Eruta, a futuristic 2D jRPG.

[beoran]

Hi, everyone, this post is to introduce you to my hobby game development project: Eruta. Eruta will be a "Japanese" style RPG with clasic 2D graphics but a deep plot. It's currently in early stages of development, and progress is slow, since I have not too much time to work on it because I have a family to care for. But still, I've been working on my dream for a long time now, so I'll keep at it no matter how slow the pace.

If you want to know more, look at the web page of the game: http://beoran.net/eruta Or read on there's more info here too.

The setting of the game is the country of Eruta, 60000 years in the future where technology is as advanced as magic, the life is the cities is almost utopic, but outside the world has been changed by the mistakes of mankind, and fierce beast, the Corruption and maverick robots roam the land. In this setting, we follow one of 2 young adults, possibly joined by 8 human and 2 android companions, their struggles, dreams, ... and perhaps, love. The idea is to reflect on deep time, and imagine a near utopia in the future as a point of hope, but at the same time show the struggles humans will always have to overcome to find what matters most to them. Great adventures will be lived, and manly or womanly tears will be shed!

Graphically, it will be a classic 2d game with a (virtual) 640x480 resolution and 2d pixel graphics, tile of 32x32 and characters of 32x48 to 32x64 high. Art style will be inspired by the Phantasy Star series, Phantasy Star 4 and the Phantasy Star generations remakes, with a dash of Art nouveau for good measure. For character pictures, vector art is OK since I can't draw in real life, my hands are too shaky, only with Inkscape I can make something passable.

Here is a admittedly lackluster recording of the engine as it was last year:

youtu.be/QB3dRUgyJbg

Used technologies are plain C, Allegro 5, Chipmunk 6, libxml2 and mruby github version for scripting.

The game is currently under the Sleepycat license which is copyleft, but much shorter than the GPL license. I like short licenses. Art is Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution.

At this stage, any kind of help is welcome. I need C (not C++) developers, dialog writers, musicians, sound effect makers, tile artits, sprite artists, character portrait artists, people who can make levels with mapeditor.org, etc. I have to admit that I don't have a very clear Todo or Contributing page yet, but that is because apart from 2 wonderful musicians, I don' t have and haven't had any serious contributers at the moment. But it's pretty clear to my mind what needs to be done, and when someone shows serious interest, I'll explain in detail what I'd like them to do. C programmers in particular will be mentored. Probably it's easiest to contact me by PM if you happen to be interested.

Any suggestions are also welcome. Thanks for your time and patience.

NOTE: it seems my web site is currently giving out due to database server overload problems. Sigh, that 'll teach me to use a database backed CMS... I hope to get it fixed soon... Edit: Looks better now I nuked the chat, it was probably being attacked...

[Evropi]

I read the story as it is on the website, it sounds very good! I suppose this is, as some say, 'your life's work'? Sorry, I couldn't avoid the comparison with Dwarf Fortress' creator there. But I like anyone who is very determined and you seem to be just that type.

I wholeheartedly approve and wish to help. I'm really into anime and manga myself. The story is the kind of thing I've always been looking for... I love sci-fi fantasy in the style of Final Fantasy or the Dune movie (I actually have the book, but I could never get into it, just too weird man) and the Ryzom MMORPG (which is OSS actually).

Which leads me into my next point...

Used technologies are plain C, Allegro 5, Chipmunk 6, libxml2 and mruby github version for scripting.

. . .

At this stage, any kind of help is welcome. I need C (not C++) developers, dialog writers, musicians, sound effect makers, tile artits, sprite artists, character portrait artists, people who can make levels with mapeditor.org, etc. I have to admit that I don't have a very clear Todo or Contributing page yet, but that is because apart from 2 wonderful musicians, I don' t have and haven't had any serious contributers at the moment. But it's pretty clear to my mind what needs to be done, and when someone shows serious interest, I'll explain in detail what I'd like them to do. C programmers in particular will be mentored. Probably it's easiest to contact me by PM if you happen to be interested.

Mruby you say? Sign me up! I'm a poor C/C++ programmer but I'm half-decent with Ruby. I'm pretty excited about MRuby myself. Not sure if it's stable enough but it was started by Matz afterall and it has been starred and forked thousands of times on GitHub so I have no doubt it will improve. I LOL'd at the link to Torvalds' rant about C++ by the way, I think it's not so lousy myself, just that people who don't understand how to use it right use it. It's undergoing something of a change in historiography right now actually, partially due to C++11. Oh well, C is a great language, if a bit bare-bones (libraries help in resolving that).

