community-driven RPG

[shmibs]

ohithur, everyone.
a little while ago i had a sudden hankering to start working on an RPG of some sort. however, i was a bit daunted by starting such a massive task (and i've noticed that not many rpg's have been coming out recently). starting yet another project that will only be completed halfway and then abandoned to the anals of the server's HDD would not be good. thus, i decided to try something different. let's make an RPG together!

a community-driven RPG, to which anybody can contribute by adding graphics, plot elements, maps, or engines, seems like it just might result in a project that doesn't die halfway through. i was thinking the 83/4+ line simply because we have the most people who could work on it. additionally, that would allow both the asm and axe crowds to work together on things 

does anyone think this will work?

we should probably start by nailing down a plot of some sort. i was thinking that something with airships/tropical islands/steam punk robotics would be nice, simply because those haven't been featured much in calc games. any other ideas/ideas to the contrary?

oh, and lastly, what would be best as far as program specs? 4 level grey? smooth-scrolling? a chrono trigger like battle system? what would be realistic?

oh, and here are those zelda tiles i was working on earlier. feel free to post any other graphics you may have made and then not ended up using for anything so they can be recycled =D

[ben_g]

will it be axe or asm?

[shmibs]

i was thinking both, as they can be used together and that would result in the largest crowd of people who could work on it, but if nobody feels like adding asm code or axe code then it could end up being all one or the other. it's whatever people want.

[FinaleTI]

What would be cool is if we did something like the original Ys games. That's definitely be an interesting battle system. And it definitely hasn't been done for the 83+/84+ family yet.

[Juju]

That would be nice.

[shmibs]

i never got around to playing through Y's, and i'm still at my parent's house (only a few more days  ) so i can't watch the videos. how did battles work in that? a seem to remember, from a topic dj posted a while ago, that it's semi-live action?

[chattahippie]

This seems like a nice idea, I like it.

I could help with graphics (although I'm not the best artist ), but would be more than happy to do bug-check playthroughs whenever needed

I think you should also keep a list somewhere that says what everything (variables, pointers and free ram, etc.) is assigned to, so that no one overwrites data or messes up engines.

[shmibs]

yeah, documentation would have to be fantastic for this to work.

[FinaleTI]

i never got around to playing through Y's, and i'm still at my parent's house (only a few more days  ) so i can't watch the videos. how did battles work in that? a seem to remember, from a topic dj posted a while ago, that it's semi-live action?

It's live action, but instead of slashing, you have to ram into the enemy. But if you hit them head-on, you take damage, and they don't really take any. If you hit they off center or from the sides or back, they'll take damage and you won't.

[Geekboy1011]

i would gladly help with this if need be. asm here though not good with axe at all.

and yeah how does the ys battle system work?

that actually sounds like it might be fun to program xD

[shmibs]

@finale: that could work, and wouldn't be all that hard to set up. is it more fun than other battle systems, though? are there baddies who are different sizes/move at different rates, items you can wear that upgrade or change your movement, and different types of battle 'arenas'? there needs to be something to hold the player's attention through dozens of battles.

[FinaleTI]

In Ys, all the bosses were different sizes and shapes, and had unique AIs. Ys 2 introduced magic to the battle system, so perhaps that's something that could work as well.
In Ys 1, there were a few items that affected the player besides their armor and sword. Namely, rings. One double the damage you dealt, while another slows down your enemies. There were some other items like the Mask of Eyes that let you see hidden passages or progress through certain areas.
Ys Seven used techs assigned to shortcuts that you learned from weapons you equipped. So say you equipped an Iron Sword which taught 'Dash'. You would then assign 'Dash' to a shortcut and after enough uses, you would permanently learn 'Dash' and could use it without the Iron Sword equipped. SP in Ys Seven ranges from 0-100, and can be drawn from Flash Guarding or from attacking(using a Charge Attack give you back a lot more SP).

If we were to use a combination of techs, magic and effect-granting equipment, I think we could bring a decent variety to the battle system. Especially if we had a range of different enemy AI's.

[shmibs]

ooh, that sounds fantastic. i am a fan. would we need smoothscrolling for it to work, though? battles may feel a bit cramped on 96*64, particularly with large bosses.

[chattahippie]

ooh, that sounds fantastic. i am a fan. would we need smoothscrolling for it to work, though? battles may feel a bit cramped on 96*64, particularly with large bosses.

There is a tutorial for that in Axe, you can adjust/ add to that, and it works well, but is a bit slow because it draws the map window every frame.  It should work fine

[FinaleTI]

I think scrolling would help, but it might not have to be smoothscrolling. Scrolling by 2 or 4 pixels would probably work fine, and be a bit faster.
Also, if we're going to scroll, perhaps it would be good to have the player in the center of the screen, because then we would have one less set of coordinates to mess with and if the player went to the edge and it scrolled, and then ended up in an enemy... I just think if we didn't stick the player in the center of the screen, we could have some collision nightmares. But that's just my two cents.