Community game project?

thefool · Post by **thefool** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 7:31 pm

ok that would be the best hehe

PB · Post by PB » Wed Mar 16, 2005 11:14 pm

> @PB: Have you tryed the starwars game Republic Commando?

As a matter of fact, yes, just the other day on my Xbox. I only played it for
about 10 minutes before getting bored. All these shoot-em-ups are boring.
I want to do something different... oh how I wish for something different.

I can honestly say the last game I played that held my interest was Grand
Theft Auto III, mainly because I could do whatever I wanted and it wasn't
all just car driving. But this game also has become very finite now... there's
only so many times you can escape a cop or drive a taxi or shoot people.
I haven't played a truly satisfying game for a year or so now.

dagcrack · Post by **dagcrack** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 11:26 pm

You're just too demanding!

Ok, freedom is what you like!

Dreglor · Post by **Dreglor** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 4:19 am

"freelancer" type games are the best, and i think thats what PB was getting to is that most games today are so wound up in there storylines that they have to be restrictive to the point that they take the value of the game away.
My idea is this freelance althought the mechanics of the gamewill be pretty intresting to do, but the fun,orginality,replay value will be worth it
we should still gather up are ideas then find the one we want to do by voting or somthing

dagcrack · Post by **dagcrack** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 1:46 pm

I'd say, dont try to make the next hit, because that wont happen if you got no experience in game dev. You'd ratter preffer to work on a simpler project, sure, adding bits of fun, that once the main core of the game is accomplished. Than work for the next 3 years on something that will end up being a bunch of mixed game genres where you wont know what to do at the time to play it.

I'd say, lets put some ideas over the table.
Discuss them,
Pick them,
Work them,
Publish them.

PS: Let's go for 3D. And a physics engine will be needed, even if the game does not require so

- for nice particles effects you'll need a physics engine, even if you programm it, but, why losing time on it when you can already use a nice engine and focus on other important aspects of the game? (ODE is nice, but you got Tokamak, Newton, Axis, etc to choose). I give my vote to ODE.

The engine should support some common mesh formats (.x dx8 would be the most important, and also .obj -wavefront- ).

For textures and skins I would say DDS format is impressively nice. But we can live with tga and png.

The gfx engine, still we need to discuss this, and I think its pretty important. But lets get a game idea and later focus on the technology.

Why? maybe the game wont require the latest in rendering technology, therefor we wont need UE3 for it

. I like eye candy, but there must be a balance where gameplay is about 60% and the other comes from the graphics and sounds.

Dreglor · Post by **Dreglor** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 4:02 pm

If we could get OGRE 1.0 in there that would be awsome becasue now it can do all that we ask of it but it's so hard to implement it into PB becasue of the object orentation a precompiled Dll is insaine to look at the functions are mostly symbols with a small name to it.
So Gfx engine is still up in the air but I haven't see many engines anyways.
a physics engine is optional unless were doing somthing like fps which every one doesn't want to do, so if were going to do any physics it will be are NEWTON becasue it's goal is precise in real-time but i don't think we will be using it...
Textures why dds yes there super but unnessary Tga is perfect most engines surport the format and the less work the more focus on the game logic

Sound Audiere (or how ever you spell it) is nice for music (all these formats) but it too limiting for sfx
i saw the recent BASS.DLL wrapper now that is beatiful compared to Audiere
I took a look at it breifly and it has alot of features perfect for games like 3d sound i dunno about eax or anything but it still a better option than audiere
Also I figure we use WAV for sound and MP3 For Music
I personally think that we should Pack this all up into Packs so it doesn't take 10 gig to install but thats just me
So to sum up my Votes for 3rd party parts

I vote for
Newton (if needed) for the physics
TGA for the textures
BASS for Sound
I am sorta voting for
Audiere for music?
Ogre For Graphics?
And Since I already put my Game Idea down I Vote for it

If we plug these all together and make them work we have a Game Engine to work with

then all we have to do it the real game development

dagcrack · Post by **dagcrack** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 5:11 pm

6 years working on game dev! and I must disagree with almost everything you said

So Gfx engine is still up in the air but I haven't see many engines anyways.

