Hero of Allacrost (2D RPG) -- Need a project manager

[Roots]

Hero of Allacrost is a single player 2D role-playing game inspired by classic console RPGs. In Hero of Allacrost, the player will explore rich environments, solve challenging dungeon puzzles, and fight strategic battles in an active-time based system. The game is free open-source software and is currently available across several platforms including Windows, OS X, Linux, and FreeBSD. In addition to the game, we also develop and release a custom content editor for the game. Development on the game and editor began in June 2004.

Links
Website - http://www.allacrost.org/
Forums - http://www.allacrost.org/forum
IRC channel - #allacrost at irc.freenode.net
Sourceforge Project Page - http://sourceforge.net/projects/allacrost
Subversion Repository (web-browsable) - http://svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/allacrost/
Latest release - http://www.allacrost.org/download

State of the Project
For the last 18 months or so, the project has been effectively dead. Myself and the rest of the team were unable to find the time to work on the project, and so things just came to a stop. For the past few weeks, I have been working alone to revive the project. My current goal is to clear off the dust and get the project in a good state where we can bring a full development team back again. That's where I need help.

Help Needed
Basically, in the short term I need an assistant to help me get this project back in order. I hope this won't take longer than 4-6 weeks to do. After that, I hope that this person will remain a part of the project and help out in a variety of other ways, including contributing directly to the development of the game by creating maps and scripting event sequences together. Below is a summary of what work you'd be helping me with.

Short term

Cleaning up existing spam and installing anti-spam measures on our forums, website, and wiki
Installing helpful mods and other tweaks on our phpBB3 forums
Updating our website's Drupal install and improving the overall design of the site
Populating our new wiki with the content from our old wiki
Installing a new issue/bug tracker and configuring it for our needs

Long term

Team management (updating road map, managing our priorities, etc)
Map creation (using our custom editor)
Writing some basic scripts in Lua to make the game come alive (animating characters, etc)
Play testing and balancing
Video production and editing
Recruitment and public relations (updating the site with the latest progress developments, for example)

Contact
If you have questions, feel free to ask them here (or send me a PM if you wish to ask them privately. I can also usually be found in #allacrost or #freegamer on Freenode IRC if you want to chat with me. If you're interested in helping me out, send me a PM here and tell me about yourself and any experience that you have related to this type of work.

Select Screenshots & Videos




youtu.be/Aok94zFs9Jc

[BioHazardX]

So Valyria Tear is a fork of this game. Maybe I can help you to translate the game in my language.

[Roots]

That would be a great help. We've made releases in the past with translated languages available. We probably won't be ready for any translation work for a few months though.

[Myckel]

In what way will the development directions be different, compared to Valyria Tear? And how will it be similar?

[Roots]

In what way will the development directions be different, compared to Valyria Tear? And how will it be similar?

I can only speak for myself and for Allacrost, as I'm not sure exactly where Bertram wants to take VT. The two games have completely different "universes" (characters, locations, maps, etc). However due to the limited amount of artwork we have available right now, the two games share a lot of the same graphics in terms of sprite sheets, portraits, tiles, etc. I think it's fair to say that the two games will continue sharing artwork amongst each other indefinitely. Music is shared as well, although VT has some of its own original music already.

In terms of code, I expect that the engine will remain the same between the two games. The map editor should as well, I would hope. And most of the surrounding core logic should remain mostly similar. However, I hope that over time, VT will get more and more of it's own unique "identity" in terms of game design that will separate it from Allacrost. For example, maybe VT won't include the same set of elemental types as Allacrost. Or perhaps it will have a different system for skill/magic points than Allacrost does. I think the more VT implements its own features that are different from Allacrost, the more it will feel like it's own game instead of being a "rebranding" of Allacrost. But doing that will take time and effort, so right now it's certainly easier to retain all of the same design features as Allacrost. I hope to see the two projects diverge more over time in terms of design, but keeping the core components of the code continuously synchronized to make it easier for the two projects to benefit from one another.

[Myckel]

So largest differences will be story/lore and game mechanics then.

[Roots]

Precisely.

[charlie]

So largest differences will be story/lore and game mechanics then.

I think both projects intend the graphic content to also somewhat diverge, should enough artists emerge.

[Roots]

Hopefully, yes. However as I'm sure you know, getting quality artists to work for free is not an easy task. In our eight years, we've never had enough artists to meet our needs, and I've had to resort to creating some of our artwork myself.

