Community project

[bananaman]

I moved this post to the beginning to make it more accessable and deleted some outdated things that I decided not to go with.

Here is a list of pretty much all the projects needed to be done to finish the planning stages of the project and bring us to where it is all coding. Everyone involved read the story line to see what’s going on and then pick something that sounds interesting and you would like to do. Put a post that displays what you want to do and start working, don’t rush yourself to finish in the day you start, but don’t pick something and just sit on it. I will update this list when stuff finish up and put your names by what you are doing. I may add some more things to be planned if I think of them, or if you think of something that needs to be done pm me and I will add it to the list. It is broken down by category to make it more manageable. Feel free to ask for help in any area once you start and the rest of the team will throw you some suggestions.

Note: all sprites will be from an angled perspective, halfway between a top view and a side view.
Tile and character sprites will be 16*16 grayscale.

Name: [unnamed]

Story Line: bananaman : Finished
The story line is the overarching theory for the entire game. Everything will be based off of it and it needs to be good. I figured since it was my idea I should initially create it and others could give suggestions.

You are the son of the lord [name], and the country of [name] in a state of disarray. Barbaric invasions have torn the country with war and roving bandits are a common place. The country’s internal political structure is in disarray and you are just becoming of age during this depressing time. The story unfolds with you waking up on your twelfth birthday.

“Good morning son, do you know what today is?”
“Yes father, it’s March 2nd why do you ask?”
“That’s true, but as you are growing older it is time to begin your training to become a lord. One day you will own your own estate and keep up the family name and add your contribution to the world.”
“That sounds like a lot of work, why would I want to start so early?”
“At times it can be hard work, but without the sweat of the brow and hard study you cannot amount to anything. Although it won’t be entirely bad. You get to start training to become a soldier. We will try you out with the sword and bow, and after a while you can learn how to ride a horse.”
“Oh yes father, I would love to ride a horse.”
“I knew you would, but remember this is serious business, as a lord you will be in charge of many things and your decisions can impact more people than you can imagine. Study hard and make your father proud.”
“Anything for you father, what are we going to do first?”
“I was thinking we could go over to the blacksmith and see what type of training weapons they have, and I will buy you a wooden shield and a stick to start your fencing lessons.”

Your father prepares you well. You study the art of swordplay and the different strategies behind weapons. You test your skill in archery as the months progress, and you get opportunities to lead your fathers vassals through strategy games to help them and you learn more about war tactics. Eventually you get your own horse and learn how to ride. You adapt well to your life, and grow big and strong. You choose whether or not to wield the sword or use the bow and your mind has been stretched through riddles and mock situations. (Note: during this time you will learn about the different weapons and how they can be used best. You will also learn how the battle system works and how to train your vassals as you have been trained. You learn some history of your country and the struggles that are taking place.)

“Well son, You are now ready to go out from my home and start your own place. For part of your inheritance I bequeath to you my property down the road, go into the town and acquire some vassals to help work it, and build up your estate over time. Remember I will always be here to help you out in times of need, or come back just to discuss whatever you want.”
“Alright father, I thank you for all that you have done for me and I will be sure not to disgrace the family. Goodbye for now, I’ll come back once I get a few vassals and have my estate up and running.”

You go to the town that is between your father’s land and your new place and acquire a couple vassals to work on your land from the local tavern. Off you go to set up your estate and make a name for yourself. You can buy up to 10 vassals and train them in town to become stronger, they will tend to your fields when you don’t use them and you tax them to gain money. Although if you tax too high they will become unhappy and not fight as well; too low and you might not have enough money. You can deck out your estate with walls and a castle and trebuchets for when battle comes to you, and you can likewise buy siege weapons to help in attacking others. From here the story line becomes non-linear as you can choose who to ally yourself with. In the south the lords are fighting off the barbaric invasions and are angry at the king for not sending very much help and in the north the lords have competition with each other like jousting and archery competitions. The king is laid back and is bias toward the north. You are located in the middle and can choose which side you want to join. Each lord will have a political meter with you and the more you do stuff up in the north, the southerners will get angry and the north will like you. When you go help the south in battle they like you, but the north loses interest. If you make any one group too mad, they won’t accept you anymore. Eventually the country becomes so tumultuous that the sides make war on each other. You join forces with one and if you win, you will then make one last battle to end the barbarian’s invasions. After winning for the south they will be so happy and crown you the new king. If you win for the north, the king will offer you his hand in marriage. You then go back to your father and he congratulates you and tells you your name will go down in history and he is proud of you. You live happily ever after.

