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Experimental Project

Quanrian 17 years ago

I am going to try something out. As a dev on Notrium I feel I'm enabled to propel the modding community a bit more than the usual user, with my insight into the scripting insanity that is modding Notrium. My plan or let's just say my game, is to take the disorganization I see and turn it into something productive. If you all would like to accept my 'challenge' or game if you prefer than I will feed you a concept, and continue to enhance it.

So now for the catch, I'm not going to do the main of the work, I will expect the modding community to do that. If you all think you can put your procastination where your mouths are, yell out and let me know and i'll challenge you. Keep in mind this project will test your abilities as a modder, as well as your ability to work with others 'successfully'. I have had a project in mind for a while, but simply don't have the time to dedicate to it, being overly exerted on Cormoon already. Yes, you may mock this if you wish by the way. I will only leave this up for so long, until I am satisfied that not enough people can accept this challenge of their abilities.

Amarth 17 years ago

Interesting. I'd love to join, but I don't know anything about modding (yet) and I really don't have much time. I have other things high on my priority queue and learning to mod Notrium sounds like a pointless exercise (it's a regular language - how much more trivial and inexpressive can a scripting language be? (in case you are wondering, theoretically it can't be worse, unless you'd go with a finite grammar, but that's really pointless)).

Okay, sorry.

Erm, I'm willing to do some graphics work perhaps, but don't expect anything grand. I might be able to help in some other ways, perhaps you'll hear more about that later.

(also, if anyones knows about this on some decent level, it IS a regular language, right? Damn well looks like it)

Crazy 17 years ago

I'm up for a little something. I'm pretty much the exact opposite of Amarth. No coding knowledge whatsoever, everything i know about modding Notrium i've learned by modding Notrium, but i'm rather good at graphics, design and general aesthetics.

And yes, my modelling skills HAVE improved since the LOTR mod days. I'm rather embarrassed about the poor models i made for that. My drawing skills have also improved beyond what's up on devart.

MageKing17 17 years ago

"Amarth" said:
(also, if anyones knows about this on some decent level, it IS a regular language, right? Damn well looks like it)

I don't think it even counts as a scripting language.

I'd be willing to participate, depending on exactly what work I'd need to be doing. I can't do any graphics work, obviously, but if you want me to, say, figure out how to implement a specific item (or items), I can probably handle it.

Quanrian 17 years ago

Well that's three responses, about enough for a small team. What you all need to 'agree' on now, is what roles you'll fill. I am not going to choose your roles for you, so pick and agree on the role/s you'd best be suited for. Once you guys appear to be organized, than I'll hit you with the base concept and what marks you'll be trying to hit graphically and script-wise.

By the way, there is nothing wrong with Notrium's scripts, there are just too many of them and they're highly prone to syntax errors. Like anything else it takes persistance, and whether it blends well into other languages is highly irrelevant. One should keep in mind the prime focus of this project is persistance, not bsing. I've seen a lot of procastinating, but no one seems to ever finish anything, including veteran members. Now is the time to stop bsing, and show me what the vets in this forum can do, besides correcting other people's grammar.

Amarth 17 years ago

Dammit. I was going to pick the Grammar Nazi role.

I dunno. What roles do we need? Can't we first see what needs to be done and use dynamic roles, ie, we see at the moment who does what? It seems obvious Crazy mainly does modeling/design, MK and me mainly code, but if we need many graphics I could do a few, etc. Defining tasks before you know them sounds awfully waterfall-model. Software developers have moved past that into agile methods (UP, XP) that work loads better.

Also, guys, I'm willing to work on this but only if I'm not alone, so don't quit, thank you. You'll give Quan a reason for laughing with us if you quit this. So apart from swearing "hell, I'll try to stick with this" I see no need to organize yet.

Pete 17 years ago

Ill join as well, as long as you dont expect too much of me. Ill need some time to brush the dust off my modding skills.

Quanrian 17 years ago

Actually there is very good reason to organize first. Me and Ville had our roles sorted right from the get go (me and Ville are still doing the same things we did from day one) and we only adjusted a bit. If you guys don't 'commit' to a role, you're not going to have anything to be persistant about. You can't just constantly shift roles, you need to be responsible for something. I'm already seeing a lot of, "Well I'm fine doing it, so long as I don't have too much 'responsibility' ".

I'm not trying to outright mock you guys, but I would like you to take this all a bit more seriously for once, rather than just criticize. I'll be blunt, don't even 'think' about calling yourself the project lead unless you're doing a lion's share and can take responsibility for keeping everyone else productive. This is just as much about working in as a group, and depending on others than your individual strength.

Grim Reaper 17 years ago

I'm interested in joining up.

