Debris - New project - Freeware/Voluntary - Help wanted

[kenna]

==== Debris - New project - Freeware/Voluntary - Help wanted ====

Team name: Robin Pirates

Project name: Debris

Brief description:

Following the discovery of Subdimensional Entanglement and its use in interplanetary travel, humans have sprung forth into space. Through revolutionising technology Mars, Ganymede, and Europa have completely or partially been terraformed into habitable homes. Millions and millions migrates to these new homes to leave behind the chaos on Earth, complete depletion of fossil fuels, global climate change, and natural disasters. Valuable and very useful minerals and metals were also discovered on Mars, and Ganymede proved to be a very habitable moon for lower and middle class people, due to its rich forests and rivers. A comet nearly destroyed the Earth, and instead scraped the Moon, shattering most of the nearside, hurling thousands upon thousands of rock fragments into orbit around Earth, further alianating what is now but a remnant of was Earth used to be. However, Earth is quite a peaceful place to live, compared to Mars, where wars rage between the new nations formed by the former Earthen nations. Europa also stand in the middle of war, as nations from Mars try to capture and transport large quantities of water back to Mars. Ganymede seems to be the only other place besides Earth to see a somewhat peaceful era.

Features:

* Intended to be fun, unserious and hillarious!
* No leveling, and easy to play short sessions, 30 min, 60 min, you can even set alarms/calendars and track your own gaming to keep you from playing to much; Responsible Gaming!
* 100% free; no EULAs, no messy registrations, no restrictions
* Lots of content and possibilities, but the game still remains quite simple, not much conplex code or unecessary libraries.
* Works on lower end computers as well (700 MHz, 128 MB RAM, 32 MB VRAM)
* Since it's Irrlicht you can create a renderer of your own, to utilise all the available power of your high end computer, thus giving you more details and explosive WOW than the default renderer optimised for lower end computers
* Nonrepetitive; be a pirate, be a soldier, be a police officer, be a trader, be a transporter, and much more
* No individual maps, but one single coherent universe; explore Earth, Mars, Ganymede, and Europa
* Create private servers, or public servers that connect to all the other servers to create one coherent universe
* Lots of weapons, accessories, and vehicles from various eras: be the captain of a small one or two masted seaship, or why not a three masted great ship; fly modern military helicopters and jets; the awsome hovercrafts and airships developed on Earth; Various military vehicles; civilian vehicles; transportation vehicles; spacecrafts; modern firearms; staves, katanas, sabres, etc.; ship cannons
* Realistic control of vehicles; helicopters, hovercrafts, and jets will have fully working cockpits and will require more than just WSAD+Mouse; Seaships and Airships will require a full crew for operating rudder, sails/engines, arms, navigation, etc.
* Interesting story and locations, with tons of quests, jobs, tasks, etc.
* Create and add your own content; weapons, accessories, vehicles, cities, towns, structures, quests, jobs, tasks, etc.

Compensation: None; this is an independent and voluntary project

Talent needed:

Programmers
Scene Designer
Graphics Designer

Current team:

Kenneth FORSBÄCK — Project Leader, Original Concept by, Lead Designer, Documentation, Translator (Swedish, Finnish)

Team structure:

* Project Leader — is in charge of the entire project (not only design tasks) and is often the one who initially began the project or created the original concept/work
* Original Concept/Work by — author of the original concept or work which the game is based upon or primarily influenced by
* Lead Designer — is in charge of planning and creating the game (involves all specialised design tasks) and assigns tasks to and provides guidelines and designs for assisting designers
* Designer(s) — assists the Lead Designer with various tasks and works with general design of the game
* Lead Programmer — is in charge of all programming tasks and plans and creates programs
* Programmer(s) — assists the Lead Programmer with programming tasks and routinely performs issue testing
* Character Designer(s) — creates characters and plans their personalities, as well as their involvement in the story or specific scenarios
* Technical Designer(s) — creates technology and plans how it works, as well as the origin and development of such technology
* Scene Designer(s) — plans and creates worlds and scenes, as well as their history, culture, language, etc.
* Storywriter(s) — provides the game with a story and screenplay
* Graphics Designer — plans and creates 2D and 3D graphics and models
* Sound Designer(s) — plans and creates sound environments and produces sounds, often also handles audio related programming and digital signal processing
* Original Music by — author of original music used in the game or related works, such as trailers, demos, previews, etc.
* Documentation — writes documentation for the game, such as manuals, references, etc.
* Translator(s) — works with translating the game and/or related documentation and material
* Playtesting — extensively play the game, give feedback, and report any issues
* Additional Thanks to — additional people who helped with the project