Battle mode:
The battle mode is going to be round based and most battles will take place at some lords estate, (barbarians may come up to attack you, bandits may attack early on, a group of lords could get really angry and attack you, you could attack a lord to gain some spoils, …). Here are some more manageable chunks for team members to do.

Items: Nitacku
This is all the equipable items and also the items for healing and other random things. It also breaks down more.

Weapons: Sage Orator (sprites), bananaman
I made out an excel spreadsheet which can be found earlier in this topic, this is my initial thoughts on the weapons although I already thought of adding some like the wooden shield. Someone can take the list and decide how many hands it should take to wield, if any of the items are unnecessary and what else should be added. Try not to go too overboard with new weapons, only add them if they are distinctly different from others already there. Get together with the leveling up person to discuss the different stats of the weapons like strength needed to hold, speed taken off of character, attack, defense, price …

Random items: Sage Orator, ...
The person who chooses this will come up with the items that will be used throughout the game. Have fun with it, I haven’t really done any planning with this yet. Get together with the side quest person to see what special items to add, otherwise do basics like keys, different types of herbs and stuff, price …

Leveling up:
This person will finalize the system for increasing your stats, I don’t really like the name leveling up b/c I don’t necessarily want to do it like that. In the game you will go to places like the blacksmith, archery range, stable, training course … to increase your stats in a specific area. Whoever takes on this category will choose all the buildings you go to and all the different stats you will have. Get together with the weapons person to discuss what stats characters have and how this will effect what types of weapons they can have.

I will put up other battle stuff after some of this gets finished because we need this planning done first.

Maps:
This category entails all the maps used in the game, how we will scroll between them, drawing the sprites for maps, and finally coding. I will break this down into smaller categories.

Overworld: Sage Orator, ...
The person doing this will read through the story line (you all should) and decide how the land of the country should be made, first they will sketch a picture in pencil of what the country is and then overlay it in pen and scan in it for all to view. On the picture include towns, different lord’s estates and the king’s palace. Once we have determined the tiles to be used this person will start putting the overworld map into its finalized state. Remember not too much exploring will we done on this map, make it zoomed out and concise, put a path between everything (where the character walks) and put the cities and such just off from the path so you can go by them, but also enter them.

Towns:
Prerequisite: Tiles, Overworld, Sprites for the buildings, Leveling up
This person will design the interior of all the cities, estates, palace found on the overworld map. He will probably want to use graph paper and write out the numbers of the tiles to be used in each location. It can be more than one person to speed up the process.

Tiles: group contribution
This person will make a list of all tiles to be used in the game, both overworld and inside the cities/estates. This does not include characters, actually drawing the sprites, or siege weapons. It does entail organizing the tiles in an order to be put onto the sprite sheet so that all of the walkable spaces are at the beginning and non walkable spaces are in the latter part so the coding for movement can be easy. Make sure to include tiles for the cities, walls, castle, buildings, interior of buildings like wood floor, etc.
I decided that one person could easily forget too many things and it would be better for everyone to add ideas to this so here is a list that I came up with hurriedly, post your suggestions…
Path (horizontal, vertical, curved all ways)
cut grass
long grass
multiple plants and vassal’s fields
shrubs
trees – different types
brick wall (horizontal and vertical)
house pieces (roof, doors, windows, etc)
wood floor
interior back wall
bed
counter
table
barrel
water (all different shores)
sand
hills
mountain

Tile Sprites: bananaman, super-speller,
Prerequisite: Tiles
I think at least two people should band together to complete this task. They will take all the sprites from the tiles list, determine if any tiles were missed and then draw the sprites for them. 16*16 make it easier on the people drawing people sprites to make them accurate. These are now in grayscale.

