Reviving Mini Adventure

Java 2D
#21

Things that I would have done next:

a) Bring in weather effects (part of what scuppered me). I wanted to port to LWJGL but I think that might be outside of the scope of what you’re trying to do.

b) Night and Day.

c) Expand and Develop conversation/quest engine. It was very much based on some XML we talked about here. I liked it for its simplicity but the GUI designer was awful.

d) Monster spawning, how… when… how to prevent overflow.

e) Combat

Melee - do this first. Problem is that due to server lag players might have slightly different views of the distances between people. There needs to be significant thought into how the combat system should work. My thought was that if you froze the played at the begining and then allowed them to submit commands to their “Combat Queue”. As server time progressed the server would action parts of these commands for you… i.e. I want to walk to that point, then shoot at him. However, this gets weird when you start considering that monsters need to be involved too. One thing I reakon is fairly important is both the player and the target (be it human or not) get frozen and the control system changes at combat start. However, this means there MUST be an option to disallow PVP combat for the player… i.e. to prevent people just freezing you when you’re walking past.

Combat as I see it was the most significant missing part. Once Melee is sorted I think ranged combat and likewise magic will fall into the system happily.

Ramblings:

Finally - Maps. The world of laminos was kinda thought out and the first area you saw was Riverside. Now, I’m not expecting you to use my ideas here but you will need at least one person put in charge of building a world with background and story. I would suggest setting up two independant mailing lists, one for development and one for world creation (assuming of course you’ve already got folks wanting to join in ;))

This brings me to (uh, I said Finally, ah well)… travel between areas. I had great plans for warp gates, boats and coaches to allow you travel between areas without walking. For instance, the river running through Riverside was added to allow me to put a ferryman that could take you south to the next land section. Of course you could walk down the paths and off the edge of the screen to the next area but I reakon their should be a danger quota involved in doing this (robbed by bandits on the way).

I really liked the idea of getting in a coach for a ride to City X… a randomly generated encouter on the way means you (and your fellow coach mates) have to fight off some hoard before getting back on the road.

Oh… also. The code is currently designed to support spawning areas to allow personal and group adventures. If you go to the king for instance, ask for a quest he may send you on a mission (by escorting you, or teleporting you) into a seperate area that only your group are in. This way you can have a personal adventure while still being part of the overall world (see Anarchy Online).

I hope this gives you some idea of the direction I was hoping to go… I’m not saying that any of the these ideas should be used, just background might help.

Sorry for the long post.

Kev

#22

Still waiting for my project to be aproved… :frowning: I did however set it up and put the code into cvs, If peolpe other than I can see it it is at : https://jrpg.dev.java.net/ there are screenshots there thanks to Kevin’s old site. Could somebody try that link and see if they can see the site?

Here is a screenie of the cleaned up tileset Builder

http://jrpg.dev.java.net/shots/290204_3.gif

…sorry guess I couldn’t link it in. I don’t have a ftp site anywhere at the moment. Anyways the site mentioned above has the Screenshots. ;D

#23

Nope, no luck. Permissions limited… actually means projects isn’t approved.

Kev

#24

[quote]Things that I would have done next:

a) Bring in weather effects (part of what scuppered me). I wanted to port to LWJGL but I think that might be outside of the scope of what you’re trying to do.

b) Night and Day.
[/quote]
For Now This can wait, but I hope that we code so that we are bound to our rendering method as little as possible, that way we can change it latter, or someone can work on the rendering port in parallel with other development.

I agree w/ this and will work hard to complete the authoring tools as we go. Any feedback as to how they work now and things to keep in mind will be greatly appreciated. As you lknow I implemented my own xml/dialog system so I should be able to pick up on this fairly quickly.

Also to consider… are the monsters invisible ala early Final Fantasy where you run into them then go into combat mode? or are they regular actors?

This will probably be one of the harder things to do,…, One thing to consider could be to have the “queue” defined in xml on the fly. That way we could also have “Pre-Scripted” battles.

Already thinking that way… I’m hoping that the community will really take a liking to this and once we hhave some real solid code, develop new resources, including original artwork and release an entire game.

This shouldn’t be that hard, for each vehicle defined use its sprite as the player or parties sprite and update postion acordingly.

I don’t quite understand what your saying here.

#25

Is it just me not seeing it or has this not appeared in Project Proposals? thus no one can vote on it?

I think what Kev meant in the last paragraph was to have an area for an adventure that is spawned for a group of adventureres, if some one elses gets the same adventure given to them, they get their own unique area rather than joining the same one. thus multiple people can do the same adventure.

