My inspiration for engine design is Hack, Slash, Crawl on the site Kongregate.com (I think its GameStop), Diablo and Diablo 2, and any other similar game (think forgotten realms D&D games, Planescape torment, etc.).

I would like to ask any creative minds on this site for input on a story for an RPG. The setting is medieval with modern language. I want to have surprises and plot twists to keep the player interested but overall a solid story to follow. So far all I've come up with are generic ideas that have been done to death 50 ways from Sunday. Sources of inspiration that I want to use are Phantasy Star 3, the early Final Fantasy series (first 4 parts and part 7), Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest), and several literature pieces written in Icelandic and high German from the 1100's through the 1600's (Volsunga saga, Nibelungenlied, etc.).

If anyone is interested in sounding ideas along this general vein I'm happy to provide sources of inspiration, ideas and counter ideas, discussion, criticism, etc.

I would like to think I'm not an ignorant newb coming at this. I'm a few classes shy of finishing a software engineering degree with a large number of English and linguistics courses along the way. I can write a script or copy text but I don't have it in me to write the whole story. I also don't have a problem fumbling through the graphics as long as I can use some of the content on this site. I'm a member of the US Air Force stationed in Germany so I might not respond to comments very quickly. I need someone or a group of someones willing to author a minor work of significant effort for a game that will get published to a major flash game site without promise of compensation (but I give credit to all contributors!).

Some information about me: I'm interested in Icelandic and generally Nordic tales from 900's through 1600's and play a fare amount of games. I'm decently educated, experienced with writing software, and am willing to work with someone on making a game. If you prefer to discuss of-site I can give my email or Facebook info to those interested. This is a serious interest.

Oh, and by the way, I can pay a bit. I don't plan to charge for this game but I am willing to pay for good content. If you can make good content and you want to work with me a bit I'm willing to compensate you for your time. On the flip side of that coin, if you want to be paid you need to produce some reasonable amounts of work that I'm happy to use before I'll make a bank transfer (or your preferred method of payment). If you're a student I don't care as long as you're good.

I work at a radio station as a technician. In talking with some of the DJ's and operations folks I've taken some advice and worked out my sort of ethereal, cloudy request for a creative mind and turned it into some actionable, measurable, individual tasks that can be accomplished individually. This is a short list of the things I'm looking to generate:

• World setting

• Locations of interests to include villages, towns, monuments, etc.
• Political or otherwise groups of significant power or local forces
• Protagonist: loose background and some character traits
• Antagonist: light back-story, motivating forces, general temperament, possible henchmen
• At least 2 supporting characters with a paragraph of backstory and how they are involved

Each of these things is a task in itself and doesn't need to be super involved. 1-2 paragraphs for each of those bullets is what I'm after. One of the DJ's offered to help come up with ideas and be a sounding board so I have someone else to help with review and input.

Again, if you're good I don't care if you're a student. If you make some significant contributions I'm happy to compensate you for your time. I'm not afraid to put some of my bread on the table if you share your efforts.

License wise it's open discussion at this point. If this ends up becoming a commercial interest I want to have ownership of all game related content but I have no problem with sharing any proceeds.

I don't get the impression so many overly ambitious writers are interested in making a story line for a game sight unseen. I've consulted with a graphics professional here on this site, Sharm, and she's agreed to let me use some of her 16x16 tile sets to make a demo for my engine. I'll make it available on my site as a download when it's ready. If I don't get much response I'll probably just use this thread as a place to post progress. Thanks.

This looks like a pretty well developed map. I'm interested to see more. It being in Turkish is not a problem, I'm willing to do some translation. Right now it's almost 11pm here so I'll get back to you another time. Cheers.

I'm pretty pleased to give you an update. After doing some searching for 32 x 32 pixel sprite sheets and working on my demo a bit I've managed to get a little town together with some people and some interesting bits of logic worked out. I hope to have something show worthy as a demo by end of this coming weekend. A coworker gave me a brilliant suggestion to develop a map editor but that will wait for later. Hope you have something ready to share when the demo is ready, I'm getting excited to see my screen finally come to life. Sorry the last two posts are brief, I'm typing on my phone.

@shirish - I will more than likely put my engine out there as a foss game engine once I've made a game with it. Keep in mind it's written in AS3 using Adobe CS 5.5 so it may not work in most other flash compiling softwares. I'm not super familiar with as3, not my prefered language.

