RPG Starter Kit?

#41 Steve,

Would you be willing to share your successes as a resource for those of us who are less fortunate :)

I'd be very happy with a Save/Load system that uses Torquescript.

Heck, I'd be very happy with any small crumb you could spare! I'm not picky.

Would it help if I said please?

:)
I3D

#42 Steve,

I would like to see the turn-based combat system. If you could spare it and put it up as a resource I would greatly appreciate it.

Claus

#43 Nevermind.

#44 Not to start a flame war or anything with Steve but this is what I always see. We have a good forum thread started and then someone comes in and says they have this all done but not polished.

We ask if he would be willing to share and then we get a post about it being modular but not. Relevant for my game and kind of hard to explain.

Thanks for the posts.

#45 Well I'm not sure what all the neverminds are about, but everyone just contribute what they have and the developers will try to get it to work together.

#46 On the Topic of Turn based, (but prehaps useless here), How does the current action system work, I mean to ask, Is there a feedback after attack, I would think you could insert a "On Off" initiative, or a "timed initiative" feeding into a master time keeper, this would allow a turn based play, where first person makes attack/movement points then the second player can (for however many players you have), OR if this is an mmo, just turn the timer to -1 indicating not to use the timer.

Picture an MMO *yes I know we will avoid those*, but picture eq where everything "Freezes" after you run 3 feet and swing a sword, now the monster gets to move. This is inherently an initiative system.

Or where you get a set number of action rounds, movement attack etc, its all feedback to the system as a matter of design.

This lets you scale it not only in size, but in play style.

Game starts, no timer set, everything moves according to its natural way
Game starts, timer set, turn based, everything moves according to move order, as far as it can, does what it can.
Game set, Timer can be flowing like a countdown or just, "on" allowing infinite time to decide, then give over to the other person.

#47 @Chad - Nice generalization... seems to work for all case.

#48 @Chad - Are you talking about something similar to Lucas Art's Knights of the Old Republic?

#49 @Chad - Are you talking about something similar to Lucas Art's Knights of the Old Republic?

Actually no, but it sounds like that is what they do from your question.

And thanks Tony...

@Chad - Nice generalization... seems to work for all case

I spend alot of time and have met some excellent people who have thought alot as well about systems, and how to implement systems.

Alot of it is just practical "thats how its gotta be" experience, you know if you have a slow computer, you settle for limited graphics/speed of game, UNLESS you come up with that one brilliant idea regarding "level of detail" or something similar.

With a turn based combat game, all you need is the idea of "whose turn is it" but if you limit it to just that you end up with an engine that can only handle that, so make it a counter system, that can be used as a Turn based system just as easily.

(modulo anyone?) - if you dont' get it, ask...

I look forward to more posts on this topic, I plan on doing an MMO one day myself (again who doesn' t eh?) so ideas people come up and are willing to share are always valuable.


For instance....I will share this one.

Consider when you write a game, to write "Recent and past history" not just as hard coded storyline in a text file but as "objects or events" that a person creating a character can automatically "generate" or "select" from

I want to roll and orc (ok its an orc BUT, it was in the war of 234 and part of the party that slew a dragon)

or story developement points ( ok I roll a character and I select the elf village, I am an orc, so I spend more points but I was raised by elves and now have archery maxed to start with)

Then when your story developes and characters meet and intertwice, or old villians resurface "TADA" the characters are part of the story, not just after thoughts (think how you may have felt in (FILL IN MMO HERE) where all things are established and you just kill mobs for exp)

If your character is an elf and they look for a new leader (storyline) let elven players fight for the honor.

Things like this let you tell a story, but get suprised by player inputs as well ....isn't that what made old D&D game nights so fun, a Master Game Story teller, and the players who told the story too.

Anyhow, enough of my blathering for now.


Chad.

#50 A lot of this is outside of the scope of an RPG Starter Kit, but it definitely leads to another very common topic on our forums (and here).

What should be included in an RPG Starter Kit?

An RPG Starter Kit should be everything common among most RPG Games. It should consist of a framework of game rules, combat systems, inventory, leveling, skills, classes, etc, but presented in such a way as to allow significant flexibility.

