A call for Coders

It's been over a year since we started working on WFTO and we've come up with some great ideas and concepts, but at the moment that's all they are: concepts.

At some point along the line we more or less agreed to use the finished NBKE source as a base for this game but I've spoken to IKSLM recently and he is incredibly busy with his job and other commitments now, so we've no idea when it's going to be finished, or even IF it's ever going to be finished

I don't want to have to wait another year just to get out of the pre-production stage of development, and I'm sure a lot of you don't either.

So I'm putting out a call for any coders who have got the skills and time to come on board officially and start discussing and advising us on how to go about building an engine for this game. We have an svn of NBK that IKSLM posted a while ago. I'm sure we can use this as a base.

Can't IKSLM release NBKE at it's current state? The more WFTO and NBKE can share the better, i would think.

I think the point is that even if he were finished it would be incredibly slow for the work on WFTO so it might be easier and faster if we find someone new.

Uhm no it would ultimately be faster if we can use shared engines

Wait... you're talking about the engine? It sounded like you were implying we have IKSLM work on the WFTO project after the NBK project.
I was talking about finding someone new to aid us, not talking about the engine.

Im talking about the engine and we only have the NBK engine, not the NBKE engine.

So I'm guessing we need to get in contact with IKSLM and ask him to send us the source code for the NBKE engine?

indeed, atleast try that before going to, in my opinion, the last resort

Looks like we wont be needing the old NBK engine

As long as the people who know the NBK engine well think it can handle the general approach that we have to WftO, I'd say to use it and really start putting this project together.
Besides, a lot of concepts are easier to test and trial when we have something to play rather than doing everything on paper.

So how is this going now?

Does anyone have the NBKE code from IKSLM?

At the moment it seems we have a lot of ideas and its time for the next step. The most efficient way would probably be if some people with programming knowledge take a good look at the NBKE code and list down its features, make a class diagram etc.

In the meantime the rest could make some decisions on all the ideas. With this I dont mean the details like a reatures health, but the more general and important stuff like the UI design.

This is a very good start:
http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dhb78tbh...&hgd=1&hl=en_GB

That way you can compare what you have with what you need. This will make it a lot easier to allocate the designers and start coding.

Is there a project organizer yet?

Any more ideas?

Cheers

Currently me and Synth have the source that im aware of, and the only developer i've been able to talk to so far is already involved with NBKE.

And no its not time for the next step if you ask me. Because it doesn't really exist. And the only decision that has been made, is the one to have the game atleast partially be played above ground. Everthing else are just random ideas and features with no decision made. Please remember this is a community project so the brainstorming proess will more or less be a continuous process that never really ends.

When coding final starts being serious what i imagine would happen that it basicly picks up the better ideas from the forum and new ones picked up along the way, so there wont be a complete game on paper before coding will begin.

ironhelm, the document linked is indeed a very good start. I have actually broken down the document into seperate areas brief/gameplay/good/evil/neutral creatures/traps/doors/rooms etc. I've not uploaded them anywhere yet but Paul has got a couple of docs.

I have also been modifying the document to try and improve the overall balance of WFTO. Not much needs to be changed from the previous games, I think we can all agree that the balance of the previous games was almost perfect, only a few things need modification. Obviously problems occur with balance when adding powerful new creatures which was the main issue with this brief.

I have finished a few of the documents and given them to a friend of mine who is a Game Design graduate so that he can scrutinise and make something which is a bit more lay man/press release standard.

... balance for dk2 was crappier than crap....
Balance for dk1 was alright but needed a bit of moddification in some areas.

Guess i should really start working now... ive been slacking off ^^.


Think i can get to work in the weekends... am buzy with other things this week.

Work will include listing the traps...(somewhat need more of these) listing the best concepts that have generally been accepted, voice your concerns over certain topics if you do not wish them to be included into the next game, prehaps even show an alternative way...
The spells... (need more concepts of these... ) listing the doors... (... it seems tiny the amount we have... but thats fine... could be better...)
listing the creatures and such...


Seems i lost that document i was working on before... oh well...

In order to do this, it would be a good idea to list down the current features of NBKE, including the classes and their methods.

Seriously, just picking some ideas from the forums and adding them one by one isnt gonna work. You need to look at the big picture in order to get a good structure in the game. Determining the basics now will save you a lot of time later on.

As I said in my first post, try to get the focus on some major items now. Get some good ideas on those so you have somewhere to start. Discussing the moves and stats of speific creatures is something you can do later.