Dear /prog/, this is /vp/

Dear /prog/,

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.

Our IRC is: rizon.net #napl
Our Wiki is: napl.wikia.com
Our Forum is: http://z7.invisionfree.com/NAPL/index.php?act=idx
For a glimpse into our story-script, we have some for two of our regions:

Great Lakes: https://docs.google.com/document/edit?id=1U0IWXg6NR6zQeCIR1Uot1jelWDOj2IDKwAqJXtLG5IU&authkey=CLPHmcQP#

Pacific: https://docs.google.com/document/edit?id=1RU9DYm90IkbpL3OtjfIbpf3GDzN9-SgjfVftMgsDK04#

Thank you for listening/reading! We really appreciate it!

>>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.