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Topics - Jacob

1
Game Development / Licensing
Hey guys, it's been a while.


Forgive me for the ignorance, but I'm terrible at understanding licenses. I plan on, when I release Ilxder, having it so players can mod the game to a certain extent, but I want to make sure they don't try making some sort of conversion based upon my work that they could then try selling or something. I can't seem to find a license that covers this.


In essence, I want players to have the ability to mod my game like Bethesda permits modding of their RPGs: you can create whatever you want so long as you don't try passing it off as your own work (I don't want them claiming they're part of my team either), redistribute the game without permission, or try selling the game or your mods for my game. Does anyone have a suggestion on what license I could consider for my game? It still uses Sphere, and I know Sphere is open-source, so would I be wisest to use some sort of open-source license, or something different?


Thanks for any answers.


-Jacob


PS: For anyone interested, I took a quick screenshot of the Aildwerd Chapel in Halmuna, the game's tutorial area and the Ilxder's home island. Lore-wise, Halmuna is the last piece of the paradise that once was Steorth (the world the game takes place in).
2
Arts / Making a variety of trees
Hey guys, I just recently bought a new laptop and desktop after my previous laptop broke down, so I've been working on developing my game again. I was working on the map for the tutorial area in the game, and I noticed, "Wait a minute, all I have are evergreen-style trees...". My tileset for this map has a bunch of evergreen trees from a tileset I imported and modded for the different environments, but I don't want my entire game to be Pine-Land. So I tried experimenting, trying come up with a variety of tree shapes (nothing specifically identical to real-life species of tree).. to put it bluntly, I failed horribly. :P

That being said, I'm also using the trees from Metallix's Resource Competition entry, which look great (even when I had to rescale them to my usual tile size), but I still would like a bigger variety than just evergreens and plain trees. Mainly just shape and color is what I'm looking for. Does anyone have an idea of where I can find either a tutorial or resources themselves that I can use in my game (I don't mind giving credit- I just don't have the money to pay royalties or anything)?

My general tile size is 16x16, and the art style of the game isn't too cartooney.

Any ideas are appreciated, because like I said, I'm not exactly good at graphics hehe
3
Site Comments / Shoutbox?
Hey guys, I know that a lot of forums tend to have shoutboxes for quick, random chat that isn't enough to put into a post, so I was wondering if anyone here had thought  to make one for this forum. I think it'd be interesting. Personally, I don't know if you'd want to install it, but I recommend SimplePortal which includes a shoutbox among some other pretty useful features you may be able to put to use; if you want just a shoutbox though, this would work. Just thinking that this may be a nice addition to the forum, honestly.
4
Sphere General / MMO-style combat system?
The other day, I was thinking of ideas to make my battle system in my game go a step beyond. Recently, I've really been dedicated to attention to detail, going one step further than I normally would have, and not taking 'good enough' to be good enough. I feel this project could potentially be something a possible future employer could look at, so I want to put as much effort into making it a great game as I can.

That being said, I was drawing up a sample interface that would kind of work with the 450 x 370 game window that I have. Drawing it up, I based it upon what Radnen said here:


I think your game is the perfect candidate for an on-map-engine type of battle system. But they can be tricky to make.


I'm going to try to dig out the paper to give you guys an idea of what I had in mind, but I had the thought: would it be possible, or even practical, to create an MMO-style battle system with an ability bar, and some abilities? I know how complicated it would be, and I'd definitely be starting with a simpler system to test and fool around with once I get to it, but I just wonder if it would be possible to do in Sphere. I'm not really talking about having a massive selection of abilities, even, nor a customisable ability bar. I'm just talking about having certain quests in the main storyline unlock special abilities bound to the 1-6 keys, that the player can use to gain an advantage in battle, particularly with bosses.

If this wouldn't be possible (or practical according to my limited programming skills), I would settle for a simpler system, as I don't even know if anyone would like the MMO-style ability combat. I'm just curious if it's possible though. Any answers are appreciated. :)
5
Some of you on the old forum may remember this project I did in YoYoGames' Game Maker, called Sci-Fi Mar-Bles. It's an action-maze game that relies heavily on physics, in a low-gravity, space-like theme.

Anyways, the first release showed promise according to some, and many felt it had potential. However, it was quite amateurish, and kind of boring, and it was filled with bugs.