Stores:
Prerequisite: Tiles, Towns, Weapons
This person will design the interior of the various stores and training buildings and then proceed in determining what weapons can be bought in each town. The weapons for each type of shop should already have been determined. Leave room behind the counter or wherever for the store owner to be.

Characters:
This section involves all the NPC’s and you. It breaks down into various categories.

Main character:
Draw the sprites for the main character, 4 directions, If someone wants to code the part to have the main character be animated then these will need to be animated. Two sets of sprites will need to be made, one for him as a teen and the other as an adult. Do not put a sword in his hand, b/c he can choose to be an archer or a swordsman.

Vassals:
Draw the sprites for various vassals. This includes making some with bows, some with horses, and some with swords. The vassals will be either swordsman, archers, or horseman when you get them in the game.

Store owners:
Prerequisite: Leveling up
Take all the different types of stores and draw characters that represent their profession.

Random people:
Draw different sprites for random people that will be passing along the way.

Siege weapons:
Prerequisite: Weapons
I know they aren’t really people, but draw all the different siege weapons, these will be used for the battle mode in the round based battles.

Soldiers:
Draw random soldier type pictures including archers, swordsmen and horsemen. This can kinda be interchangeable with vassals. We just want lots of variety.

Speech:
Prerequisite: Most planning stages
This is the funnest part of the project, making up tons of different sayings for all the characters in the game, we don’t want each character to only say one thing. Make up witty sayings depending on how the game is going, like “I hear the king is unhappy with you intruding on the ways of the south.” or “You are invited to compete in a competition at lord [name]’s place.” or “Come help us battle the barbarians.” or “Isn’t that bananaman an awesome person.”

Politics:
This person will plan exactly how the politics of the game will work and when to determine when a battle will take place, how to satiate a group, the north or the south. And how the vassals know if they like you or not and the effects of them liking you or not.

Interface: bananaman
This person will design the menu systems. And the in store screens. They will have to wait till near the end of the planning stages to know exactly all that is required.
Scratch that… I am changing it back in time to a feudalistic society. Here is some random stuff about feudalism.

Historical things about feudalism:
Three primary elements characterized feudalism: lords, vassals, and fiefs; the structure of feudalism can be seen in how these three elements fit together. A lord was a noble who owned land, a vassal was a person who was granted land by the lord, and the land was known as a fief. In exchange for the fief, the vassal would provide military service to the lord. The obligations and relations between lord, vassal and fief form the basis of feudalism.

Before a lord could grant land (a fief) to someone, he had to make that person a vassal. This was done at a formal and symbolic ceremony called a commendation ceremony comprised of the two part act of homage and oath of fealty. During homage, the vassal would promise to fight for the lord at his command. Fealty comes from the Latin fidelitas, or faithfulness; the oath of fealty is thus a promise that the vassal will be faithful to the lord. Once the commendation was complete, the lord and vassal were now in a feudal relationship with agreed upon mutual obligations to one another.

The lord’s principal obligation was to grant a fief, or its revenues, to the vassal; the fief is the primary reason the vassal chose to enter into the relationship. In addition, the lord sometimes had to fulfill other obligations to the vassal and fief. One of those obligations was its maintenance. Since the lord had not given the lad away, only loaned it, it was still the lord’s responsibility to maintain the land, while the vassal had the right to collect revenues generated from it. Another obligation that the lord had to fulfill was to protect the land and the vassal from harm.

The vassal’s principal obligation to the lord was to provide “aid”, or military service. Using whatever equipment the vassal could obtain by virtue of the revenues from the fief, the vassal was responsible to answer calls to military service on behalf of the lord. This security of military help was the primary reason the lord entered into the feudal relationship. In addition, the vassal sometimes had to fulfill other obligations to the lord. One of those obligations was to provide the lord with “counsel”, so that if the lord faced a major decision, such as whether or not to go to war, he would summon all his vassals and hold a council. The vassal may have been required to provide a certain amount of his farm’s yield to his lord. The vassal was also sometimes required to grind his wheat and bake his bread in the ovens owned and taxed by his lord.

