As the title suggests, I’m interested to know what you guys want to see in a game engine if one were to be built from scratch for this community.
Some things to consider:
What would it do differently compared to the likes of existing engines such as unreal or unity?
Is it just the learning curve that is the deterrent?
Should the engine’s primary goal be to provide a zelda-esque multiplayer experience?
Should it be 2D? If tools were provided to simply the production of 3D assets specific to the engine, would this change your mind?
I think it would be good to just focus on 2d since there aren’t many good 2d engines out there
make it handle multiplayer well and completely reskinnable
An SDK similar to the graal editor is fine. Maybe some more things to fiddle around with for the programming junkies. I honestly think the strong point of Graal was how easy it is to make levels. If we just smoothed out the edges a bit, like making 32bit png an actual thing, and shader/particle effects real, it would be fine. We already have a lot of cool things like being able to mess around with ganis and shit that most other game editors almost fear doing.
Should it be 2D? I don’t know. There’s a lot of kinds of 2D and 3D. For example, Link Between Worlds is topdown 3D to imitate the 2D style. Then there’s Wind Waker’s style where it imitates 2D by using Cel Shaded graphics. Both are great.
Why? You will need to provide me with a bit more substance in your answer for me to understand what you want and why you’re under the impression that I should be focusing on just 2D.
I want kind of what to move with the times and 3D seems like the easiest way to take graal there in terms in relation to immersive gameplay in relation to physics and graphics. I really think if I could provide tools that match graal’s in terms of ease of use it could actually be quite appealing. And along with the ability for scripters to easily manipulate the way the camera follows the player it could allow for playerworld makers to capture that 2D or 3D feel if that is what they desire.
In terms of extensibility the engine offers, am I correct in taking away that you guys appreciate the fact that graal is fairly specific in terms of its goals and doesn’t try to be everything?(i.e. specific versus generic)
Yeah and a more user friendly approach to define tiles instead of being hardcoded locations, for tile type I want to be able to customize that tiles type in the layer ( inside of the editor), and an option to animate tiles. Also 64 bit color.
I’m not really sure you can bat for either side. At first it seems very specific. A level editor with an array of tiles. Pop in some predefined NPCs and some chests, and you’ve got a classic level. However, we know from people like Downsider and Beholder that the editor can be used much much more extensively, even emulating games like Cave Story or Mega Man 2.
Graal’s editor is as specific or generic as you want it to be.
For something as specific as this you would need a custom editor. The biggest problem with Tiled Map Editor if you’re scripting, is that it’s object properties in the editor only accepts one line (a string), and if you’re using a scripting language, there is also no syntax highlighting. Good luck writing scripts using only one line.
Also, in order to attach an image to an object, unlike Graal, you can’t just insert an image, it has to be a part of a tileset, which means you would have to either make each individual image a tileset (which gets messy with a ridiculous number of tabs) or copy the image of every single NPC you’re ever going to make (which obviously makes no sense for Graal) into a single image and use that as a tileset. Otherwise you can’t actually see the object / NPC you’re making while using the editor.
It’s sometimes great for general games if the developer is the one developing content, but it’s not good for something unique like Graal which uses user-generated content. You need a level editor custom-tailored to your game, especially if there is scripting involved. Otherwise it’s going to be a bunch of general-use stuff that doesn’t help at all.
We’re discussing what people want to see here, not project management. And as Rou has highlighted, tiled is too generic to address what people are asking for here.
In a way you’re correct with what you’re saying; however those kind of systems were hacked and I’m not sure how maintainable they would’ve been. Some of beholder’s scripts sure as heck had almost no maintainability due to the constricting nature of graal(not just memory, but lack of engine functionality i.e. no rotation). With an engine like this, there’s no way you can have everything nor do you want it to be bloated and actually have everything! thus a balance must be found. I take it you seem to believe Graal has already struck this balance?
I like your point about wanting to be able to animate tiles. Being able to assign custom properties to a (normally)default tile would definitely be a useful thing as well. What I fail to understand is why you want 64 bit colour. Is there something in particular you had in mind that requires such precision?
Said 3D engines are fairly generic though, no? That doesn’t seem like a good reason to not want a tailored 3D engine specific to graal-esque development.
There’s not a true balance to it yet considering the gserver/editor had to have numerous triggeraction hacks to fix things. These things pretty much prove that the editor still has a long way to go. However, in the category of editors, Graal’s still gives you massive freedom that rivals that of a traditional “Game Maker” program. It’s true that Beholder had to find many workarounds like encryption to make things fit, but I think that while those things shouldn’t be necessary it also forces the coder to think about things they normally wouldn’t. Still not really excusable that its shortcomings are so short of true freedom though. More work was obviously needed.
I’m not against 3D I just prefer not to develop a 3D game if the engine could handle both I wouldn’t care. 64 bit color is to work around color count limitations for 2D tilesets and graphics. Pretty much required for 3D anyway.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtvDhhj4naM I also remembered that there are some pretty nice ideas in mixing 3D with 2D sprites. Ragnarok is pretty much the only thing I can think of off the top of my head. I thought of something else yesterday but I can’t remember.
Because I’m not sure what features people want to see(exactly), I think I’ll focus my efforts on initially developing a zelda-esque game with a multiplayer aspect as that’s where I feel the roots of appeal for graal as a whole stem from and I feel that nostalgic note hasn’t worn off on most people. The idea is that it will start off as a game with scriptable elements and progressively form the basis of an engine as people engage and provide feedback(if they’re keen to get on board). I feel this is the best way to drive things forward. Furthermore, initial implementations will purposely be quite minimal and unambitious as I’ll treat this project using what would be an agile software development life cycle.
However from what it looks like, I have determined a fixed 2D perspective will be most favoured. :marlon:
