Oh shi...

or not

Ssshhhh, I'm having fun watching.

We need to define what there is to do and who is capable of doing what before we can assign tasks... IMO, we're still in the early conceptualizing stage. We have an idea for how the game will be presented and played and a general idea of the story, but we haven't really nailed anything down yet. The people in such a hurry to code should have no problem modeling the application; after all, they're ready to write it. Let's see a model.

I didn't think there would be that much map to cover... It would probably be good to draw up a smaller, to-scale, version of the map so we have a general idea how the game is going to play out and the artists have some idea of what they're doing.

I've never used, or heard of, SVN. Hopefully it's straightforward enough to jump right into.

No.

Revion Control System? CVS?

Why do I suddenly feel like such a noob?

Sorry, its the short form for "checkin".

Well, duhh. It's your duty to remind us that you've already done a working map editor. Is it better than Mappy already?

My current unfinished projects consist of 2 or 3 games, and about a dozen (that's 13, codebakers) game-making tools, some of which would be very helpful in this project if they were in a usable state, but they are not.

As this was supposed to a week long hack project, the idea was probably to manage without tools, and type the maps into hex editor. This could be managed if we were all in one place sharing the same adrenaline rush, but we don't have this luxury.

I've said the job of Evil Producer is undoable over the Internet. A Producer needs to threaten starvation and physical torture to force people to do the boring bits they've been assigned. We've all heard the stories about EA, and we've all seen their games at the top of the charts. The only possible stick (to balance the carrot of a glorious finished game) is to close the source to outsiders, and then slackers can risk being sent outside. This discourages casual assitance so would probably be counter productive.

The plot, gfx & gameplay could and probably should be done in a closed design group. This will prevent spoilers as much as anything else. I see no reason why the design group need to open-source any of the game, and it would be their Intellectual Property to licence how they see fit. It will be their game.

Most of the code can be written outside of the game, and this is where we need public discussion, or we'll end up with code uglier than KQ Lives. If I am to assume the title of Chief Software Architect, we'd be working on our own version of RPG Maker, which would not be limited to classic RPG, but of course we'd give priority to whatever formats the Game Design Team want.

My own personal favourite modded game is Age Of Mythology by Ensemble Studios. This was published as a historical fantasy RTS with a strong storyline, lots of in-game cutscenes, some heavily scripted maps. The modding community AoM Heaven have taken this game with its excellent ingame editor and lots of helpful scripting docs from
ES, and made all sorts of campaigns, RPG and movies with the supplied characters and gameplay mechanism. This is my idea of code built to last.

Anyway, back to the actualities, here is a further breakdown of the framework

That's plenty of GUI work to be getting on with, and none of it is even RPG specific yet. Any volunteers for this? I'll do it with Allegro GUI if nobody beats me to it with somthing better. Any GUI lib is acceptable, and it might even be nice to have versions for several GUIs.

It's a starting point which is likely to evolve in the design. Besides, what do you expect from a forum-thread game? If it's finished and playable I'll be dancing; "good" is just gravy. As for the rest of your post, I don't think you're even reading the thread.

Define "better". It's simpler, and well suited to this type of game. I also wrote a Win32 version of KQ's tilemap editor, so I'm pretty good at this so far. I'll tell you what; we'll decide how the game will handle maps as far as code and data go, and I'll just put myself in charge of designing layouts (not necessarily graphics) and make sure my editor spits out the files right. If we want to ultimately end up with some sort of "engine" and use my editor for it, I'm sure I can customize it and there's lots of time for that later. Just for the sake of finishing the game, I'll be the only guy who needs it. The C++/Win32 version was a bit unpolished and I had to do certain things certain ways to keep it from crashing; the C# version will probably be better ... once I finish it ...

As the guy most involved in design, I'm probably going to end up with tilemap duty anyway, and I'm fine with that. I like making tilemaps; I did the last dungeon for KQ too. I was going to throw together some pics with ripped graphics just so people could get an idea of how moving around the game would be. Will probably be the next picture I post.

No. This will be very localized. The map I posted is basically the overworld in its entirety.

Again, I'm not even touching the SVN and CVS, though I want to see how you guys handle things. And why multiplayer? O_o

PS: I'm toying with the idea of using the keyboard to walk and the mouse to aim/shoot. Comments?

I've always wanted to make a game with that type of play control. I think it would be relatively easy to manage and would make the aim/shoot thing work, since the gameplay isn't going to be sword swiping. easier than 90 degree angles (watch AVGN's review of Star Trek). I think it's worth trying.