One thing anarchy does as well is use the same entrance for lots of different missions, each time the layout of the interior is different though. I didn’t like keep getting different missins in the same place all the time though :wink:

Dan.

#26

I completed the project request form,… I don’t know why the Post hasn’t been made yet. I thought the moderator of that forum did that after he recieved my form. ???

#27

I’m interested in this project as well. Please inform me when the project is approved and public.

Thanks,
Wood

#28

Will Do, I’m just waiting for them to put up my request in Project Proposals. I am relly anxious to, But at least I can work on it in the interim. 8)

#29

Its up…

#30

[quote]Its up…
[/quote]
;D ;D ;D

http://www.java-gaming.org/cgi-bin/JGNetForums/YaBB.cgi?board=Proposals;action=display;num=1106602031

#31

i’m in for this project! ;D

[i]on Jan 20th, 2005, 7:25am, kevglass wrote:

Oh… also. The code is currently designed to support spawning areas to allow personal and group adventures. If you go to the king for instance, ask for a quest he may send you on a mission (by escorting you, or teleporting you) into a seperate area that only your group are in. This way you can have a personal adventure while still being part of the overall world (see Anarchy Online).[/i]

you’re talking about instance dungeons, right? groups that enter get thier own copy of the dungeon. never played AO, but World of Warcraft has this feature, and it’s very popular.
instance dungeons typically have tougher mobs, (requiring a group to take them down), and better loot.

#32

[quote]i’m in for this project! ;D
[/quote]
The Project has been created and as should be aproved in a couple day (See Proposal Forum) then Any who want to join are welcome. All I ask is that everyone uses due diligence in checking files in so that they won’t break the build. For now their is probably enough work where everyone can be working in thier own seperate piece of code without too much overlap.

We will also want non developers to join especially if you are artistic, as well as testers.

#33

Hey Krypto!

I don’t see myself as a good java developer(yet!! I’m tied up at the moment) but I’d love to be a tester for you guys. I’ve done some testing before and enjoyed the experience, so give me a shout when there’s some code to be tested!

Count me in!

Hauk

#34

This seems to be a promising project, and would like to be a tester.

Although I’m new I hope I can help.

#35

OK That’s it. Now its obvious everyone is “Willing” to help on this project so while we are waiting for the Project to get approved ( should only be a few days ) Lets discuss things the project needs, as well as starting to learn who would like to volunteer for what.

[]Development
[list]
[]Client
[]Server
[]Audio System
[]Combat System
[]Items(weapons/armor/potions) etc.
[*]HUD

[*]Resources

[]Audio (midi music and sound effects)
[]Backgrounds (for Battle backdrops)
[]original Artwork (to replace RPG Maker Stuff)
[]Sprites

[*]Web Presence

[]Website
[]Host (to host the website and gameserver)

[*]Testing

[] Client testing (Extremely Critical Task)
[] Editor testing

[/list]

I myself am mostly experienced in GUI development, so I will probably contribute a as much to the editors and HUD as I can.
My goal is to set up teams for all the different areas of developement, so that once tasks are defined and a team knows what is is working on for a particualar milestone(more on this later) the developer will be free to go off and code his brains out. Planning is going to be critical on a project of this size. Although a 2D rpg may not seem large scale, I feel producing a polished finished version is.

Feel free to add to this list as we go and basically tell me what team you would like to contribute to.
Man that’s a long post. :o

#36

some brainstorming:

  • database management

  • quest system

  • seperate login(lobby) and game servers

  • seperate “mini” servers to handle various game subsystems…

    • world server
    • combat server
    • quest engine server
    • chat server

  • what kind of client/server architecture?

  • UI defined using scripting, LUA/XML?

  • scripting to allow ui mods, macros?

  • how will combat work? old school FF?.. or where the user has more control (i’m thinking of Zelda “Link’s Awaken” on the old gameboy. anyone ever play that one?)

  • personally i like to have more control, not sit back and watch the fight.

  • not sure how this is implemented as yet, but would like to see continous zoning, or scrolling when walking through the world, (with instances and dungeons as an exception)

  • trade skill engine.

oh, before i forget…

i’d like to be involved in client/server development, as well as the combat system.

#37

Duely noted… As fas as the Combat System goes the Original author felt that Combat would basically have to be turn based becuase of network lag. (not to mention needing animations for all possible attacks in 2D) so probably to start we will need to just go for FF style.

