The aim of Errare is to provide a crossplatform 3D RPG game in fantastic/medieval times. End users stick to windows for games and we would like to offer people more choice. It will also show that java can be used to write 3D games. [b]It is a GPL project /b.
I - Description
Errare’s ultimate goal is to become a MMORPG. This is quite a huge task so we will start by making a good RPG. It will have the classical RPG features plus :
a random world/item/characters/quests generator.
an evolved artificial intelligence (using neural networks)
a multiplayer mode
Very few GPL MMORPG/RPGs have been released. Therefore we believe our project is interresting since most desktop users think that a good 3D game is missing on GNU/Linux systems.
II - Implementation details
a - Programming language and libraries
We use Java (JDK1.6) because it is crossplatform. As there are no libraries in java for writting a RPG, we only use the following ones :
Jogl : Java bindings for OpenGL
Jogg : Java sound library.
b - Architecture
The architecture of the game is the following: it is composed of serveral independant engines (graphics, physics, game, IA, network, interface, quest, database …). We are writting or will write all these engines from scratch.
c - Data formats
The database uses XML files. The current 3D models format is MD2, but it could change. Source documentation is in Javadoc.
III - Work progress and team
We are students and have been working on Errare for 8 months. We currently have a graphics engine, a physics engine, a game engine, a graphical interface, an artificial intelligence and a local network engine. You can consider those engines as alpha, many improvements/optimizations must be done. We have linked them and the game runs.
We plan to continue develloping the game for at least 2 more years. We also wrote a 30-page technical and conceptual study (in French unfortunately). We are currently 5 programmers and one 2D graphics designer.
We took some free 3D models from other games to begin with. But since the project is doing well, we are looking for one or more 3D graphics designers, since we do not own our 3D models.We are not looking for a special type of graphics. Just remember that it takes place in fantastic/medieval times. We are mainly programmers so we wont be of any help, you will be totaly in charge of the 3D graphics part.
If you are interrested in the project, please visit us on sourceforge : http://errare.sourceforge.net
Sorry if you do not find enough info, we suscribed to sourceforge only a week ago an we plan to migrate our CVS within a month. If you want to know more or have acces to a private demo (sorry we currently do not have the copyrights on our graphics models and can not make it public), please mail :
trueblue@users.sourceforge.net
Thanks for your help.