@cemkalyoncu - I didn't realize it was father's day this weekend. Naturally, my wife and kids wanted to spend some time with me so I didn't get as much time to work on game stuff as I wanted. Even still, I threw something together to demonstrate some basic abilities of the engine in progress.

Disclaimer: Lengthy techy explanation follows. Executive summary after this for non-tech people.

It draws graphics with transparent background directly from a sprite sheet, no need to chop them up into pieces or do weird conversions to them. It uses no movie clips (AS3 object) so memory doesn't bloat like mad. It's rendering everything as sprites (still images) and drawing a new image based on the number of ticks that have passed since it started ticking (right now it's counting frames rendered). Currently it embeds two sprite sheets I found that are free license (C0 I believe it's called) but I kept their source just in case. Nice thing about embeding whole sprite sheets is you can draw your levels as big as you want and the end result flash file size virtually stays the same. The display list gets carefully verified every frame and sorted when needed based on y index.

Executive Summary follows.

I've been careful to fine-tune the logic to ensure no memory bloat or processor madness occurs. It handles images easily without need to do fancy stuff to them. Objects like trees, lamp posts, columns, etc. that would hide you in real-life will also hide you in this game.

 Controls:

It doesn't say this in the game file or on my site anywhere but WASD or direction arrows control the character's movement.

A link to my site where you can test this bad-boy out:

http://will-thompson.net/game

My 2-year-old has recently decided he doesn't like his little brother sleeping in the same bedroom as mom and dad so I've been waking up at 2:30 every morning for a few weeks. My 2-year-old wants to cry and my 3-month-old wants to cry because his brother cries. It's like an epic evil cycle of anti-sleep gone wildly wrong. I have this wicked headache from sleep depravation but I've still managed to work out some bugs and add some logic to handle objects on the stage so you don't just run through everything now. I had to rework a pretty significant portion of my original code to get that bit working because of how I originally started writting it. It appears almost exactly the same but now you don't run through stuff like trees, light posts, statues, etc. The good news is I've almost finished a map drawing function that's separate from the rest of the game logic so it can quickly swap between maps without having to pause the game or do lengthy timers between area loads. Yes, that's right, it's almost ready to have more than one area to explore!

The server where my site is hosted seems a bit congested at the moment so if you get an error message just try back later, it's still there.

will-thompson.net/game

For those still tuned in I've kept playing with the demo. You can find the link above. See what it looks like for yourself if you like.

I need mock-up stages!

Originally I thought I had a decent amount of logic already written for a game engine. Obviously I was wrong because I've been investing a large amount of time writing logic to make a demo! Thankfully I realize writing software is a process. It takes a lot of forthought, planning, and some serious time. So far I've invested quite a bit of time in this project and I've managed to make a map generator that includes events based on areas entered that can include any type of logic I like including transitioning from one area to another, firing some fancy visual effect, launching into a cut scene, etc.

I've decided on using 32x32 pixel based graphics and 48x64 pixel sprites. I have a sprite sheet with 8 characters walking up, down, left, and right. I've located and contacted authors of 3 sets of tile based graphics for painting objects and structures into levels. I've verified license for each of these is either CC-BY or CC0 and the creators/contributors are all okay with me using them for whatever I want to include commercial works as long as I give attribution. None of these graphics are my works but I'm allowed to use them to my hearts content. Attached are the 4 sets of graphics I've come up with.

I need mock-up stages to put into my game demo! I need the following:

• Small town
• Dungeon
• Wilderness
• Anything you're willing to contribute!

I don't plan to use any mock-ups for an actual game but if they're good I'll probably ask permission to use at least the ideas you present.

Thanks in advance!

Edit: I don't know why sprites.png and tiles.png are showing well over 100 downloads each considering I just uploaded them. If they already exist on this site and I didn't see them and they belong to someone here please let me know! I thought I did careful research on these and I have URLs and emails to support my claims!

@Sharm

You're probably right about the tiles. I didn't check those thoroughly. I'm not familiar enough with default RPG maker graphics so I have no idea if they came from there or not. I can always figure out something else for the tiles, that's not an issue.

The sprites were originally made for use with RPG maker 2000 but are not default graphics, they were made to be compatible with that program, they're original works. Their creator has two other sets of sprites on a website that I've got in a folder in my game folder along with the author's contact info, etc.

The two texture packs are popular Minecraft texture packs that I did go through some lengths to get permission to use and I verified are original works.

@cemkalyoncu

Are you talking about Liberated Pixel Cup graphics? If so, I haven't really explored them and have next to zero knowledge about them. I'll have to go on an exploration tonight to see about them. Thanks for the tip.

