Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Hi Thomas, I was under the impression that xml was more structured so you could query it easily using xPath or parse it using xerces or a similar utility. Plus, how would you validate your text file? You could compare the xml with the xsd and validate the xml source quickly. Pranav -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Ward Sent: Friday, July 24, 2009 8:49 PM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch Hi Pranav, Well, I really dont' see any advantage in using xml over text files for storing game info. A flat database is basically nothing more than a text file with info separated by commas, and that is easy enough to implement if I wanted to. Smile. Pranav Lal wrote: Hi Thomas, Why not use XML? You may be able to get the same advantage as in a database. Pranav --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Hi Thomas, I hear you. However, my question relates to the stage where you are writing the story for the game in a word processor. Or, do you start writing directly in a database? If you go to http\://www.ffproject.com or http://www.projectaon.org, you will find a number of downloadable game books. They are word documents consisting of numbered sections. You choose the relevant section based upon dice roles etc. My question relates to writing those numbered sections. When I am writing the game story before writing the code, how do I keep track of the different paths the character could follow? Pranav -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Ward Sent: Friday, July 24, 2009 8:53 PM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch Hi Praniv, That is basically why you would use a scripting language such as perl, javascript, or php. The scripting language can help keep track of where you've been, what adventures you have completed, and so on. You could store that info in a database or parce it out to a text file for later use. HTH Pranav Lal wrote: Hi Thomas, This is an excellent post and I have archived it. One question. Could you elaborate on the process of making a game book? How do you write the various alternatives and keep track of them? For example, let's say that our protagonist is called Peter. Peter can do two things. He can either go to the pub or go to the old barn. If he goes to the pub, something else happens. If he goes to the barn then something completely different happens. Pranav --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Hi Pranav, Well, I really dont' see any advantage in using xml over text files for storing game info. A flat database is basically nothing more than a text file with info separated by commas, and that is easy enough to implement if I wanted to. Smile. Pranav Lal wrote: Hi Thomas, Why not use XML? You may be able to get the same advantage as in a database. Pranav --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Hi Praniv, That is basically why you would use a scripting language such as perl, javascript, or php. The scripting language can help keep track of where you've been, what adventures you have completed, and so on. You could store that info in a database or parce it out to a text file for later use. HTH Pranav Lal wrote: Hi Thomas, This is an excellent post and I have archived it. One question. Could you elaborate on the process of making a game book? How do you write the various alternatives and keep track of them? For example, let's say that our protagonist is called Peter. Peter can do two things. He can either go to the pub or go to the old barn. If he goes to the pub, something else happens. If he goes to the barn then something completely different happens. Pranav --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
O no, no FPS please. How about something like quest for glory? It was a strategy game with some combat thrown in. -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Ward Sent: Sunday, July 19, 2009 3:28 AM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch Hi Aaron, Well, assuming I created a simple text interface, similar to the Infocom games, there wouldn't be any software dependancies to speak of. However, seeing as the Braille Plus is a type of note taker device any game written for it would have to be pretty bare bones. I don't know at this point exactly how bare bones I plan to get with this game. I might decide to go to a more action based roll playing game since I am getting a lot of requests for something more like an FPS rather than a game book style game. Valiant8086 wrote: Hi. yes it uses debian linux arm, at least that's what I've heard tell of. It does give access to the console but I don't know anything about dependencies or anything like that. I'm able to connect to alter aeon and mud on it using the telnet client but that's about all I know how to do. It definitly doesn't have things like pygame built into it. Heh, too bad. Playing soundrts on that thing could be a hoot. If you have commands I can type to find out what dependencies it has so you'd know, and if it made any difference to you in the long run, I'd be glad to do so. It uses hmm, I can't remember. A popular console screen reader for TUI distros of linux. I'd know if I heard it. You can use the number pad to navigate. 7, 8, and 9 move up, read current or move down lines, 4 5 and 6 do the same for words, 1 2 and 3 the same for characters. From the browser point of view, it uses minny mo, which is supposed to be baby firefox. It seems to work with dynamic content. I have never tried to play srith on it. Maybe I should to see how it works. if you did develop a browser based game I'm betting it would be a really simple browser page setup that the browser in question could handle just fine. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
what wold be cool is a sci fi rpg that had text to display info and sound and you would use the keyboard to do things. like arrows to go north east etc. I don't want a web based game, I just had enough of em. also the text could be communicated to the screen reader directly instead of sapi that would fix a lot of problems imho. it could do it like lw, jaws and wineyes, sapi and a text display for hose who don't have jaws or wineyes and don't want to use sapi. I could help with sounds. I was designing a lot of sci fi sounds recently like a busy background of a ships or stations control room. On 7/19/09, Pranav Lal pranav@gmail.com wrote: O no, no FPS please. How about something like quest for glory? It was a strategy game with some combat thrown in. -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Ward Sent: Sunday, July 19, 2009 3:28 AM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch Hi Aaron, Well, assuming I created a simple text interface, similar to the Infocom games, there wouldn't be any software dependancies to speak of. However, seeing as the Braille Plus is a type of note taker device any game written for it would have to be pretty bare bones. I don't know at this point exactly how bare bones I plan to get with this game. I might decide to go to a more action based roll playing game since I am getting a lot of requests for something more like an FPS rather than a game book style game. Valiant8086 wrote: Hi. yes it uses debian linux arm, at least that's what I've heard tell of. It does give access to the console but I don't know anything about dependencies or anything like that. I'm able to connect to alter aeon and mud on it using the telnet client but that's about all I know how to do. It definitly doesn't have things like pygame built into it. Heh, too bad. Playing soundrts on that thing could be a hoot. If you have commands I can type to find out what dependencies it has so you'd know, and if it made any difference to you in the long run, I'd be glad to do so. It uses hmm, I can't remember. A popular console screen reader for TUI distros of linux. I'd know if I heard it. You can use the number pad to navigate. 7, 8, and 9 move up, read current or move down lines, 4 5 and 6 do the same for words, 1 2 and 3 the same for characters. From the browser point of view, it uses minny mo, which is supposed to be baby firefox. It seems to work with dynamic content. I have never tried to play srith on it. Maybe I should to see how it works. if you did develop a browser based game I'm betting it would be a really simple browser page setup that the browser in question could handle just fine. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Hi, Yeah, I suppose that might be possible. Although, I am not sure on the tecnical details of the game yet. I am getting quite a lot of requests to create a stand alone application rather than create a web based game. If I do so running the game on a Braille Plus would depend on its technical specifications. If I am not mistaken doesn't the Braille Plus run a varient of Linux as the operating system? If so If I made a console application for Linux it might run on a Braille Plus with very little modifications. I guess i need to know more about the Braille Plus to tell you one way or the other. Smile. Valiant8086 wrote: I'm interested in being able to play this game on my braille plus. As a browser based game I believe this could be achieved easily. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Hi, Chris, I like your Gming style. As a player, I tend to enjoy interacting with all aspects of the world, and enjoy a world that has many facets. I tend to write stories about things my character does, things that we can't always cover in game play. Are you running any PBEM games or anything of that ilk? --- Anyone interested in chatting about role-playing, board or card games can find me on Twitter as Loravara. -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Christopher Bartlett Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 1:17 AM To: 'Gamers Discussion list' Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch This issue of open-ended vs. tightly scripted RPing interests me. My style as a game master is to set the scene, create significant non-player characters with their own agendas, some of whom act off stage independent of, or in reaction to the player characters, but who may not meet them until a climactic scene. Once I've wound this world up and set the scene, I release the PCs into the world. I then regard my job as deciding how the world reacts to their actions. They are the protagonists of this story after all. Now that is human role-playing. I've never seen a computer-mediated game come anywhere close to the richness of a human-mediated game, even in the MMORPG world. There is always a narrowing of objectives to fit a restrictive model. This makes sense in a paradigm that demands complete determinism for each scenario, where every action must be anticipated by the game designer. Without massive hardware support, you aren't going to see emergent behavior out of this deterministic model, which is the main reason human-mediated games are still more satisfying. I'm not expecting Tom to break this problem, although if he has ways around it, I'm so there for playing and ultimately purchasing the game. Chris Bartlett --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Hi, Thomas, I've always thought that the Adept books would make a great game world. I'd particularly like to see The Game from Proton coded into something cool, but I like the juxtaposition, as it were, of science and magic, and a character that would have different talents, skill choices and paths to pursue based on which world they were in. -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Ward Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 10:17 PM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch Hi Dark, Regardless if I create the game as a stand alone game in C++ or create it as an online game I want to make it a single player game. I'm not really interested in creating a party or pvp type game at this point. As far as your idea of creating a universe with mixed technological skills that kind of reminds me of an author I sometimes read. I don't know if you have read any of Piers Anthony's books, but he often has an interesting way of mixing science fiction and fantacy into the same story. For example, in the Blue Adept Piers Anthony describes a world with two aspects. In one frame it is a high tech world with computers, androids, intersteller space travel, lasers, and anything else you would expect from a science fiction novel. In the other frame it is a fantacy type world complete with werewolves, unicorns, people use magic instead of technology, etc. Some people are able to pass between the two frames of existance. Thus the main character is able to be both active in a fantacy and science fiction story at the same time. Anyway, even big name science fiction stories like Star Wars do have a fantacy aspect to them as well. If you think about it Star Wars is something like a fantacy story set in a science fiction setting. Instead of magic you have the force. Instead of swords you have light sabers. Instead of knights waring armour you have storm troopers. A lot of the same principles apply. it is just that Star Wars is suppose to be futuristic instead of being set in ancient earth. Smile. dark wrote: As I said Tom, I certainly see the logic of the online approach, I just hope it can be kept single player the way Sryth originally was intended to be. I would however love to see a scifi rp game giving you a hole galaxy to explore with different planets, quests separately on the various planets, flying a spaceship etc. Pluss, you have infinite expantion, especially if you made your universe similar to the Starwars or Dune universe with different amounts of technology found on different worlds, you could have standard dungeon crawling with swords on one world, and high tech robot developement elsewhere. Just my thoughts. Beware the Grue! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
