Well, the boards have been dead around here, lately, so I've decided to spice things up...

To all those people out there who are sitting around, scratching your asses waiting for v2.7 to be released, I have one thing to ask:

"What the hell is wrong with you?"

Have we come full-circle once again? Are we in a period where we'll not see any new demos or games or anything come about because everyone's waiting for the new engine?

There is one thing I can promise you: Converting V2C to V2.7C will NOT be THAT difficult!

Before you all start getting mad at me, saying: "Well, I haven't seen YOU doing anything!" I have been working. I've been remodeling WinMaped's TileEd as well as doing other codework for the upcoming v2.7, SO SHUT YOUR CAKEHOLE!

I remember a golden era when shit was ACTUALLY GETTING MADE! All we need are a few new techdemos or game demos or ANYTHING AT ALL to show that you don't suck as much as I think you do!

...wow... tat's had quite an effect on me, lately... scary...

Anyway, someone try making something NEW with VERGE... Sure VERGE is an RPGCE, but fuck! why not try making an FPS, or at least an first-person game!

Anyway, this rant's lame, I realize it, but I'm bored... audi

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Praetor - Strong enough for a man, but made for a woman.

I was about to post some kind of retort along the lines of "everybody's going stuff! They're just being overly secretive!", but I suddenly ran out of.... something.

I'll just rant about some technical things instead:

Converting v2c to v2.7c probably won't be too tricky, since they've got lots of similarities, but depending on how you've coded it, it could be icky work.

If you use v2's pointer mangling to do all kinds of things, you may well have a lot of work ahead of you.

If, on the other hand, you've abstracted over things so that your usual code is just calling nice, happy interfaces that do all the work, you'll breeze through. A good idea to keep in mind when coding things is to have two sides to every system. "Interface" and "implementation".

The interface is just that, how everything else interacts with the system. Code it real simple-like, so that you won't have to bugger with it later. The implementation part is the part that actually does the work. Do it any way you want. ^_~

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'Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.' -F. Scott Fitzgerald

Bitch bitch bitch. Just hold on, as soon as lore gives me the ability to update the site's scripts on my own, I'll have some new golden nuggets for you.

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I was about to post some kind of retort along the lines of "everybody's going stuff! They're just being overly secretive!", but I suddenly ran out of.... something.

Or like myself they've gotten side tracked on a system that will eventually be part of their game and decided to release it as a seperate techdemo as well.


Converting v2c to v2.7c probably won't be too tricky, since they've got lots of similarities, but depending on how you've coded it, it could be icky work.

Or depending on how much you'll use the standard libs. I'm sure that the std libs when done will lots of cool stuff that people do in v2 already and then even more cool stuff that just wasn't possible due to speed or language limitations. But then again a lot of people seem to have this "I must code every line myself" attitude. Which annoys me, actually. I've spent a good bit of time on the (hopefully) soon to be released wind engine techdemo, but I doubt that anyone will actually use it in a game (well except for myself of course). This was also a problem in the pi/ezv2 compo, no on wanted to enter because they would have to use someone else's code. Come on people, there is no shame in using someone else's stuff, unless that is they have specifically said, don't use any of this in your own stuff.

If you use v2's pointer mangling to do all kinds of things, you may well have a lot of work ahead of you.

ew pointer mangling ^_~

If, on the other hand, you've abstracted over things so that your usual code is just calling nice, happy interfaces that do all the work, you'll breeze through. A good idea to keep in mind when coding things is to have two sides to every system. "Interface" and "implementation".

Seek the tao, the tao is wise.

The interface is just that, how everything else interacts with the system. Code it real simple-like, so that you won't have to bugger with it later. The implementation part is the part that actually does the work. Do it any way you want. ^_~

Sort of like my tech demo, I'm currently striving to get it down to one maybe two calls that the user has to make. Currently it's at like 4 which is fine for my personal use of it, but I still think that that's rather much for general consumption. Not that it matters since every one must code everything themselves and no one will use other prople's code.

