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[VortexCortex]

Cooperative Game Developed by TIGers! (That means You!)
Version NaN.0.0 - Name desperately subject to change edition

Do you have a folder full of unused pixel art, or a notebook full of game ideas or compelling story lines?

Why not get together with other like-minded folks and actually turn them into something playable?

That's right,
You can help us make this game.

Just jump right in and join the discussion.  Even just suggestions and feeback are appreciated.

________

Forum too slow or permanent for you?  Try #tigCOOP on esper.net (IRC)
irc://irc.esper.net/tigCOOP

_________

Unless otherwise objected to, here are the current specifics we've agreed to:

• The game play will be similar to a roguelike, but we still need to decide on all the particular mechanics we'll employ.
  
• The graphics will be 2D and "tile based".
  
• Preferable tile size for the game's base tile sets is 16x16.  Mods with alternate tile sizes are possible.
  
• There will be a game editor tool available to players of the game.
  
• The game will be easy to mod and support adding new tilesets and sharing the mods with others.
  
• Procedural generation will be employed in some aspects, but can be overridden with manually designed content.
  
• There will be more than one tileset theme / employed in the generated free-roaming over-world.
  
• There are to be different areas of the game with different time periods / tilesets:
  
  • Medieval / Ancient Magics
    Your typical warriors, wizards, goblins and what-not.
    
  • Not to distant future
    (relative to today - Imagine yourself in 20 years?)
    
  • Post Singularity
    Post (human) Apocalypse the Cyborgs and Machine races live on.
    
  • Alternate Demention
    The alternate planes of existence rolled into one: Spirit Plane, Land of the Dead, Ethereal Realm, World of the Gods, Parallel Eldritch Dimension, etc.  Can only be seen in your After Life.  see this post for details.
    

The aim is to have a game world that lends itself to a variety of themes to maximize potential for collaboration.

Also Note: We still REALLY need a game name.

________

This is a continuation of the thread that theweirdn8 started here.  If you're reading this, theweirdn8, I don't mean to steal your thunder, just steel it -- That is, get it off to a right and proper start (since that other forum is for games that have playable content).

[Impmaster]

Name: Time warp 7: The TIGS experience. 

[VortexCortex]

"Time Warp ..."
Great, now I've got visions of Rocky Horror Picture Show stuck in my head...

Have we decided on the mixed time universe thing, or no?  I suppose we could change the name again later, but let's get a few more candidates out there to pick from first.

Roguelike name Ideas:

• Time Warp 7: The TIGS Experience
  
• Dark and Disorderly
  (Random dungeon reference, also the general project outlook...)
  
• Epic Failure Quest: You have no chance to survive, make your time.
  (After all, roguelikes typically have instant death.)
  
• Dungeon Dearest: For those who love making and playing in dungeons
  (no not those kind).
  
• Patchverse
  (If it's all made by patching manual made stuff atop a generated world...)
  
• The Entropy Experiment
  (This could be a reference to the major opposition to time travel (entropy can't easily be reversed to allow time travel, also Super Symmetry is all but disproved: Anti-Matter acts differently (not an exact mirror of normal matter), and evidence shows matter behaves differently if going backwards in time), and reference to map makers changing the overall entropic measure -- see: Information Theory -- That said, time travel is still a fun story element / game mechanic even if science doesn't support it.)
  
• Life's Work: It's Play Too.
  (OK, I'm done making world-editing puns)
  

Everyone likes the potential a community project has, but it's just not feasible unless it's done right, and by right, I mean where you can slack off for years and others can seamlessly pick it up and run, like a TIG World thread.

This was a partial thought, I'll finish here: We should make sure the code is open source and the assets are licensed under a license that's at least CC, with derivatives allowed.  To make editing the game easiest, we need some form of in-game editor, so if the game is HTML+JS, the editor is HTML5+JS too; A Java or C, etc, engine would need an editor that's just as cross platform as the game -- I used to make Doom2 .WADs, but there's no good editor on Linux, even though the DoomBuilder is open source, it uses MS proprietary APIs and no one's ported it to work on Mac or Linux yet...  We should try to avoid that type of issue, putting the editor in the game is one way to ensure if you can play the game, you can edit it.

[koiwai]

I second HTML5/JS. Though, tbh, my practical knowledge of this technology is zilch, what is embarrassing obviously. A good crash course is required, but I will learn it, probably in a week or so (unless its a horrible mess)

[Impmaster]

Alright. So, the storyline is that a wizard's apprentice has accidentally morphed all the alternate universes together. He now has to go to each of the 8 dimensions to get a dimension anchor, which he will remove to let the universe go free.

Sound good?

[koiwai]

Alright. So, the storyline is that a wizard's apprentice has accidentally morphed all the alternate universes together. He now has to go to each of the 8 dimensions to get a dimension anchor, which he will remove to let the universe go free.

Sound good?

Sounds a little sloppy. I mean, your use of scientific terms is too careless, but the general idea sounds ok.

