| A 3D RPG/Adventure Cooperation |
| Vampire | There are so many VB programmers who's active on this great site and even more people see their activity. So I thought that if we (all?) would cooperate (and we all do it right), then we could do something really remarcable. I'm thinking of a 3D nonlinear RPG/Adventure game taking place in a fantasy world.
I think, if we'd put our ideas and knowledge together, it would be ready in no-time and it would be fun playing it.
I have lots of ideas for the storyline and some for the world's and characters' design. I'm ready to put them in this project and I'm sure, everyone has something that would help this game to take life.
So, what is YOUR oppinion? |
| VBBR | Well, see my signature? I'm developing The VB Adventure Maker! This fits perfectly, huh?
(hey, you ARE the Vampire from DreamQuest, right?) |
| Almar Joling | Have been many in the past... and failed. :) |
| cbx | Step 1: Clearly define what parts of the game will be needed in terms of graphics/art/sounds/coding etc.
Step 2: Begin a thread or wiki allowing people two flesh out the story line.
Step 3: Focus on one aspect of the game at one time. Every one contributes graphics/sounds until there is enough content to work with when coding begins.
Step 4: Break up the engine into small parts so each part is manageable for one programmer.
Step 5: Cross all finger, toes, arms, and legs, and pray the vbgamer crew will pick up the idea and stick with it.
Me 2 pennies... |
| Vampire | Well, lets see...
(for VBBR): Yes, I am the one who makes the DreamQuest... I read your post about your first 3D adventure engine and that was what made me to put this topic on (in mind I have this for a long time) the forum. But I think, it is pretty hard to build a good engine by yourself, with all the tricks, optimizations (a.s.o.). This is why I thought that it would be a great thing to make it a cooperation. The more hands you have, the more you can get (and the more you look freaky :)).
(for A. J.) This is a thing that doesn't stop me. Even if this fails, all who worked at it will have a larger experience and a wider horizon...
(for cbx) I gues these points you mentioned are the most important ones for a team work (I didn't work like that yet). OK, I have already crossed everything on me, so we can start :) Step 5> checked! But wait! What does it mean "and stick with it?" My mother language isn't english, you know...
And if I see that there are enough interested people in this, I could reveal my ideas, actors, textures, sounds, music, story and all what I can do in this "project"... |
| VBBR | Hum, you know, as soon as this engine of mine is at a reasonable stage, I will make the source code available. Or parts of it, whatever. Right now I'm remodelling the map system (now we have slopes, yay!), soon I will post a small demo here, there is only an annoying bug regarding the slopes, but I shall fix it in the next hours.
Hum... "stick with it" is more like... "stay with it for a long time" or "keep it alive" or something like this. I can't explain better, as you know, my mother languege also isn't english [:)]
Also about your comment about me creating the entire engine, that is as far as I can go, because I suck at 2D art (textures and such) and I'm nearly the worst as one can be about 3D modelling. Also I'm very bad at having game ideas. Altough if I have the basic idea I can expand it. (as you already have the basic idea, I guess this is already a start [:D]) Also I may pick up bits and pieces from ready-made code, like maybe I will incorporate multiplayer code into my engine; if I do that I will borrow the code from the DaBooda engine. (all credit given, of course) |
| JoshuaSmyth | One of Peachysofts future projects is going to be a 3D action/adventure game similar to the Sega Megadrive (genesis for you american folk) game 'Landstalker' - mixed with a little bit of prince of persia and legend of Zelda and you get the idea.
Inital development ie Proof of concept demos have been underway whenever I get bored of working on my primary current project (Starcars) I pretty much have everything figured out - technology wise for how the game will work and play. The only thing I really dont have worked out is the storyline and level design. That's cause I'm taking a bottom down approach - seeing what is possible with the technology of the engine first and developing ideas through that medium. Instead of coming up with a storyline and then developing the tech for that.
Its still a while away from full production - I have another title planned before it. (A 2D/3D gauntlet clone) Basicly I wanted to finish and release two whole games before attempting a game of the magnitude of an RPG. The other thing is that my Action/Adventure game will not be programmed in VB. I've decided to use C++ and OpenGL (which should be interesting 'cause I've only dabbled in C++ and never used openGL) but I'm doing this so I can port the game to the Mac (There is an interesting shareware market for the mac) and so that I can have good support for scripting using a pre-existing scripting language such as LUA or Python. (Not decided which yet) However the map editor is going to be written in VB (Because I always develop map editors first for some reason and I might as well go with what I know for the mo') - so I'm not completely abandoning the language yet. It should show some nice possibilities for VB game development. (As it shouldn't look any different to the actual in game engine)
My advice to someone wanting to work on an RPG in pure Visual Basic is to get the scripting sorted first - The engine second and the storyline third - finally content. Whenever a new RPG is attempted in VB they always get a certain point and then when it comes to scripting the project comes to a nasty halt. I've bought the book 'Game Scripting Mastery' and it is a monster - awesome information - but I dont have time to build a scripting language from scratch that will work with VB - although it is possible to do so, that's why I'm moving to C++ and using a pre-existing scripting library. If anyone wants to work on a good scripting language that will work with VB I recommend they buy the 'Game Scripting Mastery' book but beware it will be a full time struggle and you'll have to learn C++ and assembly language.
