ORPG Development in java, seeking team-members.

Hey all,

I'm ray, a university student and together with a friend (Stinkyfax) we are planning to make game.

Now, currently were seeking to build a team. We don't currently have many ideas about story, atmosphere or exact game play, this is because it is something we want to discuss at length with the whole team including the artists, music writer's, and designer's.

We are two programmers making a game, we have no artistic skills, I have been looking around and found out that RPGmaker communities are the only place where one can find sprite artists easily. And this is what we seek along other things.

Now, I have a very minimalistic alpha in the works with barely any game play but some engine basics written.

We are trying to appeal the interest of artists working with RPGmaker to join us.

The advantages of making a game from scratch in java are numerous as compared to using RPGmaker, first of all we have a lot more freedom.

For example :

I'm currently writing the NPC spawn point mechanism, which we allow me to dynamically create a spawn point which is either stationary or moving, can output NPC's at a fixed or dynamic rate, can output numerous or single type NPC's. It keep's track of the NPC's and will only spawn a certain number. It also confines the npc's to an "area" based either on the map or the spawn point position.

As far as i am aware rpgmaker won't allow you to do anything complex or interesting like this.

These kind of things will allow for a lot more interesting mechanism and design freedom.

I am going to give this a shot. and see if anyone has any interest.

Currently i have an alpha with a basic engine allowing for movement, collision detection, zoning, and NPC's. I hope to edit it to allow full collision detection of multiple NPC/players (multiple players since its meant to be online) and allow for some very basic game play by the end of the day. Along with finishing the spawn point mechanism.

If you have any questions post them and ill reply.

If interested talk to me on msn (kamasha@softhome.net) or email me (raynos2@hotmail.com)

Thanks, Ray.

sounds interesting,i might try and help if i can,i can probably get sprites for you,but i don't really know how to program in java yet

Me and my friend Stinkyfax who _should_ post later will handle most of the java programming,

Really were looking for sprite artist to make original artwork (Not ripping & editing sprites im afraid).

I tried to make grass and wall tiles, the grass looks alright but the walls failed.

We could also use other things like development, music, story and such things, but for now programming and artist. we need a working alpha to ask for more.

I just finished my npc spawn points :] halved the frame rate nicely.

I work with Python and Ruby so I won't be much help with the programming.
However, once you need a story designer/ idea-ist...I will help.

Hello everyone. We are new to this forum, but I am glad to see you being friendly.
Me and Ray are purely java programmers (were studying it at uni for a year), so we are hoping to handle all the programming parts of the game-project. On the other hand, we are actually looking for sprite artists, etc just as Ray mentioned already.
My contact details: stinkyfax@gmail.com (same for skype), jozh@sugardas.lt - msn.
We would love to personally talk and discuss concepts with anybody who is interested in.

Best regards,
 Stinkyfax

Hey Ray and stinkyfax.
I am a Java programmer myself so I am very interested in what endeavors you meet and how you overcome them. For example how you handle threads. Designing server/client versions. How keep both of the versions updated and etc.
I am also interested in what libraries you use and what are the benefits/problems. It's essentially the technical stuff I am interested in.
I basically want to learn from your experiences. If you formulate your experiences then I am sure you'll learn more as well. :3

I believe your game design decisions are of general interest here since there are many game developers present.

I will at least follow this project.

*hugs*
 - Zeriab

For now were using :

• the slick libraries [http://slick.cokeandcode.com/]
• the lwjgl libraries which slick is based on [http://lwjgl.org/]
• the tiled map editor [http://mapeditor.org/]

I'm still waiting for stinkyfax to work on communication and protocol ¬_¬,

As for the general structure so far :

Spoiler for:

This is all clientside, no communication between server/client yet, so its singleplayer solo rpg so far.

this is nothing special, this will go through lots of iteration's and changes but it has some minor structure at least. you will be able to see the learning curve



A map of our current class structure.

That's all for now, I'm going back to making an efficient full collision detection (It's hard to have a rigid and efficient one)

[Edit] Also Here's the client/Version log so far : [http://pastebin.com/m4ba2e6a6] Showing mainly the order in which the various things were done.

At the moment we have basics which work, hence we are gathering team to continue work. Game without graphics can't exist.
We virtually divided our work to 2 aspects: server and client. while Ray worries about client, i do server side. Unfortunately I haven't prepared such a fancy picture of class hierarchy but will try to give some info:
I have huge background expirience in server side projects. Obviously server is going to be threaded, and in a simple structure:
main server thread
server timers threads[]
server services thread (like heavy mysql queries which involve global select, etc)
server-side client threads[]
each map is different object hence different threads[]
there will be more, i believe so

Race conditions? Being careful, checking everything you access twice, using synchronization or symaphore, pretty standart method.

Client is going to have few threads:
input/output thread, main functions thread, graphics thread, communication with server is threaded.

Handling updates? We are at the stage of creating the game, not updating. SVN is the choice we made, server side and client side are goign to be same version since they will be in 1 project under SVN control.

Runescape 2.0

Runescape 2.0

Game concepts are not polished yet, but I don't see the point of making game very similar to one of already existing. So calling it runescape might sound wrong, though that game is successful enough even if there are alot of negative comments floating around.

No not RS 2.0, It is very limited due to being an applet. This will be under a lot less limitations.

Runescape 3.0

If anyone is serious, I could use a main character sprite (16x16) 3 directional (left & right are flipped over) with an animated weapon attack, think zelda but in 16x16. weapon does not have to be contained in 16x16 area. 

That or link me any 16x16 animated attack sprites i can "borrow" I don't know of any animated attacks in 16x16 format.

As for why we could use artwork, here are some current screenshot's with my wonderful artistic abilities

Spoiler for:

Warning these may be removed without warning if there deemed to shit to be shown to anyone

It does show the basic engine in action, I have allowed for simple gameplay/combat that is based on touch currently, We need animation to allow it be based on actual combat.

Right Click + view image if your viewing in a small screen







Basic implementations are : Movement, Scrolling, collision detection, NPC spawn points, Interaction between player&NPC (in the form of simple touch combat), Health system, Death, RPG-like components (Strenght, Level etc.)

Nothing to be proud of, But show's you a very basic concept of the engine. With adding proper graphical sprite's it can easily turn into those zelda alpha's you see all over the place.

Also progress :]

Regards

Ray.