New stuff

[neoxenomega]

Well I finally did something about an issue thats been bothering me for two years now. I had lent my lap top to a friend,MB, but during the time I had done so she droped it and busted the side of the screen. At the time I did not see any problem until later when I discovered the CD drive no longer worked. We had gotten a warrenty from comp USA

Comments

[neoxenomega]

yeah that pretty much nailed it on the head. You'd be amazed at how long it took me to figure out how to perform that little trick with the "teddy:birdman saga" bitmap, but once I did I made it a state in the engine so I can draw buttons and other things to the screen.

I do not have engine in a place that can be downloaded, but I can email it. And even explain it a bit.

As for being outfitted to a grid that depends on what you mean, and I'll explain:
Techincally the engine is unrefined enough that it can be used in any type of game. Implementing a grid system would be a game design call, the engine is currently free of such restricitons and therefor, like plugging a video card into your PCI-E slot on your computer, it is do able.

I ask what you mean by "outfitting to a grid" becuase
1) you may be talking about represneting the game world in grids meaning charactes can move a maxium of 8 possibilities

2) you may be talking about a grid system for building the world, a game editor, which techically is the game primis as number 1

Currently my game AI is a derivitive of the A* algorithm with a world composed of a NxM grid. I plan on using this AI in both 2D and 3D because the algorithm I made functions as both a fast path builder, as in CPU time, and a perfect path builder.

[machinion]

That is a useful tool for my game framework that I didn't even consider yet. It is perfect for menusm, Textboxes, Icons.... SWEET! I have a definite need for this engine trait, because there are crazy menus and options.

The grid is something I just associate with strategy games, but yea, on second thought it does seem like its not an integral part of the engine design, just an afterthought. My reasons for having it are purely strategy related, as the player sees the numerical values. However I don't know if giving the grid numerical values and affixing it to different game units would CHANGE any of the programming or not. Maybe it would open up some doors within the programming. Then again it could be just an invisible grid from the beginning meaning that everything allready does have values.... whoa, this is why I couldn't progress in programming further, heheh.

I was talking about the 8 possibility move, not necesarily the world. I would think that you could have large scale grids representing different "areas" but not such a scale that all "areas" are on the same grid represnting the world and have no separation. For my design, this area idea can be taken to a smaller level, arena. I would think this would really ease up on the servers.

http://mobilab.wustl.edu/projects/agilla/docs/4x4_network_2x.jpg

The NxM is each unit on a larger grid or the entire grid for an area? I have been working with the idea of a 3x3 grid for unit area, but each grid square representing 1 unit square.

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I just had some other ideas I wanted to run by you, since its obvious you know your stuff.

1-NPC units. I -just- came up with a clever use to include NPC units into a mmorpg game but am wondering how possible it is. The ability to have a controllable NPC unit that is a "away" player unit that has in the game has "made allies" with other players. The idea is that even if an in game friend is not playing, you would still be able to include them in your party, and that player could even have his unit gain experience in this manner without him being there (all stat changing could be reset to previous and equipment locked). I'd imagine that you would have a list of available allies, both pc and npc.

I'd imagine that the programming would not be too hard if it is not having to distinguish between pc and npc unit, but only the player controlling said units.

2-Control of time. This is essential to my game design, as each unit of time and time phases can be the difference between winner and loser. Is this just setting a value to each character unit's "turn" and having a clock type application that is in the game and denoting which actions can be in use? Its basically ATB from FF, but with "phases" which denote which skills can be used, similar to a CCG. Is this a part of a "physics engine" that is different from what we have been talking about, or is it all part of the same thing?

big post haha

[neoxenomega]

Well I have to say I used the word "world" loosely. that was pretty much what I ment by it. When I speak about an NxM grid I am speaking about each single square unit, or each moveable space in on a level.

MMOs - one of my favorit types of games to play, currently addicted to EVE online and FFXI.

NPC units, FFXI just recenlty implemented your own personal NPC to help you fight, and Guild wars uses them as an alternative to real people in a party. I like the idea of having your "allies" availble to you off line as well as on, I think that could work, it would take some careful looking into but I belive it could work.