Yesterday, I released an expansion to this game which triples as a patch, a graphical/gameplay update, AND an addition of new levels. This expansion includes ten new levels, updated graphics (each set of levels has its own graphical theme), new music tracks, more streamlined gameplay, many bugfixes, and more story integration. I've really acted on feedback, and I've received a few compliments about the expansion. In contrast to the first time around, where I spent about a day with testing the game, I tested this game for almost an entire week, smoothing out many bugs and restructuring certain levels, so bugs should occur much less frequently. I also added a hiscores table at the end so you can keep track of your personal hiscores and try to top yourself each time. :)

Here's the article on my site that talks about it, if anyone is interested in trying it out: http://www.joquanpro.tk/3/post/2013/07/its-here.html

Feel free to give feedback if you have any, and I'll try to act on it if/when I make a new expansion. However, for now, I am going to start focusing on my main project, Ilxder - The Adventure Begins, fully again.
6
Script Support / Easier quest creation?
Hey everyone, as I've been working on creating quests and miniquests in my game, I've come across what may be an issue, especially on the really large, and complicated quests I have in mind to create.

Currently, my quest creation system is basically the same as what was on the old Sphere tutorial for 'Creating RPG Events', or however it was titled. It uses a case system to progress through different quests. In example, this is just a snippet from the small side quest (an investigation quest) that I'm testing in the game:

Code: (javascript) [Select]

function bradleyTalk()
{
  switch (monkeyingAround)
  {
    case 0:
      Text("Chef: \n\n\tWelcome to Bradley's Bakery! I'm Bradley. Can I help you? \n\nYou: \n\n\tMmm, what are you cooking? It smells excellent. \n\nBradley: \n\n\tI'm baking a special recipe of mine - ring cake. See, it's basically just dough and honey, and I make it in a circular shape, like a ring! They are excellent with milk. \n\nYou: \n\n\tSounds great, I'll have to remember that! Good-bye. \n\nBradley: \n\n\tCome again soon!");
    break;

    case 1:
      Text("Bradley: \n\n\tHello, sir! How may I help you today? \n\nYou: \n\n\tHello, I'm investigating a series of thefts from the marketplace. Is there any information you can provide to me about the issue? \n\nBradley: \n\n\tHmm, come to think of it, I HAVE been missing several sacks of flour recently. Not sure what thief would take something as cheap as flour. \n\nYou: \n\n\tThanks, I'll work from that.");
    ++monkeyingAround;
    break;

... and so forth


So basically, I was wondering if there is a method of creating quests with Sphere that would be less jumbled, less confusing, less time-consuming, and less easy to mess up. Would it be possible to create a basic quest creation tool for Sphere, perhaps for future updates, that uses a case-based system?
7
Some of you guys may remember this as 'Project Pheonix'. ;)




Links:

Legends of Steorth Site
Legends of Steorth Facebook page
Yokaan Games Studio Site






The Legends of Steorth: Ilxder I - Tempest Dawn (or just Ilxder 1/Tempest Dawn for short) is an adventure-RPG created in Sphere, with a strong grasp on storytelling, exploration, and puzzles. It takes place in the fantasy planet of Steorth, in the central Kingdom of the Phoenix. The player plays the part of the Ilxder, a young man endowed with some of the powers of the deity Tylbur, and must attempt to banish the Lord of Evils, Tai'Kalu, from Steorth. Along the way, the player can take part in side quests, exploration, puzzles and riddles, etc in this open-world game.

The story is inspired much by the stories of the Bible, The Elder Scrolls, Lord of the Rings, and RuneScape. The game is backed by lots of lore and writing that I've created over the past four years, and also borrows elements from a fantasy book I once tried to write back in my elementary and early middle school years. The game has been in casual development since April of 2009, and I feel like I've barely gone anywhere with what I have planned for it. :P However, I do want to finish it, no matter how long it takes. I've taken quite a bit of advice that was given to me by the Spherical community. (Including the spelling fix of Pheonix to Phoenix and I no longer consider YGS a company, but a simple work-from-home game development team)

I certainly will need more help/advice from the Spherical community down the road, including when I attempt, once and for all, to create a battle system. :P However, until I need that help, I think I will just stick around for some good chat about Sphere and games in general.