Just to name a few:

Gizmo3D
Nebula 2 Device
Irrlicht
BasicGL

a physics engine is optional unless were doing somthing like fps which every one doesn't want to do

Nope its not useless, what about a puzzle game where you must move boxes and stock them in order to reach a certain point, woudlnt it be nice to have physics for them? you make a bad movement and they all fall . Sure a physics engine could be too much for this easy task, but once you have it implemented, you can start adding physics everywhere, for the heck of the gameplay.

so if were going to do any physics it will be are NEWTON becasue it's goal is precise in real-time but i don't think we will be using it...

Ehh no, Newton is one of the Slowest and buggier physics engines I could find out there, ODE is awesome fast and has almost no bugs, same with Tokamak about speed, looks even faster than ODE on some points, on some others its slower. AXIS is very new, take a look at it, its fast fast fast. Newton is one of the slowest!!!

Textures why dds yes there super but unnessary Tga is perfect most engines surport the format and the less work the more focus on the game logic Smile

Well.. no again

, DDS Has very nice compression and support for many temptating features. take a look at nivida's site. Yes TGA is ok but not as good.

Sound Audiere (or how ever you spell it) is nice for music (all these formats) but it too limiting for sfx
i saw the recent BASS.DLL wrapper now that is beatiful compared to Audiere

Yes I dont like Audiere, I preffer any other engine with DX support

Also I figure we use WAV for sound and MP3 For Music

NO, no MP3! we'll use OGG if possible. Why? for getting used to it, as if we ever publish a game, we wont have to pay for a licence (mp3 is licenced you must pay them after you sold an X amount of copies.. say 1000 or 4000 I dont remember the number right now).

I personally think that we should Pack this all up into Packs so it doesn't take 10 gig to install but thats just me

Well DDS will help on the size of textures, OGG will help a little as well, compresses more than mp3 (ON SOME CASES).

Yes we could use some compression algorithm but unpacking in runtime is a pain. for distribution OK because the installer will do once, but I preffer to pack using molebox which unpacks to memory, so no temps are created on hdd and so, media is safe.

I vote for
Newton (if needed) for the physics
TGA for the textures
BASS for Sound
I am sorta voting for
Audiere for music?
Ogre For Graphics?
And Since I already put my Game Idea down I Vote for it Razz

You voted for bush as well, didnt you?

thefool · Post by **thefool** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 5:12 pm

stupid b****

we use OGG for music of course!!!

wav for sounds, well that could be ok. Otherwise if we have
a lot of sounds a compressed format as OGG would be rather nice.
btw: Why use 2 different sound libs? If i suppose we make game freeware, bass is free for us too. Otherwise i heard audiere should be ok too and both libs supports ogg format. I dont know if there is an advantage such as better controlling of music if using 2 libs..?

I vote for
Newton (if needed) for the physics
TGA for the textures
BASS for Sound
I am sorta voting for
Audiere for music?
Ogre For Graphics?

Newton : I really dunno how good it is
TGA : i like that format that also a good idea
BASS : Also a good idea heard it should be one of the best
Audiere : bass supports ogg as well but if seperate lib needed its
a good free choise!
OGRE : good idea too. Fred _should_ be on the task of updating.

edit:
i will say OGG compresses more than mp3 and makes BETTER sound in ABSOLUTE most cases

also if we really need wav for sounds because they are faster
not just because its better quality we could pack all effects etc to
ogg and at install_time unpacked to wav. I dont think molebox
is needed here i would rather like a game wich is not packed or
anything. Only installer should be.
btw dont take it as an insult i called you a bitch it was just 4 fun

dagcrack · Post by **dagcrack** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 9:22 pm

Oh noo firefox crashed and I lost my reply

Im not in the mood for re-writing it. Lets say "Keep it up with the game idea, we'll make something out of this" for now

thefool · Post by **thefool** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 9:45 pm

good idea

Rescator · Post by **Rescator** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 10:17 pm

most games today are so wound up in there storylines that they have to be restrictive to the point that they take the value of the game away

Heh most games today with a "storyline" suck.
Remember a storyline is not the same as a plot,
most "storylines" in games these days are barely a plot or setting
to tie together a loose campaign.