Allow... not require... each of the supported components.

Allow... and encourage... extension and innovation.

The Starter Kit should give you a base from whence you can begin your innovation.

You've heard the common "My game is like XYZ except I want to add features ABC"... well, a starter kit should make it very easy for you to get to game XYZ and then allow you to add features ABC.... but of course it should also allow you to create features ABC without requiring the game XYZ too.

A starter kit should not innovate... but it should allow for innovations.

#51 &I'm thinking that even though we are working with indieZen, we should still develop a TGE specific RPG.Starter.Kit

Is anyone else still interested? I know several of us have different resources in our games, so if anyone has a CVS so we can all combine our efforts, we could move along quickly.

Tony

#52 I could provide some SVN access. If you're interested Infinitum3D, email me at the adddress in my profile.

#53 Interested; but arent we prohibited to develop such unless we are''commercial' ?

#54 That was one of the reasons I wanted to create something that wasn't Torque specific, but could be used with Torque.

You know... real middleware.

We could license it however we wanted, give it away for free including 100% of the source code without any legal entanglements with the Garage.

If it drops in with only minor patches required to Torque then we could post the patches here and post the TGEA patches in a TGEA private forum.

If you want to make something Torque specific then no thanks, I'm not interested. If you want to make something that works with Torque but doesn't necessarily have to use Torque then I'm definitely interested.

#55 @Chip - Sent an e-mail.

@Christian - not prohibited if its just a resource open to the community.
It.s not like we'd be charging anything.

@Tony - Don't get me wrong, I still want to do the indieZen project, I just don't think I'd be much help. However, with torqueScript and GG resources, I may actually be able to contribute.

No reason why we shouldn't work on BOTH projects :)

I3D

#56 @Christian, a commercial license means no more than your company earns more tham a certain amount of money per year.

This rpg starter kit just seems to be getting very large. When I said I'd like to take a try, I meant developing something like the Torque starter.fps and starter.racing. Torque can already be easily modified to fit RPG styles, I just wanted to make something simple that wouldn't take too much time out of my normal day that can be used by a new-comer to Torque to see how to implement a system like such. If you look at the starter.fps and starter.radcing demos, you can see those weren't large projects with 10+ people working together for months at a time. It's simply a showcase.

@Tony - I'd like to help with the indieZen project too, but I think it's larger than I can comfortably take on.

#57 My $0.02:

The indieZen project would appear to be the ultimate goal -- an RPG oriented library/SDK that can interface with any engine (much like PhysX or Bullet do for physics.). I think that would be an incredibly useful thing to have for the game dev community as a whole. But I think that's like saying, "Let's build a 747!" to a lot of us here; we don't have the expertise, time, resources, etc. We need to start prototyping on something a little more manageable first.

I agree with Morrock and Infinitum3D that a good starting place would be a simple mod -- like "starter.fps" and "starter.racing" -- which would allow rapid prototyping of the UI and feature set, primarily with script. Then everyone (even those without a license) could download this "starter.rpg" mod, try it out, tweak things, and make suggestions, with the intended goal of rolling it all into the "real" kit, the indieZen project.

#58 Infinitum 3D and I were actually conversing about that very thing. We feel that a torque-oriented project would be much better for starters.

#59 I'm still interested in this, and Chip Lambert has set up an SVn for us, however, all I can offer is art and my current project, which has RPG-Dialog, but little more by way of add-ons.

If anyone wants my project as a base, just tell me what I need to zip, and I'll learn to use the SVN. I have Tortoise, but don't really know how to use it.

Is it like an FTP for the SVN?

just to repeat, I'm still interested and would love to see this project get rolling. I'll help in anyway I can, I just need to know what to do.

Cory, if you're still available, I elect you team leader, since you had the idea to make this :)

Where do we start?

Tony

#60 @Kevin - I can understand where you're coming from, I just wish there was a way I could explain my perspective a little better so you'd understand it.

