Project "Roleplay"
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Hello Hello everyone, long time no see, I'm here to pitch an idea of sorts at you all, and get some feed back from the people I've played with for years, I've grown up on this server. (Almost literally) So I want you all to be my first poll subjects so to speak. I'd like any and all feed back, including criticism of any kind. Here's what I have:
If you don't want to read all of this, shoot to the bottom to get a quicker idea of what I'm aiming for, and remember, I WANT YOUR INPUT, what do you all think? What would you change? What would you like to see.
Project "Roleplay" is my first large programming project. It's literally an entire game I am making. I'm coming at it with an approach I don't think has been taken to this extent before. It's development, as in story's, settings, how it's played, is entirely up to developers. What I mean by that is, I am creating a frame work for players to build there own worlds and settings. A developer can get on the creation kit and start building magnificent worlds for others to play in, with almost no limits as to what can be done. Consider for a moment all the limitation of NwN. Hard coded classes, A more or less crap core crafting system, limited character creation, a limited number of monsters to work with, and much more than that I am sure.
This game will let you modify classes, create new ones, work with several -different- crafting systems, (Several inspired by Arabels past crafting systems) it will have hundreds if not thousands of monsters that are fully editable, thousands of objects to place such as buildings, tables, chairs, so many it will make your brain explode. Creator's will be able to make there own items to work with and script there own magic freely.
Combat and Game play: There will be several options on how to play the game, all can be controlled by the host of a server or creators if they want there players to only play in one way, the options are first person, third person, and overhead. Combat will have multiple options for the creators and hosts, being turned based (much like a DnD system) or a first person skyrim sort of play.
DM'ing: Dm's can have a special view of the server from a birds eye view so they can run events for players as well as get down on the ground with them, they can take control of any NPC as well. Server hosts will be able to set pre-ready events of there own creation. Such as a goblin horde attacking a gate, this may not need direct DM supervision so the host can set the event to hit at a certain time, log off, and when logged back on, see what damaged was caused.
Last but not least: Everyone is the creator… This option of the game was inspired by minecraft and its general sandboxyness. There will be a random world generate tool, that will do as the name states, possibly with pre-created town or not, in which players can gather resources and build towns and and forts, wage wars, possibly even hire NPC's. This part is still up in the air about whether or not we will be using pre-created buildings (as in you gather x amount of wood and x amount of stone and you can select what building you would like to build; which this values can be changed) or perhaps players can build all there own creations as they do in minecraft. ((possibly we will do both)) This will also give no multilayer clients the ability to play single player.
There are many more details I could include but I wont go into them, such as server clients and persistant storage utilitys.
Overview-
A game that leans heavily to the multilayer characteristics; A game where creators build the worlds that other players play in; be it sandboxing where the players build the world up themselves, or a preset RPG world where players go on adventures and DM's control cruel Tyrants attempting the thwart the brave adventurers; with near limitless capability for world creators, hosts, and DM's. So at the end of the day, a creator is more or less creating a game that is his or her own, unlike any other out there, with his own lore, or perhaps lore from another game or section of history.If it seems like I rambled a bit or didn't get my idea through, I am sorry, so lets hear what you all think of it, ideas are what I am aiming for and criticisms. They all go toward hashing out the best I can offer.
Games the inspired this:
Minecraft
Neverwinter Nights- Specifically Arabel
SkyrimTHE END
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How do you intend to complete this task without losing focus/interest?
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I dont think its such an issue, I've been working on it (not exactly the stuff I will be using, but writing up example programs and stuff none of what I've got so far will actually go into the finished product) for several months now I think its not a problem. I've got an example combat system built (though thats kinda simple) where two characters will fight to the death, you can select there gear and what not, me and a few other programmers working on this are in the process of building programs like this from scratch since none of us have had any real video game devolpement schooling. Currently (it should be done soon) were working on a GUI for that combat program that will also include an equipment backpack, a character saving feature, and possibly some minor animations. So we have been doing all sorts of little test programs that will eventually lead into the real work soon to come. We've just kinda been trying to get other peoples opinions on this idea since most of what we have now came from only our heads, we dont want to put all this work forward and it turns out theres no potential for this. Of course if it turns out everyone says something along the lines of it just wont work then we will fall back to our original story driven games.
((Sorry for any spelling mistakes, its 2 in the morning))
Edit: What do you mean by focus?
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The problem is the massive amount of effort to make this happen. Game development takes manyears and plenty of bucks. And thats just for the mechanics. Then you need graphics, objects, a design tool that checks the validity and integrity of the build, etc. Not to mention potential copyright issues, IP rights, etc.
But if you make this happen, you will get a lifetime supply of beer from me. Unless you are English or from Kentucky, the amount they can drink is just wrong ;-)
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Oh I know, this is -years- away. Im starting up the coding now with my small group and hoping to get picked up by a bigger company. I'm really a java coder so I'm having to get back into C++ (another "form" of programing for those who dont know) which is turning out to be a pain. Java had some stuff that made programming much easier. (But slower) ANYWAYS! Yes its years away, me and my cohorts are just doing some preliminary tests so to speak. Make sure there are people out there that would think this is cool. Were coming up with new ideas all the time to build on the already large amounts of information we have.
EDIT: As I see it I have at least 4 years in the military, so in some of my spare time for the next 4 years I can be coding this thing and getting it ready to pitch at some investors and gaming companys. Which is also 4 years to fine tune my programming skills and be ready to seriously start coding -if- I find someone with the money.
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Have you looked at this before?
https://goblinworks.com/
It's a similar project in hopes of creating an MMO within the Pathfinder world.