I would suggest to try to find interesting gameplay mechanics, for example:
1) how you can travel between the worlds? when, why, what are the difficulties?
2) how to acquire items from the parallel worlds?
3) how you learn new skills and use your inter-dimensional travel abilities?

Guys, have you read The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny? That universe featured travelling between "shadow worlds":

The Amber stories take place in two "true" worlds: Amber, and the Courts of Chaos, as well as the shadows that lie between them. These shadows, including our Earth, are parallel worlds that exist in the tension between the two true worlds of Amber and the Courts. The Courts of Chaos is situated in Shadow at the very edge of the pit of Chaos itself, a seething cauldron from which all that is or ever will be comes from. Royals of Amber who have negotiated the Pattern can travel freely through the shadows. By shifting between shadows, one can alter or create a new reality by choosing which elements of which shadows to keep, and which to subtract. Members of the Courts of Chaos who have traversed the Logrus are also able to travel through shadow.

[Impmaster]

I mean, your use of scientific terms is too careless, but the general idea sounds ok.

Heh. Dimensional anchor. Scientific. 

[koiwai]

Some ideas regarding inter-dimensional travelling:

• When travelling between the worlds, player looses all his experince (or part of it) or is allowed to take only one item (or no items as in Terminator ). So you feel extremely hampered at the beginning.
• There must be both positive and negative effects of such travel, as if unknown higher being are free to do something to you at the time of this travel.
• You can find powerful artifacts that let you oppose negative effects, but it pisses off the higher beings (~gods)

I have not played Planescape Torment, but they had some concept of interconnected worlds/planes. We can get ideas from there too.

[Ant]

I dunno... think you guys may be making this a little overcomplicated.

A simpler approach would be just take bog standard simple roguelike core rules (you can tune them, add classes, etc, later), old-worldy fantasy setting. The basis of the game is you start in a settlement with shops and what not and there's a list of randomly generated missions open. Each mission leads to a pre-designed 'dungeon' where the reward is some rare loot.

Once you've got a simple game structure like that you can then build all kinds from it and it's super easy for a bunch of people with different ideas to add their own stuff.

[Impmaster]

That's what I was thinking. There is a wizard's tower in the center of the game, and there you can heal, buy items, save... And from that tower, you can go to one of 8 different dimensions. Then it's just a roguelike in a special setting, with different monsters to fight and specialized loot. Maybe if you die, you can restart at the tower?

[koiwai]

I dunno... think you guys may be making this a little overcomplicated.

A simpler approach would be just take bog standard simple roguelike core rules (you can tune them, add classes, etc, later), old-worldy fantasy setting. The basis of the game is you start in a settlement with shops and what not and there's a list of randomly generated missions open. Each mission leads to a pre-designed 'dungeon' where the reward is some rare loot.

Once you've got a simple game structure like that you can then build all kinds from it and it's super easy for a bunch of people with different ideas to add their own stuff.

The whole idea of mixing different times/worlds is not overused in roguelikes, and let different people contribute relatively freely. It is not much more difficult than making a normal roguelike, but it just looks a little weird.

The game mechanics I suggested are not very costly too. My concern is just to make this "patchverse" more believable. If we can come up with a good simple set of rules for this multiverse and make a good story around it, it will be quite fun to play just because of that.

Collegial decisions are hard to make though..

[Quarry]

Organizing cooperative project such as this is extremely hard, but I hope that this will succeed (somehow)

[VortexCortex]

I second HTML5/JS.

It's decided then.  So shall it be written, so shall it be done.  JS is easy if you know any other language at all.  Protip: The Mozilla Developer site is your friend -- they invented JavaScript back in the Netscape Navigator days, after all.

FYI: JQuery is slow, stay away from that, It's great for websites and webapps, but we won't be using it for games.  Anything we'd need JQuery for I'll either already have it done, or can quickly code up a faster piece of code than they provide.

I'm now underway adapting my HTML/JS level editor to be more generalized for this project, so lots of tricky browser compatibility stuff is already out of the way (handling stuff like Ajax loading between IE vs FF/Chrome/Safari, handling online vs offline data loading -- Eg: XMLHttpRequest doesn't work with file:/// URLs when running without a server, so no XML data and no JSON data backend -- See, this is where it's nice that I've already solved that problem with my own data language (JSE) that's designed to work around this specific problem.   That means all the messy bits of JavaScript in the engine will be handled, and additional coders can focus on the game logic, actor events, spells, all that good fun stuff.

Speaking of non-fun stuff: I'm going to go ahead and put forth that tiles and game actors (enemies / avatars) can optionally have animations (meaning they can be animated but don't have to be).  It'll take more work to create a sprite sheet tool, but it'll be well worth it.  I'm going to make the engine general purpose enough that I can use it in a couple of other projects -- kill more birds with less stones.

________

I'll restate what I think to be the best way to implement a varied world.

