Game Concept: Technical

[Kay]

Great! With some fumbling I got some of the PyOGRE demos working, including the robots, terrain, skydome, and smoke programs. (Others like the BSP demo summon the Blue Screen of Death, but they did with regular OGRE too, and these are features I never expect to use.) I was able to change superficial things like the # of robots or the color of lighting, easily. Can I use py2exe to build PyOGRE-based EXEs the same way as with regular Python EXEs? (Guess I'll find out.)

Meanwhile I started a journal for my AI, Niss. By this I mean that Niss gets to write the entries. See Niss' Journal. I'm hoping to enable Niss to send e-mails soon! More importantly, I've got refined item and world structure code, and created an MVC-based version of the state-machine "DumbAI." If I had a tile-based scene manager, I could stick my AIs in it.

[Kay]

I'm not sure anyone's still listening, but I'll post a little update anyway. I've got the following:

-Graphics engine/Interface: Pygame (SDL)-based tiled graphics engine currently displaying a big 30x25 grid of tiny 20x20 tiles, with arrow-controlled movement, a scrollable text display for entering commands, and mouse support for buttons etc.
-Worldsim (virtual world): Engine-independent; can even run as a stand-alone program using ASCII graphics. Multi-layer tile/room-based world with collision detection, interactive objects, and scripts. Can handle over 100 entities scurrying around without noticeable slowdown.
-Sound: MIDI/MP3 music. Untested WAV support.
-AI: Dumb AI (state machine) built into worldsim; advanced AI (NISS) currently wandering around eating tofu, but with much more complex code; close to having approach/food-finding behavior. Have mostly-unused "body part" code for more realistic modeling of inventory etc.
-Battle system: Stand-alone, playable furry combat game using text interface.
-Obviously missing: Animated movement; real interface; load/save world code (just needs tweaking, then a room-editor function); inventory and related details like picking stuff up; good art; story; good graphics engine.
-Possible work directions: Use OGRE; upgrade fancy AI; make basic AI suitable for a game; build real interface; set up inventory-related functions for AIs' use and incidentally for adventure-style gameplay.

[FallenWolf]

i AM listening, but still not sure how i can help

[WyrmMaster]

Maybe this thread (and its cousin "ITE Sequel Concept: Outline") should be moved to a new forum about Game Development. Or only part of the threads. And renamed something other than "ITE Sequel ..."

Would that be OK? Suggestions?

[Kay]

Moving and renaming the threads would be fine with me. "Game Concept: Outline/Technical" as a new name? We're no longer thinking of trying to create a sequel, which we wouldn't have the right to do anyway; just something similar.

Thanks, Wyrmkeep folks, for letting us use this board for the topic at all.

@ FallenWolf: Do you have any thoughts on what you'd like to see in a game? If you had a game that looked vaguely like ItE, what would you want to be able to do in the game world? Would you be willing to help test a tech demo of walking around picking up and using objects? There's not much point in doing art until I have a real graphics engine -- unless you want to post cool concept art! And if you know of anyone who'd be interested in helping with any aspect of the project, please tell them about it.

I need to bang out a legal memo outline now, so I can get back to the real work.

Kris

[FallenWolf]

Of course i want to play demos just tell me what to do, my email takes up to 2gb so just send all stuff i need to fallenwolf@gmx.net

i do have alot of thougts, as i already said some time ago, i wrote a sequel myself but stopped somewhere in the middle as i was really out of ideas (and nobody showed interest that time).

as i am a story writer i think i might help you, i just need a basic idea where to start, what needs to be contained and where i shall end

you can contact me on ICQ (92963416) as well.

thanks

~Chris

[Kay]

First, an update. I added save/load code, better language code, etc., so I've now got:
-Graphics engine/Interface: Pygame (SDL)-based tiled graphics engine currently displaying a big 35x25 grid of tiny 20x20 tiles, with arrow-controlled movement, a scrollable text display for entering commands, and mouse support for buttons etc.
-Worldsim (virtual world): Engine-independent; can even run as a stand-alone program using ASCII graphics. Multi-layer tile/room-based world with collision detection, interactive objects, and scripts. Can handle over 100 entities scurrying around without noticeable slowdown. Can save and load. ("Just needs tweaking," my tail.)
-Sound: MIDI/MP3/OGG music and WAV sound.
-AI: Dumb AI (state machine) built into worldsim; advanced AI (NISS) currently wandering around eating tofu, but with much more complex code; now has approach/food-finding behavior, complex "body" system for input, sensing, and inventory, and the ability to understand some simple English sentences.
-Battle system: Stand-alone, playable furry combat game using text interface.
-Missing: Real graphics engine with animated movement and good art; real interface; story.
-Possible work directions: Use OGRE; upgrade fancy AI; make basic AI suitable for a game; build real interface; set up adventure-style use of objects.

Game-wise, I think the next thing is to set up objects/scripts that can be used on each other, eg. a key that unlocks a door. The program would then be playable enough to let you move around picking up and using objects to get through a maze or something. AI-wise, the next thing might be to get the DumbAIs smart enough that you can walk up to them and engage them in Morrowind-style conversation. The program is still too ugly to be usable as a real game, but the code is getting close to where we can talk about graphics other than these tiny tiles I'm using.

If you want to play a text-based demo of the body part system (which lets you touch and manipulate virtual objects), see my site. (I don't really need feedback on that.) Niss' journal is at LiveJournal, but it's mostly my ramblings about the code upgrades I'm doing, at the moment.

Screenshot (click to enlarge):

[Threed]

It looks like you've made some serious headway with NISS.

Sorry I haven't been able to help at all--I am still entangled in the writhing mass called "college." It is painful and leaves me with little free time.

The NISS journal is cute.