OK... All this talk and no action is starting to get under my skin It''s stupid, it''s ugly, it''s a major hack, but it''s also only about 4 hours of work.


www.geocities.com/novalis112/vquestbeta.zip

I think it''s pretty self-explanatory. Is this the kind of thing you''re talking about Paladin?

OH CRAP ! EXACTLY WHAT I MEANT :DDDD

You got straight into point, and the layout is just "little bit that way" that I wanted (not wrong, but the proportions are wrong, because you probably didn''t even care about that

Well... buggy version, I could go west only ones (move west (moves), move west, "I''m sorry Dave, I cannot do that"...)
And when I finished the game, I got an error message.
Second try: No problem, that bug seemed to happen only ones, and I did move west two times... I''m wondering
And no error message either !

But hey, that is freaking cool demo ! Everyone who are interested about this project, download it NOW
Hmm... Visual Basic ?
I was thinking more about C/C++, but... lemme think about it

Well, are the people still interested about creating this freeware "Real CRPG of next generation"- game, eh ?

Visual Basic? Err, actually it is straight ANSI C using OpenGL. It should compile on any platform that has the GL libs...

You're correct about the layout... I basically just modeled it after all the old console RPGs from days past I know what you're talking about when you exit too, I have no idea what causes it, but I figured who cares, you're exiting

Also, there's nothing sacred about the file "vqs/rat.vqs". It's just a script that controls the rat. You can edit it to your hearts content. Just be carefule to only put one command on each line, and only use the commands that are already there as I haven't implemented any others. Also, the interpreter is *very* strict, case sensitive, no white space *inside* commands, ...etc. So feel free to experiment. Anyway, I'll probably keep making improvements/modifications to the demo on my own and posting until we (if we do) get some coordinated effort going.

Edited by - novalis on 3/9/00 6:34:31 AM

Hmm... ok, I might consider abou starting some sort of organizating when you have little more advanced demo out.

After this, I''m going to post message to "labors wanted" (heh board, and announce about the project, and that it''s 100% opensource project. Probably we need some site with freespace to keep updates online, and ofcourse, official messageboard (EZboard might be nice one).

Hmm... I''m actually getting little excited about this project

I would preferr, that if you are going to create a mapeditor, this might be good way to create it:
Mapeditor can be used to create inside areas, and outside areas. Inside areas would be in smaller scale (like your dungeon demo), and outside areas would be in larger scale so that mapeditor creates single pieces of landscape (like in muds). To explain this better, I "draw" an example:

ffffffRfff
ffffffRfff
RRRRRRRRRR
fffffSRfff
fffHffRfff

This is just an simple example. f=forest, H=house, S=sign, and R=road. Now, when player creates piece of road, it is saved as file "road-xxx-yyy", where xxx and yyy are coordinates of this single realm.

For an example, the server (or local client) directory structure might look like this:
---- D:\Vquest-server\
---------------------\Runserver.exe
---------------------\realm1\
----------------------------\roads\
----------------------------------\road-204-154.cfg
----------------------------\houses\
-----------------------------------\house-502-20.cfg
----------------------------\special\
-----------------------------------\altar.cfg
----------------------\realm2\
----------------------------\roads\

and like this

The advance with this system would be that the server would be really easy to configure, and modify even from fly. BUT, as we all know, each file (nowdays ?) takes about 16kb extra space, so lots of small files ARE NOT fun to keep on the hard-drive... SO, my solution for this would be that mapeditor modifies REALM1.main file, and asks if user wants to create config file. If the piece of forest is just "normal" without any special information (except some basic variables, like "monsters_possible=1" or weather information...), the information will be saved on REALM1.main just for a single line, BUT if creator wants to create something "more complicated" (script, etc), then he just selects "create config file", and this piece of information will be saved as I described above (type-xxx-yyy.cfg).

In case, that some player modifies this part of the realm, lets say, maybe knight with lots of money builds a castle on part of the world, where there is just normal forest, the server gets information about building process, access to REALM1.main, and copies line of the realm (one line is one piece of normal ground), that is modified, creates it as config file (castle-xxx-yyy, for an example , and then it deletes the old information from the realm1.main file... Simple ?

I like the idea of different scales for inside/outside maps... Very good idea in fact. However, let me mention how I currently handle the map data structure (as it varies considerably from your proposed method), and why I think it is probably the best.

Right now, the planet itself is generated procedurally "on the fly". So it requires approximately 0 (zero, NULL, nada, zippo, zilch) bytes of disk space. Now, when you make a change to the landscape (ie put a building on it), that data is stored in a Quad-Tree. this makes for rapid access to specific patrs of a map that could grow to very large sizes. I haven''t actually implemented any way to save the map to disk yet, but I suspect that the quad-tree could most efficiently be saved/loaded as one binary file.

Anyway, I guess the most significant difference here is that I am not "designing" the world itself, that is done by an algorithm. This allows us to have a vast planet that we don''t have to invest hours and hours into designing tile by tile.

I will implement the inside/outside scale scheme right away and notify you when it has been changed.

The only reason why I would like to have external files for special rooms is that then these rooms can be REALLY EASILY modified, kind of own small "single file scripts". I don''t like the idea that all the data would be held inside one big file, because then scripting single room MANUALLY would be pretty hardcore
Ofcourse, if mapeditor would contain scripting language... but I don''t like that idea, because then the game becomes it''s own prison, and it''s not "wide-open for ANYTHING" engine, but own little Qbasic...

?

You got it wrong !

There will (in case that project is going to become true) be tilegraphics, but this demo that Novalis created, doest''t have tilegraphics yet. What I was telling before is that the game wouldn''t have commercial-game kind of EXTRA-COOL graphics, and when I used f=forest and so on example, it was directly from other muds... just and example.