some information on my current project

Posted by death on Jan. 22, 2011, 8:23 p.m.

haven't said much here about my big project, there's a lot to say but i'll try to sum it up quickly:

it's a massive 3D rpg world done entirely in Game Maker. right now i'm not using any external libraries but there's a possible i may have too, to improve the performance in some situations.

the game will be… hard to explain, the game is fully customizable. you can customize everything about the games interface, you can change your controls, your character, the camera's perspective, the games battle system (from turn-based to action), the color scheme and font of the menues, and so much more.

it'll be a traditional RPG. so it's not online. good old classic leveling system with some very unique traits that i won't reveal yet.

the most un-traditional part of the game is the massive world it'll take place in. basically… think of Majora's Mask but bigger. every character (even townspeople) will have a back story and a life in this world. they wake up in the mornings, go to work, return in the evenings and sleep during the night. you can interact with these people and everything else in the world. even the enemies have shelters!

this of course means there is a day-to-night system as well.

the game uses a very dynamic system for talking to people. when you talk to someone, a menu displays showing a list of questions relevant to the situation that you can ask them. they can give you many different answers depending on the person!

with a virtual world like this, now you know why i call it a big project.

here's a screenshot of the games graphics during noon:

i'm very very dedicated to this project as it's been in my head for years, basically like my "dream project". i've had sketches, plans, graphs, charts, stories and outlines for this game building up over the years. of course i don't plan on finish this any time soon at all lol xD

i've already been working on it for about a year now, i stop every now and then, than i start up again. with lots of other mini's projects in between. i've still made a LOT of progress, mostly with the core programming. the battle system (1/2) is complete, menues and speech system works, the day-to-night system is.. functional. right now i'm busy building the world, it gets very repetitive at times but it's also pretty fun. overall i'm still no where near finished though, there are so many main elements still missing such as characters sprites that i have to start working on eventually…

EDIT 1/23/11:

what do you think about this little light beam i put in?

Comments

Misconstruct 13 years, 3 months ago

Never played Majora's Mask. But that screenshot looks pretty sexy.

death 13 years, 3 months ago

lol thanks. Majora's Mask is a Legend of Zelda game by the way. [:)]

JID 13 years, 3 months ago

Judging by the tranparency of that window,

this game is going to be badass.

(Don't ask wtf I'm talking about.)

JuurianChi 13 years, 3 months ago

wHAT THE fUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUt?

o_0

Scott_AW 13 years, 3 months ago

Sounds interesting, sounds like a lot of work too.

I did a similar attempt in GM, but stopped because it was getting messy, not that it was reaching too many limits. I know now I could of done some additional tricks to speed up load time and keep things stable, but oh well. Feel free to check it out for design inspiration, because thats as far as it got.

http://gamejolt.com/freeware/games/rpg/conceptual-3d-rpg/1503/

death 13 years, 3 months ago

thanks, i'll check it out. it always helps comparing related works. as for being messy, well yeah this project is a complete mess, right now there are 3 separate builds each with their own code xD

Cesque 13 years, 3 months ago

Quote:
it's a massive 3D rpg world done entirely in Game Maker.

If I didn't know better, I'd think that's a very noob idea. :}

Anyway - the light beam looks cool (but make it match the window frame, rather than being wider on the down side), the tree looks horrible, waiting for some character sprites.

Also, I like the colour scheme, but it looks more like sunrise/sunset than noon.

F1ak3r 13 years, 3 months ago

I came to your blog with the intent of telling you to give up. After reading it, I've decided I'm not going to. I feel that you have a passion for what you're doing.

The famed Iji took six years of work to reach its current iteration - version 1.6. It has ten pretty big levels, six official bosses, a ton of secrets, an RPG stat system, hacking mingame, four difficulty levels, supports divergent play-styles etc…

This project of yours is bigger than that. It may take you a decade or even longer. But I'm sure you realize that. Have you considered getting people to help out? Do you have them already?

All I can say is good luck; I'm not sure what you're doing is even possible, but I would love to be proven wrong.

PS: Start looking into external stuff soon, and also use any method you can of saving memory - multiple GMKs wouldn't be a bad idea. Once you reach a certain point, GM is going to start lagging like hell.

Castypher 13 years, 3 months ago

Someone was inspired by Minecraft.

Scott_AW 13 years, 3 months ago

You should check out GMC for the topic on 3d and making things run faster.

Also fog is your friend, you can always have it adjustable.