And yeah, I'm at my best in coding and idealising, methinks.

Amarth 17 years ago

Well, I think I'm out. I don't have that much time left, I don't know anything about modding, and, to be blunt, I don't like the way Quan is talking. No offense, of course, I'm just not going to commit myself to this. I'll be keeping an eye on it.

Quanrian 17 years ago

Alright, well that's one out and one in. It is actually a good thing to decide this isn't for you right away rather than mid-way through. The absolute worst thing for any project is someone quiting mid-way, it really sets a fire from the inside out. For a project like this, you'll need a main scripter or programmer if you want to call it that. You'll also need a main artist. Secondarily you'll need an extra programmer/scripter, usually someone who has some good knowledge to not only polish things up, but who can also augment the scripts or rewrite them to function better. I'm really stressing team work on this one, so keep that in mind throughout, as I'll be looking at how well you all work together.

Like I said before, once you guys pick some steady roles and commit to them I'll gladly toss the base concept at you. This is still going to be the modding community's mod, and as such I expect you'll take over and personalize the mod beyond the initial concept. Good luck to those who choose to stick it out, and don't let me scare you away 'too easily' if it interests you, as I'm hard balling this for a reason (I'd like to get it moving and started so it doesn't conflict too much with what I've got to do with Cormoon).

Aegis 17 years ago

Can I join your modding group? I know just about everything there is to know about modding Notrium. And my graphical skills are limited to drawing stick-figures

Quanrian 17 years ago

This is open to everyone, just keep in mind you'll be working in a group, not solo.

MageKing17 17 years ago

I suppose we don't need too many coders, so I'd say this'd work well.

Quanrian 17 years ago

"MageKing17" said:
I suppose we don't need too many coders, so I'd say this'd work well.

You'd be surprised. It's sometime the sheer quantity of what needs to be done that requires more than one coder/scripter. It will require more coordination, so the versions are kept in sync. You guys can try the thing me and Ville used (I 'think' it was called Superversion), which I only stopped using cause my java is all jacked up and it uses java. If you do end up with more coders than people making content, do make sure you all have unique roles so you're not stepping on each other's toes as much. Make sure you all let me know when you've got your roles picked out, even if they're not exact, I just need to see you're all organized and in agreement.

Aegis 17 years ago

I've made a list on what could be everyone's roles, feel free to argue or squabble over all of it (or negotiate, whichever you prefer...)

Graphics: Crazy, Aegis (I can't draw, but I am familiar with The Gimp's automated editing filters, check my avatar image to see what I can do)
Modding: MageKing17, Pete, Grim Reaper, Aegis.

The order of people is in order of posting.

Now for some Q's.

Should we use the stable version of Superversion, or the unstable version?
What mod should we base our one on? (Barebone's, default, etc.)
On that topic: I have a mod which I made, and it basically is all of the distinguishing parts of different mods. OP - The tank, alternate fire;
Aleryon Betrayal - blood and ammo shells;
Wazzal 2 - the shield system.

Quanrian 17 years ago

Well since you're the first to actually attempt some kind of organization, I'm going to temporarily consider you the Project Lead, Aegis. You can sort of think of me like a mock publisher. I'll answer your questions below.

You should, always use the most stable version, especially when it's java, which can be very unstable in and of itself.

You should work from the barebones, and I'm sure Mageking can make any initial adjustments to it that need to be made to get things going.

Your old work probably wont help much because this is going to be a very different type of mod, out of the typical style one might expect from the engine. Frankly I wouldn't even bother with this if I thought it'd be easy or predictable. It has some relations to me Eidolon mod but I'll leave it at that for now.

Here's some major artist points incase anyone wants to start conceptualizing. Submit anything you have here for feedback. Keep in mind this is all your own project, but since it's my concept I am going to have a word in it, and I would like to be happy with it.

*The style should be unique and distinguishable.
*The style should be simple
*The style should be exagerated to draw attention to the overall mod's theme
*The style will likely be monochromatic or high contrast(This will be extremely helpful if palette changes are used later on.), with sharp changes from one color to another.

Crazy 17 years ago

*The style should be exagerated to draw attention to the overall mod's theme

exaggerated*

*snicker*

Oh, and there's always Basecamp. I've used it myself. Great stuff. <a class="postlink" href="http://www.basecamphq.com/">http://www.basecamphq.com/</a>

Oh, and definitely not monochromatic. I can understand why you would want this, but just no. High contrast, however, is good. And desaturate and add some brown/beige to everything.

Pete 17 years ago

Is it just me, or is everybody being so... OVERserious about projects lately?