@Sharm

You're totally right, someone took RPG maker default graphics and put them up as their own. I found the exact same tileset several other places just by typing "RPG maker tileset" into Google. How ridiculous. Lesson learned. Double or maybe tripple check sources are legit.

About those sprites... I can't seem to locate them any other place besides the one website. I'm still thinking they're original but now you have me questioning everything. Here is the url where they can be found:

zch.neurohelmet.com/2000/

Below is the forum where they're being talked about and where I originally found them. You're smarter than me, please tell me if I'm a tard and I just missed something obvious:

forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/960-2000-era-sprites-for-vxace/

A simple search on Google with the words "RPG maker spritesheet" didn't reveal any of those exact sprites but this is a link to some very similar sprites that make me question validity (by simple search I mean opening several hundred tiny thumbnails for almost 2 hours searching carefully for similar images):

angelfire.com/hero/straygames/rpg2dmiSheet.png

Please see comment below directed at everyone for a note about maybe animating your mockup levels and making them into something a sprite can wander around so people can see my game engine working with real content. If it's okay with you I'm gonna do that.

@cemkalyoncu

I've spent a few hours digging around LPC content and I have to say, I'm impressed. The quality and consistency standards were definitely followed by most and a lot of this stuff is quite usable.

I also did some digging for tilesets. Of course, in digging I decided to look around on the internet to see if there were other places to find interesting/usable content. I found a few places. More to come on that.

@EVERYONE

Still need some mockup levels! My engine consists of a lot of good game logic but only one level! I want to give people a feel for game play style. I don't think it's the most advanced thing in the world but I'm kind of proud I was able to emulate so many different other game styles so quickly with a little flash programming. I don't really care what tileset, terrain, or sprites you might use to make a mockup. Hell, I might just make Sharm's mockup with her graphics blown up to 200% just to demonstrate how the game might feel.

@FacadeGaikan

Ha! Well done good sir. You win an interwebs. Thank you for making me laugh out loud for real. That made my night.

Funny you mention the minecraft cake. The author of eldcraft is also the author of that tileset you linked. That's a set he made before eldcraft.

I can see your point about the graphics though. I think I might have to use LPC graphics or stuff on here that's licensed in a way that I can do what I need with it.

You're a pretty darn good pixel artist, maybe you'd be interested in making some graphics... if not maybe you can recommed someone else who you believe is good like you ;)

EDIT

OMG how did I miss this page?

http://lpc.opengameart.org/static/lpc-style-guide/assets.html

That has so many assets and is so f*ing useful! WOW!

Okay, so, my final decision is to use LPC graphics. I'm still interested in the idea of contributing to a pixel artist and having some tiles made that I can contribute to the LPC effort (after I've had a chance to use some of them of course).

SECOND EDIT

Tiled map editor seems like a pretty useful tool also. I have to say, I don't know how I missed all these LPC links and assets and everything else when I was nosing around the other night. Goodness!

http://www.mapeditor.org/ (from LPC assets demo page)

I've replaced all graphics in my previous demo with purely LPC graphics. I've also had to do some re-tooling because LPC graphics are setup differently than everything I had cobbled together. Please feel free to see my basic game engine demo with LPC graphics. I attribute nothing graphic to myself, it's all the awesome people here on OGA!

[See above for link to my site, I'm not going to post it again because that's spam!]

So, huge amount of effort this week and weekend getting the map loader to swap maps correctly and smoothly. Had to make a lot of decisions on how and what to load and when and had to figure out how to make flash do thing asynchronously when called from a frame updater function.

Long story short, there are places to explore in my demo now! It's only a simple level with some polishing and an empty house but still, it shows that I got something working at least. If anyone wants to make some levels I'll be happy to reproduce them as part of my demo...

@cemkalyoncu

I'm ready to start making a game when you are. When you get some story translated let me know, I can make maps and draw objects and make stuff! I think next it's time to work on an inventory system.

I'm not picky about particular formats. I prefer an image file (PNG, GIF, JPEG, TIFF). I'll take whatever mapeditor uses too (http://www.mapeditor.org/). PDF works as long as it's color and reasonable quality. I have the Adobe CS 5.5 master suite so if someone makes some crazy cool awesome sauce map in Illustrator or Photoshop I can deal with those formats with no problem (just make sure it's compatible with CS 5.5). If you have a friend who wants to make a map using HTML, CSS, and Javascript I'll be fine with looking at that in a browser. I don't really care as long as it's viewable with normal software. I have a virtual machine that runs Ubuntu linux so I can open GIMP formats but I prefer not to do that because it's extra work for me to conver to a flat image format that I can use.