Oh and this board needs a quote feature.

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-The Developer "[About ff4] ff4(2)] Aaaahhh... great game, great characters, great story, great music, BAAAAAAAD graphics."

Your definition of a game is somewhat akin to declassifying an apple pie from the pie group because you don't like fruit. Your preference doesn't alter the definition.

GAME : "An activity providing entertainment or amusement."

Some people are amused playing Final Fantasy, which would not fit into your definition. It tends to bore the hell out of me usually. I'm a big adventure game fan, however, and the only difference tends to be that adventure games have much better dialogue, better plots usually, and no randomly occuring battles every 2 minutes. But you're still usually left with the same major plot turns and ending.

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verge-rpg. it's not just a job, it's an enema.

Let me just roll my 3 six sided dies and...a three! Critical failure! Conversation collapses into a void of stupidity.

The randomness of almost everything in GURPS is cool. But implementing such into a game is impractical if the game contains any form of plot. Although choice-defined endings have been implemented in some games, like Planescape: Torment.

Anyway, who says that a game has to have an ending at all? Or even a story of any form. Look at Pong, Tetris, Quake 3. Most completely plotless games are old, but regardless of age many of them are good.

Games are like women. The younger the better and brains don't matter.

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Companions the creator seeks, not corpses, not herds and believers. Fellow creators the creator seeks--those who write new values on new tablets. Companions the creator seeks, and fellow harvesters; for everything about him is ripe for the harvest.

<CRPGs can never be games until the game is smart <enough to rewrite itself based on the decisions of <the players...

And I suppose that you are working on one of these fabled games. I mean come on not even "real" rpgs (by which I mean of course the old school pen and paper rpgs) do that. The closest you can get is an inventive gamemaster who can make stuff up really well on the fly. But even then he doesn't completely rewrite the adventure based on user choices, he just makes up stuff as he goes along that fits what the players are doing. Given our current level of technology it would be extremely difficult if not impossible to make a game by your definition. The closest we have is MU*'s (be it graphical or text), and p&prpg's. The processing power required for a game of your definition would require the engine to possess either some form of AI or ALife simulation both of which would be extremely processor intensive. Now, maybe if you used a Cray or something, but even then you would have to cause the engine to do much undo work in calculating certain player variables and making conditions to match. It's really just not practical for game making. Maybe for an AI or ALife simulation but for a game, come on.

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-The Developer "[About ff4] ff4(2)] Aaaahhh... great game, great characters, great story, great music, BAAAAAAAD graphics."

I meant that I wanted to make a demo that was more than just the intro. Something with the idea that you actually know what's going on instead of seeing an intro then the demo ends. Something long enough for you to know what you're doing. Hell, I don't even know what's going to happen in the next scene of my game. It's just a spontaneous move that I make.

Beside that, every game has a story no matter what happens, right? And you can decide the outcome to a certainpoint, like whether you win or you die. And most (like the Final Fantasy series) are what you call a novel, so your definition of a game is probably different from mine.

Sorry if I sound like I'm just mumbling things that make no sense. I just like writing random words down.

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"It is a song I find entirely devoid o interest. The melody is trite, while the awkward paraphrases of lesser eliot poems in the lyrics are grating in the extreme." - Lucifer

It would actually probably be best to script into your engine some kind of AI or ALife system that makes decisions based on the conditions themselves rather than having events "randomly" determined in the fashon you just described. Ideally you would want this "brain" to be in your engine itself but, currently I see that as being fairly processor intensive. (I could be wrong though) But the next best thing probably would be to give each entity it's own unique brain which would make decisions based upon certain conditions. Now granted the first time you do this, coding out this kind of system and getting it to work will be difficult, but once you get a working system up and running it should be much faster on the coding engine to have the game itself come up with the differences in the plot rather than hardcoding them into the engine. This also allows for things the player might do that you might not think of.

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*start singing some Bon Jovi song..

The tide will turn, and I'll be glad to help it :)

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-Devlyn