The land-holding relationships of feudalism revolved around the fief. Depending on the power of granting lord, grants could range in size from a small farm to a much larger area of land. The size of fiefs was described in irregular terms quite different from modern area terms. The lord-vassal relationship was not restricted to members of the laity; bishops and abbots, for example, were also capable of acting as lords.

There were thus different ‘levels’ of lordship and vassaldom. The King was a lord who loaned fiefs to aristocrats, who were his vassals. Meanwhile the aristocrats were in turn lords to their own vassals, the peasants who worded on their land. Ultimately, the Emperor was a lord who loaned fiefs to Kings, who were his vassals. This traditionally formed the basis of a ‘universal monarchy’ as an imperial alliance and a world order.

Weapons
Melee
Bladed
Axe
Battle Axe
Dagger or Knife
Rondel
Sword
Longsword
Shortsword
Two-handed sword
Sabre
Bastard Sword - longsword
Bludgeon
War hammer – small version for one hand
Maul – two handed hammer version
Gudendag – Morning star
Quarterstaff – variant of the staff weapon, consisting of a long hardwood shaft, sometimes with metal-reinforced tips.
Club
Mace
Morning star – spiked club resembling a mace, usually with a long spike extending straight from the top in addition to a number of smaller spikes around the circumference of the head.
Flail – made of one (or more) weights attached to a handle with a hinge or chain.
Polearms
Lance
Spear
Pike – used against horsemen.
Halberd – cheap to produce and versatile in battle. Pole with axe and spike on end, one side of axe is hooked to dismount riders.
Glaive – two different versions of the halberd
Voulge
Ranged
Bombard – a type of cannon or mortar, used chiefly in sieges for throwing heavy stone balls.
Bow
Longbow
Short bow
Culverin – a cannon of relatively long barrel and light construction that rifed solid round shot projectiles at long ranges along a flat trajectory. Usually naval.
Crossbow
Arbalest – a stronger version of the crossbow, usually steel wiring.
Sling

Siege
Battering Ram
Ballista – powerful crossbow. Sniper version is called the scorpion.
Catapult
Siege hook
Siege tower
Trebuchet
Petard – term for a small bomb used to blow up gates and walls when breaching fortifications.
Armor
Chainmail
Gauntlet
Shield
Plate armour
Scale armour

Forification
Battlement
Castle
City wall
Gate
Moat
Drawbridge
Portcullis

[DigiTan]

I can't provide too much in the way of xlib support, but do you have a couple concept pics to show us the general dynamics of the game? And would it be on the text-based or graphical part of the spectrum?

[bananaman]

I was thinking graphical. I mean if we're going to do a big project we may as well go all out.
About the pics, I'll upload some tomorrow along with the excel document. Right now I'm heading off to bed it's late and I have Cross country practice in the morning. Oh wait I'm gone all tomorrow. I'll see if I have any time anyways.

[c_plus_plus]

Im in (Even though I only skimed verry lightly over your post.) UTI, Inactive? It seems active enough to me.

EDIT: I have been learning xLib.

[Madskillz]

sweet if it gets some more involvement I will sticky this thread. I'll help in what I can.

[Sage Orator]

I'm willing to help where I can.

[bananaman]

Great, glad to see some others that want to help. I'm going to my brothers college for the weekend and I'll work on some more planning and on what different groups can do for the actual coding and sprite design.

Edit:

I got some of the sample idea screenshots for what I want this project to look like.

Sorry if you mind lolje...

This is a pretty good example of what a fief would look like inside of your actual castle are. This one is surrounded by a city wall and is occupied, b/c of the houses. Of couse I would use different sprites and the layout isn't perfect for sticking 10 fiefs near each other, but I couldn't pass up not having to draw to much in the planning stage to give people an idea of what I want. The map system would probably be like dragon warrior where there is an overworld map of your country and then the towns and different lords lands would be a tile that you enter and go into a smaller map.


