When the Phoenix respawns, I try again with a bucket of lava

[garvek]

Scone to all, ... people still out of there.

Hem ... hello ?

I just wanted to know if we have to expect something out of here, or if people like Gladius and Freegamer should spent their ressources elsewhere, and/or reuse what they already done. Or if this site has eventually been buried away, under a pile of cobble and grass.

Personnaly I feel kinda responsible of this Berezina (not being the alone, though), but this guilt doesn't put me chains or whatever, so if we don't have responsiveness to elaborate a Nth reborn plan, it is fine to me to put an end and turn the page Feel free to comment on the matter.

And first of all, who's still here, and why ? ^^

[qubodup]

I'm here, reading this because the news popped up at http://planet.freegamedev.net/ .

It would be great if the art could be put on opengameart but I'm not sure the artists are around to confirm that the licenses are compatible. And art source files might also be missing. Perhaps OGA would be a good community to hang out at for artists anyway?

The same might be true about the writing by the way. It needs a license and then could survive on OGA.

I would highly encourage you to set the forum to read-only, because sooner or later it will be swamped with spam or even broken.

PS: an official 'this project is dead' statement could be a good thing. Radakan did something similar.

[garvek]

There are spam regularly, but I'm not the one cleaning them (at last, I can't do cleaning in non-dev areas).

Let's say, we wait like 1-2 weeks for reactions, then we know what to do. Thanks for your concern on the subject.

[1Samildanach]

There are spam regularly, but I'm not the one cleaning them (at last, I can't do cleaning in non-dev areas).

That would be me, going by the admin logs. I'm cool with continuing to do so; it only takes a minute or two out of my entire week, after all.


I wouldn't go recording a time of death yet. Things have died multiple times before, with something else popping up eventually.

"Hiatus" is the appropriate word, I think. We are currently in a gap between major programmers (i.e. people who can take on the major tasks), which flows on to everything else slowing down/going on hold. I encourage people to continue building on design documents (as far as possible) and other assets. Even without active code development, a project with clear goals, requirements, and tasks* has a certain attraction over "Lets make a MMORPG with swords and magic and axes and flying space monsters and intergalactic wars and a hundred different species!!!".

*Almost tautological, but each of those has a different, though closely related, meaning.

[TheAncientGoat]

At cost of sounding selfish, wouldn't it be a good idea for deadish projects to link to active, similar projects?

The DH wiki could link to Peragro Tempus, Tempest in The Aether, heck, Lips of Suna even. (btw Garvek, nekotaku implented an Ogre renderer and heightmaps)

[garvek]

@1Sam: "a project with clear goals, requirements, and tasks"
This is what we lack. I would also add: "reasonnable". This is what we don't have and make this whole die again and again.

@TAG: FreeGamer informed me about that, which is good opportunity, but not enough to take back ... yet. We have to reorganize things here before, else we have nothing of value to show / contribute / transfer.

Regarding taskforce, "major programmers" is OK if it is NOT 1 only guy, because this is also the reason of the cycles. We need at least tandems with good communication (binom AND internal AND external).

[Musk-of-Ephesus]

I don't think we even have a setting anymore. Which I don't really mind I guess, Godhead was a good and solid setting but I never really felt galvanized by it. I think a lot of the southeast Asian stuff just fell into being overly primitive or to predefined to have much fun with, but that's probably my own fault, I just couldn't get my head around it.

[1Samildanach]

@1Sam: "a project with clear goals, requirements, and tasks"
This is what we lack. I would also add: "reasonnable". This is what we don't have and make this whole die again and again.

Indeed, unachievable objectives only ever succeed in breaking dreams and making tears (I like my double ententes). I must admit that I've read very little of the planning and stuff -- for a long while almost all of my activity here has been deleting bots. So I've no real idea about how things stand in that regard.

Regarding taskforce, "major programmers" is OK if it is NOT 1 only guy, because this is also the reason of the cycles. We need at least tandems with good communication (binom AND internal AND external).

