Quote:Original post by dashurc
4) OOT and MM are big budget games. There are few professional developers (by this I mean companies, not individuals) out there that can come close to competing with the attention to detail and depth of gameplay that Nintendo provides. These games are some of the highest rated games of all time. You will not be able to come close to these games without a lot of high end industry experienced talent (these guys don't come cheap). You can easily compete with the visuals (although the sheer amount of content is beyond your capabilities), but that is entirely due to hardware limitations at the time of those games.

They were big budget games, 10 years ago. Now that's not to say that what they made is easily replicated today, but I'm rather confident that with enough free time and creativity one (in this case me) can make a game with the same attention to detail and good gameplay if they work hard enough. What I'm mainly worried about are things like the special items. Targeting and lunges should be easy enough but do you remember the hookshot? That weapon that would poke baddies and work as a kind of grappling hook on steroids? How the heck would someone make that? How would someone devise a inventory system with equipped items that show up on your character (well, that one has probably been done already)?

I am getting a much clearer picture of what needs to be done here (thanks to you guys) and I think that the big challenges are going to be putting in those "special items".

Quote:Original post by Nipah
They were big budget games, 10 years ago. Now that's not to say that what they made is easily replicated today, but I'm rather confident that with enough free time and creativity one (in this case me) can make a game with the same attention to detail and good gameplay if they work hard enough. What I'm mainly worried about are things like the special items. Targeting and lunges should be easy enough but do you remember the hookshot? That weapon that would poke baddies and work as a kind of grappling hook on steroids? How the heck would someone make that? How would someone devise a inventory system with equipped items that show up on your character (well, that one has probably been done already)?

I am getting a much clearer picture of what needs to be done here (thanks to you guys) and I think that the big challenges are going to be putting in those "special items".

I know the hookshot all too well (the Zelda series is my favourite series of all time), but just implementing the hookshot requires a bunch of support work (you need art assets for the item, character animation sequences, camera work for the first person or over the shoulder targetting camera as well as an animation system that can adjust animation sequences to point where you're aiming (either using IK or some other procedural adjustment). That's not to mention locomotion (running around animations), a prop system and transition animations (to switch between equipped items), collision detection, physics, etc. etc. etc.

An example of an attainable first step is to define the base technical requirements you need to implement your gameplay and rendering features, which will allow you to assess various engines against your required criteria. Once you've chosen an engine, get a character rendering, get basic locomotion working, get props working (start with a sword in your hand, don't worry about transitioning or pulling it out of its sheath for now). Start building your core building blocks from there (physics, collision), which doesn't necessarily mean building the code from scratch, it should often be as simple as integrating the existing engine functionality into your game (not that this is always easy). Once you have the absolute basics working in an empty room, start expanding your gameplay or rendering features in an empty "test" room.

Once you're happy with your feature set it's time to start making an actual game. It's harder to shoehorn in new features once you've started cranking out the levels, enemies, etc, without it feeling tacked on, but it's inevitable that it will happen. Once you've built all your levels/enemies/animations/weapons/items/etc, testing and debugging a game the scale of Zelda will take months for a team of QA testers and engineers to get to a commercially shippable quality.

Something smaller scale is definately advisable in my opinion. Not that you shouldn't try, but my assessment would be that you'd never be able to take it beyond the "testbed" stage, or at most make one or two small levels.

Quote:Original post by Nipah
They were big budget games, 10 years ago. Now that's not to say that what they made is easily replicated today, but I'm rather confident that with enough free time and creativity one (in this case me) can make a game with the same attention to detail and good gameplay if they work hard enough.

Hey!, as long as you enjoy it, everyone is entitled to a hobby [smile].

Quote:Original post by dashurc
Something smaller scale is definately advisable in my opinion. Not that you shouldn't try, but my assessment would be that you'd never be able to take it beyond the "testbed" stage, or at most make one or two small levels.

Once I have all of my characters, textures, environments, objects, items, ect. wouldn't it (aside from the bug testing) be pretty much like putting together a puzzle? And once I got it to a desirable size I would advertise it for free to the public, with the request that they report bugs/glitches and suggestions to a specific e-mail. Over time things will be fixed, edited, and created until a new and much more polished version is completed, making the original look like a alpha/beta. Of course this would only start once I get it to what I think is the "done" stage which could be any number of years from now.
Two new questions popped up.

1. Since Torque uses straight C++ would it be better for what I'm trying to do or am I looking at it through the wrong lens?

2. One of the (if not the) main weapons will be a short spear, probably held in two hands, so are there any important things I should keep in mind before I make the permanent character/weapon model?

What I meant by OOT/MM being no problem with Unity or Torque is that it would be no problem physically. The engines can technically do anything that was done on the N64 and a whole lot more. However, as was already pointed out, making a game with that level of depth would be equivalent to climbing Everest for one developer.

Quote:Original post by Nipah
Once I have all of my characters, textures, environments, objects, items, ect. wouldn't it (aside from the bug testing) be pretty much like putting together a puzzle? And once I got it to a desirable size I would advertise it for free to the public, with the request that they report bugs/glitches and suggestions to a specific e-mail.

For somebody who has no previous experience working on smaller systems it would be like putting together a puzzle in the dark with your eyes closed and missing a piece. But yes, generally if you have all the elements then you just need to put them together. Though for something like you are wanting people generally get paid good money to do it.

And for the most part nobody cares to beta test bug ridden games for fun. From experience most beta testing on free projects comes from the developer.

If you are super serious about a project like this then you should really start smaller. As was said the hookshot has a lot of variables attached to it. Get Unity or Torque and work on designing a small area with just a sword and no animations other then walking and slashing. Maybe not even worry about enemies. If you can get that done then figure out how hard that actually was and if you think you can make a complete game.

As for which engine to use that really is something you need to figure out based on your needs and what you can actually do. Just because Unity only lets you script doesn't meant that it puts any limits on what you can do. Unity has a really nice WYSIWYG editor which would make level creation much easier.

Quote:Once I have all of my characters, textures, environments, objects, items, ect. wouldn't it (aside from the bug testing) be pretty much like putting together a puzzle?

The problem with that analogy is that a puzzle is simple - just search and search until you find two pieces that match, and snap them together.

A better comparison would be to taking an extremely complex plastic model (the kind with 1000 or so pieces), dumping all the pieces into a box and then trying to assemble the model with no instructions or other tools/supplies. First you have to figure out how the pieces should fit together, then come up with some kind of "glue" (code) to actually hold the pieces together and make them fit in the larger picture.

Give the lead programmer a complete game design documentation with all the interactive features so he can start coding, and you, in the mean time, create art for game, your works will synchronize after some time and game will move to game design faze, that means editor software running, artists producing, programmers scriptting and handling betatesters.
pm me I am a programmer with technology, I understand you work without fundings, so do I.

Quote:
If you are super serious about a project like this then you should really start smaller.

Not at all. And do not deal with programming if you have no experience, do 3d art, do everything. If you end up with source art for MMORPG, and do not have technology for MMORPG you are a way through, and just pm me, I have technology.