This is a mock up of the item management area where you would equip items in your pack to various members of the party.


Here is your typical main menu screenie. I made it with paint incase you can't tell. Where there is some stuff for your eyes to look at, I hope a couple more join and we can get moving with the project.

Edit2: I am attaching the excel document of the start of weapon planning so people can see how involved of a battle system I am shooting for.

[Fallen Ghost]

I'll try to follow this project in its evolution. Sounds great if it is finished!

[elfprince13]

if we are making this a community project than somebody should create a sourceforge project to make it easier to collaborate. might be good for bananaman to be project leader since he suggested it.

[bananaman]

What exactly is sourceforge. I'd be glad to do it and set up the planning and coding and everything and code myself. In a little bit I'll type up a big thing I put together for initial planning and people could then comment on that and start our discussions and the project.

Edit: I just googled sourceforge, never mind. I'm working on creating it right now.

[bananaman]

So far it doesn’t look like we have enough assembly programmers to do it in that language which is fine with me. So I will start basic distribution with xLib-Basic in mind. I am not assigning anyone to positions I’m just breaking it up into manageable areas.

Sprites:
Pretty much everyone will contribute in some way to this part. There needs to be sprites for the tiles used on the ground and buildings and fortifications. A 4 directional walking character sprite. Sprites for every genre of weapon (blade, hammer, axe, bow, crossbow, pike/halberd, shield, up body armor, legs, boots, gloves, helmet, etc.) to be used in the shop and item management menu. Designing the different menu systems with a nice user interface. Random sprites that I have forgotten. If we do the round based system we would need sprites for each different character type to be used there (archer, rider, footman), we would also need them for various siege weapons.
Those are all the sprites I can think of right now, but we can’t start drawing to many of them right now due to the small amount of planning in all of those areas, if someone wants to start on all the weapons I listed those could be done and used. But in the sprite area even if you can’t draw you can help choose which sprites look best and match the overall feel of the game and should be used.

Planning:
This is where we mainly are right now. I will break it down into different sub categories to make it more manageable.
Maps: I have already said that I plan a dragon warrior style map, but we still need to determine how to store all the data, it obviously has to end up in a matrix somehow, but still work needs to be done here. After this is settled we can start on map sprites.
Speech: In order to have a somewhat realistic game we need to have multiple speech bubbles that people can draw upon so they don’t always say the same thing, people can give you insight on how your reputation is with your vassals and other lords and if you are strong enough to go to battle and current events throughout the country.
Weapons: This is a big one, planning all the stats of the weapons to make them work well and create a balanced battle system.
Leveling up: This goes along with weapons to make the battles not too easy or hard, and not create too much grinding. Experience will be granted after battles, but I think we should also have training schools to up specific stats quicker although it would cost money. The problem with schools is they have to take time and the character being taught shouldn’t be able to be used for a time while he is being taught.
Battle System: This part covers a lot. It has what types of enemies we will have and their stats, how exactly the battles will work, and how often they occur. If this section along with weapons and leveling up isn’t planned out good, the entire game could be a flop. I was planning for turn based on the regular battles, but kinda a spin on it where people’s speed affects when they get to attack. Weapons would weigh you down and reduce your speed, but more strength lets you carry heavier weapons without too much loss of speed. So you could in theory have a really quick guy equipped with a dagger attack 3 times before some slow guy with a two handed sword even gets a turn, but of course the dagger wouldn’t do too much damage so it would equal out.
Menu System: How we navigate through menus, a standard for how menus will appear, and what should be in each menu.
Side Quests: By having different side quests that are unnecessary to beat the game it will be more fun and have extra stuff to do instead of grinding your way through. I think we should put in some riddles, I have some great ones.
Story Line: I have the workings of one written out in the first post, but it needs to be refined and work with the Speech to decide what the game will actually say to reveal to you the story. Without a good story the game is worthless.