In a related note, I've begun importing code changes from VT back into Allacrost and I'm afraid the projects are going to diverge more than I had hoped they would. Bertram made a lot of changes to code style, formatting, etc. such as changing the indentation, removing all "using namespace std;" calls, requiring you to specify the path for all header files included, and so on. I wish that he would have just stuck with our existing code standard and not spent time going through the entire code base and making these types of changes, but maybe he thought Allacrost wasn't coming back and wanted the code formatted and organized his own way. The unfortunate result is that it's not trivial for me to take code from VT back into Allacrost, or vice versa.

[Myckel]

Because my registration on the forum isn't activated yet, I decide to post this here:

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

g++ -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I/usr/include/SDL -I/usr/include/AL -I/usr/include/lua5.1 -I./src/luabind -I./src/luabind/luabind -I./src/luabind/luabind/detail -I./src/luabind/src -I./src -I./src/engine -I./src/engine/audio -I./src/engine/video -I./src/engine/script -I./src/global -I./src/common -I./src/common/global -I./src/common/gui -I./src/modes -I./src/modes/battle -I./src/modes/boot -I./src/modes/map -I./src/modes/menu -I./src/modes/save -I./src/modes/shop -DDATADIR=\"/usr/local/share/games/allacrost\" -DLOCALEDIR=\"/usr/local/share/games/allacrost/txt\" -DPACKAGE=\"allacrost\" -I/usr/X11R6/include -Wall -O3 -I/usr/include/qt4 -I/usr/include/qt4/QtGui -I/usr/include/qt4/QtCore -I/usr/include/qt4/QtOpenGL -I/usr/include/qt4/Qt3Support -DQT_CLEAN_NAMESPACE -DQT_NO_DEBUG -DQT_GUI_LIB -DQT_CORE_LIB -DQT3_SUPPORT -DQT_SHARED -Wall -O3 -MT image_base.o -MD -MP -MF .deps/image_base.Tpo -c -o image_base.o `test -f 'src/engine/video/image_base.cpp' || echo './'`src/engine/video/image_base.cpp
src/engine/video/image_base.cpp: In member function 'bool hoa_video::private_video::ImageMemory::_LoadPngImage(const std::string&)':
src/engine/video/image_base.cpp:264:18: error: invalid use of incomplete type 'struct png_info'
/usr/include/png.h:745:16: error: forward declaration of 'struct png_info'
src/engine/video/image_base.cpp:265:19: error: invalid use of incomplete type 'struct png_info'
/usr/include/png.h:745:16: error: forward declaration of 'struct png_info'
src/engine/video/image_base.cpp:266:26: error: invalid use of incomplete type 'struct png_info'
/usr/include/png.h:745:16: error: forward declaration of 'struct png_info'
src/engine/video/image_base.cpp:266:44: error: invalid use of incomplete type 'struct png_info'
/usr/include/png.h:745:16: error: forward declaration of 'struct png_info'
src/engine/video/image_base.cpp:279:23: error: invalid use of incomplete type 'struct png_info'
/usr/include/png.h:745:16: error: forward declaration of 'struct png_info'
src/engine/video/image_base.cpp:283:14: error: invalid use of incomplete type 'struct png_info'
/usr/include/png.h:745:16: error: forward declaration of 'struct png_info'
src/engine/video/image_base.cpp:286:34: error: invalid use of incomplete type 'struct png_info'
/usr/include/png.h:745:16: error: forward declaration of 'struct png_info'
src/engine/video/image_base.cpp:287:35: error: invalid use of incomplete type 'struct png_info'
/usr/include/png.h:745:16: error: forward declaration of 'struct png_info'
src/engine/video/image_base.cpp:289:50: error: invalid use of incomplete type 'struct png_info'
/usr/include/png.h:745:16: error: forward declaration of 'struct png_info'
src/engine/video/image_base.cpp:290:17: error: invalid use of incomplete type 'struct png_info'
/usr/include/png.h:745:16: error: forward declaration of 'struct png_info'
src/engine/video/image_base.cpp:300:34: error: invalid use of incomplete type 'struct png_info'
/usr/include/png.h:745:16: error: forward declaration of 'struct png_info'
src/engine/video/image_base.cpp:301:35: error: invalid use of incomplete type 'struct png_info'
/usr/include/png.h:745:16: error: forward declaration of 'struct png_info'
src/engine/video/image_base.cpp:303:50: error: invalid use of incomplete type 'struct png_info'
/usr/include/png.h:745:16: error: forward declaration of 'struct png_info'
src/engine/video/image_base.cpp:312:34: error: invalid use of incomplete type 'struct png_info'
/usr/include/png.h:745:16: error: forward declaration of 'struct png_info'
src/engine/video/image_base.cpp:313:35: error: invalid use of incomplete type 'struct png_info'
/usr/include/png.h:745:16: error: forward declaration of 'struct png_info'
src/engine/video/image_base.cpp:315:50: error: invalid use of incomplete type 'struct png_info'
/usr/include/png.h:745:16: error: forward declaration of 'struct png_info'
src/engine/video/image_base.cpp:324:34: error: invalid use of incomplete type 'struct png_info'
/usr/include/png.h:745:16: error: forward declaration of 'struct png_info'
src/engine/video/image_base.cpp:325:35: error: invalid use of incomplete type 'struct png_info'
/usr/include/png.h:745:16: error: forward declaration of 'struct png_info'
src/engine/video/image_base.cpp:327:50: error: invalid use of incomplete type 'struct png_info'
/usr/include/png.h:745:16: error: forward declaration of 'struct png_info'
src/engine/video/image_base.cpp:225:30: warning: ignoring return value of 'size_t fread(void*, size_t, size_t, FILE*)', declared with attribute warn_unused_result
make[2]: *** [image_base.o] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/myckel/Software/allacrost/trunk/game'
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/myckel/Software/allacrost/trunk/game'
make: *** [all] Error 2