Website: none at the moment

Mailing list: robin-dev@freelists.org

Contacts: mail:kenneth.forsback@pp.inet.fi, EDIT: jabber:kenna.f@jabber.org

Feedback: Anything as long as it's not flamming or newb/noob bashing (^^)

[BlindSide]

Sounds like a cool project if you actually finish it. Good luck.

[Konstantin]

Hi,
I'm Konstantin, a hobby game programmer from Germany.
Well, I'm looking for an funny free-time project, but your game seems to be a little bit to difficult to realize this without professional support. If you can found other interrested members, of course, I would be glad to join you.


(I know, my english is terrible)

[kenna]

Yes, the summary is quite difficult and long, however, this is not ana actual roadmap, this is just the ideas that I've put together. The project is ALWAYS revised to meet the capabilities of the team, and to make it realisitically possible.

So don't take this post as a strict roadmap as to exactly what must be made, but a list of things that might be made. E.g. the programmers have quite a lot of say in this matter, the major outline of the project depends on what the programmers are willing to do, how much effort they are prepared to put in.

So even though it seems like quite a super-dupe-mega-horrendous-project, in reality it may just boil down to a very simplified version of it. I'm not out to make some kind of revolutionising game, I'm out to make a fun game, and this is a collection of ideas I have, so it's actually quite relative ^^

If you are interested in helping, you're more than welcome to suggest how far we go, what your ideas are. As I get a few team members, the outline should have been give some form or less, and not just this huge list!

We sort out the important things, what we like the most, and don't want to leave out, etc., revise it, revise again, and revise again, until we have something we feel is both artistically satisfying, as well as realistical.

EDIT: I've been designing my own engine for quite some time (I'm not a professional programmer, so it's not easy) and believe me, I really can be quite pedant when it comes to design. Designing my engine has made me even worse, as I've had to think of exactly everything, every single little details to how to make it work ^^ So don't take this list to seriously

[dawasw]

Very interesting. You might not belive it but actually I was thinking of doing exacly the same type of project you showed us here.

I must admit that your plans are very ambitious: for example few planet / locations - you can do whatever you want -> as a police man or a transporter or something like that, many weapons and items to interact and also vehicles - cars, boats and aircrafts (with full cockpit control! omg!).

If you want to make it exacly like in your plans - there is a long way to go.

Hmm when I started to plan something related to your project I was thinking: right I'll make the locations -> some cities, then I have to set up great AI to make some good traffic, then opponents, then some other locations and instances (in meanwhile I will have to make all the models for the game and stuff) - of course physics is a must - and newton sounds good. Also game has to include dozens of items - every unique. For example -> you start to smoke a cigarette , and a hand will raise (in FPP view) with a cigarette and start to smoke and stuff.

It does look great in our imaginations and looks quite simple to make it all alive within some months or years - but after a longer thinking - I think it's impossible to make such kind of game even with a small team.

That's why I changed my hmm goals a bit -> make a few cities a little bit copied from the world (with other names of course, streets etc.), add everywhere a bit of transport and stuff -> make giantic exterior lands also for some fun like attacking a villiage being a paid assasin (a'la Kill Bill playstyle with katana would be cool, especially to imagine a camera where when player rolls foward the camera will make a right rotation) ... And then of course the story/plot would need a few conflicts between countries or factions whatever - and later you can add some profesions or classes you will be avaible to play during the game (to make it a bit hmm gta similiar ?), and only cars and motorcycles are avaible for player.

For example 5 main cities, you could set them up on different continents or something like this - make some minor cities too. (I know it will sound like a WoW in nowadays world)

But after a loooonger thinking - I decided to make up just one city with traffic, some usable ground vehicles and some shooting action. And maybe later I will add more cities and then some villiage's or instances to be somethink like "base attacks" or some "boss fights" etc.

