus** » Sun May 16, 2004 6:13 pm

From your post faub, I gather you think we need a design document. I totally agree. I'm only worried that some people won't know what a design document is or what it does for the programmers.
If the chat lasts long enough I should be able to make it. I get off work at 4 that day, but it takes about an hour for me to get home.

Xaviar · Post by **Xaviar** » Sun May 16, 2004 6:50 pm

faub.. We're taking it slow. The chat session is to get everyone on the same first page.

Once we know what we're actually gonna try to do, then we can cover the neccecities... But a lot of those don't need anyone. Things like database structure only need really be covered by the programmers, and possibly with someone like Orion so that he knows what's going on...

Chibiartstudios · Post by **Chibiartstudios** » Tue May 18, 2004 1:24 am

Vorticus wrote:From your post faub, I gather you think we need a design document. I totally agree. I'm only worried that some people won't know what a design document is or what it does for the programmers.
If the chat lasts long enough I should be able to make it. I get off work at 4 that day, but it takes about an hour for me to get home.

Could you give me the 60 second version?

Faub: I just realised that I never fully addressed your previous post. Sorry. You bring up some verry good points. All you posted are things we NEED to discuss badly. If nothing else we need to discuss what we will be discussing at the chat. As I am not the leader and have little power to move things foreward all I can do is suggest. Orion, you really should make a list of things we need to discuss in the order we need to discuss them.

example:

1) What are our programing options? (who knows how to do what?)

We need to know this first so we know what kinds of games we are even able to make

2) Basic game style

What kind of game? (ff, puzzle, diablo?) Knowing this we can move on to...

3)Basic plot

Who is who doing what? Few details

4) What kind of batle system?

5) What kind of non-battle system

6) Charactter options

Who CAN we use?

...And so on.

I say after setting this up we create a thread for one each week week and leave it up for discussion for 7 days. At the end of the 7 days we have a chat on the item and at the end Orion will post what he has chosen to do. This is not to be changed unless absolutely needed! We don't want this to take forever.

Orion, this will take occasionally being an ass on your part. Especially when we have a 50-50 split between members on a decision.

Lets pretend that half of us want a fully customisable character and the others want a fixed one (please don't start this argument now BTW). If its turning into a huge debate make it a topic for the chat. Those that don't attend the chat don't get as much of a say. You listen to both sides and at the end you make a deccsion, and move on. Even if someone like me hates the dessision and won't stop griping keep to it. You can't please everyone. The important thing is that we make progress and avoid letting the whole project grind to a halt due to stupid arguments.

The other important thing that I am not seeing is deadlines. I hate them as much as the rest of the world but there is an important fact that you must all remember:

You are dealing with artists.

And because you are dealing with artists they will occasionally take a month to get you what you need when it should take a week. So make sure that with every assignment you give you make a deadline to go with it. Discuss it with the artist if need be, but once agreed uppon make sure it is firm.

(note: I have seen alot of projects fall apart because everyone waits forever for one guy to finish while everyone else gets bored and looses intrets. I think we can handle all this though.)

Another thing. As a side note, get permission to use characters IN WRITING so that we don't have to worry about artists getting a bug up their butt about characters dying or something. Basicaly, they:

1) Agree to let us use their character in a way that we see fit and in return we:

2) Agree not to use it in a pornographic or otherwise demeaning manner maner set by the author in advance.

Have them be really specific. You will be thankfull for this

Last, I think we need to start assigning duties to artists and designers (after the first chat maybie?). Map drawing, character design, etc. They don't have to start now. But it is good to know what you can expect to be doing.

Everyone else: I am not even starting on programing questions. It took all I had to get my pitifull grasp of HTML down.

Sorry if this was too long. I do that some times. Again, What I said here is not a rule or an order, just what I think should happen. Feel free to post commentst hough.

IVstudios · Post by **IVstudios** » Tue May 18, 2004 5:19 am

I second chibiartstudios' plan.

Sopheia · Post by **Sopheia** » Tue May 18, 2004 6:04 am

Thank you somesuch, for your insights.

As for the discussion of customizable characters or not... (I am sorry, I cannot go to the chat session)... How about customizable in the skills/clothing, but not customizable in personality? And if we'd like to make the things a little more complicated... allow the main character to have maybe 2-3 personalities to choose from when using dialogue, and have a choice of appearance/name? I would think that the NPCs should be like the characters of the comics they belong to... so customising their appearance/name/personality would probably not fit with the theme.

I don't know, but it seems like a good compromis to me. It still allows for a good plot and interaction between characters, without making it too rigid. I think it's fun to let the main character be 'you' since we're all comic artists, we fit the part.