Only adventure games still has true storylines that is more than just a plot device.

Remember, a secret special agent going to various places around the world hunting a terrorist/organization is not what I'd call a storyline, it's a plot.
Oops I think I just dissed Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

in a game like that the storyline is just a plot device to tie the missions/campaigh together,
instead of making it look like well, just a mission based campaign (which don't always have to have a "story")

You should decide early on if you wish to "tell a story",
or make a "open game", or a "storybased game" or a "plot driven game"
and if it should be open ended or conclusive.

If a storyline is added as a aftertought then make sure it stays that,
don't try to push it as a story game.
If the storyline is the main focus, then make sure you keep it the main focus,
nothing worse than a great storyline (or the potential of one)
getting forgotten in the shadows of another "shooter" (be it fps or rpg or rts)

Always plan everything ahead of starting to make it,
don't even try to think about what engines or whatever to use until
you actually have the entire game planned out in great detail,
it's only then you actually get an overview of what is required,
what can NOT be done, and have a pretty good idea on what current engines and libraries can do or can not do what the game actually requires.

PS! BASS should support OGG natively as far as I know,
and it is available on multiple platforms too. (including consoles I think)
Personally I found it somewhat easier to use than FMOD (which is also good)

And try to avoid TGA if possible, it's old and outdated.
PNG should do fine for general storage of textures on disk/cd, and just like TGA no compression quality loss (unlike JPG etc).
And the fact that PureBasic don't support PNG alpha masks isn't that much of a loss really.
usually there is a lot more gain in storing the textures/meshes seperate from the actual masks.
That way you could more easily have multiple meshes but one mask for them all.
And altough I haven't studied PNG's alpha compression,
I do believe that a seperate mask PNG would allow you to use "black and white" (gray scale) optimization advantages and thus PNG could save you even more space.

Plan all areas of the game first,
when you know what is needed and what can not be done (i.e get dumped).
"Then" you can start considering engine stuff, middleware, etc.

thefool · Post by **thefool** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 10:26 pm

Good point.
But of course since we havent decided game yet etc we can speculate a bit
on the engine stuff

so, FRED: when is the ogre update coming?

well if we finds out ogre is at our hands, then no needs to worry about the engine [at least i think that]..

Blade · Post by **Blade** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 11:13 pm

Rescator wrote: And try to avoid TGA if possible, it's old and outdated.

Yes!

TGA was created to store 24 color images for the first-ever "true color" videocard, named TarGA, in ages when a 4 color CGA graphics was acceptable...

Rescator wrote: And altough I haven't studied PNG's alpha compression,
I do believe that a seperate mask PNG would allow you to use "black and white" (gray scale) optimization advantages and thus PNG could save you even more space.

According to PNG specs, alpha masks depth can be choosen as 1bit (black/white) 4bits(16 levels, cool and light) and the "usual" 8bit (256 levels).
Should be avaiable even a 16bit (65536 levels) masks for hi-quality images.
Yes, PNG is the right choice, and it's patents free.
If only Fred would add loading/saving alpha...

dagcrack · Post by **dagcrack** » Fri Mar 18, 2005 1:44 am

Go tell them tga is old, I work with dds only. mind you?

Hey put a little bigger the comment to fred, I think he wont be able to read it if you make it that small heheh.

But we are getting a little offtopic again, I firstly said "lets choose a game type, throw up some ideas, put everything over the table and start planning". kinda, didnt I ?

OGRE is OK but not the best -free open sourced engine- out there you know..

And talking about getting offtopic... happy Saint Patrick's day!! (or DRUNKY Saint Patrick's!)

thefool · Post by **thefool** » Fri Mar 18, 2005 3:13 pm

dagcrack wrote: Hey put a little bigger the comment to fred, I think he wont be able to read it if you make it that small

is that ok