I'm not yet, but if there's sufficient interest, I would be persuadable. Chris Bartlett -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Nancy Sent: Saturday, July 18, 2009 8:05 AM To: 'Gamers Discussion list' Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch Hi, Chris, I like your Gming style. As a player, I tend to enjoy interacting with all aspects of the world, and enjoy a world that has many facets. I tend to write stories about things my character does, things that we can't always cover in game play. Are you running any PBEM games or anything of that ilk? --- Anyone interested in chatting about role-playing, board or card games can find me on Twitter as Loravara. -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Christopher Bartlett Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 1:17 AM To: 'Gamers Discussion list' Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch This issue of open-ended vs. tightly scripted RPing interests me. My style as a game master is to set the scene, create significant non-player characters with their own agendas, some of whom act off stage independent of, or in reaction to the player characters, but who may not meet them until a climactic scene. Once I've wound this world up and set the scene, I release the PCs into the world. I then regard my job as deciding how the world reacts to their actions. They are the protagonists of this story after all. Now that is human role-playing. I've never seen a computer-mediated game come anywhere close to the richness of a human-mediated game, even in the MMORPG world. There is always a narrowing of objectives to fit a restrictive model. This makes sense in a paradigm that demands complete determinism for each scenario, where every action must be anticipated by the game designer. Without massive hardware support, you aren't going to see emergent behavior out of this deterministic model, which is the main reason human-mediated games are still more satisfying. I'm not expecting Tom to break this problem, although if he has ways around it, I'm so there for playing and ultimately purchasing the game. Chris Bartlett --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Hi. yes it uses debian linux arm, at least that's what I've heard tell of. It does give access to the console but I don't know anything about dependencies or anything like that. I'm able to connect to alter aeon and mud on it using the telnet client but that's about all I know how to do. It definitly doesn't have things like pygame built into it. Heh, too bad. Playing soundrts on that thing could be a hoot. If you have commands I can type to find out what dependencies it has so you'd know, and if it made any difference to you in the long run, I'd be glad to do so. It uses hmm, I can't remember. A popular console screen reader for TUI distros of linux. I'd know if I heard it. You can use the number pad to navigate. 7, 8, and 9 move up, read current or move down lines, 4 5 and 6 do the same for words, 1 2 and 3 the same for characters. From the browser point of view, it uses minny mo, which is supposed to be baby firefox. It seems to work with dynamic content. I have never tried to play srith on it. Maybe I should to see how it works. if you did develop a browser based game I'm betting it would be a really simple browser page setup that the browser in question could handle just fine. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward To: Gamers Discussion list Sent: Saturday, July 18, 2009 6:05 AM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch Hi, Yeah, I suppose that might be possible. Although, I am not sure on the tecnical details of the game yet. I am getting quite a lot of requests to create a stand alone application rather than create a web based game. If I do so running the game on a Braille Plus would depend on its technical specifications. If I am not mistaken doesn't the Braille Plus run a varient of Linux as the operating system? If so If I made a console application for Linux it might run on a Braille Plus with very little modifications. I guess i need to know more about the Braille Plus to tell you one way or the other. Smile. Valiant8086 wrote: I'm interested in being able to play this game on my braille plus. As a browser based game I believe this could be achieved easily. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- avast! Antivirus: Inbound message clean. Virus Database (VPS): 090717-0, 07/17/2009 Tested on: 7/18/2009 1:52:24 PM avast! - copyright (c) 1988-2009 ALWIL Software. http://www.avast.com --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
it uses SpeakUp. On 7/18/09, Valiant8086 valiant8...@lavabit.com wrote: Hi. yes it uses debian linux arm, at least that's what I've heard tell of. It does give access to the console but I don't know anything about dependencies or anything like that. I'm able to connect to alter aeon and mud on it using the telnet client but that's about all I know how to do. It definitly doesn't have things like pygame built into it. Heh, too bad. Playing soundrts on that thing could be a hoot. If you have commands I can type to find out what dependencies it has so you'd know, and if it made any difference to you in the long run, I'd be glad to do so. It uses hmm, I can't remember. A popular console screen reader for TUI distros of linux. I'd know if I heard it. You can use the number pad to navigate. 7, 8, and 9 move up, read current or move down lines, 4 5 and 6 do the same for words, 1 2 and 3 the same for characters. From the browser point of view, it uses minny mo, which is supposed to be baby firefox. It seems to work with dynamic content. I have never tried to play srith on it. Maybe I should to see how it works. if you did develop a browser based game I'm betting it would be a really simple browser page setup that the browser in question could handle just fine. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward To: Gamers Discussion list Sent: Saturday, July 18, 2009 6:05 AM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch Hi, Yeah, I suppose that might be possible. Although, I am not sure on the tecnical details of the game yet. I am getting quite a lot of requests to create a stand alone application rather than create a web based game. If I do so running the game on a Braille Plus would depend on its technical specifications. If I am not mistaken doesn't the Braille Plus run a varient of Linux as the operating system? If so If I made a console application for Linux it might run on a Braille Plus with very little modifications. I guess i need to know more about the Braille Plus to tell you one way or the other. Smile. Valiant8086 wrote: I'm interested in being able to play this game on my braille plus. As a browser based game I believe this could be achieved easily. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- avast! Antivirus: Inbound message clean. Virus Database (VPS): 090717-0, 07/17/2009 Tested on: 7/18/2009 1:52:24 PM avast! - copyright (c) 1988-2009 ALWIL Software. http://www.avast.com --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Hi Aaron, Well, assuming I created a simple text interface, similar to the Infocom games, there wouldn't be any software dependancies to speak of. However, seeing as the Braille Plus is a type of note taker device any game written for it would have to be pretty bare bones. I don't know at this point exactly how bare bones I plan to get with this game. I might decide to go to a more action based roll playing game since I am getting a lot of requests for something more like an FPS rather than a game book style game. Valiant8086 wrote: Hi. yes it uses debian linux arm, at least that's what I've heard tell of. It does give access to the console but I don't know anything about dependencies or anything like that. I'm able to connect to alter aeon and mud on it using the telnet client but that's about all I know how to do. It definitly doesn't have things like pygame built into it. Heh, too bad. Playing soundrts on that thing could be a hoot. If you have commands I can type to find out what dependencies it has so you'd know, and if it made any difference to you in the long run, I'd be glad to do so. It uses hmm, I can't remember. A popular console screen reader for TUI distros of linux. I'd know if I heard it. You can use the number pad to navigate. 7, 8, and 9 move up, read current or move down lines, 4 5 and 6 do the same for words, 1 2 and 3 the same for characters. From the browser point of view, it uses minny mo, which is supposed to be baby firefox. It seems to work with dynamic content. I have never tried to play srith on it. Maybe I should to see how it works. if you did develop a browser based game I'm betting it would be a really simple browser page setup that the browser in question could handle just fine. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
I wasn't really suggesting anything. Mostly I was just rambling about my take on roleplaying games. Certainly the only way I can think of to do skills checks and such is through dice rolls or other forms of random number generation, aside from leaving all skill and strategy up to the player as I've seen in a couple muds, which under no circumstances would lend itself well to an RPG I think. In any case I'm looking forward to your game and I wasn't really putting forward anything spacific in regards to it, mostly just throwing my two cents out there. For the record I know what an RPG is, all I was trying to get across is that there's a lot of different types and different amounts of control, since it seems like a lot of people on this list use the term RPG in regards to pen and paper style games, whereas a lot of times I hear it used to describe strictly grinder style games where pretty much all the characters are the same, or games where you have no control over character creation but simply play it. Most likely I'm just rambling nonsense, I'm far from an expert on the subject. -- From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 10:01 PM To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch Hi Shadow Dragon, I'm not really sure what you are suggesting. While it is true the conceptual ideas of rpg style games is changing, especially in terms of audio/video games, but the basic concept of a roll playing game is to assume a character roll within an imaginary world, complete various quests, train skills, and so on. Game books are probably closest to traditional paper and pen roll playing that we have. In such a case the game mechanics are similar to traditional paper and pen games. I do agree that rolling a dice to perform skill checks, roll attacks, etc isn't very realistic, but given that the rpg type games began with paper and pen that was the only way to randomly determine an outcome. If you have a suggestion on how to improve performing skill checks, attacks, etc let me know. Otherwise I think the game mechanics set out by traditional rpg games seams sufficient for our needs. Smile. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Hi Tom, That copyright stuff sounds like a mess. With the litigious nature of companies and people today, I can understand why you want to avoid that mine field as best you can. When it comes to which game to make, there is nothing saying that you couldn't create both over time. If I understood it correctly, the online game you mentioned could have a lot of less work to it, and gamers with sufficient brain power can crank out those modules for expanding the online universe. At least, I think that is what you said about it. I do prefer the stand alone game, but it doesn't mean none of us would try out the online game, and it does sound interesting too. I never thought much about the sounds of games. I just assumed that there was this giant reservoir of game sounds just sitting around ready to get used. I admittedly know nothing about all that, but is it possible to create the sounds needed, or to get some friends together, give them a bunch of medieval weapons and record what happens,lol. If I remember right, I think it is the foley artist in movies that make sound effects, and a while back I saw a show where they use various things to mimick sounds in a movie, like footsteps, twanging of bows, hitting a metal sheet with a drum stick to recreate thunder, things like that. al --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Well A long time ago in a galaxy far far away is ambiguous enough for it to be set anywhere, ;D. But that was my point. An Sf setting can include fantasy elements, where as it's much less plausable to have a fantasy setting including sf elements like robots, lasers space ships etc. The other alternative (which could also make an interesting game and something closer to final fantasy), is going magitech. this basically involves a single world with a quirky tecnological mix, - in Xenogears for example, magic existed as a power called Ether which people could harnice, which was also used to fuel giant humanoid fighting robots. They also had modern weapons like guns etc, but fought with swords and martial arts. I think though, for diversity of gamebook setting, - and because it's something I've always wanted to see in a game, I'd personally most like to see something in a scifi setting, flying around a diverse galaxy exploring different planets. Beware the Grue! Dark. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Friday, July 17, 2009 5:16 AM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch Hi Dark, Regardless if I create the game as a stand alone game in C++ or create it as an online game I want to make it a single player game. I'm not really interested in creating a party or pvp type game at this point. As far as your idea of creating a universe with mixed technological skills that kind of reminds me of an author I sometimes read. I don't know if you have read any of Piers Anthony's books, but he often has an interesting way of mixing science fiction and fantacy into the same story. For example, in the Blue Adept Piers Anthony describes a world with two aspects. In one frame it is a high tech world with computers, androids, intersteller space travel, lasers, and anything else you would expect from a science fiction novel. In the other frame it is a fantacy type world complete with werewolves, unicorns, people use magic instead of technology, etc. Some people are able to pass between the two frames of existance. Thus the main character is able to be both active in a fantacy and science fiction story at the same time. Anyway, even big name science fiction stories like Star Wars do have a fantacy aspect to them as well. If you think about it Star Wars is something like a fantacy story set in a science fiction setting. Instead of magic you have the force. Instead of swords you have light sabers. Instead of knights waring armour you have storm troopers. A lot of the same principles apply. it is just that Star Wars is suppose to be futuristic instead of being set in ancient earth. Smile. dark wrote: As I said Tom, I certainly see the logic of the online approach, I just hope it can be kept single player the way Sryth originally was intended to be. I would however love to see a scifi rp game giving you a hole galaxy to explore with different planets, quests separately on the various planets, flying a spaceship etc. Pluss, you have infinite expantion, especially if you made your universe similar to the Starwars or Dune universe with different amounts of technology found on different worlds, you could have standard dungeon crawling with swords on one world, and high tech robot developement elsewhere. Just my thoughts. Beware the Grue! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Magitech is by far my favorite genre, especially when you get things like soldiers from ff7, highly-enhanced humans infused with energy from the planet and bread spacifically for battle and war. I also like how it leaves open several interesting posibilities, for example combining the gun and sword into a single weapon, the gunblade, ala final fantasy 8. My favorite adaptation of the weapon is that the gunblade doesn't actually shoot bullets, but instead the trigger sends a pulse of powerful energy down the blade, basically harnessing the kinetic energy of the payload of the bullet and expending it to make a wound much more vicious than any regular old chop could do. I've always liked the combination of medieval and sci-fi, and if by some miracle I ever managed to scrape together the patience and motivation to learn some kind of programming language, this would be one of the first type of games I'd try to make. -- From: dark d...@xgam.org Sent: Friday, July 17, 2009 8:20 AM To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch Well A long time ago in a galaxy far far away is ambiguous enough for it to be set anywhere, ;D. But that was my point. An Sf setting can include fantasy elements, where as it's much less plausable to have a fantasy setting including sf elements like robots, lasers space ships etc. The other alternative (which could also make an interesting game and something closer to final fantasy), is going magitech. this basically involves a single world with a quirky tecnological mix, - in Xenogears for example, magic existed as a power called Ether which people could harnice, which was also used to fuel giant humanoid fighting robots. They also had modern weapons like guns etc, but fought with swords and martial arts. I think though, for diversity of gamebook setting, - and because it's something I've always wanted to see in a game, I'd personally most like to see something in a scifi setting, flying around a diverse galaxy exploring different planets. Beware the Grue! Dark. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
I'm interested in being able to play this game on my braille plus. As a browser based game I believe this could be achieved easily. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward To: Gamers Discussion list Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 5:09 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch Hi Shaun, Sigh...That really wasn't my point. The point of my original article was how to overcome certain aspects of creating a roll playing game with the least amount of difficulty as possible. I certainly could write such a game in C, C++, Visual Basic, C-Sharp, or any other language I chose to, but based on my preliminary research creating such a game as a web based game was the least difficult option for me or anyone else interested in writing game book style roll playing games. That said, I haven't made any absolute decisions on weather or not the game will be an online game or a stand alone version. A lot of people jumped to the conclusion that my article meant I was talking specifically about Legends of Etheria, but I actually had intended to talk about creating a roll playing game in general. what I had found out, what problems I had encountered, and practical solutions for same. Finally, as for the .NET Framework that is of little concern at this point. After Mysteries of the Ancients is completed I will be officially dropping .NET support in my games and will be creating native Windows, Linux, and Mac OS games in C++ using core libraries and components. That will cut down on what dependencies a person will need to install. Smile. shaun everiss wrote: hmmm I'd be happy to install all the dependencies on my system. I have dotnet 1.1 to 3.5 with all service packs. I have dx9 I have xna3 for entombed I have I think some my sql addins for this to. So if it was easy enough I'd load all the dependancies. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- avast! Antivirus: Inbound message clean. Virus Database (VPS): 090717-0, 07/17/2009 Tested on: 7/17/2009 11:41:19 PM avast! - copyright (c) 1988-2009 ALWIL Software. http://www.avast.com --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Hi Al, Yeah, copyrights can be a serious pain in the backside sometimes. It all really depends on how strongly the company wants to press the issue, and weather or not the content is in the public domain. For example, in the 1990's there was a show called Hercules the Legendary Journies. Legally you can write all of the fan fiction games and stories you want because all of the main character's are all in the public domain anyway. However, Xena Warrior Princess, which was a spin off tv series of the Hercules show, is copyrighted up the butt, because the author's of the Hercules show created Xena from scratch so to speak. Anyway,you are right. It doesn' have to be an issue of picking one or the other. It is feasable to do both game ideas in time. one specifically fantacy and write one sci-fi. I guess it is justa matter of deciding which to do first, or more like deciding which idea I would like to do first. Grin. Allan Thompson wrote: Hi Tom, That copyright stuff sounds like a mess. With the litigious nature of companies and people today, I can understand why you want to avoid that mine field as best you can. When it comes to which game to make, there is nothing saying that you couldn't create both over time. If I understood it correctly, the online game you mentioned could have a lot of less work to it, and gamers with sufficient brain power can crank out those modules for expanding the online universe. At least, I think that is what you said about it. I do prefer the stand alone game, but it doesn't mean none of us would try out the online game, and it does sound interesting too. I never thought much about the sounds of games. I just assumed that there was this giant reservoir of game sounds just sitting around ready to get used. I admittedly know nothing about all that, but is it possible to create the sounds needed, or to get some friends together, give them a bunch of medieval weapons and record what happens,lol. If I remember right, I think it is the foley artist in movies that make sound effects, and a while back I saw a show where they use various things to mimick sounds in a movie, like footsteps, twanging of bows, hitting a metal sheet with a drum stick to recreate thunder, things like that. al --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
This issue of open-ended vs. tightly scripted RPing interests me. My style as a game master is to set the scene, create significant non-player characters with their own agendas, some of whom act off stage independent of, or in reaction to the player characters, but who may not meet them until a climactic scene. Once I've wound this world up and set the scene, I release the PCs into the world. I then regard my job as deciding how the world reacts to their actions. They are the protagonists of this story after all. Now that is human role-playing. I've never seen a computer-mediated game come anywhere close to the richness of a human-mediated game, even in the MMORPG world. There is always a narrowing of objectives to fit a restrictive model. This makes sense in a paradigm that demands complete determinism for each scenario, where every action must be anticipated by the game designer. Without massive hardware support, you aren't going to see emergent behavior out of this deterministic model, which is the main reason human-mediated games are still more satisfying. I'm not expecting Tom to break this problem, although if he has ways around it, I'm so there for playing and ultimately purchasing the game. Chris Bartlett --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
hmmm I'd be happy to install all the dependencies on my system. I have dotnet 1.1 to 3.5 with all service packs. I have dx9 I have xna3 for entombed I have I think some my sql addins for this to. So if it was easy enough I'd load all the dependancies. At 03:27 p.m. 16/07/2009, you wrote: Hi Shaun, Like I mentioned earlier it really comes down to a matter of logistics. It is one thing to create a side-scroller like Mysteries of the Ancients, and quite another when designing a detailed roll playing game. With a game like Mysteries of the ancients you have perhaps 14enemies on a level, most of a similar type or class, and equally as many special items. In terms of management that is a manageable amount of things to store in memory, and keep track of. Especially, since everything is pretty much standard throughout the entire game. With a fantasy game book style roll playing game such as Sryth there is much more to keep track of. Each and every weapon could be different in terms of stats, quality, and may or may not have magic powers. In a game like Mysteries of the Ancients you only have to worry about one sword. In a roll playing game there could be hundreds of swords ranging from short swords, long swords, to broad swords, and so on. They could be common, sturdy, well crafted, exceptional, magical, etc. You need to have a way to store all of that information without keeping it all in memory. The easiest way to do that is use a third-party database, and perform look ups when necessary. Yeah, I could technically do the same thing in an off line version, but it seams to be the more difficult way of handling it. Instead of a nice SQL database I store all of that info in a text file and open and read those files as necessary. It just seams to me to be a quick and dirty way of handling it without the advantages of a true database on hand. Smile. shaun everiss wrote: Well an online game is all and good, but I would probably take offline if I could. the main issue is that there are a load of capped connections, and going over that probably is not nice. although in theory the php html games take vary little data I just thought I would point out that fact. In the next few months or so its possible either my bill or speed will change depending on the ability of me to afford the unlimited connection I am currently on who's prices is set to rise from 50 to 60 dollars. This may mean I will have to either reduce my connection to a capped one say 25gb which is still a fair ammount but others use the system to or change to a cheaper isp which will probably have a smaller cap all in all I'd prefur some offline play to. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