Xaviar · Post by **Xaviar** » Tue May 18, 2004 11:36 am

I think the biggest problem right now is a lack of organization. What needs to happen is a seperation of powers, of sorts....

This may just be me speaking from the prospective of an OO programmer, but artists only need worry about templates and such, so their art will work, and story, so they know what art to make.

Programmers worry about the structure, language, etc.

Story folk worry about that...

When different people are worrying about things they aren't responsible for, nothing gets done. I'm not saying that's what's happening, I'm just saying, let's establish a bit of organization, and from their the respective groups can discuss the relevant issues, and the heads of the respective groups can coordinate as neccessary.

That's the way groups I've been with have always been organized, and it's also how you generally organize various objects in a program... Hence the whole private/public variable system... But whatever, just my two cents.

Vorticus · Post by **Vorticus** » Tue May 18, 2004 11:40 am

chibiartstudios wrote:
Vorticus wrote:From your post faub, I gather you think we need a design document. I totally agree. I'm only worried that some people won't know what a design document is or what it does for the programmers.
If the chat lasts long enough I should be able to make it. I get off work at 4 that day, but it takes about an hour for me to get home.
Could you give me the 60 second version?

It's pretty much the technical name for what your post is all about. A design docuemnt is about getting things nailed down, deciding what can and can't be done, and figuring out what the end product should look like. All of this should be written down. As a programmer, I can tell you there's nothing worse than a project with no set specifications. The specs can change and be somewhat fluid up to a point. Once that point has been reached, everyone must agree that the specs will not be changed. Otherwise alot of time will be wasted writing code that never gets used.

Chibiartstudios · Post by **Chibiartstudios** » Wed May 19, 2004 10:22 am

OK, I won't be able to make it tomarrow since I have work till 6:00 (god freaking damnit!)

I'll pop into the chat after that to see what's up after that though. If it's over by then I'll poke my head into the forums to see what's happening. This is looking to be more of a programing meeting anyways. So I don't think there is much I can add anyways.

Superlance · Post by **Superlance** » Wed May 19, 2004 9:59 pm

chibiartstudios wrote:
You are dealing with artists.

And because you are dealing with artists they will occasionally take a month to get you what you need when it should take a week.

...

Who?
Me?

Couldn't be me.
Of course not.

Last, I think we need to start assigning duties to artists and designers (after the first chat maybie?). Map drawing, character design, etc. They don't have to start now. But it is good to know what you can expect to be doing.

Yes, please.

Post by **Kisai** » Wed May 19, 2004 11:44 pm

I'm going to add my two cents from everything I've learned from two and a half projects and then I'm going to stay out of it...

1. I've worked on a programming project more than once... I often wind up having to do everything. So don't start unless you have at least one person doing programming, one person doing art and one person doing story. More people can be involved or specialized... but unless you have at least that, it's going to go nowhere fast.

2. Programming language. For portability reasons and how some of us use alternate OS's, I recommend against any windows-centric solution. So C/C++, SDL type solutions are recommended. (python+pygame is another possibility) Basically, if you can compile it on windows, linux, and macOS you cover the majority of who would play the game, freebsd, palm/winCE, BeOS, Amiga... etc bonus if it crosscompiles. Most linux stuff will run on freebsd with a little tweaking, though the graphics/audio interfaces tend to not have as much support as the linux side of unix clones.

3. I am NOT getting involved. You have my permission to ask me things, include me in the game, etc. I have Keenspace, I don't need any other programming project to be distracted with. I've seen two and a half game projects bomb, 3 weeks I give it and the majority of the people who throw ideas out will lose interest. That will leave about 8 people that will stick around untill their ideas get poopoo'ed and then it will just be whoever is left holding the bag.

4. Don't overdo it. Don't make it horribly complex, use overkill libraries and what not. Again, I've seen projects die that were too complex in the design phase that nobody could work the middleware. Fine, create an engine from scratch in C, but don't assume that everyone has a fast enough computer, everyone has openGL, everyone has a 4:3 ratio screen(I don't), everyone can use 640x480 to 1920x1600 rez... etc. Like the programming OS agnostic subject, not everyone has a top of the line machine, nor a standard configuration. I have a laptop, in order for a 640x480 screen to work, it needs to be scaled up, it's native resolution is 1920x1600 at a not quite 16:9 ratio, but not 4:3 either. Better to make higher resolution artwork, and scale down for distribution sizes than it is to make it so it only works on the most common denominator (640x480) and have it look warped,blocky or chunky on high rez screens. (A lot of games don't need a fixed resolution, slide-show types can overscan the background, sprite-based rpg's can extend the tile-renderer beyond the 4:3 ratio window.

