[Free][Windows] WorldGrower, rpg simulator

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#1

Yow,

WorldGrower is a rpg simulator.
This means that it’s like a traditional rpg but with a dynamic, simulated world.
Npcs do their job, become better at their job, adjust prices for the things they sell, etc.
They also seek mates, have children, breakup with their mates, choose a deity to worship, etc.

WorldGrower contains rpg aspects like crafting, professions, combat, magic, greec gods, etc.
It focuses on skills, dialogue, economy and society.

The world in which your player character starts is an empty world.
NPCs and yourself start to build up society/civilization.

WorldGrower is written in Java, with a Swing front-end.

Here are some screenshots:

1920×1080 735 KB

1098×798 315 KB

761×708 76.7 KB

895×846 167 KB

735×550 95.4 KB

Gameplay Video:

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Project page:

User Manual:
http://worldgrower.github.io/WorldGrower/UserManual.htm

The controls are:
left, up, right, down or numeric keyboard: move character
left-click: see list of possible actions
right-click: center map

The project code is licensed under GPL-3.
The project graphics are free to use from a third party.

I can use (gentle) feedback.
Anyone wanting to be a user for this project is welcome.

Greetings,
Tom

#2

I just had a look at the github page and I am really impressed!
Are all those things from the userguide already implemented and working?
How long did you work on the game?
Are you stil working on it or is it a finished game?

#3

I’m at a loss for words, this is really impressive! :o

There’re a lot of classes in that repository! How long has it been since you started work on this project?

#4

Thanks for the compliments.

Everything in the userguide is implemented and working.
I’ve been working on it for about 1.5 years.

Indeed, the project has a lot of classes :).
There are many npc behaviour classes and loads of unit tests to test it all.

I consider it a finished game, and I’m taking a break from working on it.
Maybe in a while I’ll start working on it again.

#5

Hi,

I’m looking to make more changes.
I could use feedback to decide which changes to make.

Should I:

  • make the game work under more operating systems like Linux/Mac?
  • improve the user interface?
  • try to improve the animations?
  • add more magic spells?
  • add more political mechanics like government types, revolutions, voter fraud, etc?
  • add more monsters and other urban threats?
  • add more dialogue options?

Or should I just continue promotion of the game?

I welcome feedback in this regard, and any other suggestions.

#6

Although I did not try the game yet, I would like to tell you which of these points are the most important one in my opinion:

  • Make it work on other operating systems. The game is written in Java and should therefore run on other operating systems.
    So I would definitly try to make the game work on other OS, if it is possible without to much effort.
  • Improve the UI: As i did not try the game, I can only judge the pictures. The UI seems okay to me, however, I don’t really like the blue background.
    I guess you should use some background image, which fits the game style. Maybe some kind of a wood-texture or something like that?

I can’t say anything about the other points, without trying the game. However all of this points sound pretty interesting :slight_smile:

#7

Hi,

thanks for the feedback.

You’re right about making it work on other operating systems.
Right now I have the most problems with getting sounds to play on Linux. I’m using the Sound API right now, but I’ll probably switch to another library/framework.

As for the the UI, maybe I went overboard with the blue gradients :-).
I’ll try out some textures and see what works.

#8

For the UI you could also try to just make it a bit transparent. Then the blue color might be okay, but I guess you just have to try a few things and see what looks best.

#9

Hi

Please can you clarify the licensing terms of your graphics? Are they under Creative Commons BY-SA?

I see that there is only a Windows installer. If you need some help to generate native installers for all major operating systems, let me know, my own tool does it very well.

#10

@Springrbua, I’m trying a mix of making items transparent and adding stone textures. Until now things look good. I’ll post some screenshots when I’ve made more progress.

@gouessej, thanks for your feedback. Most graphics are free graphics from other people. Here is a list:


And the few graphics that I created myself can be considered public domain.
There are other installers, but I’ve hidden them from plain view because there are some issues left with those operating systems.
And thanks for the offer, but the installers are the few things that didn’t cause problems on non-Windows operating systems :-).
#11

Thank you for the explanation. It’s great, you give some credits to the original authors ;D

I saw only some scripts for other platforms, these aren’t real installers. In my humble opinion, it’s enough for developers but not for non technical end users. Moreover, as you write “[Windows]” in the title, non Windows users can wonder whether your game works under other operating systems and there are numerous developers under OS X and GNU Linux here.

