The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 4 (of 5)

Having some good ideas

I'm thinking of a great rpg game.
My friend and myself have designed it on paper.
But as, I don't know game programming yet.
I just wonder if someone is interested.

We are planning to make it a freeware.

Thanks

Noagbodji Victor
Tuesday, May 18, 2004

Go to source forge.

Ignore my ignorance
Tuesday, May 18, 2004

Try WorldForge.

TomA
Tuesday, May 18, 2004

http://www.worldforge.org/

"independent community in which many free games can develop and evolve with unique roleplaying-oriented worlds and rules"

TomA
Tuesday, May 18, 2004

A couple years back, I was involved with:

Arianne
http://sourceforge.net/projects/arianne/

It's both a game, but they were trying to make the engine fairly modular and the game portion was more of a Proof of Concept.

KC
Tuesday, May 18, 2004

Noagbodji Victor, just as a matter of interest, why do you think someone able to develop a game would prefer to develop your probably poor design in preference to their own?

Cruel to be kind
Tuesday, May 18, 2004

Actually, to be both more polite and more pragmatic - I think good independent game design comes from a passion for the game, and this is far less likely to happen when the author isn't the one who came up with the design.

Philo

Philo
Tuesday, May 18, 2004

Two points:

1. If you don't know how to program a game your ideas are most likely worthless. Games ultimately simulate the real (or a fantasy) world in some fashion, unless they're completely abstract like Tetris. But computers today cannot actually simulate the real world, so you have to design the game around lots of technical limitations. If you don't know game programming then you don't know those limitations, ergo you can't provide a solid design.

(There's the different problem of coming up with a design that's actually fun to play but I'm not even going there.)

2. Anyone who is interested enough in game programming to learn how to write an RPG _and_ would be willing to do so for free, is certainly working on his own idea and doesn't want to work on yours. If he didn't have his own ideas why would he ever have learned how to write an RPG in the first place?

3. http://www.sloperama.com/advice.html

Chris Nahr
Tuesday, May 18, 2004

You didn't notice that those were actually three points, did you? :p

Chris Nahr
Tuesday, May 18, 2004

"your probably poor design in preference to their own? "

Now children...

There's no basis for assuming that it MIGHT be a poor design, much less PROBABLY is.

There's enough to critique without making assumptions on which to base some more citicism.

SUGGESTION
Could you design your game using an existing game engine? Most games today (Starcraft, Half Life, etc.) let you build your own world.

It'd be a LOT easier to design it around that.

If you have a good STORY, you could perhaps pick the world that would be good to tell it in.

For all of your D&D (RPG) buffs out there: this would be like desinging your own module instead of trying to reinvent D & D.

Mr. Analogy
Tuesday, May 18, 2004

"A couple years back, I was involved with:

Arianne"

Isn't that the 7 million dollar rocket that blew up due to a register overflow error due to trying to write a 32 bit number to a 16 bit variable?

Mr. Analogy
Tuesday, May 18, 2004

"There's no basis for assuming that it MIGHT be a poor design, much less PROBABLY is."

Yes, there is, namely the fact that this guy has no experience in game programming, as I already said.

"Could you design your game using an existing game engine? Most games today (Starcraft, Half Life, etc.) let you build your own world."

That's patently false, and a great example of what I was talking about. People (even generally insightful and intelligent people like yourself) who don't know about game programming always _imagine_ that they know how to make computer games, for whatever reason.

The games you mentioned are "moddable", they have map and scenario designers. But the limitations of the world are built into the engine and cannot be changed with such tools.

In particular, you can't create an RPG with a mod unless the engine was specifically designed to support such a game type. Morrowind and Neverwinter Nights would be two examples.

However, in these cases you're building on a commercial game and therefore can't make the whole thing freeware as the original poster said.

All successful commercial RPGs use custom-built 3D engines, by the way, since converting shooter engines (Unreal, Quake, HL) to support RPG-specific features proved too difficult if not outright impossible.

"If you have a good STORY, you could perhaps pick the world that would be good to tell it in."

It's true that good storywriters are in short supply in the games industry. But "picking a world" means you're locking yourself into someone else's copyright so I would be very careful with that.

Example: While the basic D20 system is kinda/sorta available to everyone (the actual licensing agreement is extremely complicated!), the worlds of Dungeons & Dragons are not, including all settings and creatures (!). You cannot legally make a D&D-based freeware game without permission from the copyright holders. (WotC or were they recently sold?)

Chris Nahr
Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Mr Analogy, maybe you could market this non-existent game for these non capable pretenders?

All you need is a game programmer. A mere detail.

Cruel to be kind
Wednesday, May 19, 2004