well I don't care for an open ended online game I don't have all the time or rather the wish to spend all my time on an online game. At 07:16 p.m. 16/07/2009, you wrote: This issue of open-ended vs. tightly scripted RPing interests me. My style as a game master is to set the scene, create significant non-player characters with their own agendas, some of whom act off stage independent of, or in reaction to the player characters, but who may not meet them until a climactic scene. Once I've wound this world up and set the scene, I release the PCs into the world. I then regard my job as deciding how the world reacts to their actions. They are the protagonists of this story after all. Now that is human role-playing. I've never seen a computer-mediated game come anywhere close to the richness of a human-mediated game, even in the MMORPG world. There is always a narrowing of objectives to fit a restrictive model. This makes sense in a paradigm that demands complete determinism for each scenario, where every action must be anticipated by the game designer. Without massive hardware support, you aren't going to see emergent behavior out of this deterministic model, which is the main reason human-mediated games are still more satisfying. I'm not expecting Tom to break this problem, although if he has ways around it, I'm so there for playing and ultimately purchasing the game. Chris Bartlett --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Hi Chris. while I agree the responsiveness of a human gm to the choices of players is indeed something which couldn't be mimmicked by any computer program, I do think there must always be some sort of structure in the world or situation presented to the player anyway, symply because of the nature of the relation betwene the players and the world. the world and it's npcs are completely under the control of the gm, and have to respond to the players in a way which is some degree progressive. I'm not talking about specifically tightly scripted games, - the game can be as free for player action as possible, but there must be some sort of progression in events or otherwise the players will just stumble around getting randomly board. While a computer program certainly can't have the responsiveness to all the actions a player might choose which a human would, imho it could, - assuming the programmer is a sufficiently skilled author, have this aspect of narative progression. To give a basically symple example of what I mean, the players arrive in a village. The gm must have an idea of the history of certain aspects and characters of this village. Suppose for instance it's under attack from a goblin hoard. The players will be told of certain things which are wrong in the village and (if they're observant), will investigate as to why. They may have several courses of action at that point, attempt to slaughter the goblins themselves, go and fetch help from elsewhere, organize and train the villagers for defense etc, but ultimately, the basic presence of the hoard implies that the players do something about it, - engage in a story concerning it. While the players choices of what to do in the situation may be fairly open, the situation itself implies a narative structure, simply on the basis that players being players, and games being what they are, they'll want to do something about the hoard. This for me is the essance of an rpg as i said, playing the protagonist in a series of events and situations which form some sort of story. Of course the more choice I have about those situations the better, - but ultimately the situations have to be set up in such a way to provide some sort of satisfying narative cohesion somewhere along the line. Beware the Grue! Dark. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
yeah same here. I'm personally more into offline gaming. I never liked online games that much, though the fighting fantasy gamebooks are cool there you get long descriptions and then links of what you want to do instad of something like a table: peter. mage. 31 hp out of 45. 11 mana out of 20. and so on and so on. On 7/16/09, shaun everiss shau...@xtra.co.nz wrote: well I don't care for an open ended online game I don't have all the time or rather the wish to spend all my time on an online game. At 07:16 p.m. 16/07/2009, you wrote: This issue of open-ended vs. tightly scripted RPing interests me. My style as a game master is to set the scene, create significant non-player characters with their own agendas, some of whom act off stage independent of, or in reaction to the player characters, but who may not meet them until a climactic scene. Once I've wound this world up and set the scene, I release the PCs into the world. I then regard my job as deciding how the world reacts to their actions. They are the protagonists of this story after all. Now that is human role-playing. I've never seen a computer-mediated game come anywhere close to the richness of a human-mediated game, even in the MMORPG world. There is always a narrowing of objectives to fit a restrictive model. This makes sense in a paradigm that demands complete determinism for each scenario, where every action must be anticipated by the game designer. Without massive hardware support, you aren't going to see emergent behavior out of this deterministic model, which is the main reason human-mediated games are still more satisfying. I'm not expecting Tom to break this problem, although if he has ways around it, I'm so there for playing and ultimately purchasing the game. Chris Bartlett --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Hi Dark,
Well, when I wrote that article I was actually thinking more of
designing roll playing games in general rather than my roll playing game
specifically. In any case I understand what you are saying, and I could
use text files to store stats, weapons, armor, and other items, but
there are advantages to using an actual database for this. Plus,
logistics asside, programming in C, C++, C-Sharp, Java, etc is also a
lot more time consuming. Consider the two examples below.
C Example
// Header includes
#include conio.h
#include stdio.h
#include stdlib.h
// Function prototypes
void LoadScreen(int);
void GetInput(int);
// Load and show the game screen.
void LoadScreen(int screen)
{
// Clear the game screen
system(cls);
// If this is screen 1091
// print the screen
if (screen == 1091)
{
printf((%d)\n, screen);
printf(You are standing in a north/south passage.\n);
printf(You can hear the sound of dripping water up ahead.\n);
printf(What would you like to do?\n);
printf(Head North (n)\n);
printf(Head South(s)\n);
}
// Wait for the player to press a key
GetInput(screen);
}
// Get keyboard input
// for the current game screen
void GetInput(int screen)
{
// Wait for a key press
char key = getch();
// If this is screen 1091
// handle keyboard input
if (screen == 1091)
{
// Head north
if (key == 'n')
{
LoadScreen(1092);
}
// Head south
if (key == 's')
{
LoadScreen(1090);
}
// The user pressed an invalid choice
else
{
system(cls);
printf(Error! Please press n or s.\n);
printf(Press any key to continue.\n);
getch();
LoadScreen(1091);
}
}
}
html/php example
html
head
titleLegends of Etheria/title
/head
body
p align=center(1091)/p
p align=leftYou are standing in a north/south passage. You can hear
the sound of dripping water from up ahead. What would you like to do?/p
bra href=1092.phpHead North/a
bra href=1090.phpHead South/a
?php
$options = file_get_contents('options.php');
$stats = file_get_contents('stats.php');
print $stats;
print $options;
?
/body
/html
What is probably quite clear in these two examples is my second example
was far easier and quicker to create than the first example. While C is
powerful it is not really suited to the game book style adventure.
Assuming there were 1091 screens I'd have to do the same thing 1,091
times. In such an instance using html and php makes the job much easier
to perform.
Smile.
dark wrote:
Hi Tom.
Well I'm fully in favor of the frequent updates etc which a php script
game could give, and I'm glad your stil thinking single player even if
the logistics are much easier online, pluss, it'd probably be seen as
more reasonable of you to charge for an online game in some way than
for a downloadable text rpg, - though personally I'd be willing to
pay for such a game if it fulfilled my needs.
But being as your also running a business (and to maintain the server
costs of the game), either a subscription or account update fee for
the game to gain full access would be seen as more reasonable by the
public in general, - I know the huge amounts of markiting
resources the commercial interactive fiction company malinch have to
put into selling their games.
Btw, not to quibble over your decision (which I completely understand
the logic of), but Angband, the roguelike I mentioned which will
hopefully be having full accessibility features added in the future,
has taken precisely the opposite approach.
I'm not certain what language the game is written in, but there are
certainly several versions (windows mac os), and even source code for
self compiling.
When new versions come out, they are symply stuck on the website and
people are expected to update. Everything in the game, the
thousand or so monsters, the classes, items, and huuge amount of
complex mechanics are contained in a series of text files which are
easy to modify (one reason Angband has so many varients developed by
other people). There is even a text file containing sound and display
options.
Obviously there are some differences, the most notable being that
while Angband certainly uses lots of text for a roguelike (one reason
why I'm fairly convinced it can be made fully accessible in the first
place given some extra warning messages and coordinates), it does have
a basically spacial interface with characters moving around a grid
based, randomly generated dungeon rather than the environment being
described gamebook style.
Stil, in terms of pure mechanics, of which Angband has a truly
mind bogling amount, everything is run through text file databases.
this isn't to say your decision is wrong, or to argue in the least,
- as I said I can fully follow your logic, I just thought it was
an interesting contrast, and sinse we're discussing rpgs I thought I'd
throw it out for considderation.
Beware the Grue!
Dark.
---
Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org
If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Point taken Tom on the text front, - I actually understood your php
example pretty well given my knolidge of html, ;D.
I suppose the crytical difference here is with Angband's presentation.
It doesn't need to worry about presenting several thousand screens of actual
text and linking them via key presses or whatever, it just needs to defign a
number of objects, - player, monsters, npcs, walls doors and items which
are presented randomly on a grid pattern with certain rules and attributes
attached to them, and set up the various reactions for what happenes when
two of these objects interact, rather than completely rewrite all in game
screens for each game event as happens in a gamebook style game or your
example.
I was just particularly interested in the use of text files, sinse that's
one of Angband's actual strengths, and the reason players have been able to
create so many different varients and alternative versions of the game so
easily.
Your example though also makes me wonder about early 80's rpgs like Eamon
and fallthru and how much doing they must have taken to create.
Beware the rue!
Dark;.
- Original Message -
From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com
To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org
Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 3:18 PM
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Hi Dark,
Well, when I wrote that article I was actually thinking more of designing
roll playing games in general rather than my roll playing game
specifically. In any case I understand what you are saying, and I could
use text files to store stats, weapons, armor, and other items, but there
are advantages to using an actual database for this. Plus, logistics
asside, programming in C, C++, C-Sharp, Java, etc is also a lot more time
consuming. Consider the two examples below.
C Example
// Header includes
#include conio.h
#include stdio.h
#include stdlib.h
// Function prototypes
void LoadScreen(int);
void GetInput(int);
// Load and show the game screen.
void LoadScreen(int screen)
{
// Clear the game screen
system(cls);
// If this is screen 1091
// print the screen
if (screen == 1091)
{
printf((%d)\n, screen);
printf(You are standing in a north/south passage.\n);
printf(You can hear the sound of dripping water up ahead.\n);
printf(What would you like to do?\n);
printf(Head North (n)\n);
printf(Head South(s)\n);
}
// Wait for the player to press a key
GetInput(screen);
}
// Get keyboard input
// for the current game screen
void GetInput(int screen)
{
// Wait for a key press
char key = getch();
// If this is screen 1091
// handle keyboard input
if (screen == 1091)
{
// Head north
if (key == 'n')
{
LoadScreen(1092);
}
// Head south
if (key == 's')
{
LoadScreen(1090);
}
// The user pressed an invalid choice
else
{
system(cls);
printf(Error! Please press n or s.\n);
printf(Press any key to continue.\n);
getch();
LoadScreen(1091);
}
}
}
html/php example
html
head
titleLegends of Etheria/title
/head
body
p align=center(1091)/p
p align=leftYou are standing in a north/south passage. You can hear
the sound of dripping water from up ahead. What would you like to do?/p
bra href=1092.phpHead North/a
bra href=1090.phpHead South/a
?php
$options = file_get_contents('options.php');
$stats = file_get_contents('stats.php');
print $stats;
print $options;
?