I think it's a good idea that you (as you imply) intend to create most of the content in a scripting language. The author of ToME4, DarkGod (very well known in the roguelike community), after struggling for ages with ancient C code forked from Angband in the process of creating ToME3, eventually (and wisely) threw it all out and restarted with his own custom engine, the venerable T-Engine 4. Now 99% of the game is written in Lua (his favourite language) which meant he completed the project in 3 years since beginning writing his custom engine (the capabilities of which were meant to not be game-specific from the start - in fact there is a contest on right now which will accept entries till the end of the year). I think the more of the game is written in s a scripting language, the better. And it's good you didn't write a DSL for it either! Who needs DSLs when you have Ruby.

The thing is, your website claims the scripting is performed in Lua and not (M)Ruby. What's up with that?
Anyway, when (and if) you get to that point, I'd absolutely love to be able to help, especially if scripting is performed in Ruby. I'm considering practising my Lua actually, it seems to be all the rage these days... hate the C-like syntax of it though.

The game is currently under the Sleepycat license which is copyleft, but much shorter than the GPL license. I like short licenses. Art is Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution.

Well... I'm not sure about that. I think it's best to pick the shortest (big +1 for that - zlib/BSD/MIT/one_of_them was the first software license I ever actually read), but also the most popular licenses as they attract developers. They don't need to be permissive, though that is a plus, but they should be popular ones. Sleepycat is associated a bit too much with Oracle IMO, which probably has an even worse reputation than Microsoft in open source circles. Your choice though. I doubt you'd get in any trouble, I really just wanted to make my position on that known.

[beoran]

I read the story as it is on the website, it sounds very good! I suppose this is, as some say, 'your life's work'? Sorry, I couldn't avoid the comparison with Dwarf Fortress' creator there. But I like anyone who is very determined and you seem to be just that type. /snip

Thank you. Yes, I consider Eruta my life's work, although my family takes priority of course. I'm glad the story interests you and it looks it could be great fun to work together with someone like you.

Mruby you say? Sign me up! /snip

Well, yes, its quite usable by now. I already have a quake-style console that runs mruby, but it doesn't have much other game-related functionality yet. As for C... I wrote another RPG in C++ 15 years ago. Now it won't even compile anymore, the code became useless. I'd rather have a stable language that will still compile 15 years from now, because even I don't know how long this project will take before it's completed. Yes, I do plan to write most of the game itself in mruby, except for the graphics/hardware related parts, for which Ruby unfortunately turned out to be too slow in my experience, even with C extensions. But with mruby that problem is essentially solved. And yes, mruby will be the DSL.

The thing is, your website claims the scripting is performed in Lua and not (M)Ruby. What's up with that?

Oops, I corrected that. At first I started with Lua, but then mruby came up and I switched to that. I also like mruby much more than Lua. And any issues will most likely be ironed out by the time Eruta is ready to go gold.

Well... I'm not sure about that. I think it's best to pick the shortest (big +1 for that - zlib/BSD/MIT/one_of_them was the first software license I ever actually read), but also the most popular licenses as they attract developers. They don't need to be permissive, though that is a plus, but they should be popular ones. Sleepycat is associated a bit too much with Oracle IMO, which probably has an even worse reputation than Microsoft in open source circles. Your choice though. I doubt you'd get in any trouble, I really just wanted to make my position on that known.

I don' t have too strong feelings apart that I don't like GPL too much anymore these days especially GPLv3. It's too long, too complicated, and actually too restrictive. I don't care about other people ripping me off, I just care about writing my own project. If people complain, I'll probably move everything to the zlib license.

Well, I hope that clarifies a few things.

[shirish]

make a github page and I can help to playtest.

[beoran]

Oh, but there is a git repository already for a long time. Oops! It seems I forgot to link to it on the web page!

Now I fixed that. Anyway the repository is at:

https://github.com/beoran/eruta

Oh, and you'll also need cmake for building Eruta.

[Bertram]

Hi!

Greetings from Valyria Tear, I'm looking forward what will be done in Eruta.

Best regards,

[shirish]

@beoran - if you can post a screenshot or two on the github site or somewhere else and link it up would be easier. I, for instance am more partial towards screenies rather than looking up youtube (do understand that gameplay mechanics and movement etc. can only be understood via video) but still.

Looking forward to hear from you.

[beoran]

Thanks for the support Bertram. I hope alot will be done but a lot of time will pass to make that happen. I think you'll be finished with Valkyria Tear long before that.

Shirish, I understand, so I posted these two screen shots on my web site. They're not very impresive, but they remind me I just have to keep at it. :-)
http://www.beoran.net/eruta/index.php?mact=News,cntnt01,detail,0&cntnt01articleid=3&cntnt01origid=15&cntnt01detailtemplate=Simplex_Detail&cntnt01returnid=15

[Bertram]

Thanks for the support Bertram. I hope alot will be done but a lot of time will pass to make that happen. I think you'll be finished with Valkyria Tear long before that.

There is still a lot to do on Valyria, so don't worry, I might be able to play a few demos from you before so.

Best regards,