I spent six years at an average of 2.5 hours a day, seven days a week, 365.25 days a years making prototype games with Torque. I learned a whole lot during that time.... I wish I could just "brain dump" that knowledge to you, but I can't.

I know what Torque can do with and without modifications.

It can do literally anything with modifications, provided you have the skill to make it happen. This has been the "crutch" of Garage Games ever since 2001.

As you probably already know, making games is a daunting task... difficult at best, impossible at worst.

Sometimes Torque helps, but for certain game types, Torque actually hurts... RPG Games, MMO Games, Virtual Worlds, turn based strategy games... Torque is not the right game engine.

Also, making a starter kit that is easy to use is a whole lot harder than making a game... if you've ever written an API or a framework for others to use and compared that to the level of difficulty in making something for yourself then you know this already.

The same is true of making game engines... it's fairly easy to make a game engine for a specific game, but it's significantly more difficult to make a game engine that is flexible enough to handle any game type.

This is where Zen Engine and Torque differ the most.... Torque is hands down the most fantastic game engine that ever existed for Indies to make FPS games.... other game types, sure you can still do it... but the more you deviate from the original Tribes 2 gameplay, the harder it is to force Torque to do what you want.

Zen Engine, although still immature, was designed from the ground up to be versatile... simply changing one line of code will allow you to switch between Python, Lua and Java Script. Another line of code allows you to switch from OpenAL to FMOD. Yet another line of code you can choose between PhysX, Bullet and Newton for a physics engine.... adding a few simple things will allow you to do these changes without even modifying a single line of code.

I'm not talking about simply including a new library... I'm talking about complete integration with the rest of the engine.

Starter kits using well-known modern design patterns such as dependency injection, inversion of control, decoration, and class composition allow your users to use the starter kit without having to learn every single nitty-gritty detail of your game engine, or learning every detail of how to use a complicated framework. That's my goal.

The only modern pattern that Torque uses is defined as a "Big Ball of Mud." Even the most recent additions to TGEA 1.7 are nothing more than C-ish hacks.

If your goal is to simply tack on yet another layer of Mud... go for it. Obviously you don't need my blessing.

But this is where the advice of the experienced deviates from the gut feelings of youth... you think you know what you're doing, but I've been there already and... well... the advice that I'm giving is "forget about Torque" but I'm sure you'll ignore that advice... thus is the boon and the bane of being old and being young.

As for me, I'm sick of making dead-end prototypes.

Hopefully some day Garage Games will stop using "ooh, poor baby, suck it up and stop complaining about how difficult it is to make a game" as their first response to "Torque sucks".

Torque sucks... period. I would not have dedicated all of my spare time for the past 18+ months making my own game engine framework if that were not true.

Possibly some day the Garage Games employees will realize that when a C++ programmer with over 20 years of experience (30 years if you included non C++ experience) says "Torque is hard to use" possibly they'll realize that I'm not complaining about how difficult game creation is... rather, I'm complaining about how much work Torque adds to the task.

Let me say that one more time just to make sure you understand what I'm saying...

Making games is difficult... making games with Torque is more difficult.

I don't care about the "making games" part being difficult... all I care about is that I have a game engine that stays out of my way.

If you really want to make an RPG Starter Kit that will be useful to more people than just you, lets hook up.

If you're only interested in someone else making the starter kit for you and you have nothing to contribute other than just artwork or a bunch of "dime a dozen ideas" then go for it... but that is simply a huge waste of my time so forgive me if I opt for bowing out.

The Zen coders are committed to making an RPG Starter Kit, with or without the GG community... I prefer "with" since I think this community has a whole lot to offer and I know for a fact that the GG community really wants this to happen.

But, if we end up doing this without the help of the GG community then we will not support Torque... period.

So it's your choice... either you have an RPG Starter Kit created by professionals, you are stuck with making it yourselves.

My gut feeling tells me that you're not mature enough to realize the difference and you will choose the latter.... at which point I re-iteratate "I just wish there was a way I could explain my perspective a little better so you'd understand it."

Oh well... Life is Life and youth is wasted on the young.

Happy Torquing... or whatever.