A new project and a new Engine - OPENEngine

[Arr0nax]

Hello, fellow old school RPG amateurs

I'm working on a long-haul project and am starting to get the first concrete results. Being too hyped up not to share, I'm making a little anouncement !

I've started, about a year ago, to develop a *flexible* engine dedicated to top-down style games like RPGs and STRs, all of this in my free time, because I was so desperate about the current RPG situation...
The purpose of the engine is primarily to be the support of a moderately multiplayer Roleplaying game I will start to develop next year, taking a year off from my studies.

To give you the scope of the engine, I started developping it after being pissed off about how NeverWinter Nights - which we were making a mod for at the time -, was so unflexible and clunky to use. So the purpose is to give a similar environment, but not bound to D&D rules. In short : giving to RPG amateurs like you and me the tools to freely and flexibly design the worlds, stories and mechanics of their choice, in 3D, and with multiplayer support.

Currently the state and features are still completely experimental, but at least I got here, alone (with the help of some pretty neat open-source libraries)

<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/UNw-e3CakWo&hl=fr_FR&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed>

The houses disappearing are part of a field of view mechanism that isn't intended to be applied to houses, but to moving entities. So that's just for testing purposes

The development roadmap looks more or less like this :
-Dialogue system
-Inventory component
-Basic combat system
-Network client/server
-Physics and collisions
-Basic toolset

Then the Opokonverob project will get started...
The engine will be closed-source for the duration of the Opokonverob project, but a couple of years after it will be released to the public domain.

Well, that's it for the moment

By the way, if you have suggestions of what features SHOULD be in an RPG developement suite, feel free to share... altough my personal list is already pretty complete :]

 

[iridium_ionizer]

If your engine will be as complete and wonderful as you say it will be, then good luck to you. A couple of things to consider:
1) Consider changing the name. A quick google search of Openengine lists many different programs with that name. Further, because your software is closed source (currently) there is a truth in advertising gap.
2) Make a better video. If you are making a game engine that you want to be even mildly popular (whether through user-made games or your own games), you need to show something more game-like. Not a game camera falling in from a thousand meters of blackness, but starting from a "normal" top-down view and then going to a zoom in from the side. Not a stuttering framerate, but smooth animations without disappearing boxes (I don't care what the reason is disappearing boxes make it look cheap). Show an actual mockup RPG with a main character dressed in something who walks around someplace that resembles a real world.

I apologize if I sound harsh, but the internet is full of half-finished game engines, and there is almost no point in showing yours unless you can make it look polished and something that people would enjoy using. Best of luck.

Edit: added "gap"

 

[Dario ff]

Implement a proper rotation for the character? Seriously, IMO, characters should move even if they're not facing in the right direction, and it seems your character doesn't look for the nearest angle, you're just using some basic interpolation.

Also, I would put a video with a MUCH better framerate. If you're using a Delta time like framerate, just slow it down, capture, and when finished, speed up the video.

 

[Arr0nax]

No offense taken. As a programmer I get pretty excited for very simple accomplishments, and I suppose it's your role to remind me of how *horrid* it looks like from another angle of view.

Yet I'm forced to oppose you on the "no point in showing" part.
I'm convinced of the interest of showing the progresses whatever how shitty they may appear, because I find it more interesting to get incremental feedback than doing my stuff in the dark and then release it at the end when it's too late for anyone to provide insight.
The scope of this thread is not yet about "popularity", but to get the kind of negative feedback you just provided me, features ideas, and whatever insight the population of this forum may provide. The forum is already my main inspiration regarding the many ways in which a RPG can provide fun, and the logical continuation of this is showing what I do.

So, this is the current state of things.
The visual aspect won't get enhanced much in the followings weeks because I'm currently working on functionality, not assets. But I've noted your griefs and will adress them in time
The 'stuttering' framerate is linked to the capture software, the game itself is smooth. I'm using camstudio but there are probably better ones.
The name is... well, a temporary name

Implement a proper rotation for the character? Seriously, IMO, characters should move even if they're not facing in the right direction, and it seems your character doesn't look for the nearest angle, you're just using some basic interpolation.

Also, I would put a video with a MUCH better framerate. If you're using a Delta time like framerate, just slow it down, capture, and when finished, speed up the video.

If you want to get into details, i'm using a atan2(v1.y, v1.x) - atan2(v2.y, v2.x) to discover the proper sense of rotation, yet it doesn't work in every situation. I've yet to discover why.
As to making the character move while rotating, yes it's on my todolist !

 

[Santoka]

The video fulfilled it's purpose, don't waste time trying to make it look fancier, it's not your job. But I must admit it's hard to provide ideas or feedback when all we see is your progress so far.

The forum is already my main inspiration regarding the many ways in which a RPG can provide fun

So I guess there will be FO3 bashing feature ! Cool !

 

[Dario ff]

I do get excited too about simple accomplishments while programming(though it's not that often since I've been on this for some years), but if you want to get that development feel, I'd say you just post one of the most polished parts of your engine, not the whole unfinished thing. For example, some weeks ago I presented in another community a showoff of the animation system for my actual project.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcbztM7U_TM[/youtube]
I got really positive feedback from it(from the community, not from Youtube), and that kind of stuff really gets your motivation and inspiration flowing.

The 'stuttering' framerate is linked to the capture software, the game itself is smooth. I'm using camstudio but there are probably better ones.

I assumed the gameplay was smooth, just your recording was bad . I use CamStudio too, so here's some tips:
- Reduce the resolution of the program(You're using Ogre after all), and capture it. After all, Youtube doesn't have a really big res.
- Just slow down the game and capture it. Then, you speed up the video to normal speed. You use Ogre, so just modify the value of the Delta Time.
- Look for the different options in CamStudio, it might not be configured well by default.

If you want to get into details, i'm using a atan2(v1.y, v1.x) - atan2(v2.y, v2.x) to discover the proper sense of rotation, yet it doesn't work in every situation. I've yet to discover why.

What kind of rotation you're using for the character? Polar coordinates or a single radian angle? In the latter case, you just need to look for the "distances" from going to the left or to the right.

 

[Arr0nax]

The video fulfilled it's purpose, don't waste time trying to make it look fancier, it's not your job. But I must admit it's hard to provide ideas or feedback when all we see is your progress so far.

Well it's true that there aren't so much mechanics exposed so they're not much to comment about this.
The only mechanic exposed is the appearance and disappearance of props relatively to your actors perceptions, which ultimately will be applied only to living entities.
It's also incidently the mechanic that is used to propagate the events the AI will act on. A given entity receives events from the entities whithin its perceptions (that can be many). So you'll use these to listen on a door to be notified when it's opened, a chest, a NPC, etc...

What kind of rotation you're using for the character? Polar coordinates or a single radian angle? In the latter case, you just need to look for the "distances" from going to the left or to the right.

I'm getting a positive or negative angle from the formula I gave (x,y coordinates of the two direction vectors) and then apply an angular velocity on the UP axis.
But you're right, it may be simpler to just check the angles in the two directions and get the smallest one.

And yes, your animation system looks pretty neat Do you mean you coded the animation part from scratch ? What about the physics ?

 

[Dario ff]

Do you mean you coded the animation part from scratch ? What about the physics ?

The physics is from a heavily modified version of Box2D. Neat open-source engine for 2D physics.

The animation part was all done from scratch. As you can see, you need really little rendering to get an animated character, and I can get really smooth animations and keyframe interpolation. Similar to a 3D model.

And yes, just check the smaller distance if the character only rotates in one axis.