Your mention of communication reminded me of something I've been thinking about chucking in the Brendan's Links thread: Sociology. That link doesn't cover the actual decision making process, which I think is relevant and a very important part of it, but I haven't been able to find a description of it. I may come back to it later and have a go myself (my exposure to it is limited, though). If anyone's really interested, I might be able to get a certified trainer to give some thoughts on FOSS + sociology.

Personally, I reckon the two would mesh very well; FOSS is pretty egalitarian, and sociocratic systems compliment that aspect and also, I think, reduce the impact of losing people.

[kbl]

Your struggling seems not code related, but philosophical. Where does the Dungeon really end or rather begin?

My background ls LP/LD MUDs since 1990. Done everything with the MUD driver, from adding code to altering 'master' functionality. Every time it came down to a social political nightmare of who did what when and how. My advice is back up, give yourselves a bunch of credit, you've kicked ass to get to this point.

You all need a larger goal, but not unachievable, more like phased in. You need a planet that is really a Dyson sphere with core of Dyson is run by large neutron star with it's own orbiting bodies. (Change Dyson to something you like)

Phase I - Surface (large ocean area included) is as you imagined it, Many different beings, from animal to 'elemental' types.

Phase 2 - Sub Surface would be where all the characters surface knowledge now comes into play, since the inside of this planet is really a 'machine' beyond any written about currently, which handles everything on the surface, from ocean currents to volcanic activity. Survive this place which includes a 'physical' cyber space which now adds enhanced DNA to your code to track your character.

Phase 3 - Core and the Neutron star. Twist on this is, orbiting the Neutron star is a strange black hole and it leads to somewhere else, the 'Intra-Universal' void and the game just changed radically, since any Einstein physics just went out the window and 'unachievable' becomes the topic.

You all need a larger vision to focus on, since there is Zynga, getting millions of all kinds of money, because it has a 2 Dimensional game called Mafia Wars. Kick ass man! Downloading your source, good luck all.

-KB

[Zurnl]

I'm here, reading this because the news popped up at http://planet.freegamedev.net/ .

It would be great if the art could be put on opengameart but I'm not sure the artists are around to confirm that the licenses are compatible. And art source files might also be missing. Perhaps OGA would be a good community to hang out at for artists anyway?

The same might be true about the writing by the way. It needs a license and then could survive on OGA.

hi, i have no problem to say everything i made are free to use even for commercial use.
Sad to see this project dead... i've been following dungeon hack related forums since 2007...

zurnl

[garvek]

Personnaly I originally went there because I thought I could contribute on a Daggerfall-like game. TBH Godhead was too further of it, and I was already tired of continued issues regarding our previous codebase which almost perma broke on Windows (no one's fault, rather relying on unstable [in the 2 meanings of the term] frameworks like Bullet and MyGui).

If we are able to focus on a new setting and decide which technologies we'll use, and be able to make it work w/o being an hassle (my philosophy being: code is a tool, not a goal), then we may be able to start again. I really like some of the discussions over there, so if you're OK with that, we may create a new post to discuss on the setting, and try to create some kind of devchat whenever possible to settle things.

[freegamer]

Daggerfall... towns, dungeons, exploring, adventuring. That was the crux of it. It was like a world you could get lost in.

I remember Rosthara (?) talking about town generators, but that was a long time ago.

The problem with dreamy projects is the goals themselves become dreamy. Expecting a ludicrously high level of quality for models, for visuals etc. Immersive worlds are not always made from things that look beautiful. Daggerfall was not beautiful. MUDs are not beautiful.

If you want to get back to that essence of Daggerfall, you need goals that lend itself to that. Forget about setting, backdrop, etc. Let that come over time. You need a dungeon to explore, that is randomly generated. A town to walk around, that is randomly generated. People to interact with, that are randomly generated. A world map that is randomly generated.

