I think part of it is FOSS usually means personal projects and folks usually start off small and "simple". That means tilesets and 2D. Beginners aren't going to rush into 3D game-dev, unless they are learning from a book. I can't see a book using FOSS engines. Look at the progress of FLARE. It's all about building, learning and growing. You can design art in blender and bake your content. It doesn't mean you can't grow later on and use the same content in a 3D world.
The big factor is engines aren't cheap for licensing. I've looked at ogre, unity and find I've got more API to learn how to use then getting to focus on the game, having to learn the quirks of the system. You end up writing wrapper classes to hide details you don't require and then forget about the APIs. Yes, old man memory kicks in and you don't remember anything about anything.
Of course, knowing your audience, style and the platform you plan on targeting will effect your options. However it always comes down to what @William.Thompsonj said, the "Cost and Value of Time."
Personally from my own experience I find if you are a do-er, you need a thinker to help with the creative side. If you are lucky enough to be creative to do art and the level of an artist, that great but we all need help. It's finding the right people to come together.
I, myself for instance want to create a "first" game - as much as I can by myself, mostly to say I created it and be proud of it, even if it sucks and no one plays it. I want learn something about myself, and game design, etc.
I can sit here all night playing with the coin render, oh shiny! I very nice rig for testing, just bad since you can play with it all the time and not be productive. I was like that when I was verifying my cave generator.
Your method is what most D&D dungeon generators are doing. I like the cellular automata but I can certainly see the appeal of growing caves.
Once the generation is done the hard job I think setup a tileset for use in a system and populating the map with alternate tiles and not feel weird. Sort of like you'd need a rule set, i.e since water tiles can be generated do you allow some water to movement, or wide enough to support a bridge.
Lots to still figure out on what makes the most sense. I think maybe it is easier to have someone design the level after all.
@Clint, thanks for the link. I totally missed that article. I'd have to do these in 3d, seems less work then trying to do is pixel-push. I bow to the masters of pixel art.
I think part of it is FOSS usually means personal projects and folks usually start off small and "simple". That means tilesets and 2D. Beginners aren't going to rush into 3D game-dev, unless they are learning from a book. I can't see a book using FOSS engines. Look at the progress of FLARE. It's all about building, learning and growing. You can design art in blender and bake your content. It doesn't mean you can't grow later on and use the same content in a 3D world.
The big factor is engines aren't cheap for licensing. I've looked at ogre, unity and find I've got more API to learn how to use then getting to focus on the game, having to learn the quirks of the system. You end up writing wrapper classes to hide details you don't require and then forget about the APIs. Yes, old man memory kicks in and you don't remember anything about anything.
Of course, knowing your audience, style and the platform you plan on targeting will effect your options. However it always comes down to what @William.Thompsonj said, the "Cost and Value of Time."
Personally from my own experience I find if you are a do-er, you need a thinker to help with the creative side. If you are lucky enough to be creative to do art and the level of an artist, that great but we all need help. It's finding the right people to come together.
I, myself for instance want to create a "first" game - as much as I can by myself, mostly to say I created it and be proud of it, even if it sucks and no one plays it. I want learn something about myself, and game design, etc.
@Ryan, cute game.
I learn by doing and making a game has been on the "TO DO" list since my C64 game days.
BAD ASS silouettes! I can see a bad guy just saying "Release the kraken!" and an entire squadron of them go raise badassry
I'll setup a testcase for node variant @Bart suggests and see how that places out.
I can sit here all night playing with the coin render, oh shiny! I very nice rig for testing, just bad since you can play with it all the time and not be productive. I was like that when I was verifying my cave generator.
Your method is what most D&D dungeon generators are doing. I like the cellular automata but I can certainly see the appeal of growing caves.
Once the generation is done the hard job I think setup a tileset for use in a system and populating the map with alternate tiles and not feel weird. Sort of like you'd need a rule set, i.e since water tiles can be generated do you allow some water to movement, or wide enough to support a bridge.
Lots to still figure out on what makes the most sense. I think maybe it is easier to have someone design the level after all.
@Clint, thanks for the link. I totally missed that article. I'd have to do these in 3d, seems less work then trying to do is pixel-push. I bow to the masters of pixel art.
Beautiful!
@Client, Are these done in blender then cleaned up in gimp?
I just checked out the files. Very nice work. I attempted to do tiles based in blender from Clint's tutorial yet that was an epic fail.
I think a tutorial is in order, does anyone second that request?
It is amazing how for something so small it's so visually stunning.
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