Epic Frontiers Progress Report
by Ted Southard · 01/06/2009 (11:03 am) · 9 comments
No videos in this one, sorry. Seems that Vimeo is taking my videos down for being what they are. Ah well. I would have used YouTube, but Vimeo is higher resolution, and my email address is already tied to my personal account (and we don't need bot looting spilling over into ferret videos). But here's some MMO progress for you, nonetheless:
1) I have a semi-functional minimap in-game that displays your coordinates, date/time, and pans/aligns with your character as he/she moves. I'm getting a bit stuck on coding the limited-dragging akin to what you can do with the minimap in WoW, where you can drag the map a little bit to see just a bit further ahead- it's a coordinate system thing, trying to line it up with the player's position and get the dragging right, but it should be knocked down in the next day or so. And after that features and getting compass headings integrated, I'll have me a fully featured minimap. Or half-featured, considering that I have a "Round Two" list of features to add later on. For those wondering, I'm using Ben Garney's Commander Map resource as a starting point. The TSE conversion in the comments and other posts worked wonders to get it to 90% of where I needed it to be before I started to wade into the code and muck things up ;)
2) Swimming was "fixed" in TGEA with a little help from the forums. Now when the lake freezes over, I have to swim to the mouth of the river to get out from under the ice. Not that good a thing if I was running out of breath ;) I also got some water currents working with triggers for interesting effects. Needless to say, water isn't going to be a passive medium in my game (come to think of it, neither will any other environment).
3) Inventory got a bit of an upgrade as I started hitting a couple of its Round Two features, such as size attributes, encumbrance, and the equipped item slots. Basically, inventory will be limited by weight, slowing you down as you carry more until you can be run down and looted by random six-year-olds with slingshots. That is combined with a size attribute that allows you to both equip multiple items in multiple slots (think Mr T's use of necklaces), and to prevent you from using your back pocket to carry the engine-block for an 18-wheeler (you know who you are!). There's going to be a host of other features going into this for automation of tasks usually done by the player now and reduced to automatic tasks, or single-click utilities. The goal is to make inventory management as light as possible- except for those who like that sort of thing, which is where the advanced functions come in. Loot's not my thing, but hey, some people like it, so far be it from me to not provide :)
4) Combat, Crafting, Chat, and AI are all frozen right now while I get the minimap working. It irks me that I have this whole AIAE system done up and have to wait for other pieces before putting it into play for testing, but them's the breaks, right? Crafting will probably be next up after the minimap, with some environmental features mixed in for me to keep my sanity.
5) Tools and Procedural Content: These will probably get addressed next month at the earliest. All kinds of stuff from name generators to NPC generation (backstory, knowledge and conversation capacity based on backstory/location/profession), and "situation generation" for missions to admin GUI's for creating conversation snippets, spells, actions, items, and everything else.
Content scares me more than features. Not to toot my own horn, but I don't see the features I'm planning as especially hard to implement. But making procedural content fun will indeed be difficult. And making it both fun and consistent with the game even moreso. But I'm trying to go the extra mile and make it fun, consistent, and adaptable to the player's/group's abilities, which means months of work and playtesting.
Epic Frontiers isn't meant to be a perfectly balanced, "just so" type of game like 99% of MMOs have been up to this point. But at the same time, Epic Frontiers is not going in the direction of Second Life: a semi-chaotic shot at sandbox play with little consistency due to user-created content. Or, quoting a lyric that sums up a lot of what I like to do when confronted with choices such as those:
I came to a fork in the road and went straight...
1) I have a semi-functional minimap in-game that displays your coordinates, date/time, and pans/aligns with your character as he/she moves. I'm getting a bit stuck on coding the limited-dragging akin to what you can do with the minimap in WoW, where you can drag the map a little bit to see just a bit further ahead- it's a coordinate system thing, trying to line it up with the player's position and get the dragging right, but it should be knocked down in the next day or so. And after that features and getting compass headings integrated, I'll have me a fully featured minimap. Or half-featured, considering that I have a "Round Two" list of features to add later on. For those wondering, I'm using Ben Garney's Commander Map resource as a starting point. The TSE conversion in the comments and other posts worked wonders to get it to 90% of where I needed it to be before I started to wade into the code and muck things up ;)
2) Swimming was "fixed" in TGEA with a little help from the forums. Now when the lake freezes over, I have to swim to the mouth of the river to get out from under the ice. Not that good a thing if I was running out of breath ;) I also got some water currents working with triggers for interesting effects. Needless to say, water isn't going to be a passive medium in my game (come to think of it, neither will any other environment).
