free to help!

[buhatkj]

in the beginning there was fmorg...

that was my acronym for my idea for a largely d&d based, small-group multiplayer RPG I wanted to make. I had gotten up to the point of having a level you could walk around in, with a chase camera and basic collision. this was way back in the days of irrlicht 0.4.2

then, I discovered that nearly the exact game had already been made, and it was called Neverwinter Nights....

so next, I thought, well why doesnt somebody try to make a MMORPG that doesn't suck, and has real-time-ish combat...

then blizzard released WoW....

so now, here we are, I have better than 2 years experience with irrlicht, and can confidently say I've learned it inside and out, Ive written and re-written simple OpenAL and FMOD and audiere sound wrappers hundreds of times, learned how to script anything with LUA, dabbled in the basics of RAKNET, and even gotten as far messing with newton and ODE physics that I can actually understand mercior's brilliant tutorial entirely.

I think I have the skills that I could really handle the code bit of a good game, but no ideas left that haven't been done! I've turned my project into a very loose engine project, and all I really make now is nifty little wrappers for bits of irrlicht and other libraries and generally experiment with things. I have no direction, no game to make now.

So, I call out to you, the others in the irrlicht community, and ask, what game would you have me work on/help with? FNORD/FMORG is going noplace, because i've noplace to take it anymore.

I have limited time of course, because like most of us, I have a day job too, but given a direction I'll run with it, and do my part.
Who needs me?

[winter]

So you've done it all. Great! Can you give me advice on some of those sound APIs you mentioned? I need an open source sound API to use with the Irrlicht or NX++ API. What would you suggest?
I need:
stability
quality
simplicity
speed

In that order. I'd like something that integrates nicely into a game made with the Irrlicht API. Also something that has good docs and tutorials.

While your at it, can you give some advice on some open source physics engines?

Thanks for your help!

Winter

[Electron]

sound API's
-audiere (lgpl I think)
-OpenAL (definitely best OS sound api. Can't say much about it. I use FMOD, which isn't OS

physics:
major free physics engines these days are
-Newton
-Novodex
-True Axis
-ODE

Only ODE is OS. Only ODE and Newton are available for commercial use (freely that is). I use Newton, but as I said, its not OS.

[Myth]

hello buhatkj,
I would appreciate your help alot.
I am currently making a game and have a team of modellers, animators etc.
If you are interested just contact me:

msn: admin@myth-place.com
aim: halocenter00
email: icc@halo-center.com

- Myth,
http://icc.halo-center.com

[A.Russell]

There are lots of things you can do to make a new RPG.

One of the most glaring is improving the AI. In most RPG games the NPPCs are waiting around in the same place to perform some obvious task for the player, as if their whole world revolved around it. Manybe give them need based AI so that the player has to go and find them whether they are at work, at home or drinking at a tavern. Leaps and bounds could also be made in their natural language recognition and responses.

Another thing that has been thrashed in RPGs since they first appeared about 30 years ago is the roles of the available classes. You usually have big, hulking indestructible fighters wading into combat to thump and be thumped, backed up by spell casters that stand back and launch spells to help the hulk or cure him so he can keep thumping a bit longer.

Enemy AI could also be re-thought. Most monsters aren't too bright so that the players can quickly slaughter a whole lot of them in order to level up.

Generally, there is a lot of room in RPGs for more intelligent game design. Perhaps your next project could be to make a smarter RPG?

[Thulsa Doom]

I have limited time of course, because like most of us, I have a day job too, but given a direction I'll run with it, and do my part.
Who needs me?

So do I.
I would greatly appreciate for some help.
In general I'm working on something like a game engine using irrlicht and some other api's, some of them you mentioned already.
Status of project completion maybe <20%.
The first test game might be a strategic space game with some other elements. But I'm also open for suggestions.
Pleaze let me know if you're interested.
T.D.

[buhatkj]

welp, as for sound ive found that no one API really has all the goods.

Openal is the most capable, it has the 3d sound, and a decent API, but it's missing the sort of things that make it easy to use, because you need to write your own handler for anything other than simple .wav files.

audiere is awesome in essentially every way, with one glaring exception, NO 3D sound

FMOD has the 3d sound, and the eas format support, but its not truly open source, nor does it have a particularly good API.

The sound component of fnord tries to use openal and audiere at the same time, to get 3d sound for .wav samples, and easy streaming for music.


as for physics, I recommend newton, its has the best tutorials for use with irrlicht, and is very simple to use. ODE is cool because it is the only one ive heard of that is truly open source, but the interface was kind of difficult for me to get...
for all intents and purposes newton is just fine cuz its still free, you just dont get to mess with the source itself.