Aegis 17 years ago

"Crazy" said:
Oh, and there's always Basecamp. I've used it myself. Great stuff. <a class="postlink" href="http://www.basecamphq.com/">http://www.basecamphq.com/</a>

Basecamp looks OK, but looking at the pricing and signup page (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.basecamphq.com/signup">http://www.basecamphq.com/signup</a>

I'm a little bit confused. How can the free version have 0mb storage for file sharing?
I've never used Superversion or Basecamp, so I guess I can't really compare the 2.
And almost contradicting myself, I've noticed that the stable version of Superversion (1.2) doesn't have an option to upload it to the internet, while the unstable version does. But I might have missed out on something, and correct me if I'm wrong.

"Quanrian" said:

*The style should be unique and distinguishable.
*The style should be simple
*The style should be exaggerated to draw attention to the overall mod's theme
*The style will likely be monochromatic or high contrast(This will be extremely helpful if palette changes are used later on.), with sharp changes from one color to another.

This gives us a lot of options in what to do and I think it's time to choose a genre for the mod. If it's a mod which involves weapons and all that I think it would be very cool to have a "choose your own path setting" where you can be good or evil.
This will be a done with a special bar, it's minimum value would be (evil) -5 and it's max would be 5 (good) and we could use:

condition 24 (player's bar parameter0 is greater or equal to parameter1)

and

condition 25 (player's bar parameter0 is smaller than parameter1)

to give out missions. And destructible terrain would be nice too.

And to Pete, seriousness involves talking in low, boring voices; but OVERseriousness will involve sabotage, guns and nuclear missiles. Do you understand my point? I don't.

Grim Reaper 17 years ago

If we're gonna have a good/evil bar thingy, surely we'll actually have some middle-ground outcomes and such, unlike Fable and friends?

Aegis 17 years ago

Absolutely. We could add heaps of different paths you could choose. Ooh! Ohhh! I'm having a headache with pictures! (an idea)

You could be a spy from the medieval times who can somehow control time. You could go into the past, present (2007) and the future. You could be able to stop, slow down and fast forward time. I don't think that anyone has ever made a Notrium mod about all that stuff.

Grim Reaper 17 years ago

Firstly, how would we implement time travel, and secondly, why a spy from medieval times?

Aegis 17 years ago

Firstly, time travel could be done like this:
There are plot_objects hidden in different places, and right clicking on them will transport you to another map.

Secondly, It's a spy 'cause I couldn't think of anything any more imaginative, but mainly because...I don't know...We'll just kick the spy.

Grim Reaper 17 years ago

"Aegis" said:
Firstly, time travel could be done like this:
There are plot_objects hidden in different places, and right clicking on them will transport you to another map.

Secondly, It's a spy 'cause I couldn't think of anything any more imaginative, but mainly because...I don't know...We'll just kick the spy.

A spy I can understand, but a MEDIEVAL spy? A spy from the near future or something would seem more likely to me.

Also, why not give the player nearly full control of the time travel by giving him items which, upon use, transport him to a certain map/age/era? We could always start the game from the medieval times (spy getting stuck there due to either a mixup or just because s/he was discovered by the enemy during a mission or something) and then unlock more maps/ages/eras by giving the player the appointed items as the game goes on.

Oh, and about the good/evil bar... Howsabout we use TWO bars, one for measuring your good deeds and the other for measuring the bad ones, and NOT make them cancel each other out (so you could be a baby-eating Mother Theresa if you want to)?

Aegis 17 years ago

Items aren't as simple as they seem because to transport/warp to another time you would need a different plot_object for EACH TILE, plus you would need lots of conditions to decide which plot_object to transport to, depending on what tile you're standing on. And with your 2 bars idea, I like it, it will allow a lot more diversity so you could become whatever evil/good/neutral guy/girl you wanna be!

Maybe there could be 5 eras:

Stone Age
Medieval
Present
Near future
Space-Travel---Why-Bother-Walking-When-You-Can-Transport---Automatic-Toilet-Paper-Bottom-Wiping-Robots Future

Grim Reaper 17 years ago

I thought that there would be a way to transport the player on item use... Or perhaps we could make the item use spawn/summon the plot object that then transports the player to the other era?

Also, on the matter of where the player ends up upon transportation, how about either having a set points in which the player is transported, or perhaps leaving a plot object behind upon transportation, so that when you transport back to that certain era, you arrive exactly where (and quite possibly when) you left?

Crazy 17 years ago

Hoo, boy. I am so very much against time travel.

No other reason but the absolute staggering amount of paradoxes. I mean. The butterfly effect is rather logical and according to it, your mere presence in the medieval era may lead to giant man-eating plants that spit quantum-mechanical toasters made out of bubble-gum in the present world.

