[Help Wanted] - Realms of Forlorn Hope

[Insomniacp]

Realms of Forlorn Hope
Forums: http://www.rofhonline.com/forums/index.php

Public alpha release,
http://rofhonline.com/RealmsofForlornHope.zip

Domain Change! we have moved from our old domain to www.rofhonline.com
We currently do not have a site built but that will come along in the near future.

Realms of Forlorn Hope is an online role playing game that takes place in a very large seamless world. There will be a large number of races that players can play. There will be many things that players can do whether it is creating their own items, taking over a town, being a leader of a clan, attacking another clans castle, running a nation or town or just wandering the large world.

Currently we are in the alpha phase of the game. There is a version of the client out but it doesn't do much. In the next two weeks or so I plan on releasing a newer client that will make the patcher more complete as well. The client will have working npc's, combat, a more functional gui(stats and inventory pages at least). This will make the game actually playable instead of just being able to see that it works.

Equipping of items now works data wise though I don't have the models displaying yet. I will begin attack and targetting code next followed by things dying.

We are still in need of more 3d graphic artists, we do have a few at the moment but I am hoping to get a good team set up so that things can be quickly added once they are operational.

We now have a shader programmer on board.

Screen Shot:

[rogerborg]

Question: since we tend to get a generic goblins and fairies project announcement most every week, why would anyone choose to contribute to your project? What's so special about you, or your team, or your project?

[Insomniacp]

One thing about the team is that right now some of the people making contributions are my two brothers and I. The three of us know how to program so the programming part of the game has been put together quite quickly and we will continue to be quick at implementing new things.

We also have a server lined up so that once the game is ready to go it will be placed online for a quick closed test of the system and then be open to play. I know many projects that start up but die off because they don't realize the costs behind a dedicated server for a game.

This is also the first of many games that we are going to make. Anyone that helps is welcome to join in future projects which may involve money depending on how well things go. My brothers and I plan on starting a company in the near future building games and useful programs, this is our first step in that direction.

Thats about all I can think of right now that may make this project "better" than another. I do see the reason you asked that question since many of those probably come up and then die in a few months. Though due to the above things I do not see that happening to us.

EDIT:
Quick update, network is now functional.

[xray]

[Boring...]

[Insomniacp]

Even so, I got a few volunteers, a concept artist and two 3d artists. It will at least put the game in motion graphically. If the game makes money I will pay those who help but I cannot guarantee that you will make money which is why it isn't a paid position.

EDIT:
I am now offering free web hosting to members of the staff. This may get some more people to help out since I don't have money to give out . PM me for the details on that if you are interested.

[Insomniacp]

New map editor is almost done, just need to finish up saving the heightmap and adding buildings and foliage. It is easy to see the large improvement in quality from the original screen shot. The game also will run much smoother with the new maps.



EDIT: Saving and loading are completely done, foliage and buildings will be added later on when needed.

[patricklucas]

Still, what makes this project unique? Interesting?

[rogerborg]

If you check their forums, they seem to be making concrete progress. So unlike about 90% of goblins and fairies projects announcements, they do have a developer on-board.

The announcement on the server did make me spit my Irn Bru over my keyboard though, for the usual reasons.

[christianclavet]

Hi, Insomniacp

Your terrain editor GUI is functionning? You are able to deform the terrain with the mouse (as a brush) and spat a texture on it to make trails, or it's just a mock up of what the tool will be?

From what I see from your screenshot it look very nice!

[Insomniacp]

The editor is functional. I made that using it. The texture isn't a splat though. i simply apply a color, brown to make a path, white for snow, green for grass. I think it still gives a great effect even though it is all one texture. I do not know enough about shaders yet to make texture splatting useful, in my opinion around 8 textures is useful for this size of terrain. I do actually like the coloring though since you can make things more unique then one texture for grass. I will keep the coloring even if i add texture splatting. I may make the editor available to the public but I have not decided yet, there is still functionality I need to add like the buildings and foliage adder as well as adjusting the size of the "brush", which is partially implemented already I just need to add it to a few equations and add gui things for it.

