Tuesday 24 July 2007

Video for the lazy

Someone asked for a video of the moving grass. Thinking about it, I've decided to record a demo video and share it with the ones not able or willing to check out SVN repository or people who just want to have a first look at the game without big downloads. Here you go!


I've uploaded it on youtube, it is rather low quality, but I hope it won't scare away anybody, [ironic] I assure you the game looks much better [/ironic]! :-D It was recorded on an Nvidia 6200 GO, RENDER_DISTANCE set to 5, RENDER_GRASS_DISTANCE also 5. fraps utility ate away my FPS ;-)

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hehe, thanks. It was me asking for the video. I really was too lazy to checkout SVN, but I think a lot of people can't do a checkout, so a video is always a plus! The low quality isn't a problem, as on youtube there is hardly any better recording... ;-) So people won't get angry about it.

JCRPG is really looking good and I'm always amazed what one can do with Java and a little bit of dedication. Keep up!

pzi said...

I'm very glad you like the look of JCRPG.

Hope jcrpg will have an even (much) better gameplay too! There is a lot of uncertainty yet, but I have many concepts that maybe worthy to work on them a lot.

Brainstorm mode: One such idea that occurred to me yesterday was dynamic road condition. Roads should wear out in jcrpg. Easy to implement yet many of such things needs to be collected to put together a fun game. Mode off.

Thanks for commenting! :-D

Charlie said...

Hmm... on the grass... I expected it to be more like the shader-based grass typically found in modern FPS games.

See the Sauerbraten vid on this FG post for an example of what I mean.

pzi said...

I haven't grope yet how to create shader based thingies under JMonkeyEngine. I would like to do it too, but till now I could't find a decent example for JME... until then it will be like that... I plan to dig up some shader programming although... if anyone knows a good resource about it, please post it here!

Anonymous said...

I think jcrpg should let you pick from a handful of fighting systems. like a completely turn based one, or a mode like the combat in elder scrolls oblivion, and some other modes.

pzi said...

Harek, it would be nice to have such a combat system as in Oblivion, but please be aware that the main goal is to have a combat system without real action like elements, a pure RPG approach. This is my first goal in combat system and in gameplay too. Wouldn't you like a game that resembles old and legendary adventure games? I think it's very hard to resemble them with an action-RPG, so in the first iteration action elements will be missing from the game. Also another hardness in implementing such combat system is the 3D programming and modeling which is much more complex in an action rpg than a classic turn based rpg that doesn't need to visualize all the combat happenings. What do you think? I think that I am mostly dedicated to create the most detailed old style rpg ever created. I hope we will have people joining jcrpg, people who had a bit enough of the time of many action-rpgs and no classic style rpg games nearly at all. Jcrpg aims to fill that whole firstly.

pzi said...

er, i meant hole not whole :)

Dragonbait said...

When I think classic rpg's, I think of the Bard's Tale, Wizardry, Might and Magic I,II, the Devil Whiskey, where you roam around gridmapped mazes and when a battle erupts you see a picture of the monster you are facing on the left of the screen
(sample animated pic)
http://www.icestorm9999.com/images/deathreaper.gif
(animated or not) while the right of the screen hosts the description of what happens in the battle via text. Command your characters what you want them to do.
(A)attack
(D)defend
(C)cast spell
(U)use item
(R)run away

then the text shows what happens in the battle.

Or....

Games like the original Pool of Radiance series did well with their strategic combat system as well.
sample animated battle scene from Secret of the Silver Blades
http://www.icestorm9999.com/battle0.gif

Anonymous said...

I understand paul just pitching in my ideas, but thinking back on it I haven't played a great full on rpg in a long time :)
(plus animating that many attacks makes me queasy lol)

pzi said...

Harek: Heh! :-D I hope you will like the first non-action approach as much as action-rpgs maybe. :-)

Anonymous said...

About dynamic road conditions: Can you make the grass fade out in places where it is stepped on many times within a time period? So paths can be created by just going regularly in a certain way. It can gradually recover if nobody steps on it for some time.

pzi said...

forcage: sounds an interesting idea! I was rather thinking about how much an ingame community spends on the road's condition, and it may decline with time of no money for upkeep of that. Economic units like cities and their community will have their programmed ways for building roads, just like in Civilization games AI.

But paths are another thing! You gave me an idea, if for example somewhere a community lives there may be path like roads automatically created without spending money on them. So from a small village to another, or if there will be water resources too, to the well paths may be created automatically. (Keep in mind that I plan to create a dynamic world , where things build up like in old Civ, a good example of that, but all in the view point of RPG)

Anonymous said...

In a framework it may be enough for the road to have an API to decline (be pillaged) and be renovated.

A game may want to make it man-hours-based instead of money-based, with the (paid or forced) workers actually present.

Characters may get skills in creating things (by doing or learning). The creator's or last maintainer's skill can determine the speed of the object's deterioration. This may move communities towards specialization.

pzi said...

Yes, right, it must be better planned when implementation arrives... to leave room for choice for the game designers.

(hope to get there soon...currently fed up with too much memory allocation without being freed... :D)

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