Essentially, the over-map will be one big huge seamless world.  Procedural generation will create the majority of the major land forms, random enemies, rivers, etc.  Regions of different "factions" or tilesets will be dispersed in the world by the generator: from small pockets to large dominated areas, to mixtures between them.  It's all the same world, just treat everything like one big tileset -- Think of the way terrain generators create mountains, plains, water,  now, imagine the world divided up like that into different factions -- Instead of water you have the magic users, instead of mountains you have Aliens, or whatever.   We'll use two separate passes of the noise patterns, one for land form creation -- 'This is land, this is water, this is mountain, this is lava'  Then we run the pass again and say this spot is futuristic, this spot is ancient magic, etc, and so you get the different factions smoothly layed out across one big generated world.

So if there's two differing tilesets, say: medieval times and futuristic, there will be large blobs dominated by either faction dotted across the whole world -- The forest area might be populated with goblins or homeless refugees.  The plains might be populated by Giants and barbarians, or by mad-max motorcycle gangs, depending on the faction stuff.  Maybe add tire marks to tiles in the desert where it's modern day, ect.  Maybe if there was a 3rd faction, Cyborgs & Robots for instance,  then the plains would have tons of solar panels and wires would run through all the Machine race's tiles.  I think if we end up having  medieval magics as a main theme / faction / world, then I'm voting for a Cyborg & Machine race world as another faction.

If there's more settings than two that's cool with me, but however many there are needs to be decided (and roughly tested) before start patching in our own manual chunks of the world.  I think just one tileset -- medieval magic -- would get boring, so I'm voting for at least two main factions, maybe more if you folks can come up with a good story for how they're all mixed in and interrelated.  Just so long as it wasn't The Nexus crap from StarTrek Generations.

Now, that doesn't mean there can't be more different factions or tile-set / dimentions tacked on later, they just won't be a major faction that the endless world generator could handle.   Folks can still create new tilesets afterwards, but all the world-patch additions in that new tileset will have to be done manually, the generator won't be able to merge a whole new faction into the world and keep the old stuff matching correctly, them's the breaks of Perlin Noise Functions.

I'll leave it up to other folks to decide if there should be restrictions between walking between different worlds -- Eg: 100% dominated regions of an opposing faction may require alliance with that faction's leaders (see, each faction would have their own protagonists and antagonists/monsters).  Through completing a quest, or certain EXP for another one, or having a special amulet, etc.  That way the tax accountants aren't just all chilling with the Necromancers -- Those bastards, you know they would.  Imagine it!  Raise an undead minion then charge them for a Milena of back taxes on their grave property rights!  Just thinking of stuff like that would add humor / story, etc.  "What would happen If _____ met ______", It writes itself...

I kind of like the Shadow ream idea -- a different plane of existence.  Maybe we could have one faction / tileset deployed in the world that you can only see some of the time (restrictions, etc?) -- The way that would work is that near the bottom end of the "faction" gradient we'll just display one tile set if you're able to see it.  Say, a land of the dead type thing.  any patches made in that area would belong to either tileset or the other, and you wouldn't see the patch unless you were able to see that tileset.  That way you could walk over land to some place then if you go into the shadows you might have just walked right through a Giant City of the Dead.   It doesn't have to be the Dead, it could be Aliens with cloaking powers, or however you want to write it into the story.  If it was a faction in the "center" of the faction gradients, then it could connect into every other faction...

[koiwai]

Speaking of possible multiverse concepts



this is too much, probably, but quite amusing.

VortexCortex: I will read that more carefully, but I think, I like very much what you say. Adding new worlds later as auxiliary parts of the universe is a good solution: The main world stays relatively stable, while additional worlds can be more experimental and flexible. Also, your advice on JavaScript programming is very much appreciated!

[Quarry]

merveilles.xxiivv.com/login.php

[Impmaster]

Alright. So, should we decide now the amount of different settings that we will use, or will we allow people to build their own tilesets?

[Quarry]

How will the mods work

[VortexCortex]

How will the mods work

You'll use an in-engine editor -- It'll switch you to edit mode, where you can scroll around freely and create and test stuff.  You'll be able to place tiles / items / monsters / etc.  This will be the same tool that we use to create the game with, so mods can be every bit as full featured as the game itself.  Basically, once the engine is complete to a certain degree, the game engine will then be built and extended from within itself -- Self Hosting (like a C compiler that Compiles itself).

When we're "done" we don't have to turn off the game editor system and say the game is finished.  Instead we can leave it on for players to mod, so that if we can just get the editing system to feature completion, the project is essentially fail proof:  Even if none of the original contributors continue the project, folks could jump in, mod a few things from time to time -- Sort of like the TIG World threads I mentioned before.  These are what the core design is modeled after.

I'll post more about the particulars in the near future.

Edit: Also, we need a name!

Throwing another one out there: Roguish

[Quarry]

Doesn't roll of the tongue

[Impmaster]

Dimensia

Jenneisborug

The adventure of Charlie, the slightly failed wizard

An HTML5 Game

Voyage