These are not difficult tasks. The towns in daggerfall were just blocks fitted together. The dungeons a set of corridors and rooms of set shapes that were linked together (and there's plenty of dungeon generating algorithms online - start with something 2d, then wedge a few of those together, and bam you have a random 3d dungeon generator). The world was a 2D grid with randomly placed coordinates for dungeons, towns - it isn't hard stuff. A motivated programmer could have those 3 things put together in a few days. Assorted blocks, 2d dungeon generator hacked to be 3d, random coordinates on a map. Generating a basic 3d world around that shouldn't take much longer. Again, keep it basic, throw out shaders. Heightmap generators are common online as well.

It doesn't matter if all the people look the same, or the creatures are just boxes with the name "Wolf", "Skeleton", etc on the side. It doesn't matter if the dungeon is all grey and brown and made of big cuboid blocky rooms. Once you have a working dungeon generator, you can then evolve the rooms, add the greebles etc. At the moment you just have this static basic world, which is exactly what Daggerfall was not.

Back to basics... what was it that made Daggerfall good? It wasn't the graphics, or the story. It was the adventure. Build the adventure, and then build everything else around it.

Look at what Gladius is doing with the old demo, bringing models into it, improving the textures. If you can provide a framework, a basic functioning world to adventure around, it won't matter if it looks crap because the Gladius' of the world can change that for you. But if there isn't a world to improve? The game is dead in the water.

And no, you shouldn't expect the game to be anything. Be at peace with it failing. It doesn't matter if it has failed or will fail. You do this for fun, not because you are expected to produce Eldar Scrolls VI.

I'll also add that if you think Panda3D is better, garvek, go with that. Forget what I said before. Just try and attach a purpose to what you are doing. (There didn't seem to be much purpose in the engine juggling over the years, other than lack of familiarity.)

[Gladius.s]

I agree to what freegamer said. The world is static. We should change that first by adding more chars (could be boxes as freegamer said), adding more possibilities to interact with them and then somewhere in the future polish the look of it. Or rather I will continue to import models, textures and sprites. With the assets we already have the looks departement doesn't look so bad at all.
But it should be easier to import stuff into the game. That will boost my and the other artists motivation because we can imidiately see how stuff looks ingame. Thats important.

We should make a list with the stuff other games have but we lack. Like an inventory system, health bars for monsters, interactivity through dialogues and trade etc. Then we should concentrate on the ones that are important but easy to implement so we all get a sense of achievement. This should motivate us and it will attract other people as well.

Well for the south-east-asia setting. For me it's difficult to model something because this is all too excotic for me. It's easier to model stuff I already know. We should continue with what we have and first make the game playable and then, when we have the basics we can migrate to another setting if we still want to.

Finally I want to stay with our current engine. Over the last few weeks I meddled with it and I'm impressed how powerful it already is. Sure for me as a non coder it was incredibly difficult to set it up and build it and that should change so other non coders are able to build the most current version of the game and stay up-to-date. But I learned alot and to change the distribution of the grass and other small things was alot of fun and motivated me as well.
Of course I'm no coder so I don't know how well one can work with it. If Garvek says it's easier for him to work with Panda3D and he can achieve what we have right now in a reasonable amount of time go with it. For me it's just a different exporter to use and some different material settings.

Long story short. We need:
1. Tools to import assets more easily to get the models we already have into the game.
2. More chars to interact with (boxes or sprites at first)
3. An inventory system, trade system, dialogue system to interact with these new chars.
4. Not sooo important; More sounds like waves, chirping stuff like that
...
Add your ideas here
...
10. Somewhere in the future the possibility to use animations into the game.

So my question to everyone. Are these ideas reasonable, do you have other ideas? To the coders. What is the most easiest thing of those to implement, how long will it take?

[Archwyrm]

"Hiatus" is the appropriate word, I think.

Indeed.

[Clean3d]

I still check in every so often, and I regret not spending more time on the project. I have made a few assets, and if someone feels they should go on OGA let me know and I'll try to upload them. I can also answer any licensing questions about my artwork. I know I committed to at least several more assets that never got completed, and I guess they won't ever be now. :-/

My contact information can be found on my website.