It may be possible that one of the pre-existing scripting libraries work with VB - I haven't done much research into it yet, cause other things are eating in to my schedule. But definately sort out how scripting is going to work before even thinking about anything else. |
| Dan | OT:
quote:
It may be possible that one of the pre-existing scripting libraries work with VB - I haven't done much research into it yet, cause other things are eating in to my schedule. But definately sort out how scripting is going to work before even thinking about anything else.
The msscript.ocx control (Windows Scripting Host (WSH)...)
works pretty good, allowing a familiar language to be used. With it you can script using any language that has hooks into the host. Vbscript, Jscript, REXX, Perl, Python, and others. WSH supports Vbscript and Jscript out of the box, and both the Python and ActivePerl distributions provide support for WSH.
Further reading about Windows Scripting can be found here >>
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/nhp/default.asp?contentid=28001169
An Article on the MSDN explains how to add scripting support to your app can be found here >>
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/0600/visualprog/default.aspx |
| VBBR | Wow, I didn't knew it supported Python. Do you know if it supports Lua too?
edit: uh... I've downloaded Python, but couldn't find anything related to WSH. Also tried running a pythin script with it and it said that no compatible module was found or something like it. |
| Dan | You first need to download the win32 python extensions from here>>
http://starship.python.net/crew/mhammond/win32/Downloads.html
Then Read here for setting it up to work with WSH >>
http://www.python.org/windows/win32com/ActiveXScripting.html
I havn't done it myself, so don't know any more info other than what I found out in a few momments of searching |
| VBBR | Thanks, managed to set up Python successfully in a simple VB app. I also reccomend it to anyone that is wanting to use a scripting language; it is a lot better than VBScript in my opinion. |
| Eric Coleman | I would be interested in speed comparisons between a vbscript, jscript, and Python scripts. Something simple but that is also a large loop.
Dim A, B, C, D, E, F, G, N
B = 2
C = 3
D = -4
E = 5
F = -1
G = 2
For N = 1 to 1000000
A = B * C + D * E + F * G
Next |
| VBBR | That, in Python, would be... (I think)
[code]b = 2
c = 3
d = -4
e = 5
f = -1
g = 2
for n in range(1,1000000):
a = b * c + d * e + f * g[/code]
This may be wrong, as I'm just starting to learn Python, but I think it's right. I could test the speeds using Almar's benchmark model. Could someone translate that to JScript? |
| VBBR | Well, these are some results I got using Almar's template. (Test1 is VBScript and Test2 is Python)
[code]% faster | -29,4| -39,9 | -39,4 | -39,9 |-38,7
Test1 |3,844907|3,265745|3,266323|3,230364|3,29376
Test2 |5,448391|5,438165|5,38696 |5,370542|5,376462[/code]
From this, it seems that VBS is around 40% faster. Maybe because it was originally meant to be used with WSH.
Now the code I used... (with 5 iterations)
[code]Public Sub TestOne() 'VBS
Dim TestCode As String
TestCode = "Dim A, B, C, D, E, F, G, N" & vbCrLf & _
"B = 2" & vbCrLf & _
"C = 3" & vbCrLf & _
"D = -4" & vbCrLf & _
"E = 5" & vbCrLf & _
"F = -1" & vbCrLf & _
"G = 2" & vbCrLf & _
"For N = 1 To 1000000" & vbCrLf & _
" A = B * C + D * E + F * G" & vbCrLf & _
"Next"
ScriptVBS.ExecuteStatement TestCode
End Sub
Public Sub TestTwo() 'Python
Dim TestCode As String
TestCode = "b = 2" & vbCrLf & _
"c = 3" & vbCrLf & _
"d = -4" & vbCrLf & _
"e = 5" & vbCrLf & _
"f = -1" & vbCrLf & _
"g = 2" & vbCrLf & _
"for n in range(1, 1000000):" & vbCrLf & _
" a = b * c + d * e + f * g"
ScriptPy.ExecuteStatement TestCode
End Sub[/code]
ScriptVBS and ScriptPy are MS Scripting Controls.
New: Now curiously those are the results if I don't declare the variables in VBS. I decided to test that since as far as I know Python doesn't allow variable declarations.