#12

Ok, fair point regarding the installers.
I’d like to take you up on your offer regarding native installers.
If you show me your tool, I’ll take look at it.

Well, I’ll take a look after making sure the program works on non windows environments, otherwise the native installers aren’t that useful :).

#13

I updated the user interface.
I made more items transparent, changed the font and added a texture background.

Here is the updated user interface, what do you think?

1098×783 948 KB

817×549 691 KB

763×710 777 KB

#14

Hi

Have you ever launched your game under GNU Linux? Your Gradle build seems to create a single fat JAR with all dependencies, you can use it with JNDT which is documented here. I really have to move my tool into a separate project to drive it easier you to use.

I’ve just looked at the tutorial (under Mageia Linux 5, by using the JAR inside the ZIP archive). I find your game promising. It’s already polished, good job.

#15

It’s nice, you’ve done a great job adapting the look of swing. Perhaps darken the texture a little so it contrasts against the text. Both area a little too bright. Or darken the text and lighten the texture.
One thing that you might consider is a skill tree rather than the spreadsheet-style cells of numbers. Skill trees were one of the cooler aspects of Diablo, allowed for a greater amount of replay-ability.

#16

@gouessej, thanks for the info regarding native installers.
I did try my game under GNU Linux.
I got some strange behavior, that’s why I decided to release the Windows version first.

And yes, everything is bundled into one big fat jar file.
Right now, I use Install4J and that seems to support native installers like .deb and .rpm.
As far as I can tell, JNDT can do the same as Install4J, so I think I’ll keep using Install4J. That route is probably the least amount of effort for me to build native installers.

@CommanderKeith, thanks for the feedback.
I darkened the background texture:

1098×797 912 KB

As for your other point, I personally do like the skill trees in games like Diablo and Skyrim.
Adding skill trees would probably be an improvement, but quite a bit of work :-). I would have to add more options for crafting, magic, combat and resource gathering.
I’d probably use Skyrim as a starting point, especially for the crafting and social skills.
Any idea of other games that use non-combat skills and skill trees?

#17

Hi

Which strange behaviour? If you want to get some help, maybe you should tell us what is wrong. You use a cross-platform technology and as far as I know, your game works like a charm on my machine.

Install4J isn’t free of charge (you can only obtain a trial key for a short time, use an evaluation version or obtain an “open source” license until Ej-technologies modifies its policy like InstallAnywhere did), it’s neither open source nor free and its support of DEB & RPM packages is surprisingly less mature and a lot less complete than JNDT. It’s your project, it’s up to you to decide but feel free to ask for help if you plan to move to a more reliable and viable solution than Install4J on the long term (except if you’re ready to pay at least 848 € per year for the less expensive licence) especially when JNDT becomes easier to include in a project (currently only a few JARs and a single XML script). I don’t think that using a few lines of XML code from a real example of use as a source of inspiration takes a long time and you can call Ant from Gradle. I’m not often on this forum, it doesn’t mean that I’m not interested in your project :wink:

#18

I also wanted to suggest you to darken the new UI-Texture a bit, but it seems like you allready did :slight_smile:
Looks really good, far better then the blue gradients IMHO :slight_smile:

#19

@gouessej, it’s good to hear that it works on your machine, thanks again for testing it.
I’m testing it on Ubuntu 14, using Oracle java 8.
The issues I encountered are:

  • incorrect screen dimensions
  • cursor is renderered incorrectly if number of cursor colors is 2
  • swing rendering has random issues if using the default pipeline
  • sound clips are loaded all at once at startup which gave problem if the sound mixer was limited for it

These issues should be fixed now.
Fixing these issues isn’t that much work, it’s mainly all the test effort going into it.
So I’m grateful for your assistance, but I don’t think there is much you can help with on this point.

Regarding the installers, you make good points.
I’m going to try out some things.
If I need help, I’ll let you know.

@Springrbua, thanks for your comment.
I’d have to agree that it looks better with the texture background.

#20

I released a new version, you can find it at https://github.com/WorldGrower/WorldGrower/releases.

The main changes in this release are the user interface overhaul and making sure the game works on all operating systems.

More screenshots can be found at http://worldgrower.github.io/WorldGrower/UserManual.htm.

Now I’m ready to focus on:

  • adding more items/abilities so that skill trees are possible
  • taking a look at the installer