Time is rather easy to manipulate, As a philosophy I try to make every thing in the engine as modular as possible, leaving the ability to drop components with ease. So I'd say its all part of the same thing. just to make sure denote what CCG means.

I'll try to keep it short, heheh.

[machinion]

CCG= Collectible Card Games, for instance Magic the Gathering. The use of certain skills is determined by phase. Thats not exactly how it translates into the game, but there are similarities. Each turn has set phases.

It sounds like you have mastery over the kinds of things I need for my MMORPG, are you able to work on any new projects in the near future? I am serious about financing my project I've been building for the past year. I have some other skills besides design to promote the idea - Marketing, and music (game soundtrack).

Re: I'll try to keep it short, heheh.

[neoxenomega]

I am currently still in college, so getting experience working on a "real" project is always welcome. I've been trying somewhat to establish a team for such things but nothing ever works out.

music is good, definatly music. One of my honest belifes in game design is that music plays a major and at times vital impact in vodeo games, unfortunatly it is one of the aspects of video game creation I lack the tools to make myself, that and marketing :)

Re: I'll try to keep it short, heheh.

[machinion]

I am also in college but about to be done. I would think that the smaller the team the better, as long as all the pieces are there. Well, I guess the next question is what kind of payment for your work do you need? If it were an even partnership, we would be doing our work for "free", but expect that at a later date there will be monthly payments. I think 5.00 a month subscription if players lock into a year is a nice way to ensure payments and also treat them to a deal. I've done the math before heheh, lets say each server has 10k players, that is 50k per month for one server, 600k for the year. Potentially with multiple servers, this could be a good amount. I am thinking globally with this game, there could be 100 servers in a few years time. that'd be 60 million. Heheh, I might be getting a head of myself but the point is from a business viewpoint, gaming is a very viable source of income.

For a timeframe, it actually doesn't seem too impossible to have it finished by the end of summer. I have a lot allready on paper, and to get a prototype going may be easier than it seems. It is a matter of translating, as I've been revising for about a year allready.

I really really like your engine the more I think about it especially because of the overlay abilities you've been working on. You can do multiples right? I think it'd need some static and some temporary or changable. I just wonder if there would need to be some kind of window within window effect to get the menus to not cut anything off that is there.

Re: I'll try to keep it short, heheh.

[neoxenomega]

For the most part from what I know games run off of a single window, buttons and internal windows are designed with the engine and do not use the OS windowing system. It has no net code, as I do not know socket programming (net programming)... yet.

One thing I have not thought about until now is having the game window render a remote scene and display it with the local scene, think security camera. I know know a good use of those pixel buffers. Luckly this will require the use of a camera which is one of the listed things I haven't implemented yet.

Re: I'll try to keep it short, heheh.

[machinion]

Hmmm, I was unaware of that problem. I was thinking to make a "dashboard" window which was the main window, and have the "live window" or wherever the world is, a large centralized window, giving the use of the bottom, and sides of the total screen for menus,profile pictures, etc....

The remote scene would also be useful for a radar window. Geez, Cameras... I haven't even considered that yet. If you were to remote view an area, would it be in the same camera angle and viewpoint as the local window? I've been thinking of a static zoomed out 3/4 view for area maps, and zooming in and allowing rotation for battle. Although maybe rotation would be a good option for area maps as well. I've been thinking if when battle commences, you even need to have the graphics of that area rendering on the area map. You could have reduced rendering, a freeze frame like effect or "still frames", for any "viewing unit" outside a bordering area block, they can't see what is going on. If they move forward closer, the in-battle area gets rendered. What worth is there for lessening the rendering like this?

Re: I'll try to keep it short, heheh.

[neoxenomega]

Techniques like that are used all the time, reduce the geometry to improve rendering performance. But often implementing them is the hard part, either you have to hand build X models of the same model for different viewing distances or you have to make a really good ingame thing that does it. I belive 3ds max can generate models with reduced geometry... but 3ds max is so big i havent' found that option yet and I've been using it for 6 years.

To make an engine with a windowing system like that you would have to make it almost OS exclusive, Windows, linux, and Mac are all so much different you'd be rebuilding like half the game for each OS you want to run it on. But if you build that yourself, exclusive to your engine, you just have to change the main program loop.