3) Inventory got a bit of an upgrade as I started hitting a couple of its Round Two features, such as size attributes, encumbrance, and the equipped item slots. Basically, inventory will be limited by weight, slowing you down as you carry more until you can be run down and looted by random six-year-olds with slingshots. That is combined with a size attribute that allows you to both equip multiple items in multiple slots (think Mr T's use of necklaces), and to prevent you from using your back pocket to carry the engine-block for an 18-wheeler (you know who you are!). There's going to be a host of other features going into this for automation of tasks usually done by the player now and reduced to automatic tasks, or single-click utilities. The goal is to make inventory management as light as possible- except for those who like that sort of thing, which is where the advanced functions come in. Loot's not my thing, but hey, some people like it, so far be it from me to not provide :)
4) Combat, Crafting, Chat, and AI are all frozen right now while I get the minimap working. It irks me that I have this whole AIAE system done up and have to wait for other pieces before putting it into play for testing, but them's the breaks, right? Crafting will probably be next up after the minimap, with some environmental features mixed in for me to keep my sanity.
5) Tools and Procedural Content: These will probably get addressed next month at the earliest. All kinds of stuff from name generators to NPC generation (backstory, knowledge and conversation capacity based on backstory/location/profession), and "situation generation" for missions to admin GUI's for creating conversation snippets, spells, actions, items, and everything else.
Content scares me more than features. Not to toot my own horn, but I don't see the features I'm planning as especially hard to implement. But making procedural content fun will indeed be difficult. And making it both fun and consistent with the game even moreso. But I'm trying to go the extra mile and make it fun, consistent, and adaptable to the player's/group's abilities, which means months of work and playtesting.
Epic Frontiers isn't meant to be a perfectly balanced, "just so" type of game like 99% of MMOs have been up to this point. But at the same time, Epic Frontiers is not going in the direction of Second Life: a semi-chaotic shot at sandbox play with little consistency due to user-created content. Or, quoting a lyric that sums up a lot of what I like to do when confronted with choices such as those:
I came to a fork in the road and went straight...
About the author
Started with indie games over a decade ago, and now creates tools and tech for games. Currently working as a contractor for startups and game studios.
#2
01/06/2009 (6:45 pm)
Quote:and to prevent you from using your back pocket to carry the engine-block for an 18-wheeler (you know who you are!).Awe shucks. And here I wanted to keep my 450 cat in my back pocket.... hehee, just kidding. It sounds like you are making great headway. For number 2, your frozen water problem, could you add points where the ice is thin enough to break and climb out of?
#3
01/06/2009 (7:01 pm)
I was thinking of Space Quest when Roger puts a ladder in his pocket...
#4
Britton, I rewrote the response to this several times- and not because any of the previous drafts were rude or anything- I do respect your opinion. It's just that the answer is... No, I can't.
I know there's a certain lack of credibility that comes with taking on a project like this, and it's deserved. I've been told the same thing you told me by all kinds of people in the industry. I may have even prevented myself from getting a job for a corporate developer by going down this path instead of making all the little demos people make. And I'm sure that some people are not going to be nearly as considerate as you were in their advice to me.
But at the same time, my own philosophy is that these tasks can all be accomplished, and writing other kinds of games, just to demonstrate that I can write them, will not accomplish those tasks for me. These tasks are not impossible either- nor are they so difficult that I cannot accomplish them in a reasonable amount of time. So for me to abandon this game in favor of creating games that do not show the kind of innovation that I would like to see is akin to me giving up on the task altogether, because to delay is to give others the chance to beat me at my own game.
And I think every single person knows how much worse regret is than failure. Compared to that, I'd rather fail- but I'll settle for success ;)
01/06/2009 (10:27 pm)
Quote:The MMO idea is a good one, and it should always be your final destination. But can you come up with some really simple games along the way?
Britton, I rewrote the response to this several times- and not because any of the previous drafts were rude or anything- I do respect your opinion. It's just that the answer is... No, I can't.
I know there's a certain lack of credibility that comes with taking on a project like this, and it's deserved. I've been told the same thing you told me by all kinds of people in the industry. I may have even prevented myself from getting a job for a corporate developer by going down this path instead of making all the little demos people make. And I'm sure that some people are not going to be nearly as considerate as you were in their advice to me.
But at the same time, my own philosophy is that these tasks can all be accomplished, and writing other kinds of games, just to demonstrate that I can write them, will not accomplish those tasks for me. These tasks are not impossible either- nor are they so difficult that I cannot accomplish them in a reasonable amount of time. So for me to abandon this game in favor of creating games that do not show the kind of innovation that I would like to see is akin to me giving up on the task altogether, because to delay is to give others the chance to beat me at my own game.
And I think every single person knows how much worse regret is than failure. Compared to that, I'd rather fail- but I'll settle for success ;)
#5
Well, this takes the fun out of drowning my players ;) But yes, you can do that. It would probably be easy enough to assign health to the ice and subject it to attacks. Since it's a DIF, you can have the ice be made up of DIF pieces and breaking it would make that piece disappear, allowing you to take a breath or climb out. I have a "partial freeze" function that works, but I didn't make a video of it because the DIFs didn't relight and black-ice looks horrible (the full freeze uses a transparent collision DIF because the water effects look nicer). But it's not a big leap from that to what you're thinking of.
01/06/2009 (10:33 pm)
Quote:For number 2, your frozen water problem, could you add points where the ice is thin enough to break and climb out of?
