FreeGameDev

Adonthell is a RPG engine in development since 2000, currently heading towards the 4th (and hopefully final) incarnation. It's aim is to combine classic western story driven RPGs like Ultima VII or Planescape: Torment with the look and feel of classic eastern RPGs such as Secret of Mana or Chrono Trigger.

We are currently in the process of porting our previous demo game, Waste's Edge to the current version of the engine, thus paving the way for our first true RPG: Dun Barethsol will bring back locations and characters from Waste's Edge and continue some of its plots, but will be much larger in scope.

To finish the port and make progress with Dun Barethsol, we're looking for graphic artists, especially an animator for our character sprites, but also for other in-game graphics and cut scenes. Please note that we can only accept art and graphics that are licensed under GPL2+ and/or CC-by-sa.


You can find out everything about Adonthell on our Documentation Wiki, but here's a brief summary:

The Adonthell Engine is written in C++ and uses Python for scripting. It is highly portable and so far runs on GNU/Linux, OSX and Windows. It is still not feature complete, but nearing a state where the creation of Dun Barethsol becomes feasible. Progress can be tracked on our Road Map. Internally, the engine uses a simple 3D representation of the world for tasks like collision detection, path finding and positioning objects. On the outside, the view is fixed and graphics are purely 2D, with no further processing of images.



These screens are taken from the upcoming Waste's Edge re-release, but there's also an older engine preview available for the impatient.

Together with the engine, a set of tools is being developed, to make working on game content as simple and convenient as possible. Like the engine, the tools run on GNU/Linux, OSX and Windows. Ready to use so far are

• Modeller, to attach 3D information to 2D images and sprites.
• Mapedit, to add models and meta information to the game world.
• Dlgedit, to create conversations between Player and NPCs.

If you are interested in helping out, the preferred way of getting in touch is via the appropriate Adonthell Mailing List (which require a subscription) or the IRC channel #adonthell at irc.freenode.net. If you have comments, please share them below!

ksterker {l Wrote}:Please note that we can only accept art and graphics that are licensed under GPL2+ and/or CC-by-sa.

Very good idea

Maybe put up a notice over here too :
http://opengameart.org/forums/open-game ... e-requests

But it looks like you are progressing very well! Keep up the great work!

Julius {l Wrote}:

ksterker {l Wrote}:Please note that we can only accept art and graphics that are licensed under GPL2+ and/or CC-by-sa.

Very good idea

The reason is simple and a bit selfish, of course. We'd like the Waste's Edge remake and Dun Barethsol to enter Debian, just like the old version. And they are quite strict when it comes to licensing. Probably already leaning out of the window by allowing CC-by-sa (although I haven't followed exactly how that dispute went in the Debian community).

Julius {l Wrote}:Maybe put up a notice over here too :
http://opengameart.org/forums/open-game-art-forums/resource-requests

Thanks for the hint. Didn't know that site yet. Compiling some info to post there right away.

With quite detailed sprites like these I do wonder if it's not quicker to be making the models in 3d and animating them to generate the sprites. Just a thought.

charlie {l Wrote}:With quite detailed sprites like these I do wonder if it's not quicker to be making the models in 3d and animating them to generate the sprites. Just a thought.

As long as they'd still blend in with the rest of the graphics, it would certainly be an option. For now, we found somebody who's giving it a try the traditional way, although I assume that we cannot really get unique sprites for every character. A viable solution might be to reuse body parts (maybe with different coloring) and keep the largest differences to the face of characters.

Of course, with more artists, we could also achieve more. *hint, hint*

How's it going?

Have you seen the character sprites that the OpenGameArt community is making?

http://opengameart.org/content/pixel-ar ... style-base
http://opengameart.org/content/armor-ma ... se-sprites
http://opengameart.org/content/anime-st ... ase-sprite
http://opengameart.org/content/anime-st ... ase-sprite

That looks interesting. I'm pretty busy these days, so I didn't have a chance to take a closer look, but the quality is great and the style could be fitting with the artistic direction we're heading right now. So thanks for letting me know :-).

Here's some more hair:
http://opengameart.org/content/hair-mal ... se-sprites