If you want to make an ASCII level in notepad with a legend telling what characters represent what tiles in what LPC files I'd probably be willing to try to use that too. Just don't get too crazy or use weird formats and we'll be okay. I prefer flat image formats that are common industry standard. Whatever makes a small file size that's easy to see detail is prefered so it can be emailed.

Things I Need:

• MAPS! (world/town/area maps)
• Design considerations (placement of houses, buildings, people, etc.)
• Some reasonable detail about an area so a map can be generated

There are some things I'd like to get related to characters. These can come before, during, or after the maps. Stuff I need about characters:

• Hero description (I'll pick something random as a placeholder if open)
• Non-Player Characters (NPCs) to include physical description, gender, significant visual traits
• Significant characters (potential party members, enemies, etc.) and their visual traits

Thing you can do to speed-up the character creation process:

• Pick some sprites from LPC-compatible asset
• Take naked sprites and overlaying the appropriate gear and features
• Give me links to the different assets that should be on a sprite and I'll lay them all together to make a finished spritesheet

You can sift through my favorites for ideas. I went through and picked out a bunch of the LPC-compatible assets on OGA in preparation for making this game. I've also asked Sharm to make some graphic assets for us at a small cost to myself to personalize this game and any future games I make using my engine.

Happy 4th of July. I won't have much chance to work on game stuff this weekend because I'll be in Amsterdam, plus it was my anniversary on Tuesday. I did make a good start on NPCs (non-player characters) but there's still a bit left before they're done and troubleshot/tested. Have a good weekend!

@cemkalyoncu
I've been looking at how to do A* path finding in flash for a couple months. It doesn't look so complicated but never having done it means I have no idea. I'd like to make that part of this game engine at some point. For now I think I need to finish implementing NPCs and enemies first.

I'm using Adobe CS 5.5 Flash to build my FLA file and associated AS3 files. If you want I can email what I have made so far to you when I get back to Germany. I'm happy to share with anyone else who's experienced and has some idea what the internals should look like.

@cjc83486
Some nice graphics you linked. I looked through them a little bit. Have to look more when I get back.

I'm back from Amsterdam! There's a new update to my demo. Added a dialog function. Give it a try if you like.

I decided I didn't like how dialogs were displayed and didn't like how I setup event handling to work with them initially. Changed it so the engine can queue up several dialogs to display, one after the next, and added the ability to display an image to the left or the right of the text in the dialog messages. Check it out, they have conversations now!

Had a little bit of time on my hands so I decided to put some more stuff into my engine and game demo. I think I've settled on a solid-ish API for now but still haven't put together a real inventory. I'll post the source on my site in a zip file for anyone curious to see what it looks like so far. I can't promise it'll look nice or even make sense but I try to leave comments and I try to make things meaningful. I'm open to hear all suggestions, comments, etc.

Game demo page now has zipped source file link!

Most definitely I'm looking at adding dialog options! The first and easiest thought was a simple yes/no prompt. I want to make a full-blown menu dialog at some point, just haven't tackled it yet. The split dialog used for gaining or losing items is still a bit buggy, I haven't finished working out the details of that yet. For some reason it doesn't want to move the text for the item to the right coordinates but I'll hammer that out in short order.

I'm learning AS3 as I go. If I'm making crazy/weird/non-sense mistakes or reinventing the wheel or doing something totally out of the norm I'm happy to hear about it. AS3 is by no means my first language. I understand writing software, just not all the intricate details of how AS3 works. I've played with Tweens a bit and plan to use them for transitions and cut scenes but for complicated stuff (like shaking the screen for an earthquake) I just couldn't use them.

There's a simple array for the hero's inventory with no way to manage it. I chose an array over a vector because I don't want to do all the extra gear work of making a generic item base class and extending everything else off of it, it's less prone to break and more simple that way. I will probably change my mind about that and write a base class but that'll be decided later. The eventual goal is to have an inventory screen with currently worn gear, a keyring managed separately from main inventory, and a space for quest items separate from inventory. I want to make a GUI inventory manager with icons that are drag-drop capable, very similar to Diablo II but all items would take up 1 slot. I like the idea of 32x32 pixel icons for inventory items.