Well your idea sounds like a dream not to come true - that's my point. I even think that making even one wonderful looking city with traffic and opponents is a great challenge. (remember about sophisticated architecture of buildings...) For me even such one city with some extended player action already sounds like impossible for a small group of few people. Well but somehow I would like to make it and I belive it might come true lol.

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Edited because Midnight scared me with copyright problems. That was intended just for fun etc. I know we don't have any rights for anything but... For non-commercial and non-released (private) projects I can do whatever I want for my own purposes... But you're right, I have to be much more strict about what I use... And besides there are so many imprecisions in such laws - so many people release some amateur games with weapons - so actually if someone uses a weapon looking like ak47 he is using it a bit illegal too... We could speak and debate hours on this topic. What is legal and what is not.

[roxaz]

i like team structure. that will bring big advantage to the project

[kenna]

Very interesting. You might not belive it but actually I was thinking of doing exacly the same type of project you showed us here.

Yay ^^

I must admit that your plans are very ambitious: for example few planet / locations - you can do whatever you want -> as a police man or a transporter or something like that, many weapons and items to interact and also vehicles - cars, boats and aircrafts (with full cockpit control! omg!).

If you want to make it exacly like in your plans - there is a long way to go.

Yes, I know, that's why it's only a basic guideline ^^

Hmm when I started to plan something related to your project I was thinking: right I'll make the locations -> some cities, then I have to set up great AI to make some good traffic, then opponents, then some other locations and instances (in meanwhile I will have to make all the models for the game and stuff) - of course physics is a must - and newton sounds good. Also game has to include dozens of items - every unique. For example -> you start to smoke a cigarette , and a hand will raise (in FPP view) with a cigarette and start to smoke and stuff.

The basics of this game is taken directly from how it would be with my own engine (Robin Engine), and it all begins with the actual life-size solar system. Not too complicated, the size of the astral bodies, the orbiting parameters, and skins, that's all. I prefer this to just creating four spheres at certain distances from each other, as this wouldn't be very realistic, due to the lack of orbits etc., as well as some other reasons.

The centre of our solar system is the sun, that provides heat and light; so outdoor scenes get their lighting from the sun, not light entities (used for indoor only, or during the night, but a bit pointless during daytime). And don't start jumping tracks, it's really simple ^^, in Irrlicht we could just place a global light (e.g. name=__sun) which is recalculated depending on distance from the sun, light from nearby bodies, and orbit (day/night, seasons). That's it.

Next comes our planets and moons, Earth, Mars, Ganymede, and Europa, we don't need to care about the others. Each body has some parameters, such as atmosphere, magnetic field, etc. that affect certain things in the game, e.g. the atmosphere is a set of values, and among other things affect the temperature. So the temperature is calculated upon distance from sun, core, and atmosphere. Some other asepcts are calculated in the same manner, but it never really gets complicated.

Now, each of our 4 bodies, is divided into 2 hemispheres (north and south), and each hemisphere into a 4 sectors:



Each sector is then divided into a number of domains (which are basically an array list of scenes), and scenes which contain the actual data. The domains and scenes are the only actual files here, plus the main configuration file for the body. The scenes are then files which contain a few strands (streams of data), one for the actual standard Irrlicht scene, as well as some additional data. These scenes are then arranged in a linked list, listing the surrounding scenes of any particular scene. So at any time you have several scenes loaded into memory, and as you travel across the planet more distant scenes are replaced with closer ones, thus providing one uninterrupted world. Individual scenes can also be randomly accessed through the domains.cnf, instead of always having to traverse the linked list. The linked list also provides for very fast editing of scenes, which comes very handy as we'll be doing a lot of real-time editing of scenes, e.g. in IrrEdit, oooor our own editor which would allow editing of any part of the game.