No support for libpng 1.5 and up.

[Roots]

I activated your forum account, so feel free to post that information over there so that we have a record of it. Thanks. I'll look into fixing this issue. On my system it looks like I only have libpng 1.2 available (via Ubuntu repositories).

[Myckel]

Submitted. The switch in 1.5 API is to improve the code. The png_info struct was, if I remember correctly, never intended to be accessed directly, yet everybody did it.
See http://libpng.org/pub/png/libpng.html for details.

[Roots]

youtu.be/x9scSYkFK5o

Uploaded this tonight. It shows the current state of the game along with my comments about what we're working on and what content we are missing.


This project is now in full swing again. Unfortunately, I never found a project manager but I was able to complete most of this work myself (with some help) in a reasonable time frame. Now I'm going to start building back a full development team and get things rolling again.

[charlie]

Good video Roots! I would suggest you turn down the effects volume for the next one, as it was difficult to hear you when they played e.g. battle scenes and some of the effects were quite sharp noises (not nice when they are the loudest and you're straining your ear to hear the voice).

[charlie]

I wouldn't worry about crappy artwork too much. Playable games with placeholder art can attract contributors. You have empowered players to be able to improve the game by making it open source! Wesnoth is a great example - the original looked hideous.

Regarding the portraits for generic characters, I'd suggest generic portraits. There's nothing wrong with using the same portrait over and over - it helps the player recognise the role of a character. Then in the future you can look to add subtle variations (hair colorization, facial hair features etc) if you wanted generic soldiers to look as if they were different people.

So, yeah, let the game drive the artwork requirements; challenge artists by regular releases of an expanded storyline/game even if it is laced with placeholder art that was done over a lunchbreak.

[Roots]

Noted. Yeah, I did reduce the game volume by a great deal in editing, but I guess I should have turned it down even more. I was afraid of making it too low that you couldn't hear the game at all. That should be easy for me to improve next time.

The thing with generic portraits is that our portrait art style is so detailed it's hard to make something that's generic, which is why I suggested a sort of silhoutte. But we'll see. If we can have just one for every "class" of human character I guess we could make generic portraits work. I'm just worried about setting our artwork requirements too high (as they were in the past). Thanks!

[Roots]

Oh, and along the topic of enabling artists, I wrote the following page on our wiki several days ago with that in mind:

http://www.allacrost.org/wiki/index.php ... Categories

It took me a long time, but I'm very happy with the result and I think it's really going to make it easy for any artist to come along and help out with as little barrier to entry as possible.

[Bertram]

Hi,

I was around with a bit of coffee and noticed that post with great pleasure.

Great to see Allacrost's development video As someone still eager to play Allacrost, I'm quite happy something was done to make it in shape again. Kudos to Roots for the hard core behind-the-scene work on this.

In what way will the development directions be different, compared to Valyria Tear? And how will it be similar?