Something to Note

I've never seen RPG-Maker or any other game-making software. I'm making things based on my experience with playing games. If there's a feature or function you would expect but don't see I'm happy to take suggestions. I have a short to-do list of features to work out with no particular order. Maybe I should formally write-out that list and post it here so everyone can see it and leave comments.

Dialog:

• Item gained/lost dialog
• Decision based dialog
• Menus (similar to decision based dialog)

Inventory, items, and misc related:

• Inventory (structure, logic, management GUI)
• Equiped items
• Keyring
• Quest items

Sprites and graphics:

• Character sprite generation logic
• Transition effects (fade in/out, etc.)
• Preloader screen (cannot finish until near the end)

Stats system and effects on stats:

• Character stats (intelligence, strength, dexterity, etc.)
• Equipment values, graphics, etc
• Leveling system for gaining stats
• Buffs and negative effects (to include visual effects)
• Currency system

Please tell me if there's anything else I should add to this list, modify, or change in some way. Also, tell me what would be most useful to work on next.

I've been a little busy this week, didn't get a lot of time to work on this. I'll try to get an update out this weekend some time. My desire is to make some menu dialog screens next. If you have any more suggestions or requests let me know.

What you've translated so far is quite good. Thank you so much for the rumors and other details. Those are things I can use when the hero talks to random NPCs. It makes me very curious now about some other details.

Things I need to know about your story:

• What is the geographic setting/influences? I saw the descriptions of Kujasa being mostly warm and cold in the north but I need a bit more detail about the local region (desert, mountain, forest, bay, etc. [overview map of the region would really help me])
• What economic basis does Trimak have? I saw trading for Trimak and surrounding farm lands but what about the Quashi and any other local groups? (Primarily fishing, trading, farming, ranching, crafting, raw material harvesting, mining, hybrid, etc.)
• What cultural basis can Trimak's people be related to in the real world? What cultural reference can the Quashi be associated with? (Irish/Scottish/Welsh/English, Desert people [Egypt, the Sahara, Most of Northern Africa, Australia], Islander [Easter Island, Iceland, Philippians, Hawaii, New Zealand, Cuba, Puerto Rico], Cold Nordic [Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia], Cold region of the world [Canada, Greenland, the Arctic, Antarctica, northern Russia, southern Argentina], forest cultures [central/southern Africa or the Inca/Mayan people of north and central Americas before their destruction], varied European influence [French, German, Spanish, Italian, Greek], Slavic [Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Poland, Czech Republic], Middle Eastern [Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Saudi Arabia], East Indian or near by cultures [India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Burma, Bangladesh], Eastern/Oriental [China, Tibet, Mongolia, Thailand, Indonesia, Japan], nomadic [Celtic, Gypsy/Hungarian], or something else?)
• What language influences are there? (similar to Roman/Latin, Cyrillic/Slavic, Arabic, Pushtu, Native dialects like many African countries, symbols like Mandarin Chinese, constructed of symbols like Korean, or some combination of letters and symbols like Mayan?)
• What sort of significant historic events have taken place within, near, or in relation to Trimak? I saw the history between the Quashi and Trimak but I'm looking for more detail (pilgrimages, yearly festivals, important battles, failed or successful foreign cultures that mingled and became part of Trimak, failed or successful invasions, etc.)
• Are there famous characters from Trimak's history that should be highlighted? I saw the Kujasa commander Hatrok Kandaro and the other notes but I need more names and significant figures (great leaders, warriors, martyrs, peace keepers, founders, famous characters, etc.)
• Typical architecture (Old Roman, high gothic, jungle head-hunters in the Congo, etc.)
• Any other details of significant interest that need to be addressed
• What dominant traits are found in their art and cultural heritage? (Celtic knot work, roman architecture and military, Greek story telling, Alaskan totem poles, pyramids of Egypt, other famous traits)

Since Trimak is a thousand-ish years old it has a lot of history and culture. Therefore, it needs a decent back story and fairly in-depth detail surrounding it. It'll need decorations, eye candy of sorts, probably statues or landmarks (or at least obvious traits). It's going to need some well established cultural norms and customs. The people are also going to dress a certain way depending on the time of year, geographic conditions, and any other climatic considerations.

When you get some answers for this wall of text I'll be very interested to see them. You have my email address if you prefer to avoid spoiling the plot or want to keep specifics safe from prying eyes. Also, if you haven't thought of some, most, or any of these you might want to start thinking about them now because they will all shape how the game is going to look.

My next project is to have Sharm make some statues and decorations for Trimak. I need to know what kind of pictures to send her so she has an idea of what to mimic.