Sorry to be of a bother but we /tr/ainers in /vp/ are in quite a struggle.
Currently a bunch of us are working on creating Pokémon games based on the North American continent, called the North American Pokemon League Project. However, we realized that creating a romhack was not the best solution to this due to inherent limitations on what we can do, and that RPG Maker XP doesn't provide what we absolutely need.
I'm not a programmer, so please bear with me as I explain.
One of the /prog/rammers in our ranks suggested that perhaps we can create an original engine scripted for the purpose of mimicking a Pokémon game (with added modifications such as seasons, real time weather, etc). It would be an open source project and would run under OpenGL.
Furthermore, it would ideally also have a Wysiwyg editor so that a non-programmer willing to learn the basics and who doesn't want to make any dire changes in the engine (because they don't know how) can make a simple Pokemon game. /vp/ would love it. I'm sure everyone on 4chan and beyond would love it.
Anywho, we're serious about this project. We have creative heads, but simply lack programmers. It would be a blessing if anyone here would help us out or take part in the inner workings of the project in general.
Thank you for listening/reading! We really appreciate it!
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Anonymous2010-08-14 2:21
Dude I'm so high right now dude. If you had to eat a pokemon how would you eat it and which one would you be eating?
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Anonymous2010-08-14 2:22
Also, we only really need an engine and ideally a wysiwyg editor.
We don't need anyone to program the entire games as that would be even more to ask for from what is already too much.
Hopefully if a wysiwyg editor is created, the brunt of us already working on this project would be able to do the rest (unless of course if you want to stick around, which you are more than welcome to do so!)
I'd like to say that you need to give more details about your project constraints: The platforms you hope to target, the libraries you intend on using, the languages you're considering, the time scale you're thinking about, etc.
Open source and OpenGL are decent starts for constraints, but by no means do they compose the entire picture.
If /prog/ is to help you, you need to help us help you. I also lament that the board is so full of shit in general that this help thread is one of the better threads on the front page.
>>7
I suppose I should've been a bit more verbose in the constraints part because it sounds like you're like a pack of lost puppies.
Tools are extremely important constraints as well: Source revision control, development environment, some sort of bug/issue tracker (Trac or BugZilla or some other equivalent), methods of collaboration and communication (IRC, e-mail, Wave?, messengers, forum, etc.).
Not to mention things to produce assets for your game, such as audio creation tools, spriting/modeling programs, etc.
Also keep in mind that OpenGL is graphics only. DirectX is a suite that covers input, sound, graphics, and I believe it also does networking, though I may be incorrect about that. Since you've decided on OpenGL, you'll need something else to cover the other areas, and SDL is a poor choice for production code.
These are lots of things that mostly need to be standardized at the beginning. There's some leeway for things that you won't need for a while, like assets. So you can put off standardizing those tools until later. But for the most part, you're going to want coordination on the development side because lacking coordination leads to a great deal of issues.
For example, I stopped working on a project because people kept committing things around the modifications I was making even after I specifically requested that they not do that. You're going to have to manage the people on top of all of these constraints. I don't know if you know quite what you're getting into.
We have creative heads, but simply lack programmers.
You have nothing. Everybody has ideas, what makes you think yours are good enough to warrant other people working on them instead of their own?
If you don't want to help, its fine. I'm not here to argue that our ideas are good enough. Whether or not the idea is receptive to you is up to you, bro.
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sage2010-08-14 10:17
>>8
In terms of collaboration and communication we're using IRC, wiki, forum, and Google docs.
For tools to create assets, such as audio creation tools and spriting tools, we largely have Photoshop. That being said, we'll be using already existing tilesets for the most part.
I think the OpenGL and DirectX Issue can be talked about between the programmers in our ranks. I'll have one run by this thread tonight.
In terms of co-ordination, I am more than likely capable of it. We can first set out the rules of conduct before going about the development process so that we can prevent things that you mentioned. We had some general (albeit unwrittein in this case) rules that prevented things such as backtracking on what we already have, or adding things which would mess up the entire process.
I've been constantly trying to keep the processes (rules, etc) we use for the project updated to make sure that we run efficiently and that everything is coordinated.
Please do not reinforce the Microsoft Windows gaming monopoly by using DirectX. Game development is not one of my strong areas, but I'm sure there are tolerable cross-platform libraries for the areas not covered by OpenGL.
Also, keep in mind that no non-trivial 4chan development project has ever gotten anywhere. If you want to succeed, you'll have to figure out why others have failed and what you need to do differently.
Regardless, I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors. As a Pokémon player myself, I am curious to see what will come out of this.
>>16
This isn't strictly true; Katawa Shoujo is getting quite far and is quite active. That's been in development for years. I am, however, not aware of anything else that comes close to that kind of success.
>>14
Egh. Wikis are a pain to set up and maintain, but I suppose that's a viable solution for project information.
Also, deciding on a language is an important part of deciding on the majority of your development tools and libraries and so on. You should probably do that before discussing the issue of DirectX/OpenGL.
Regardless, you'll probably want an FTP for non-source content, but source code virtually needs to be under revision control. There are more choices there than SVN and Git, but those are probably the ones you'd want to look at first and they make a lot of different underlying fundamental assumptions.
You want to use something like in >>22. There's not much point in making the engine from scratch, especially if the brunt of you aren't programmers.
Do you have a list of the sets of requirements that romhacks and RPG Maker don't fulfil?
>>23
I'd say that they really want distributed version control if at all possible (i.e., if they are competent enough to use it.)
And they should find an environment where much is already done for them, which will probably decide the language for them.
This isn't strictly true; Katawa Shoujo is getting quite far and is quite active. That's been in development for years. I am, however, not aware of anything else that comes close to that kind of success.
That would be a much better example if they ever managed to finish Act 2
>>28
No thanks, jerkface. I don't know where their SVN is located and even if I did, it probably requires credentials to read.
Reality exists independently of your perception of it; that is, it's going to be the way it is regardless of whether or not your standard of proof is satisfied. Take it or leave it, I don't give a fuck.
>>31 Reality exists independently of your perception of it
I'm not trying to start an argument on the validity of the open world assumption, but if their claim is that they will release when ready, and they haven't released, then by their own standards it isn't ready.
It's a minimalistic high-speed engine, with ZOMGHUEG worlds at high performance.
It's 3d.
Supports widescreen, OpenGL 3.2, and GLSL (for extended graphical effects/shaders)
Has an existing scripting engine, one geared for RPG (though not in the way Pokemon is)
Has minimal AI, with pathfinding, aiming abilities, etc.
Has lag-free networking.
It's open source, and writtin in C++, so although it's not quite what you'd need, it's extensible. It also supports the Md2 and md3 format (old quake formats), but also supports MD5 (the newest Id Tech style models), and Half-Life formats, as well as some others, like OBJ (3DMax favorite I think).
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Anonymous2010-08-15 1:24
>>37
This. SDL is crap. It hasn't changed much in years. It's nothing more than a toy API.
I don't play children's games, but aren't the Pokémon games 2D affairs that run on Game Boys? Why the cunt would you even be talking about OpenGL versus DirectX?