Coding:
Currently we can’t start coding, but I do have a little bit to say. I love object oriented programming and love using subprograms. To have this fit on the calc it will be necessary anyways. But stuff like making a pop up window which you do often or the store would be in a subprogram. To run them I was thinking of having a list be the ANS variable before you called the program, then the start of the subprogram stores the ANS to a list for further use. The first number in the list would determine which routine to run and the others would be input numbers for the routine. Like for example the sample menu windows I put in the screenshot can be made with two xLib commands. If you analyze them they are just two different rectangles and as such can be easily done. The ANS would be something like {1,5,5,50,25. In this example it would call the first routine in the program and would draw the menu box starting at the coordinates 5,5 and making it 50 wide and 25 pixels tall.
Other notes about coding. We will break it up into manageable sections and people can choose what parts they want to do. We will all help others if they have any questions. A list will have to be made when we start that displays all the variables and what they are being used for so we don’t have any confusion. I hope to begin coding as soon as possible. Doing parts once we have enough planning to work on them will keep the project moving quickly and make it not turn out like Vera. I hope to see this through to completion by the end of the school year if possible. Although I don’t like setting specific dates and getting others hopes up.
If anybody has suggestions or would like to help and be in on the project please reply with your suggestions or say what you would be willing to do.

[Liazon]

this sounds like an awesome project!

:( but unfortunately i too am approaching college, and must do a lot of work sorry!

i'll keep track of this thread.

[bananaman]

Attached to this post is a picture I drew by hand of a concept of some of the building to be used in the game. I am thinking that instead of just having a shop that sells everything you will have to go to different places to buy the required equipment. Like the blacksmith will sell swords and maces and stuff like that. The stable will sell horses, and if I want to implement horse armor that too, and will also sell pikes and lances and halberds. The archery range will sell bows and such, and will allow you to train your archers. The tavern will be a place to meet people and draft them as your vassals, or to hear the local gossips, or gamble to try to make money.

At those people that expressed interest in helping with this project. I am proposing that we start our design on the map first. If others would start creating sprites for tiles, (multiple grass, trees, wood floor, water, path, and stuff that you would think would be good for an RPG, random people, 4 way directional for main character) I will be working on the buildings, I am going to try to create them in a way to reuse most of the sprites in other buildings. Oh yeah, sprites will be 8*8 non grayscale.

[0oruneo0]

I too have been bouncing around ideas for a RPG for a while but I always lack the motivation to go beyond a few maps. I consider myself quite able with XLib and am willing to help in any way I can.

[bananaman]

Glad to have you on the team rune. If I'm not mistaken a couple others were interested. I'll try to get the sourceforge up and running and then it will be easier to contribute.

I just had a sudden burst of inspiration. What if instead of having a large overworld map, we just had one of those ones where it is really zoomed out and you can only walk on certain paths between towns. It would save a lot of time of making the large map detailed, save memory on the calc b/c it would be zoomed out. Then we would probably make all round based fighting, but bandits would attack your estate sometimes. Then we can go all out on making the cities and other lord's areas and the political unrest.

[Cure]

Sounds like a great idea. I'm totally in. I'll help as much as possible.
Recommended: xlib guru

Downloadable version: xlib guru

I suggest you read both, as the download .txt file is more in depth, but the wiki (first one) is better visually.

[nitacku]

Count me in. I usually specialize in graphics and xLIB/AI (if there is an AI), but I will be willing to help on any part of the project.

[bananaman]

Ok, thanks for your help. I'm getting encouraged seeing all the response that I'm getting. And there will be major need for AI in the battle system because I hope it will be round based.

[elfprince13]

[Sage Orator]

So the world map will like pokemon's? Also, what kind of clothing, and body/face, should the main character start out with? I'm not the greatest pixel artist in the world, especially for map sprite's, but can alter based upon suggestion. I'll start on the weapons.

A list of people involved:
bananaman (of course)
c_plus_plus
Madskillz
Sage Orator
0oruneo0
Cure777
nitacku

That's at least who specifically said they were involved.