/body
/html
What is probably quite clear in these two examples is my second example
was far easier and quicker to create than the first example. While C is
powerful it is not really suited to the game book style adventure.
Assuming there were 1091 screens I'd have to do the same thing 1,091
times. In such an instance using html and php makes the job much easier to
perform.
Smile.
dark wrote:
Hi Tom.
Well I'm fully in favor of the frequent updates etc which a php script
game could give, and I'm glad your stil thinking single player even if
the logistics are much easier online, pluss, it'd probably be seen as
more reasonable of you to charge for an online game in some way than for
a downloadable text rpg, - though personally I'd be willing to pay
for such a game if it fulfilled my needs.
But being as your also running a business (and to maintain the server
costs of the game), either a subscription or account update fee for the
game to gain full access would be seen as more reasonable by the public
in general, - I know the huge amounts of markiting resources the
commercial interactive fiction company malinch have to put into selling
their games.
Btw, not to quibble over your decision (which I completely understand the
logic of), but Angband, the roguelike I mentioned which will hopefully be
having full accessibility features added in the future, has taken
precisely the opposite approach.
I'm not certain what language the game is written in, but there are
certainly several versions (windows mac os), and even source code for
self compiling.
When new versions come out
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Hi, Quote First, I don't think I'd classify Angband or any of the Roguelikes as an RPG. These feel more like tactical simulations with a lot of details added End quote I agree. I'm not thinking of a roguelike adventure such as Angband or Ancient Domains of Mystery. What I am thinking of is a game book style game play along the lines of Sryth. My game world will be full of towns, cities, forests, mountains, and have an open ended story line. The game needs to be written more like an interactive book instead of one large dungeon. Quote One big advantage of what Tom is proposing would be the possibility of user-extensibility. As I understand it, the game design would be completely modular, so it should be possible to bolt on new modules fairly easily. End quote Yes and no. It is true that using ascripting language like php would make the task of updating the game, bolting on new modules, etc much easier. However, I am not as open to the idea of end users just bolting on their own modules themselves. For one thing they would have to have full access to the USA Games web server, and for security reasons I can't allow that. Plus once I create the core game scripts they'll need to follow whatever guidelines and coding conventions I use in order to keep the code clean and bug free. Finally, there is the problem with copyrights. If you or someone sends me an adventure submission, a npc character, whatever I would have legal right to assume copyright control of that story or character. However, some people may object to that, or they may think that by contributing x number of adventures entitles them to a discount on the game subscription. So I'm not really sure where I stand on this idea of end user extensibility. Quote I'm not sure how to translate all of these thoughts into a playable computer-mediated game. The questions transcend the medium and would be faced no matter how you decide to deploy the game. I don't know how ambitious you want to be Tom, but I would be interested in being a part of the creation of things, if you're looking for any collaborators. I have 25 years of IRL role-playing experience, both playing and running games. End quote At this point I'm really just hoping to work on the games story and have 10 to 20 adventures to start with. Like Sryth, Kingdom of Loathing, whatever it is going to start out very small and gradually grow as time passes. The main thing I need is adventure ideas, names for npc characters, names for towns, cities, etc. I have some written down, and more of this kind of stuff would never hurt. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
I agree Alan, a scifi rpg would be great, particularly with the large amount of worlds available. But one step at a time though. Beware the Grue! Dark. - Original Message - From: Allan Thompson allan1.thomp...@cox.net To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 4:19 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch Hi Tom, It looks like a pretty good idea. I can't pretend to understand all the technical mumbo jumbo, but it looks to me like you make a game, sell it, and charge a subscription to keep playing it online, like Ever Quest or World of Warcraft. It sounds highly customizable for programmer and gamers alike and so you might have a nice RPG to add to your catalog. Personally, I like the stand alone, turn based RPG, with a major storyline. I like to make one or more characters with lots of options and customization, who go from a weak to strong progression in power and items, solving miniquests, and challenging tactical battles ending up with the climatic showdown. I am not sure how that lines up with your vision, because most online things I have toyed with seem to be simply, kill, loot, repeat when necesary. Lastly, I just wanted to put a bug in the ear of you and everyone reading, I would love to see the turn based rPG game evolve into other genres. It would be neat to have science fiction, Post Apocalyptic, western, supernatural, or modern day based RPG. al --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Of course, your right. One thing at a time. al - Original Message - From: dark d...@xgam.org To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 11:37 AM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch I agree Alan, a scifi rpg would be great, particularly with the large amount of worlds available. But one step at a time though. Beware the Grue! Dark. - Original Message - From: Allan Thompson allan1.thomp...@cox.net To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 4:19 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch Hi Tom, It looks like a pretty good idea. I can't pretend to understand all the technical mumbo jumbo, but it looks to me like you make a game, sell it, and charge a subscription to keep playing it online, like Ever Quest or World of Warcraft. It sounds highly customizable for programmer and gamers alike and so you might have a nice RPG to add to your catalog. Personally, I like the stand alone, turn based RPG, with a major storyline. I like to make one or more characters with lots of options and customization, who go from a weak to strong progression in power and items, solving miniquests, and challenging tactical battles ending up with the climatic showdown. I am not sure how that lines up with your vision, because most online things I have toyed with seem to be simply, kill, loot, repeat when necesary. Lastly, I just wanted to put a bug in the ear of you and everyone reading, I would love to see the turn based rPG game evolve into other genres. It would be neat to have science fiction, Post Apocalyptic, western, supernatural, or modern day based RPG. al --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Given all the discussion about RPG mechanics on here I just figured I'd throw in my two cents. Personally I think the use of RPG has taken to a broader scope. There's everything ranging from your classic RPG, using pen and paper, you and your friends creating all the characters and scennarios and playing through them, to what more modern gamers would consider an RPG, a party-based game where you create none of the characters and for the most part the game is very close-ended with a major storyline already in place, bosses to fight, quests to perform, goals to conquer. You also have your action RPG or ARPG, which are becoming more and more advanced as technology becomes more powerful. Its become a very broad category of games. Having said this I think that a gamebook style RPG will be one of the most difficult to create and really satisfy everyone. Take sryth for example. I am, and always have been a combat fanatic. I'm a martial arts enthusiast in real life, and if a book doesn't have an action scene every few chapters, its pretty much garunteed I probably won't like it. Therefore, sryth's combat system is highly disappointing, its simply a series of dice rolls which get very, very tedius after a while with minimal description and detail, even after the battle ends. So far lone wolf has some of the coolest detail to combat I've seen yet. I still play sryth for the exploration and story factor, when it comes up nowadays, but the combat system has always put me off from sryth slightly. The problem here is that you either have to be a combat enthusiast or be willing to go into the realm of unrealism aka final fantasy, later versions of dragon quest to get good techniques and spells and the like going, or the combat falls into the trap of 99% of muds where the unrealistic realism, learning how to bash with a shield or throw a basic kick, for example, becomes irritating. To me, at least. I've also never found random combat to my liking, the entire dice roll system has always bothered me. It makes me think of someone rushing into battle swinging wildly and hoping to god they hit something, rather than a fierce and powerful warrior stalking into battle and striking with careful, measured accuracy as he drives his opponent back and breaks through his defenses. Few games can immitate that, though, and its pretty complex, so its sort of understandable. Then you also have your grinder types, who refuse to play an RPG unless there's plenty of stats to grind and goals to reach. Sure you can say there's plenty of number crunchers out there already, but I imagine not all grinders are interested in seeing straight numbers rise, for example, I grind to earn new techniques and spells, to power up my character in preparation for a bonus dungeon, in certain cases to level up other party members so they have a fighting chance in places, etc. I love exploration, but I've always thought that gamebook and RPG mechanics just don't seem to work out very well. I am interested to see how Thomas pulls off the combination of mechanics though. My personal favorite is closer to the mainstream version of RPG's as they stand now, where mostly things are close-ended, with turn-based battles and a major overarching plot and party of characters to control to complete said plot and side quests. This leaves more room for plot and character development in my opinion, because the main character can actually talk rather than just having a line about him telling someone this, or performing that action. And it's a lot less easy to fall into the trap that sryth always, always does with making your character look like he'd flee from his own shadow. I'd love to see something like this done in text form, aka planet gambro only without the very strange humor. I still haven't figured out what it is about text RPG's, no matter how advanced, and making them non-serious or humor-based. Having said all this I'll definitely be checking out thomas's game when it comes out. While I think that gamebook and RPG mechanics clash on general principal just because the style of RPG isn't advanced enough for my tastes, the exploration factor is also nice, and some of the scenes can be really cool if done right and under certain mechanical conditions, aka using disciplins in lone wolf, skills and powers in sryth. So while its not my prefered style of RPG, I am glad to see another good-sounding text game coming up and will definitely be checking this out. Anyhow I think I've rambled on long enough, hopefully all of this made sense and wasn't too contradictory, its too early in the ... uh ... noon for major thinking just yet. