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EDIT: MUCH OF THE BELOW INFO IS BRAINSTORMING ONLY AND PARTIALLY OUTDATED BY NOW!----------------------------
[Split from here: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4070 ]Edit: surt drafted a nice potential title name:
- by surt
Ok, maybe this is a bit early to ask for support, but I have quite intensively looking into making such a 3D RPG FOSS game in the last 8 weeks or so.
The idea is to use a quite unique art-style that resembles a 2D pixel art to some extend, so that:
[*]1. A lot of the existing 2D RPG UI graphic stuff can be used (see OGA for that, GUI, spell icons, equipment icons etc.)
[*]2. The amount of character variations needed can be much easier and quicker produced (more on that later)
[*]3. The game has a unique style that doesn't "age", e.g. a problem many FOSS games have
Here is a reference I found with would be roughly the level style I am aiming for:
But maybe a bit less pixelish. As a start I would probably convert these cc-by licensed 2D tilesets (
http://www.lostgarden.com/2006/07/more- ... phics.html ) into 3D textures, which shouldn't be too hard as they are not real pixel graphic and relative high resolution. Using 2D filters (and maybe hand drawn hight-maps) all of these would get normal and displacement maps, thus having a 2D pixel look with full dynamic lightning support. There are several examples of 2D games that use normal-maps to a great effect, and I think the result would look pretty sweet.
For characters the aim is to go for a 2d/3d hybrid, with the rough aim to look like something similar to this 2D graphics:
- 2013050205pixelart.gif (14.38 KiB) Viewed 45316 times
- 2013020113pixelart.gif (17.03 KiB) Viewed 45316 times
Technically the idea is to break up the meshes into three parts (quite similar to how it is done in Qauake3 md3s):
[*] A full 3D head mesh and follows mouse-movement (not animated)
[*] 2D arms pictures in 3D space with limited texture animation that are effected by mouse input
[*] "Directional sprite" like 2D body with texture animations (pre-rendered?)
[*]Animated tags for attaching weapons and other props like back-packs and shields in runtime
Edit: The latest idea is to make it even more 2d/3d hybrid, by making body armor, helmet etc in 3D (with a pixelated texture) and all animated parts directional spritesThe result would be that one pseudo mesh could be used for all characters and enemies, with just swapping out textures, and the overall creation time would be much quicker as there is no need to worry about polycounts, proper rigging, animations etc. Just wip up what ever mesh, pose it in a few walk cycle animation poses (4-5 should be sufficient), render it out with something like this
https://github.com/BinaryPeak/blender-texture-atlas (and maybe that new Freestyle renderer) and include the new texture in the shader material of the character.
Thus overall the workflow of creating new characters or armor variations would be MUCH quicker, and the result should look pretty much like fully animated 2D pixel graphics in 3D space (especially if you factor in normal and displacement map use).
I have also identified the best engine to use for this, but I have hit some barriers there which probably would need the commitment from a experienced coder (anyone?). Basically what I would like to use is a combination of qfusion (of Warsow fame: https://github.com/viciious/qfusion ) and ya3dag (http://www.ya3dag.de/ & http://www.moddb.com/mods/r-reinhard/do ... ource-code ).These two engines are technically really close (both are based on Quake2 and ya3dag borrowed some code from qfusion in the past), but the problem is that the qfusion creator has no interest in implementing RPG features, and the ya3dag developer is somewhat unresponsive and doesn't have much time to develop new features.
Pro and cons of both engines:
ya3dag:
[*] + has pretty much all the RPG like features already
[*] + Awesome in game level and terrain editor
[*] + Cool stuff like bullet physics
[*] - only limited script support (is planned, likely copying the qfusion code, but developer working only very slowly on it)
[*] - GUI system really outdated
[*] - Engine has some performance problems
[*] - Only windows (but according to the developer there is no mayor obstacle why the code shouldn't compile on Linux too)
qfusion:
[*] + Really fast with and very modern OpenGL2.0 ES renderer and awesome all GPU run q3 like shader system
[*] + Very nice online multiplayer stats and login system (matchmakeing etc. planned)
[*] + Fully scriptable (angelscript) with awesome librocket based GUI system
[*] + Well documented and easy to use asset creation system (.iqm, Quake3 maps)
[*] + Fully multiplatform (win, mac, lin), production ready and proven, additional platforms like Android should be easy to do
[*] - Developer not interested in adding features outside of the FPS genre
So the idea would be basically to take qfusion (as it is the more advanced of the two engines) and port the RPG and in-game level/terrain editor stuff from ya3dag over into it. I hope that given the similarities of the engines, that shouldn't be too difficult, but as I am really not a C programmer, I can't do it myself (I could help out with gameplay script later on though).Edit: Seems like we will do it the other way around... take ya3dag for now and see if stuff from qfusion (and AlienArena) can be ported later.
I think given all the code available and the awesome amount of 2D art for RPGs on OGA, at least 50% of the work is already done! But it would need a skilled coder to take the lead and make this thing a reality (and I would be happy to lead the art department side of things).
Ah, last but not least: My idea for game-play would be to start with a mission based coop multiplayer, kind of like Left4Dead but obviously with RPG elements. Players could have a permanent advancing online character (or a fast leveling system could be used, so that people start out new for every campaign) and additional missions could be largely contributed by the community (given the easy to use level editor).
In addition I would really like to add a Savage2 like multiplayer option, but with a toned down RTS element (keeping only the map control elements and expanding it to be a bit towerdefense like). This should be probably easy to do once you have the base RPG game, but well... that would be rather the longer term plans
Tell me what you think! And hopefully we can find a quake engine experienced C coder that would like to make this a reality!