[code]%faster | 61 | 44,8 | 44 | 35,2 |106,3
Test1 | 0,853772|0,77584 |0,807183|0,869534|1,113404
Test2 | 0,530268|0,535775|0,56048 |0,642921|0,539781[/code]
It seems Python is faster in this case then! I will look in the Python docs for explicit variable declarations.
New code:
[code]Public Sub TestOne() 'VBS
Dim TestCode As String
TestCode = "B = 2" & vbCrLf & _
"C = 3" & vbCrLf & _
"D = -4" & vbCrLf & _
"E = 5" & vbCrLf & _
"F = -1" & vbCrLf & _
"G = 2" & vbCrLf & _
"For N = 1 to 100000" & vbCrLf & _
" A = B * C + D * E + F * G" & vbCrLf & _
"Next"
ScriptVBS.ExecuteStatement TestCode
End Sub
Public Sub TestTwo() 'Python
Dim TestCode As String
TestCode = "b = 2" & vbCrLf & _
"c = 3" & vbCrLf & _
"d = -4" & vbCrLf & _
"e = 5" & vbCrLf & _
"f = -1" & vbCrLf & _
"g = 2" & vbCrLf & _
"for n in range(1, 100000):" & vbCrLf & _
" a = b * c + d * e + f * g"
ScriptPy.ExecuteStatement TestCode
End Sub[/code] |
| Eric Coleman | your second test seems to be way off for some reason. Your time values are much too small if the only change you made was to remove the "Dim" statement in the VBscript version. That shouldn't have affected the Python test at all. |
| VBBR | Now that you say it, I noticed...
There seemed to be something wrong. I re-ran the two test and those are the results...
With "Dim"
[code]% faster | -52,3 |-42,3 |-43,3 |-45,9 |-42,2
Test1 | 0,337046|0,331936|0,334958|0,341163|0,431935
Test2 | 0,706068|0,574953|0,59076 |0,630985|0,746955[/code]
Without "Dim"
[code]% faster | 49,3 |45,8 |53,5 |46 |99,4
Test1 | 0,857457|0,89679 |0,88588 |1,012913|1,215434
Test2 | 0,574427|0,615014|0,577294|0,693654|0,609483[/code]
Anyway it seems that the "Dim" makes a HUGE difference on speed. (more than doubled here)
edit: Oh here it is... hehe it looks like in the first test I used 1,000,000 for the loop, but 100,000 in the second. Anyway 1,000,000 was taking too much time so I guess 100,000 is good enough. Also each 100,000 loop is being executed 5 times (and this is repeated 5 times thus making the 5 values, kinda confusing but there is a 5 for the VB iterations, a 100,000 for the script iterations and another 5 for the number of times the test, including 5 iterations, is run). |
| Eric Coleman | 100,000 iterations does not give a good enough representation of the speed. Simply look at the differences in results, "61 | 44,8 | 44 | 35,2 |106,3", that's just too much of a discrepency. The margin of error is larger than the value being measured. A value of 10 +/- 10 isn't as precise as a value of 100 +/- 10. |
| VBBR | OK, OK, 1,000,000 iterations now. (note that now each test runs just 1 time as opposed to 5)
With Dim:
[code]% faster | -47,1 | -42,9 | -40,8 | -43,1 | -38,6
Test1 |0,61747|0,617301|0,629835|0,628216|0,638489
Test2 |1,16737|1,081612|1,064591|1,104773|1,03939[/code]
Without Dim:
[code]% faster | 44,4 | 27 | 76 | 48,9 | 50,2
Test1 |1,528633|1,558092|1,88045 |1,559742|1,566843
Test2 |1,058943|1,226932|1,068605|1,047792|1,043385[/code] |
| Vampire | Well, I guess, I had an impossible idea... It doesn't seem to work this "cooperation"... Anyway. If someone still wants to do this, just mail me! |
| Hacker9988 | Well, I think we could do it. I like Vampires Idea. Let's get working on the RPG. Me and some of my friends were wanting to make one and i even got them to write out a pretty cool story line. We (me and my friends) all have good knowledge of folklore and i think we could all work together to make a pretty awesome game (not to mention some money $$$¢¢¢). I'll be on AIM most of the time, but mainly around 1:37 CST (b/c i'm in computer class that time). I can work on it here or at home. Just e-mail me [url="mailto:Administrator@aurorachurchofchrist.com"]here[/url]. Thanx!!
[:D] |
| Eric Coleman | Since this is a fairly old post, I suggest you email the guy that started it (on page 1) and see if he's still interested :-) |
| VBBR | Hey Eric, you've got 486 posts... wanna upgrade to Pentium now? [:P] |