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Hi Chris, Unfortunately, computer mediated games may never be able to match human mediated games in quality. It is not just a matter of hardware, but the programming techniques themselves are incapable of creating a truly humanlike inteligence. Current artificial intelligence is limited to making decisions based soully on logic and probability. Humans don't really think that way. We tend to base decisions on emotions, morals, and other factors that has nothing to do with logic. For example, in Sryth, when playing the Goblins of Westwold adventure, you come upon a passage with a goblin chained to the wall. The game gives you three options. You can free him, kill him, or head back the way you came. A computer AI wouldn't be able to make a decision like that logically. The reason being that the action the player chooses in a case like that is emotional and may be based on prier experience rather than strictly based on logic. A compassionate person would free the goblin. A person who gets off on blood, guts,and gore would kill the goblin for a cheap thrill. A person who simply doesn't care might head back the way he/she came and do nothing about the chained goblin. The computer player on the other hand might have to randomly pick an action from a list of actions, or the developer would have to give the computer AI special instructions to be compassionate, blood thirsty, or disinterested. In other words the computers thought process, such as it is, is no better than its programming. It is incapable of independant action and thought on its own. It is incapable of creating its own personality and roll in a game world. Anyway, I just wanted to say as a developer I am limited to what I know and have been taught. I am no expert on artificial intelligence, and it is a fairly complex field of study to begin with. Programmers, scientists, and engineers better than I am have tackled this issue of human vs computer intelligence and it is not an easy problem to solve. I'm afraid to say my AI in this or any other game will be average at best. Smile. Christopher Bartlett wrote: This issue of open-ended vs. tightly scripted RPing interests me. My style as a game master is to set the scene, create significant non-player characters with their own agendas, some of whom act off stage independent of, or in reaction to the player characters, but who may not meet them until a climactic scene. Once I've wound this world up and set the scene, I release the PCs into the world. I then regard my job as deciding how the world reacts to their actions. They are the protagonists of this story after all. Now that is human role-playing. I've never seen a computer-mediated game come anywhere close to the richness of a human-mediated game, even in the MMORPG world. There is always a narrowing of objectives to fit a restrictive model. This makes sense in a paradigm that demands complete determinism for each scenario, where every action must be anticipated by the game designer. Without massive hardware support, you aren't going to see emergent behavior out of this deterministic model, which is the main reason human-mediated games are still more satisfying. I'm not expecting Tom to break this problem, although if he has ways around it, I'm so there for playing and ultimately purchasing the game. Chris Bartlett --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Hi Shaun, Sigh...That really wasn't my point. The point of my original article was how to overcome certain aspects of creating a roll playing game with the least amount of difficulty as possible. I certainly could write such a game in C, C++, Visual Basic, C-Sharp, or any other language I chose to, but based on my preliminary research creating such a game as a web based game was the least difficult option for me or anyone else interested in writing game book style roll playing games. That said, I haven't made any absolute decisions on weather or not the game will be an online game or a stand alone version. A lot of people jumped to the conclusion that my article meant I was talking specifically about Legends of Etheria, but I actually had intended to talk about creating a roll playing game in general. what I had found out, what problems I had encountered, and practical solutions for same. Finally, as for the .NET Framework that is of little concern at this point. After Mysteries of the Ancients is completed I will be officially dropping .NET support in my games and will be creating native Windows, Linux, and Mac OS games in C++ using core libraries and components. That will cut down on what dependencies a person will need to install. Smile. shaun everiss wrote: hmmm I'd be happy to install all the dependencies on my system. I have dotnet 1.1 to 3.5 with all service packs. I have dx9 I have xna3 for entombed I have I think some my sql addins for this to. So if it was easy enough I'd load all the dependancies. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Hi Dark, Yes, the amount of text is really the key difference. Roguelike games, like most games, aren't especially concerned with a great amount of describing your surroundings in great detail, or giving you lots of historical information about this or that place in the game world. There is a lot of text involved in a game like Sryth, Kingdom of Loathing, or any other game along those lines. dark wrote: Point taken Tom on the text front, - I actually understood your php example pretty well given my knolidge of html, ;D. I suppose the crytical difference here is with Angband's presentation. It doesn't need to worry about presenting several thousand screens of actual text and linking them via key presses or whatever, it just needs to defign a number of objects, - player, monsters, npcs, walls doors and items which are presented randomly on a grid pattern with certain rules and attributes attached to them, and set up the various reactions for what happenes when two of these objects interact, rather than completely rewrite all in game screens for each game event as happens in a gamebook style game or your example. I was just particularly interested in the use of text files, sinse that's one of Angband's actual strengths, and the reason players have been able to create so many different varients and alternative versions of the game so easily. Your example though also makes me wonder about early 80's rpgs like Eamon and fallthru and how much doing they must have taken to create. Beware the rue! Dark;. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Well, there is in fact a lot of text and messages in Angband, - but mostly that comes from a number of text files which function as databases to provide object descriptions and in game events rather than actually telling you anything about the environment (as I said, this is why i believe it will be possible to make Angband playable without access to the graphics). But i do take the point about general environment. In angband, it's simply necessary to have an object and say it's a tree when your targiting curser hits it, with it's relation to the player's character totally worked out by space, you don't need to describe anything at all. Beware the Grue! Dark. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 11:20 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch Hi Dark, Yes, the amount of text is really the key difference. Roguelike games, like most games, aren't especially concerned with a great amount of describing your surroundings in great detail, or giving you lots of historical information about this or that place in the game world. There is a lot of text involved in a game like Sryth, Kingdom of Loathing, or any other game along those lines. dark wrote: Point taken Tom on the text front, - I actually understood your php example pretty well given my knolidge of html, ;D. I suppose the crytical difference here is with Angband's presentation. It doesn't need to worry about presenting several thousand screens of actual text and linking them via key presses or whatever, it just needs to defign a number of objects, - player, monsters, npcs, walls doors and items which are presented randomly on a grid pattern with certain rules and attributes attached to them, and set up the various reactions for what happenes when two of these objects interact, rather than completely rewrite all in game screens for each game event as happens in a gamebook style game or your example. I was just particularly interested in the use of text files, sinse that's one of Angband's actual strengths, and the reason players have been able to create so many different varients and alternative versions of the game so easily. Your example though also makes me wonder about early 80's rpgs like Eamon and fallthru and how much doing they must have taken to create. Beware the rue! Dark;. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Hi Dark, That works for me. Like I was saying to Allan I am completely open into moving to a different genre like science fiction or some other genre. Just give me some ideas and I'd be all too happy to consider them. dark wrote: I agree Alan, a scifi rpg would be great, particularly with the large amount of worlds available. But one step at a time though. Beware the Grue! Dark. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
As I said Tom, I certainly see the logic of the online approach, I just hope it can be kept single player the way Sryth originally was intended to be. I would however love to see a scifi rp game giving you a hole galaxy to explore with different planets, quests separately on the various planets, flying a spaceship etc. Pluss, you have infinite expantion, especially if you made your universe similar to the Starwars or Dune universe with different amounts of technology found on different worlds, you could have standard dungeon crawling with swords on one world, and high tech robot developement elsewhere. Just my thoughts. Beware the Grue! Dark. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 11:41 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch Hi Allan, Thanks for the suggestions. It does seam as though more people are in favor of a stand alone, turn based, roll playing game apposed to an online game. I certainly have the technical skill and knowledge to do so, but at the cost of more time and energy. If a number of people really do want a stand alone turn based game I have no problem with sticking with that format for the game. As far as switching to a different genre or theme like science fiction that is a very good suggestion. For one thing there is more room to expand on the game world or game universe by adding aliens, robots, high tech weaponry, etc where the triditional roll playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons, Heroes Might and Magic, and so on have been there and done that so to speak. Everything that can be done has probably been done already in the fantacy genre. For example, one of the problems I had early on was finding a title for the game that wasn't already copyrighted. I went through a dozen names only to find out through a google search that some big commercial company had already copyrighted that name. If I used it I could get fried for copyright infringement even though it would be accidental rather than on purpose. The problem is the mainstream market is saturated with Dungeons and Dragons clones, and a small time developer like me can stumble into a mine field of copyright infringement suits. Another aspect about using modern or science fiction roll playing would be the availability of sound effects. It is easy enough to get laser sounds, explosions, electronic background ambience loops, etc. It is somewhat harder to get good quality fantacy sounds like spells, swords, knives, axes, etc. Allan Thompson wrote: Hi Tom, It looks like a pretty good idea. I can't pretend to understand all the technical mumbo jumbo, but it looks to me like you make a game, sell it, and charge a subscription to keep playing it online, like Ever Quest or World of Warcraft. It sounds highly customizable for programmer and gamers alike and so you might have a nice RPG to add to your catalog. Personally, I like the stand alone, turn based RPG, with a major storyline. I like to make one or more characters with lots of options and customization, who go from a weak to strong progression in power and items, solving miniquests, and challenging tactical battles ending up with the climatic showdown. I am not sure how that lines up with your vision, because most online things I have toyed with seem to be simply, kill, loot, repeat when necesary. Lastly, I just wanted to put a bug in the ear of you and everyone reading, I would love to see the turn based rPG game evolve into other genres. It would be neat to have science fiction, Post Apocalyptic, western, supernatural, or modern day based RPG. al --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Hi Thomas, Why not use XML? You may be able to get the same advantage as in a database. Pranav --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Hi Thomas, This is an excellent post and I have archived it. One question. Could you elaborate on the process of making a game book? How do you write the various alternatives and keep track of them? For example, let's say that our protagonist is called Peter. Peter can do two things. He can either go to the pub or go to the old barn. If he goes to the pub, something else happens. If he goes to the barn then something completely different happens. Pranav --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Hi Shadow Dragon, I'm not really sure what you are suggesting. While it is true the conceptual ideas of rpg style games is changing, especially in terms of audio/video games, but the basic concept of a roll playing game is to assume a character roll within an imaginary world, complete various quests, train skills, and so on. Game books are probably closest to traditional paper and pen roll playing that we have. In such a case the game mechanics are similar to traditional paper and pen games. I do agree that rolling a dice to perform skill checks, roll attacks, etc isn't very realistic, but given that the rpg type games began with paper and pen that was the only way to randomly determine an outcome. If you have a suggestion on how to improve performing skill checks, attacks, etc let me know. Otherwise I think the game mechanics set out by traditional rpg games seams sufficient for our needs. Smile. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Hi Dark, Regardless if I create the game as a stand alone game in C++ or create it as an online game I want to make it a single player game. I'm not really interested in creating a party or pvp type game at this point. As far as your idea of creating a universe with mixed technological skills that kind of reminds me of an author I sometimes read. I don't know if you have read any of Piers Anthony's books, but he often has an interesting way of mixing science fiction and fantacy into the same story. For example, in the Blue Adept Piers Anthony describes a world with two aspects. In one frame it is a high tech world with computers, androids, intersteller space travel, lasers, and anything else you would expect from a science fiction novel. In the other frame it is a fantacy type world complete with werewolves, unicorns, people use magic instead of technology, etc. Some people are able to pass between the two frames of existance. Thus the main character is able to be both active in a fantacy and science fiction story at the same time. Anyway, even big name science fiction stories like Star Wars do have a fantacy aspect to them as well. If you think about it Star Wars is something like a fantacy story set in a science fiction setting. Instead of magic you have the force. Instead of swords you have light sabers. Instead of knights waring armour you have storm troopers. A lot of the same principles apply. it is just that Star Wars is suppose to be futuristic instead of being set in ancient earth. Smile. dark wrote: As I said Tom, I certainly see the logic of the online approach, I just hope it can be kept single player the way Sryth originally was intended to be. I would however love to see a scifi rp game giving you a hole galaxy to explore with different planets, quests separately on the various planets, flying a spaceship etc. Pluss, you have infinite expantion, especially if you made your universe similar to the Starwars or Dune universe with different amounts of technology found on different worlds, you could have standard dungeon crawling with swords on one world, and high tech robot developement elsewhere. Just my thoughts. Beware the Grue! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