Well, this takes the fun out of drowning my players ;) But yes, you can do that. It would probably be easy enough to assign health to the ice and subject it to attacks. Since it's a DIF, you can have the ice be made up of DIF pieces and breaking it would make that piece disappear, allowing you to take a breath or climb out. I have a "partial freeze" function that works, but I didn't make a video of it because the DIFs didn't relight and black-ice looks horrible (the full freeze uses a transparent collision DIF because the water effects look nicer). But it's not a big leap from that to what you're thinking of.
#6
Read up on the latest GG "whats new with T3D" post here
If it were not for the fact that you are not alone (myself included in 2003) its almost as if the following image is directed specifically at you. I think they are echoing my thoughts by saying you need to limit your scope to succeed.
01/11/2009 (4:51 pm)
Ted, Read up on the latest GG "whats new with T3D" post here
If it were not for the fact that you are not alone (myself included in 2003) its almost as if the following image is directed specifically at you. I think they are echoing my thoughts by saying you need to limit your scope to succeed.
#7
01/11/2009 (5:45 pm)
@Britton: Look, you made your opinion known to me. Leave it at that. I've never met you, and so I find your need to randomly pop up in my blogs and tell me to stop what I'm doing as a bit strange. Especially as I am actually showing progress on this project rather than just babbling about being the best thing ever. What I think you should do is take a step back, take a breath, and then get back to managing your own affairs, instead of attempting to manage mine. Thank you and have a good day.
#8
I was told this and I ignored the advice I was given too. But I remembered the advice, and it served me well. Just passing on the torch, young dreamer. Your heart is true, but your direction needs to be smaller, closer and more focused.
1. What can you realistically accomplish in less than a year?
2. Do you have enough income to sustain you during that time?
3. How do you expect to publish advertise and sell your game?
If you do some quick math, you might find a smaller RPG game might fit the bill. Its an idea of build the foundation and sell the first game. Then add more features as you pull in revenue from the first sale. Just keep up that cycle until you achieve the end result you want.
If you think about it, this method does not ask you to sacrifice anything. It just forces a practical release schedule.
if you need content you can find plenty here: turbo squid They have content that is search able by its game ready state and number of polygons. I suggest you find some torque artists here at GG or pull in some talent by hanging out with artists in forums like CG talk you can typically find a great artist willing to do one off contact art work for about $250.00 per model. You could probably find that here in the forums at GG too. Naturally at that price the artist retains the rights to re-use, re-sell his / her art work.
To do this right and retain legal ownership of your game with out squabbling over intellectual property you need to have your contracts drawn up and form a corporation. I recommend Game Developer Legal Kit its the best and cheapest solution for an indie.
To start your company if you have not already (someone needs to won the art and code assets) this is my favorite spot. BY forming an LLC with a pass through on income you will have the simplest tax structure out there. You need only report income once a year when you file your income taxes. I recommend Business Filings
I know what its like being a dreamer. No one seems to support your dream. It seems like everyone is kicking you. Initiation over. Welcome to the club. You have to be tough to survive.
Sorry ... last post on the subject...
01/12/2009 (1:01 pm)
Ted, I am just like you only 6 years in the future. Like you I also made lots of progress and this whole indie contribution site but nothing that big gets finished in 18 months. Its a fact. I cant even find the old posts I made anymore.I was told this and I ignored the advice I was given too. But I remembered the advice, and it served me well. Just passing on the torch, young dreamer. Your heart is true, but your direction needs to be smaller, closer and more focused.
1. What can you realistically accomplish in less than a year?
2. Do you have enough income to sustain you during that time?
3. How do you expect to publish advertise and sell your game?
If you do some quick math, you might find a smaller RPG game might fit the bill. Its an idea of build the foundation and sell the first game. Then add more features as you pull in revenue from the first sale. Just keep up that cycle until you achieve the end result you want.
If you think about it, this method does not ask you to sacrifice anything. It just forces a practical release schedule.
if you need content you can find plenty here: turbo squid They have content that is search able by its game ready state and number of polygons. I suggest you find some torque artists here at GG or pull in some talent by hanging out with artists in forums like CG talk you can typically find a great artist willing to do one off contact art work for about $250.00 per model. You could probably find that here in the forums at GG too. Naturally at that price the artist retains the rights to re-use, re-sell his / her art work.
To do this right and retain legal ownership of your game with out squabbling over intellectual property you need to have your contracts drawn up and form a corporation. I recommend Game Developer Legal Kit its the best and cheapest solution for an indie.
To start your company if you have not already (someone needs to won the art and code assets) this is my favorite spot. BY forming an LLC with a pass through on income you will have the simplest tax structure out there. You need only report income once a year when you file your income taxes. I recommend Business Filings
I know what its like being a dreamer. No one seems to support your dream. It seems like everyone is kicking you. Initiation over. Welcome to the club. You have to be tough to survive.
Sorry ... last post on the subject...
Torque Owner Britton LaRoche
Just my 2 cents. The MMO idea is a good one, and it should always be your final destination. But can you come up with some really simple games along the way? Maybe you can take pieces of the whole idea and package them off. I think its better to get something small out quickly. Creating a WoW type MMO is going to be a very long process.