Okay, fine, that was a slight exaggeration, but still.

I'm always for the post-apocalyptic subject, of course. Great stuff you can do there.

Oh, and i had an idea for vehicles. Maybe have vehicles that are plot objects and when the player uses them, the player is not only spawned as a vehicle, but also spawned in a map that is zoomed out. The entire map consists of textures and objects and enemies that are four times smaller than normal. I can't see how this could be used in a non-linear situation, however.

The idea was originally meant for a linear mod for Notrium. The player could use mechs (Yes, i know, not too original. But mechs rock.). They were meant to be little things in between the normal game, much like vehicle scenes in Generic FPS #873.

Grim Reaper 17 years ago

"Crazy" said:
Hoo, boy. I am so very much against time travel.

No other reason but the absolute staggering amount of paradoxes. I mean. The butterfly effect is rather logical and according to it, your mere presence in the medieval era may lead to giant man-eating plants that spit quantum-mechanical toasters made out of bubble-gum in the present world.

Okay, fine, that was a slight exaggeration, but still.

Well, if time travel doesn't work out, then howsabout hopping between realities/dimensions/whateveryouwannacallthem?

Also, that vehicle idea seems fun. It could be used for traveling, so that on the edge of the city/place/what-have-you there's the vehicle used for traveling the World Map, i.e. the area with smaller things. Shouldn't be too hard to make it be like that.

Crazy 17 years ago

That'd be nice. But it's rather simple, unless it's parallel realities featuring the same world (a la Trilby's Notes), it's really simple and non-Wow-factor and as such, i wouldn't add it. Unless it has importance story-wise. Then everything goes.

Quanrian 17 years ago

Just don't get too far ahead of yourselves. There is already a concept I have, that's not the hard part you guys need to work on. The hard part is going to be taking the concept and making it actually work, and more importantly, making it fun as well. Right now your focus should still be getting organized, which I've only seen one out of you all even attempt. For now just try and focus on which of the project tools you're going to use, and from the sounds of it the unstable version of Superversion is the one we used.

MageKing17 17 years ago

"Quanrian" said:
Just don't get too far ahead of yourselves. There is already a concept I have, that's not the hard part you guys need to work on. The hard part is going to be taking the concept and making it actually work, and more importantly, making it fun as well.

That would require us to know what the concept is.

"Quanrian" said:
Right now your focus should still be getting organized, which I've only seen one out of you all even attempt. For now just try and focus on which of the project tools you're going to use, and from the sounds of it the unstable version of Superversion is the one we used.

Great, now tell us what the concept is so we can get organized.

;P

I'm all for attempting whatever kind of game you guys want to make, because I think the Notrium engine still hasn't been explored to its full potential, but seriously, you guys need to scale back a little. Time travelers piloting giant robots may sound fun on paper, but nothing is fun unless it's well implemented, so once Quanrian actually gives us what it is were going to be working on, focus on how we can implement it in a way that will be enjoyable and not frustrating or boring.

Quanrian 17 years ago

You don't have roles yet. You haven't been consistent in how you'll exchange data. You haven't shown me anything that resembles what art style you've all agreed upon. Your idea of being organized and mine are obviously not the same. When I see what I originally asked for, I will be more than happy to share the concept. That's all, and yes if your post is nothing but a complaint, it will be deleted.

MageKing17 17 years ago

Someone set up a project for us at that Basecamp thing where we are getting ourselves organized.

Quanrian 17 years ago

"MageKing17" said:
Someone set up a project for us at that Basecamp thing where we are getting ourselves organized.

Glad to be hearing it ! Let me know when you're all set and than I'll hit you with the concept. I'm honestly not sure how you'll all take it, cause it's a bit odd. Most of my concepts, or well just most concepts in generals are based off of gimmicks, and just building the gameplay around that gimmick. As you stated Mageking, there is much that hasn't been done, and several of the gimmicks have either not been done or never been done properly. Honestly I could of done all the scripting myself, if I had someone else doing the art for me. I'm just doing it this way, because it'll give you guys some great hands-on, with dealing with someone else's concepts rather than your own.

A lot gets lost in translation, and game design with a team is a lot like playing telephone, worse or better depending on how well the team communicates. As much as you all aren't fond of my methods, they're very helpful to be practiced. Besides one more mod done is more morale for other's to look at and encourage them as well. I'm going to wish you all luck now, but remind you once more, only insane amounts of persistance get these things done. Starting a project will always be easier than finishing it to a satisfactory degree, like not being loaded with glitches. Luckily at least a few of you know the pitfalls of modding with Notrium, so you should be able to avoid the more common bugs.

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