WELL WHATEVER YOU CHOOSE i DON'T MIND i AM USED TO THE GAMEBOOKS ALTHOUGH i ALSO LIKE THE STANDARD STANDALONE THINGS WHERE YOU HEAR EVERYTHING. At 09:09 a.m. 17/07/2009, you wrote: Hi Shaun, Sigh...That really wasn't my point. The point of my original article was how to overcome certain aspects of creating a roll playing game with the least amount of difficulty as possible. I certainly could write such a game in C, C++, Visual Basic, C-Sharp, or any other language I chose to, but based on my preliminary research creating such a game as a web based game was the least difficult option for me or anyone else interested in writing game book style roll playing games. That said, I haven't made any absolute decisions on weather or not the game will be an online game or a stand alone version. A lot of people jumped to the conclusion that my article meant I was talking specifically about Legends of Etheria, but I actually had intended to talk about creating a roll playing game in general. what I had found out, what problems I had encountered, and practical solutions for same. Finally, as for the .NET Framework that is of little concern at this point. After Mysteries of the Ancients is completed I will be officially dropping .NET support in my games and will be creating native Windows, Linux, and Mac OS games in C++ using core libraries and components. That will cut down on what dependencies a person will need to install. Smile. shaun everiss wrote: hmmm I'd be happy to install all the dependencies on my system. I have dotnet 1.1 to 3.5 with all service packs. I have dx9 I have xna3 for entombed I have I think some my sql addins for this to. So if it was easy enough I'd load all the dependancies. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
[Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch by Thomas Ward Jul. 15, 2009 Like many modern game players I enjoy a well designed roll playing game complete with grand adventures, lots of magic weapons, the ability to learn and train new skills, a large game world to explore, etc. However, it never occurred to me how much time and effort goes into creating a well designed roll playing game from scratch. Most of the big name roll playing games we know of such as Dungeons and Dragons, Heroes Might and Magic, and final Fantasy have entire teams of people devoted to those projects. Therefore it should come as no surprise why they are so addictive and interesting to play. At times big name roll playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons can seam near endless when it comes to new content and adventures. Yet, what would it take to create a custom roll playing game from scratch? Well, I have discovered firsthand that creating a roll playing game from scratch is no easy matter. At first I assumed that creating my own Dungeons and Dragons style roll playing game should be fairly easy. After all, i had lots of story ideas floating around in my mind, and it should be easy enough to use them as a starting point for my custom roll playing game. Plus, I have more than ten years experience as a software developer, and I figured if I could create a FPS game engine, a side-scroller, a racing game, etc writing a roll playing game adventure system would be a piece of cake. That idea quickly was dispelled when I actually realized what was involved in creating a full fledged roll playing adventure system. First, thing I discovered as a game developer I had to create a rather comprehensive story for the game. Actually, more like several short stories held together in the context of the main story. I had to put considerable thought into the who, what, when, where, why, and how aspects to draft the main story. Like any good story it requires supporting people, places, and things of interest. That ends up being a very large task in and of itself. The next step was to convert the game's story and adventures into a paper and pen game book. This was easy enough to do. Rather than create custom rules, character classes, etc I decided to just go ahead and borrow the official Dungeons and Dragons character classes, rules, spells, etc. This saved a considerable amount of time and energy since the Dungeons and Dragons rules are widely used by similar roll playing games anyway. Finally, I was ready for the hard part. Converting the paper and pen game into some kind of computer game. As I mentioned above at first I thought this would be fairly straightforward and easy. As it turned out I grossly under estimated the complexity involved in creating a fairly in depth roll playing game. A roll playing game such as Sryth certainly is no small feet for a single developer. The first decision was weather or not to create the game as an internet based game or as a stand alone game. Both options have their own advantages and disadvantages. A lot depends on weather the developer intends the game to support player verses player style game play, wishes to use a central game server, store items and stats in a database, use Sapi support, etc. With a stand alone game it is certainly much easier to add sound effects, background music, Sapi speech support, and other such features to the game. Not to mention as a stand alone game it would not require a constant high speed internet connection to play. However, by the same token that would exclude features such as online adventure parties and player verses player style game play which are quite popular in current online roll playing games. If I decided to build an internet based roll playing game I would then have to decide between a web based game book style adventure such as Sryth, or design the game as a mud. Given the two options a web based game book style adventure would certainly seam more preferable as it would be more user friendly. All of the options or choices could be standard buttons, links, and would be easier to design using perl or php. While I believe I could create a mud server from scratch it seams as though it would be a lot more work, and I've never especially liked typing long commands into mud style games anyway. Therefore I decided it definitely wouldn't be a mud. The next thing I had to do was decide on a programming language. Since I wasn't overly concerned with multiplayer online style game play I chose to create a rough draft of my ideas in C++. I used SDL for sound and input support, and use Sapi for speaking menus, reading the adventure introductions, etc. As it turned out again I grossly underestimated what I needed to create a game world of any size. My first problem was finding enough sounds to make the game sound realistic. I needed sounds for swords, spears, daggers, knives, bow and arrows, and various other
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Hi Tom. Interesting. While i take the points about interface, ability to update the game easily and make it ultiplatform, my concern with the game being entirely online and multiplayer is that it avoides the traps of focusing on pvp, guild wars, power gaming and grinding which seem to dominate so many other web games. How about hosting the game online and using that system, but having no player interaction or comparison the way Sryth used to be. I'm sorry, i was just very much looking forward to a really detailed story driven single player game, which actually doesn't exist on the internet at the moment from what I can determine. If people want pvp or party adventuring, there are muds and rpgs aplenty which offer those things. Beware the Grue! dark. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 12:24 AM Subject: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch by Thomas Ward Jul. 15, 2009 Like many modern game players I enjoy a well designed roll playing game complete with grand adventures, lots of magic weapons, the ability to learn and train new skills, a large game world to explore, etc. However, it never occurred to me how much time and effort goes into creating a well designed roll playing game from scratch. Most of the big name roll playing games we know of such as Dungeons and Dragons, Heroes Might and Magic, and final Fantasy have entire teams of people devoted to those projects. Therefore it should come as no surprise why they are so addictive and interesting to play. At times big name roll playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons can seam near endless when it comes to new content and adventures. Yet, what would it take to create a custom roll playing game from scratch? Well, I have discovered firsthand that creating a roll playing game from scratch is no easy matter. At first I assumed that creating my own Dungeons and Dragons style roll playing game should be fairly easy. After all, i had lots of story ideas floating around in my mind, and it should be easy enough to use them as a starting point for my custom roll playing game. Plus, I have more than ten years experience as a software developer, and I figured if I could create a FPS game engine, a side-scroller, a racing game, etc writing a roll playing game adventure system would be a piece of cake. That idea quickly was dispelled when I actually realized what was involved in creating a full fledged roll playing adventure system. First, thing I discovered as a game developer I had to create a rather comprehensive story for the game. Actually, more like several short stories held together in the context of the main story. I had to put considerable thought into the who, what, when, where, why, and how aspects to draft the main story. Like any good story it requires supporting people, places, and things of interest. That ends up being a very large task in and of itself. The next step was to convert the game's story and adventures into a paper and pen game book. This was easy enough to do. Rather than create custom rules, character classes, etc I decided to just go ahead and borrow the official Dungeons and Dragons character classes, rules, spells, etc. This saved a considerable amount of time and energy since the Dungeons and Dragons rules are widely used by similar roll playing games anyway. Finally, I was ready for the hard part. Converting the paper and pen game into some kind of computer game. As I mentioned above at first I thought this would be fairly straightforward and easy. As it turned out I grossly under estimated the complexity involved in creating a fairly in depth roll playing game. A roll playing game such as Sryth certainly is no small feet for a single developer. The first decision was weather or not to create the game as an internet based game or as a stand alone game. Both options have their own advantages and disadvantages. A lot depends on weather the developer intends the game to support player verses player style game play, wishes to use a central game server, store items and stats in a database, use Sapi support, etc. With a stand alone game it is certainly much easier to add sound effects, background music, Sapi speech support, and other such features to the game. Not to mention as a stand alone game it would not require a constant high speed internet connection to play. However, by the same token that would exclude features such as online adventure parties and player verses player style game play which are quite popular in current online roll playing games. If I decided to build an internet based roll playing game I would then have to decide between a web based game book style adventure such as Sryth, or design the game as a mud. Given the two options a web based game book style adventure would certainly seam