DATA STRUCTURE
/earth/root.cnf
/earth/data/h0/s0/domains.cnf
/earth/data/h0/s0/foo.scene (foo_0, ..., foo_n)
/earth/data/h0/s1/domains.cnf
/earth/data/h0/s1/foo.scene (foo_0, ..., foo_n)
/earth/data/h0/s2/domains.cnf
/earth/data/h0/s2/foo.scene (foo_0, ..., foo_n)
/earth/data/h0/s3/domains.cnf
/earth/data/h0/s3/foo.scene (foo_0, ..., foo_n)
/earth/data/h1/s0/domains.cnf
/earth/data/h1/s0/foo.scene (foo_0, ..., foo_n)
/earth/data/h1/s1/domains.cnf
/earth/data/h1/s1/foo.scene (foo_0, ..., foo_n)
/earth/data/h1/s2/domains.cnf
/earth/data/h1/s2/foo.scene (foo_0, ..., foo_n)
/earth/data/h1/s3/domains.cnf
/earth/data/h1/s3/foo.scene (foo_0, ..., foo_n)

Not to make this post too lenghty, I'll leave out (at least for now) how the CLOD (it needs to be modified a bit) works.

When it comes to physics I really don't know what to do, I'm already quite lost with Irrlicht (since I didn't design it, and I hate OO) and in the Robin Engine I used my own way of dealing with simulation of physics and chemistry. But maybe newton, something "tokamak" or what it was called, I don't know, I'll leave that to the programmers.

Actual cities (quite small ones) and towns are created later, and not that many, only some major locations which are very important, and some minor ones just to let the player visit other places. The rest of the world (of any of the locations, EMGE) is empty and can be populated/constructed by the players themself. Want a city, town, castle, hideout of your own, then create it.

Now, for items, we are going to again use a method from Robin Engine. Yes, there are going to be quite a few items, not horrendously many though (as players can add content themselves later ^^!!), but they all have only one file, with n strands (streams of data). Which strand to use depends on the distance to the entity. If one level of detail is left out, the previous one is simply used. So if you only have data for the 10 m group, that's the only one used, you won't see any more details when you get closer. With only 50 m data you'll get quite crappy details, but better speed at super low-end computers.

0.5 m - used when really up close, with maximu detail.
5 m - used when fairly close, with additional details.
10 m - normal data, normal detail.
50 m - used when far from the entity, simplistic detail.

Also note that even though it is a FPV game, it doesn NOT use the common method of creating separate FPV data/rendering. Everything is rendered as normal, and the camera is simply placed where your eyes are, and you will see (nose, cheeks), possibly hair, the rest of your body, etc. just like you would in real life. No more of that SUPID thing where you look down and DON'T see your feet.

City, town details (traffic, inhabitants, etc.) and AI comes later, and even this doesn't need to be very complicated, as the main focus is PvsP playing, and I don't mean PvsP fighting, but general interaction between players.

Well your idea sounds like a dream not to come true - that's my point. I even think that making even one wonderful looking city with traffic and opponents is a great challenge. (remember about sophisticated architecture of buildings...) For me even such one city with some extended player action already sounds like impossible for a small group of few people. Well but somehow I would like to make it and I belive it might come true lol.

Lol, yes, very demanding, and again, that's why this is an unrevised basic list of ideas, features, etc. it all depends on the crew what the actual plans are ^^, the crew is nothing without me (no project), but more importantly, I would be nothing without the crew!

I just wanted to ask if you imagened the cockpit functionality in such kind of 'way'.

The cockpit of a e.g. helicopter will be a fully 3d rendered view, where every single button has a function, every single screen actually shows something, etc. E.g. if you want to fly a helicopter, you need to LEARN to fly a helicopter. You need to learn preflight/postflight checks, manoeuvering, and operation. You won't get into the air if you think you only need to press W and start shooting ^^.

You need to first do the preflight check, check everything is ok, then do the engine pre-start check, then start the engine, then connect the transmission, and then you'rea about ready to go ^^ Ingame battle will also be very different from lets say BF2, ammo is limited and you don't really have much to fire away, so there won't be super-duper, ammo-flying-everywhere, thousands-of-20mm-rounds-shells-on-the-ground, hundreds-of-missiles-flying-about, etc. not to mention that the main role of military vehicles (as we're talking about that right now) is transporting of personnel and material, and to to reconnaissance and provide ground troops with intel and warn of dangers ahead etc. So you won't be flying 50 different helicopters within 30 min, just because you always get shot down by better pilots, no! I don't like that one bit, nor will that be featured in the game. Seaships will require at least on person controlling the ship's wheel, as well as additional crew to operate sails, and optional arms or other stuff on the ship. The size of the crew depends on the size of the ship, small ship 2 or 3, medium about 10, large maybe 20. And even this is nothing complicated.