1. OpenGL is good for 3D, okay for 2D, but not everyone has 3D.
2. C++/SDL is good for cross platform, but not all compilers are the same.
3. Unicode/FreeType2 works for allowing any language font into the system, but actually getting it to work is tricky since most c compilers are ascii. If you want more than one language to be available, even if it's an afterthought (like most games ported from japan) put the ability in now, not later. ie, if you use it, you need to have a script interpreter that is unicode/MCBS enabled (ie python,javascript, ruby, LUA)
4. Multithreading is a pain in the ass
5. People who are "artists" always seem to not be up to the artwork load required for a "sprite" game, "fighting game" as they like to draw stock artwork, not the same character 5 times in each of the 8 directions (40 cels per character just for movement)

6. People don't get to the story soon enough. WRITE THE STORY (font huge and blinking)FIRST(end font size huge and blinking) DAMMIT!!! Write the first chapter, establish all the characters, fill out their backstories, locations, etc.

Forget the game mechanics for now, unless you know where you want to start and where you want to end it, the game mechanics is only there to make the game longer and more enjoyable than a visual novel.

Chibiartstudios · Post by **Chibiartstudios** » Thu May 20, 2004 12:09 am

Kisai wrote:
3. I am NOT getting involved. You have my permission to ask me things, include me in the game, etc. I have Keenspace, I don't need any other programming project to be distracted with. I've seen two and a half game projects bomb, 3 weeks I give it and the majority of the people who throw ideas out will lose interest. That will leave about 8 people that will stick around untill their ideas get poopoo'ed and then it will just be whoever is left holding the bag.

First off, thanks for all the imput. (you are the best! ^_^)

Like I said. I am happy to help with story. Thinking about it. With Battle royalle comics to do (it's personal damnit!) and fighter sketches to do, I don't think I will have time for another art project. Still, I WILL stay on with storry ideas and scripting!

Kisai wrote:
6. People don't get to the story soon enough. WRITE THE STORY (font huge and blinking)FIRST(end font size huge and blinking) DAMMIT!!! Write the first chapter, establish all the characters, fill out their backstories, locations, etc.

I would like to take this moment to point out my previouse post about gameplay being like the plot of a porno in RPGs. ^_^

(gets evil stares)

Well I'm just saying...

Again, thanks for the imput Kisai!

Remember, if you can't get me into a chat try and PM me. I tend to be on at night after 8 (starting on Mon, after finals). Discuss anything and everything game related with me!

Superlance · Post by **Superlance** » Thu May 20, 2004 10:01 pm

Kisai wrote: 6. People don't get to the story soon enough. WRITE THE STORY (font huge and blinking)FIRST(end font size huge and blinking) DAMMIT!!! Write the first chapter, establish all the characters, fill out their backstories, locations, etc.

This is the most fun part of it all!!

We cannot go without this for another day.

As soon as I finish my commision page, and my Webcomic Secret Asassin page, probably by Saturday/Sunday; I'll be good to go.

Do... whatever I wind up doing...

...Sweeping the floors?

YarpsDat · Post by **YarpsDat** » Fri May 21, 2004 7:54 am

Okay... so the chatroom meeting happened at night, and I don't remember any of it.
Could someone recap the most important points?

Okay, that's not actually true, I vaguelly remember wrapping a towel around my head, running on the tables, and shouting at people.

Vorticus · Post by **Vorticus** » Fri May 21, 2004 9:19 am

YarpsDat wrote:Okay... so the chatroom meeting happened at night, and I don't remember any of it.
Could someone recap the most important points?

Okay, that's not actually true, I vaguelly remember wrapping a towel around my head, running on the tables, and shouting at people.

Ditto. Except I had the unfortunate experience of having events conspire against me, thus I was unable to attend the chat.

IVstudios · Post by **IVstudios** » Fri May 21, 2004 9:42 am

I'll try to get all the info fomr Orion, and E-mail it to everybody.

YarpsDat · Post by **YarpsDat** » Fri May 21, 2004 9:53 am

is there anything wrong about posting a copy here too?

BTW I posted is in the fight game thread, but it belongs here too:
http://machall.com/gallery/index.php?ga ... &artID=448
I think what the artists are going to do is something like this. Except we probably need about 10 of pages like this to animate one character.

Chibiartstudios · Post by **Chibiartstudios** » Fri May 21, 2004 11:44 am

Hi everyone! Sorry, got sidetracked after work because of having to finish an art final. What all happened in the chat?