I can only speak for myself and for Allacrost, as I'm not sure exactly where Bertram wants to take VT. The two games have completely different "universes" (characters, locations, maps, etc). However due to the limited amount of artwork we have available right now, the two games share a lot of the same graphics in terms of sprite sheets, portraits, tiles, etc. I think it's fair to say that the two games will continue sharing artwork amongst each other indefinitely. Music is shared as well, although VT has some of its own original music already.

Well, I'm not sure of where VT will evolve as nobody can tell precisely where one project will go in the future, yet I'm still intending to follow the written story for it, using own-made artwork, and open licensed ones from others when I can. I hope we'll indeed keep sharing artwork, Zabin's work being one great example of help, btw. I do try to listen to Roots concerns when it comes to similarities that annoy him, but only when I can, though. That's why I switched the GUI theme, and asked for a Bronann/Claudius new portrait. Moving to other music is something I also would like to do, to let Allacrost breath with its own musical mood, while getting actually fitting music isn't easy to do.

Graphically, I guess we'll stay cousins and use one another graphics when necessary while I'll try to stay polite with own allacrost work and hope they'll do as well.

My first motivation in creating Valyria Tear was to revive a worthy dead project, and time turned it into a brand new one.

In terms of code, I expect that the engine will remain the same between the two games. The map editor should as well, I would hope. And most of the surrounding core logic should remain mostly similar. However, I hope that over time, VT will get more and more of it's own unique "identity" in terms of game design that will separate it from Allacrost. For example, maybe VT won't include the same set of elemental types as Allacrost. Or perhaps it will have a different system for skill/magic points than Allacrost does. I think the more VT implements its own features that are different from Allacrost, the more it will feel like it's own game instead of being a "rebranding" of Allacrost. But doing that will take time and effort, so right now it's certainly easier to retain all of the same design features as Allacrost. I hope to see the two projects diverge more over time in terms of design, but keeping the core components of the code continuously synchronized to make it easier for the two projects to benefit from one another.

As for the technical side of things, I guess we were in different schools with different practices. Examining others difference makes things stronger usually and I do think we'll keep learning from each other in the future. While porting code from one to another is something uneasy, not for the code formatting or the code style IMO, as it's just text where you add missing include or change tabs to spaces and vice versa, but for different ways of thinking in term of design. That's quite normal, in fact, still IMHO. I do think there is a way of doing code per person in the world and that doesn't mean either of us do all of it right or wrong, just differently. Keeping the discussion open is the way to go, in any way, even if the job has to be done in both projects' flavour.

I also do think both projects will keep going their own way, and will become more and more different as the time flies. The low-core mechanics, on a counter part, have advantages to look close, since it will permit to both fix bugs along the way, but that's about it.

Here are my two cents.

Best regards,

[Bertram]

Ah, I forgot, I take the opportunity to request a micro-banner for allacrost that I'd like to add on the right frame of my blog. If you have something fitting, please point me out to it.

[Roots]

Sounds good. I agree with everything you said. As for a mini-banner, how about this?

[Bertram]

Added!

Due to the blogging limitations, I could only add a still image.

[Roots]

I uploaded a new version of the video with the volume adjustments that were suggested. I hope that this one is a lot easier for people to hear the commentation. The embedded video further up in the thread has been updated to point to the new video. Thanks for the feedback.

[qubodup]

I uploaded a new version of the video with the volume adjustments that were suggested.

Much better, I still had trouble understanding the voice around 0:45.

Enemies being allowed to move while the player is in dialogue mode is kind of scary.

Ideas:

To avoid cornering: create a time out rule for enemy movement: two seconds after you leave a battle, a speech bubble saying "z"/"zz" (animated) is displayed above other enemies and then bursts in another animation frame to make it clear that they awake again. The humorous explanation would be that they fell asleep while you were fighting the first fight.

As for animation during cutscenes: when soldiers hear a noise, the scared ones could just change facing direction repeatedly (looking around or looking back and forth), they would look like they're trying to see the source of the sound or they could (non-animated) jump a few pixels backward representing shock/being startled.

[Roots]

Yeah, I know there are still a few parts in the video where the sound/music gets loud that it overshadows my voice.

You're right about enemies being allowed to move when the player is in a dialogue. That's something I'm definitely going to change. I'm also going to try to remove any enemies that roam nearby a NPC.

I had the same idea as you for cornering, only I was going to create some sort of flash/highlight on the sprite instead of the ZZZ bubbles. The bubbles feel a little cartoon-ish to me, which isn't really the style of the game.

I also love your animation idea. We will add something very similar to that. The last scene in the cave especially is still in it's very early stages and will see a lot of improvement in the future.