Airships will require a pilot, navigator, engine master, and possibly additional crew for other things. Think of "Last Exile", in case you've seen/read the anime/manga, or any submarine film, etc. Larger crafts will actually require teamplay: captain, navigator, arms officer, echo sounding, etc.

Smaller crafts will have much simpler cockpits/interfaces/controls, like cars and motorcycles. There a lot I could write about, and i'm actually trying to write some documentation too, but more on that later.

Simplified it's sails up/sails down/tie rope/untie rope, etc. what makes it SEEM complicated is that one person can't to it all ^^

The game will SEEM very complicated and totaly cowabunga awsome, because it uses many SIMPLE things together which are hardly complicated at all.

[kenna]

Very nice! I'm not that pedant when it comes to graphics, that can be finetuned later, the important thing is to get the controls working, i.e. we would probably have a lot of red squares with helicopter controls behaving like a helicopter. No detailed mesh, no cockpit rendering, just a red square on the screen on a simple terrain scene, and a paper where all the controls are written down so you won't forget them, since some vehicles have quite a few.

So at some point in time, there will be a alpha/beta version with LOTS of red, blue, and green squares and triangles and spheres flying about ! ^^ LOL Priority! A rodmap is very important.

[kenna]

i like team structure. that will bring big advantage to the project :)

Thank you! I've spent quite some time trying to make a very simple yet efficient team structure, looking at other game credits, looking at film credits, other credits, etc.

EDIT: here's something I just drew, not anything revolutionising ^^
http://robinpty.org/temp/illust1.png

Was thinkin of how to build a sailing ship in Irrlicht, and this is some sketch of the types of sails.

[GameDude]

I might be able to help program a little, depending on what you have so far

[Revan1985]

I'm intresting in translation...
I offer myself for italian translation

[kenna]

I'm intresting in translation...
I offer myself for italian translation 8)

Thank you! Any help is indeed very much appreciated!

[Midnight]

you guys need to be more careful with copyrights and trademarks.

that's a suburu trademarked image on your steering wheel.

meaning even if you didn't go commercial.. and put that on a public site they would have the right to sue you.

you're safe on irrlicht forums ONLY because guest accounts have been disabled. and I doubt they would seek damages unless you went commercial.

if you think I'm just paranoid try selling that and see what happens cause not only could they come after you but anyone with sufficiant rights by way of lisencing could also come after you and in software design this is the easiest way to crush indie compatition.

I don't know what they allow it may be totally legal.. but I'm guess not.

[GameDude]

I'm sure they'd get permission before they sold it, or change the logo of the image to something else. Also back on topic, are you still looking for an extra programmer?

[kenna]

@Midnight: I think it depends a bit, but yes, for bigger companies (especially certain ones) it would be almost suicide to use their material. I've always been paranoid about this myself as well, since I wouldn't really stand much of a chance against some multimillion company O_O Anyone would easily drown in courtfees...

@GameDude: Yes, absolutely! I'm the only one in the team right now (with Revan1985 offering to do some translation later on), and even though I know basics of c (somewhat) I definately need a programmer. The fact that irrlicht is c++ (OO) only makes it worse, I hate OO X_X. Lua is the only OO that I somewhat like, but I do prefer assembly or c.

I've also recently been thinking of actually starting to write my own physics/chemistry simulator for the game, since I've already been designing and thinking about it for quite some time. Not sure though, it would be written in c, so not sure how it would mingle with irrlicht, not to mention that it's going to take quite a lot of work too.

EDIT: Irrlicht would then maybe be used only as a rendering engine.

But anyway, yes, I would very much need a programmer. You don't have to be "level uber-god", just decent knowledge of c++ and irrlicht. That would allow me to start focusing more on design, rather than learning to program in irrlicht, although I would still do some occasional programming.

You can always contact me on kenna.f@jabber.org (sicne googletalk and other jabber clients don't support SSL), or kenneth.forsback@pp.inet.fi.

I still don't have a mailing list, even though I've been over and under everywhere on the net. So if you know of a good and FREE mailing list, please let me know. I do have a web server with PHP so we could also use our own script.

EDIT: I suggest you use meebo.com, completely free online frontend to jabber and other protocols.