Recommend me a route...

General Discussions
#1

I’ve spent the past year learning Java with small projects and games, and I want to take it up a notch. By ‘up a notch’ I mean making a full-scale game. I have a general idea of what I want to do but I just need some direction with libraries and licences. Below are some questions I’d love an answer to:

  • What library do you recommend for a large 2D RPG?
  • What licencing do I need to look for if I want to use libraries or source-code in a commercial work (ie: GPL etc.)?
  • Would you be interested in a modern RPG based around the idea of a totalitarian state?
#2

1:
I think this one comes down to personal opinion as well. There was once a nice list on this forum with each library and its advantages. But i guess for 2d you can just keep using the java2d? Otherwise use something like slick or lwjgl if you have openGL
2:
no clue
3:
What do you mean by totalitarion state? when i google it i come around 2nd world war stuff and dictators.

#3

A totalitarian state is a country controlled by one man, an entity who has complete control of all aspects of life. This is not always the case and there would be revolutionaries, sort of my idea.

#4

  1. For a 2d RPG, I would recommend libgdx, since it’ll give you the smoothest path to porting to Android.

  2. GPL is the opposite of what you want, don’t use any library with a GPL license since it will “taint” your project with its license, effectively requiring you to either distribute under the GPL or not at all. With GPL’d Java libraries, there’s often something called the “classpath exception”, which means if you use the library unmodified, you don’t need to worry about taint, and there’s also the “Lesser GPL” aka the LGPL, that works pretty much the same way. BSD, MIT, and Apache licensed libraries are fine to use in anything, just be sure to give credit.

  3. Rebellion against the totalitarian state is a great and popular heroic trope (not using “trope” in a negative sense here, it just is what it is). It’s always been one of my favorites, and it’s great for an RPG since it provides clear motivation and dramatic tension right from the get-go. Lots of ways to spin it too, from clear good-vs-evil to wondering if you’re really on the right side. I would say at least give The Bad Guys at least some believable motivation for imposing their rule rather than making them snarling growling hissing one-dimensional Cardboard Cutouts Of Evil (I’m looking at you George Lucas).

Incidentally, totalitarianism doesn’t require a single dictatorial figure: Big Brother was just an idea dreamt up by the faceless dehumanizing bureaucracy of IngSoc after all, and the government in Brazil didn’t even have a figurehead to speak of at all.

#5

1: I recommend you to use an OpenGL library since you could benefit from your GPU graphic acceleration even if you only use 2D. If you intent to port to Android follow sproingie advice and use libGDX. If you don’t want to port it to Android, I’d go for LWJGL + Slick utils.

2: sproingie already answered perfectly. Go for BSD, MIT, and Apache-like licensed libraries.

3: I’m a lover of dystopias and RPG is one of my favorite genres. I always love when something/someone small and powerless accomplish something great (like defeating a totalitarian system.) So I’ll be looking forward to hear about your project :slight_smile:

#6

Maybe have a look at JOGL 2.0 if you are really interested in Android, Linux ARM and more general embedded support. As far as I know, you can use JOGL with LibGDX but I don’t remember which version it uses.

I prefer using GPL even though there are a very few commercial games using it but that’s for political reasons.

#7

Really, pick almost any Final Fantasy game with an ‘Evil Empire’, and it’ll probably be some degree of totalitarian government, albeit with many of the details left out. Except, of course for the tragic murder of some MC’s loved one by the armies of darkness, which then provides said MC with a reason for joining the ragtag team of dogooders you invariably play.

However, many other games styles end up having these, and Totalitarian gov’ts, especially in fantasy worlds, can end up being good. I’m having to grasp for one, but a lot of the 'Church of the ’ style countries/governments tend to act somewhat like them, and except for the recent taint of the Templar Trope are fairly good people… It has a lot to go with the shift in word means/word views that happens through history, like Tyrant just used to mean a single ruler, rather than an oppressive, single ruler and how discrimination just used to mean being able to differentiate between two separate things.

#8

Just going off on a tangent, but my favorite tyrannical regime is the Terran Empire of Warhammer 40K. Yes it’s a brutal, regimented, xenophobic, totalitarian theocracy, but given the way the rest of the galaxy is, they actually have a damn good reason for it!

#9

A game with a Totalitarian Government is nothing new to most of us. Ah! How could I forget one of the most famous examples in our popular culture: The Empire from Star Wars. Using them as an enemy to help your ‘good guys’ have a reason to get together and giving them a common enemy and making them the obvious underdogs in a conflict is sort of meh to a lot of us, because it’s been done enough to be considered a trope: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheEmpire .

Doing it well will get you some major props from gamers. Doing it badly can feel like you’re trying to push us to sympathize with the MCs, which depending on how they’re presented might cause the opposite reaction in the player… I mean, there’ve been a few games where I’m rooting for the Empire, despite playing as the PCs, because they’re just so much more interesting.

#10

Wow. On point 3, I was thinking of a similar reason to that ‘V for Vendetta’ the comic used, a right-wing group hooking on to terrorism/war and turning it to their advantage. I really love the response I get with this community, you guys are great.

#11

So, what I get, is that the idea I want to use is a bit cliche? I understand that it’s been done to death in that sense.

#12

I remember playing Tie Fighter all those years ago, defending the glorious civilization of the Empire against those terrorist traitor rebel scum.

Man, they just don’t make good space fighter sims anymore. Remember when people had big ol joysticks attached to the computer? Good times…

#13

@the idea being cliché

it all comes down to writing
what you are stating is just a premise
with the right characters, dialogues, scenes and scenery
stuff happening

my point is, its a broad topic nevertheless and you can do good.

#14

Agreed. There are a wide variety of paths you can go down when writing a story about a totalitarian state. IMO the way you develop the characters/conflicts will be more important than the overarching theme of the story.

#15

Which was exactly what I was getting at. Pretty much everything nowadays is cliched to one point or another. Which isn’t a bad thing. People expect to see cliches in what they read/watch/enjoy, because it brings home a sense of recognizable. It’s rare that the completely, utterly novel and original exists and that in the end it is well received. A new spin on an old idea, or even just an old idea portrayed well tends to be well received.

Look at how many people play Megaman still. There are incremental changes to them, the gameplay getting more complex, but for the most part the story lines stay the same: Dr. X is evil. Dr. X has evil robots. Megaman goes off and destroys the evil robots. Megaman fights Dr. X. The public rejoices. And the series is still being played and the franchise is still alive. It’s just that the game play is good, and stories while cliched, are rather fulfilling.

#16

As far as 2D graphics libraries, what I’ve ended up doing was implementing my own 2D engine with minimal use of Slick2D (for texture and audio loading). While this can take a bit longer, it allows for a much deeper understanding of what’s going on in the interior (less magic). If you are making your first “real game” like I am, the benefits of knowing how stuff works outweigh the negatives of taking a bit longer to implement. I suppose you could use libGDX for this as well, but I don’t have experience using it, so I can’t really comment on it.