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Hi Tom. Well I'm fully in favor of the frequent updates etc which a php script game could give, and I'm glad your stil thinking single player even if the logistics are much easier online, pluss, it'd probably be seen as more reasonable of you to charge for an online game in some way than for a downloadable text rpg, - though personally I'd be willing to pay for such a game if it fulfilled my needs. But being as your also running a business (and to maintain the server costs of the game), either a subscription or account update fee for the game to gain full access would be seen as more reasonable by the public in general, - I know the huge amounts of markiting resources the commercial interactive fiction company malinch have to put into selling their games. Btw, not to quibble over your decision (which I completely understand the logic of), but Angband, the roguelike I mentioned which will hopefully be having full accessibility features added in the future, has taken precisely the opposite approach. I'm not certain what language the game is written in, but there are certainly several versions (windows mac os), and even source code for self compiling. When new versions come out, they are symply stuck on the website and people are expected to update. Everything in the game, the thousand or so monsters, the classes, items, and huuge amount of complex mechanics are contained in a series of text files which are easy to modify (one reason Angband has so many varients developed by other people). There is even a text file containing sound and display options. Obviously there are some differences, the most notable being that while Angband certainly uses lots of text for a roguelike (one reason why I'm fairly convinced it can be made fully accessible in the first place given some extra warning messages and coordinates), it does have a basically spacial interface with characters moving around a grid based, randomly generated dungeon rather than the environment being described gamebook style. Stil, in terms of pure mechanics, of which Angband has a truly mind bogling amount, everything is run through text file databases. this isn't to say your decision is wrong, or to argue in the least, - as I said I can fully follow your logic, I just thought it was an interesting contrast, and sinse we're discussing rpgs I thought I'd throw it out for considderation. Beware the Grue! Dark. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Well an online game is all and good, but I would probably take offline if I could. the main issue is that there are a load of capped connections, and going over that probably is not nice. although in theory the php html games take vary little data I just thought I would point out that fact. In the next few months or so its possible either my bill or speed will change depending on the ability of me to afford the unlimited connection I am currently on who's prices is set to rise from 50 to 60 dollars. This may mean I will have to either reduce my connection to a capped one say 25gb which is still a fair ammount but others use the system to or change to a cheaper isp which will probably have a smaller cap all in all I'd prefur some offline play to. At 12:34 p.m. 16/07/2009, you wrote: Hi Tom. Interesting. While i take the points about interface, ability to update the game easily and make it ultiplatform, my concern with the game being entirely online and multiplayer is that it avoides the traps of focusing on pvp, guild wars, power gaming and grinding which seem to dominate so many other web games. How about hosting the game online and using that system, but having no player interaction or comparison the way Sryth used to be. I'm sorry, i was just very much looking forward to a really detailed story driven single player game, which actually doesn't exist on the internet at the moment from what I can determine. If people want pvp or party adventuring, there are muds and rpgs aplenty which offer those things. Beware the Grue! dark. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 12:24 AM Subject: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch by Thomas Ward Jul. 15, 2009 Like many modern game players I enjoy a well designed roll playing game complete with grand adventures, lots of magic weapons, the ability to learn and train new skills, a large game world to explore, etc. However, it never occurred to me how much time and effort goes into creating a well designed roll playing game from scratch. Most of the big name roll playing games we know of such as Dungeons and Dragons, Heroes Might and Magic, and final Fantasy have entire teams of people devoted to those projects. Therefore it should come as no surprise why they are so addictive and interesting to play. At times big name roll playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons can seam near endless when it comes to new content and adventures. Yet, what would it take to create a custom roll playing game from scratch? Well, I have discovered firsthand that creating a roll playing game from scratch is no easy matter. At first I assumed that creating my own Dungeons and Dragons style roll playing game should be fairly easy. After all, i had lots of story ideas floating around in my mind, and it should be easy enough to use them as a starting point for my custom roll playing game. Plus, I have more than ten years experience as a software developer, and I figured if I could create a FPS game engine, a side-scroller, a racing game, etc writing a roll playing game adventure system would be a piece of cake. That idea quickly was dispelled when I actually realized what was involved in creating a full fledged roll playing adventure system. First, thing I discovered as a game developer I had to create a rather comprehensive story for the game. Actually, more like several short stories held together in the context of the main story. I had to put considerable thought into the who, what, when, where, why, and how aspects to draft the main story. Like any good story it requires supporting people, places, and things of interest. That ends up being a very large task in and of itself. The next step was to convert the game's story and adventures into a paper and pen game book. This was easy enough to do. Rather than create custom rules, character classes, etc I decided to just go ahead and borrow the official Dungeons and Dragons character classes, rules, spells, etc. This saved a considerable amount of time and energy since the Dungeons and Dragons rules are widely used by similar roll playing games anyway. Finally, I was ready for the hard part. Converting the paper and pen game into some kind of computer game. As I mentioned above at first I thought this would be fairly straightforward and easy. As it turned out I grossly under estimated the complexity involved in creating a fairly in depth roll playing game. A roll playing game such as Sryth certainly is no small feet for a single developer. The first decision was weather or not to create the game as an internet based game or as a stand alone game. Both options have their own advantages and disadvantages. A lot depends on weather the developer intends the game to support player verses player style game play, wishes to use a central
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
I have some thoughts here, being an inveterate paper-and-pen role playing gamer. First, I don't think I'd classify Angband or any of the Roguelikes as an RPG. These feel more like tactical simulations with a lot of details added in to make them have replay value. One big advantage of what Tom is proposing would be the possibility of user-extensibility. As I understand it, the game design would be completely modular, so it should be possible to bolt on new modules fairly easily. I don't know how many people know or want to learn PHP, but some sort of scripting language for specific objects, areas and creatures might be doable, a la MUD wizards. I'd certainly like to learn PHP to contribute to such a game. In order for the game to be truly an RPG, play would have to be completely open-ended, with the player goals being whatever the player desires. This is the downfall of the MUD style of gaming, where the goals are scripted into the game, leading to grinding and in the end the final lack of these games as compared to human-moderated games. TA decision to limit the play to single-player mode, while logistically understandable would detract significantly from the RP aspect of the game, since it becomes impossible to have gross effects on the world. Stories make sense in one respect, as they give structure to chaos, but if you're looking for something truly revolutionary, then there has to be a good balance between pre-generated story arcs and something the player comes up with on the fly. I'm not sure how to translate all of these thoughts into a playable computer-mediated game. The questions transcend the medium and would be faced no matter how you decide to deploy the game. I don't know how ambitious you want to be Tom, but I would be interested in being a part of the creation of things, if you're looking for any collaborators. I have 25 years of IRL role-playing experience, both playing and running games. I used to be a fair hand at programming, back when 68020 assembly code was being taught, and I could probably reacquire some skills if I had the right project to work on. Whether or no, I will be watching this project with great interest. Chris Bartlett --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Hi Shaun, Like I mentioned earlier it really comes down to a matter of logistics. It is one thing to create a side-scroller like Mysteries of the Ancients, and quite another when designing a detailed roll playing game. With a game like Mysteries of the ancients you have perhaps 14enemies on a level, most of a similar type or class, and equally as many special items. In terms of management that is a manageable amount of things to store in memory, and keep track of. Especially, since everything is pretty much standard throughout the entire game. With a fantasy game book style roll playing game such as Sryth there is much more to keep track of. Each and every weapon could be different in terms of stats, quality, and may or may not have magic powers. In a game like Mysteries of the Ancients you only have to worry about one sword. In a roll playing game there could be hundreds of swords ranging from short swords, long swords, to broad swords, and so on. They could be common, sturdy, well crafted, exceptional, magical, etc. You need to have a way to store all of that information without keeping it all in memory. The easiest way to do that is use a third-party database, and perform look ups when necessary. Yeah, I could technically do the same thing in an off line version, but it seams to be the more difficult way of handling it. Instead of a nice SQL database I store all of that info in a text file and open and read those files as necessary. It just seams to me to be a quick and dirty way of handling it without the advantages of a true database on hand. Smile. shaun everiss wrote: Well an online game is all and good, but I would probably take offline if I could. the main issue is that there are a load of capped connections, and going over that probably is not nice. although in theory the php html games take vary little data I just thought I would point out that fact. In the next few months or so its possible either my bill or speed will change depending on the ability of me to afford the unlimited connection I am currently on who's prices is set to rise from 50 to 60 dollars. This may mean I will have to either reduce my connection to a capped one say 25gb which is still a fair ammount but others use the system to or change to a cheaper isp which will probably have a smaller cap all in all I'd prefur some offline play to. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Hi Chris. What you say about tactical simulations is true of vanilla angband, ie, the basic varient which is purely about the dungeon full of monsters and equipment balance and choice. There are however now some other varients which feature quests, npcs, unique pantheons of gods and powers etc, all using the basic Angband version and engine (another reason I've been trying to push for accessibility changes in the game). Getting back to roleplaying games in general, I disagree with you about the deffinition of an rp game being open ended and having an effect on the world devorced from story. I'd say the basic deffinition of a role playing game and what distinguishes it from a life sim is story. Even playing tabletop games with a gm, there is a story, and sequence of events and background the gm has in mind. Of course, the way the players interact with those events might not be as the gm expects, and might require some improvising on the gm's part, but the basic idea is that the players are characters taking part in a constructed series of events, a construction story or situation. Suppose the gm creates a battle betwene two sides. The characters might decide to follow faction A, faction B, or try and stop the war. The Gm however must have certain ideas about the ramifications of this, and certain pre-conceived notions of what will happen, whome the characters will meet or fight, what stats the npcs involved etc. Even if the Gm plays an incredibly open ended game and asks the characters what to do after describing the situation, the Gm already has something in mind. Also personally, it's this aspect, participating in a story, quite literally playing a role which most interests me in rpgs themselves, and it's this aspect which is so trodden on by current net rpgs and muds, with all the grinding, guild wars, pvp factionalism etc. the problem is the larger the group, the less story control the game has, and when you've got players in their thousands, you can' weave stories around them without factors like game resets, npc quests etc, and so down the road to grinding. I'd personally much rather have an absolutely complex world and story with a single character which you are free to explore alone, participating in it's story and becoming a central figure. To take a single example, i loved the way in Sryth, once you completed the Mirk quest, the description of the town of stormfield utterly changed, and the npcs there reacted to you differently. That quest was an indellable part of the world, and once it was done, it was done forever with that character, consequences and all, with all the plot threads that intales. If Tom was willing to make the game modular enough to accept player created content, or let other people contribute adventures, this is also something I'd absolutely love! to do, sinse I'm certain learning enough php to add the scripting for adventures would take considderably less time than trying to learn enough general programming skill to create more own rpg, and creating rpgs is something I'd love to do. then again, it's Tom's world, and Tom's rules, and if he doesn't want others dabling in it, --- fair enough. Beware the Grue! Dark. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