As for the Skills System. We will need to think about that as a piece of the Overall Player Stats. for example:

[]Health Points
[]Defense Points
[]Experience Points
[]Money
[]Special Status(poisoned,slow,sleep,frozen,swift,etc)
[]Skills

Of Course experience is gained over time w/ battles fought ect. As Experience increases new Skills can be learned or skills could be taught(Pay the Shaman to Teach You to Heal) ect…ect…etc…

#38

where is everyone ? :-/

#39

What about combat more similar to Final Fantasy Tactics instead of regular. I find it much more enthralling and it entails more strategy of sorts. Wouldnt be a whole lot harder to do either.

Also, put me down for the website/host if you choose to move away from Kevs site.

I may be down to help with some coding, but I’ll wait and see what is left after more anxious people dig in :slight_smile:

I think that skill based instead of Class based could be cool, why limit!

In the past I’ve done: (for combat skills)

Offense (affect % hit)
Defense (affect % evade)
Armor (absorbs % of hit, based on armor worn + any natural)
Damage (inflicts damage, based on weapon + any natural)
Speed (if using ff tactics type engine, or even FF engine, how quickly you move or can attack)
Life/Health
Mana/Magic

Possibly break client down into:

2D and 3D (LWJGL) also

or maybe just LWJGL :open_mouth:

#40

Obviously your free to ignore anything I post since I’ve handed this project over. That said:

You really want to get written down what your actually aiming to do and in what order.

Its all very well coming up with tons of ideas (which is great btw ;)) but as a project you’ll need to be pretty focused on getting something playable (to get a user base) before worrying about feature rich worlds and redundant servers.

The best example of this I can think of is the client. There isn’t much point starting work on two new clients (say 3D and LWJGL) until you know what structure/features the game needs/wants to present.

It would seem that the biggest points of having a game that can be played and enjoyed from the current state are:

  • Improve Tool Support

This is extremely key. Until the tool support is good enough, even if its just the additional of web page manuals on how to use them, you can’t get arty folks to get to work.
* Tile Cutter - Integrate with IDE. Add the ability to specify properties on tiles.
* Mapper - Make this the central IDE. Add multilayer support (I believe its just two at the moment). Add a framework to support plugin editors.
* Script Editor - Probably best to assign someone just to rewrite this from scratch. Its uncomfortable and takes a lot of preknowledge to use.
* NPC Editor - Fresh build, maybe the first test of the IDE plugin architecture. This should support making templates of NPCs/Creatures and then deriving new versions (see Zelda games :))

  • Combat

This needs to be resolved quickly. Don’t worry about getting it wrong, it can be tuned later on but its such an integral part of the game many other bits will revolve around how you decide its going to work.
* Combat Engine - consider melee, ranged and magic. What takes place when? What balances the system? What allows you to develop new types of creature as time goes on? What values do you tweak when players complain that X is unfair? How do items affect combat?
* Networking - How is the combat handled network wise? I’d considered a bunch of options. Maybe the combat opens a new connection to the server which is used solely for this combat phase. Maybe its peer to peer. Maybe combat is just movement like everything else.

  • World

At the moment the world consists of one (fairly large) area. This isn’t a good test case. It took me ages to get it designed but it was a mistake. A few people need to be assigned (once tool support is better) to start designing some more complete test worlds.

  • Keep it small - build lots of smaller areas all interconnected world cells. Lots of inteaction in a small area. This will allow testers to try every aspect of the world without walking for half an hour :slight_smile:
  • A new feature isn’t complete until its in the game, 10 times :slight_smile:
  • A pseudo complete world will get people interested in playing and looking around. I had college students from all over the US looking and playing about just because there was a world in which they could wander and feel like they were finding stuff.

I’d suggest before you ADD anything, you first resolve what you have. Its much easier to change something once its got people up and understanding than to attempt to add stuff fresh.

Again, only suggestions.

Kev

PS. Re: Options mentioned above:

  • Continuous Zoning - the current source is specifically designed without doing this. Network with continuous zoning is pretty darn tricky. It also doesn’t lend itself to modularising the server or server redundancy.

  • Database - something that needs to be a priority once you know whats going to be stored :). Its flat file at the moment because I was trying to work out what to store. :slight_smile:

  • Lobby Server - I’m not sure where this comes in. Its a MMORPG not a game based server. If you want to chat go to a tavern, sit down and chat… Or use the global system channel :slight_smile:

  • An LWJGL client would be great. Personally I don’t see the point in a 3D client because there are just so many 3D MMORPG’s already. Just an opinion tho.

Coo Long Post.