Haha, I guess you can call me a developer but I have only been learning irrlicht for two-three months now so I am still very new, I only took one c++ class that ended on arrays which isn't too in depth imo.

So back to the great question of what makes it unique. The game play style does/will make it unique but I don't know if that is what you want to know. There will be no classes in the game so you join you can become anything you want at that point, there is going to be a tutorial type begining though. After that and you get to the main continent you can travel around and join your favorite guild(groove), whether it is just a warrior and then to something like a ninja, or you go warrior and then mage and cleric so you can attack from afar heal and fight up close. You can choose any combination. Also you will be able to "restart" in the middle of the game, you will keep a percent of your exp(95% or something), and redo all of your guilds stats and levels.

[Insomniacp]

To keep this up to date:

Game engine is being recoded to be more functional, cleaner, and it is being made fully functional meaning you login and play, the first engine was stand alone first and I then added the networking parts which got very messy so I decided to clean the whole thing up. So since restarting here is a screen shot of the login page
http://realmsofforlornhope.pk-logic.com ... inpage.jpg
and the register page
http://realmsofforlornhope.pk-logic.com ... erpage.jpg

I am unable to program for about a week due to me going camping, but once I get back I will finish registering and logging in. After that will come loading the map, placing foliage, buildings, and models. Also the gui will be built at this time. Once that is coded, which really shouldn't take long since I have code for all of it, I will do movement, chat and attacking so it will be playable though with only a few features . All of this should be done during August most likely. Anyway, that is my update.

Quick question, does anyone know where I can find some good tutorials for shader programming?

[lostclimategames]

haha! this is an odd coincidence.... this is bamf whats up insom?

[pera]

Here are some ideas that pop in my mind for uniquenesness. This may have already been done somewhere, but I don't know about it.

1. all online rpg have number of playable races to chose from (6), 3 good, 3 bad, and you have monsters in the forests to fight with.... to differ from such concept, you could make all races available to players - so you can chose to be a bear, or human, or dire fly. Simple rules impose: bears can't go to guilds (unless they have good connections), they can't chat to other players cause all they can say is "GRROOAARRR!", unless they come across priest with "Speak with animals" spell/ability, in which case they can chat normally and complain how villagers always steel their honey.
People can chose to be dragons, its nice to have real person behind the dragon swooping above the village blowing fire, having 20 adventurers chase him like pinyata. Sure, first level dragon will be just a hatching (which brings lots of experience) with no special abilities, so he'll have to hide in mountains till he grows up, but that is what leveling is all about. If there is a problem with all the players want to be some popular race - like dragons, limit the number of that race to 5, so lucky ones get to be 5 dragons of the world, and others can queue up for replacement if one of these get killed.

2. AI characters of all races could be added to the world, it would be interesting to discern in chat between real player and AI.

3. Don't just create open world where you 'can do anything you want'. Think of some game, like half of the players are outside the city walls, and half of them is inside (randomly placed on startup). Ones outside the city have the goal (the goal of the game is almost forgotten phrase) to conquer the city, and ones inside have the goal to defend it. Let them organize them selves, don't put 50th level Lord of the City played by your brother who organize everything. They can chose to be spies for the other side if they want. Dire Flies can fly above city to scout their weapon and food supplies. Dire Badgers can sneak inside city walls and open the city gate while townsmen are sleeping. blah blah blah...

[rogerborg]

That's a good point.

left completely open for people to do as they want

I'd pronounce that as "no point to doing anything in particular, so no point to doing anything at all". Wandering around an empty world executing random Snot Goblins... it's been done.

Non goal-oriented players will avoid goals even if you have them, but you can't attract goal-oriented players without them.

[Virion]

good job on the map editor. great effort.