Shining Force III for Sega Saturn kinda did that (I think).

Sounds like CrossGen comics ...

Actually, I thought a good idea would be creating an RPG engine, then making it a serial game, so there was no sequel or Game Over; just continuous chapters. Being an X-Men comics fan, this naturally appeals to me greatly. And of course actions taken in earlier games have an effect on later chapters. Troy had a good idea too, but we'd have to have a strong central world, and maybe an overseer to make sure no one's stories conflict or anything ...

Well my idea isn't something you can "finish"; the first chapter wouldn't even amount to a whole game. It would be just like a comic book; about 5 - 10 hours of gameplay each chapter, with a new one every month. This was based off of what I heard console game makers were going to do a year ago; hand out the free engine, first chapter is free too, every chapter after that is 5 bucks or so. That's my idea anyway; who knows if I'll ever do it.

Heh, I kinda had the same thing in mind.

But it'd be a series of unrelated stories(Seemingly?)

Hell I'd love to buddy up with anyone to create a RPG with Allegro.

I'm sitting here all week just writing out stories.

This sounds great! I would love to help out on something like this; it might be a better chance to get something finished for a change . Maybe we could discuss - peterhull90@hotmail.com

Pete

How about letting the game evolve on itself ?
Instead of providing a story line, make the NPCs react according to a some 'purpose', so as that the story line evolves while the game is played.
For example, an RPG party want to conquer a piece of land. The current owners of this land, the NPCs, will react according to what the player does : if he tries to conquer the land, then the NPCs will react accordingly(organizing an army, assigning roles to them, fight, getting injured, die, etc).
A mechanism could also be built (ala COM) that gives access to a game's internals (characters and their attributes, locations, etc) so as that new characters can join in at a later time.

hmm, I quite like this idea.

One cool way of linking them together might be to have a game map, and each module would add an area to the game. Each new area would have new things to explore do and see.

heh the player could download the areas they think look interesting and do them in any order.. or work on one area.. then get another area, and work on it.. then maybe go back and complete the first.. all with the same characters.

Hm.. I think I would get boered with downloading the newest version all the time... It would prove hard to upload it all the time to. I would rather go for a once a week update, where players could send in their completely new quests trough e-mail ,and have them implemented in the game. It would have been cool to have an world of maps, missions etc etc that the players made themself. The limitations could be almost unlimited, with size as the only limit. Of course, it would have been difficult to make all the maps and quests fit together, but the creator of the game could Do some work there. Like adding the NPC's, including the new maps etc. etc.

Zelda or Final Fantasy. Probably Zelda.

I like the idea of the town creator being "mayor". Say there's a plot centered around the town of Troy, but of course some traveling is involved. If Troy needs an NPC of his in Hull, he can contact the mayor and ask if he can move in. Some requirements may be necessary ("No pets, no loud music, can't live in town square because it would interfere with a plot in progress ..."). If someone could write up a design doc to get this thing off the ground, I'd be interested. Some good possibilities here

I like these ideas very much, I think white_door's idea with different areas linked together seems very good!!
I'd suggest everyone uses their own engine and tools etc. but use a common file for crossover (which in practice is your savefile)
let's say person_1 makes a game/area called "Looming desert - The battle for the black oil"
person_2 makes "Escape from Azhora dungeon"
There would be a main exe for all the projects called: "main.exe"
and let's say the savefile is called "JohnDoe.sav"
so in order for the prog main.exe to open a certain area it would simply call the program:
looming_desert/looming_desert.exe JohnDoe.sav
thus passing only the preset info in the savefile.
Let's say the person goes to another area then that program would in turn call
../Azhora/Azhora.exe Johndoe.sav
then terminate

I don't know what h4xx0ring means but the rest of the ideas sound good!

Having different EXEs would solve some problems but does that mean the look and feel would change between diffenrent areas?

Maybe a lib or DLL could be used for the common stuff.

Pete

Daniel,
Could you confirm what those 3 look like. I'm thinking:
zelda: top-down 2d (like KQ on the allegro depot)
s-f: isometric 3d (like The Legend of Jou)
ff: perspective 3d (like ?? Mookies Quest??)
Is this right?
What's your opinion on platform, resolution, bpp, language (C/C++) and what could be a good name for it?
Pete
[edit. corrected omissions]
[ February 05, 2002: Message edited by: Pete Hull ]