Rtw Clone

[ScionTheWorm]

This is something probably been discussed before, but I'm really wondering. I'm not too experienced in such projects, so maybe someone could tell me to what degree this would be possible.

The idea would be the ultimate free total war game. It should use some high quality game engine like Crystal Space (for game dynamics and such) or something more primitive.

Since there's been laid so much work in these mods I'm just convinced it could be possible to reqruit from here, but would of course take a lot of time (years). Also it would be very educational and give a lot of experience on all aspects of coding and modding. It should and would overgo the current Total War in graphics, which I think would be possible, and in gameplay, which I know is possible.
The main features would be:

- Fully scriptable (by Python or some other lang). AI scriptable and extendable, making it the ultimate strategy game. Every aspect where scripts would be good and not kill performance, it should be used.
- No limits, fully extendable (factions, battlemap etc) and so on. Then thousands on the map if wanted, even if we'd just turn the graphics quality way down. No restrictions.
- Very easy and avaliable to make mods. Models and such based upon free software, if not, converters included.
- Modualrized: Senate module, Pope module, cultures, factions, api even accessible in battle mode. Whole game fully generic.

Just a great massive battle engine, which should be easy to extend if there was something new and hot on for instance the graphics apartment.

All inn all take what's great about RTW and make it better. I know it seems like I'm stupid or something, and I know this is a pretty large huge project.

CrystalSpace (http://www.crystalspace3d.org/tikiwiki/tiki-index.php?page=Features)
(Possibilities: animated skins, particle system for blood, ~D, fog on battlefield with effects, dds, landscape engine, animated skydome ++)

Of course it would be great, but would it be possible? Anyone thought about this?

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Like Open Source: Total War?

Me laptops' gagging at the thought of a high-powered graphics engine, but conversely I'm nauseously favorable to the idea.

If only... ~:handball:

[ScionTheWorm]

Yes pretty much open source total war. A pretty ambitious project idea I guess, would take a lot of effort. Of course I present this idea with the intention to be a major part of it, but it would require someone with more programming experience than me too (I have my weaknesses and strenghts). I guess a core team of around 8 dedicated programmers to start with. I think it should be free.

There's a lot of open source libaries making it unneccessary to make a game engine from the ground up, I guess when we would have made some progress, the game dynamics would be the major challenge (sieges ouch).

The thing is, that you wouldn't have to wait for patch 1.1 of 2 patches, but a developer going into the cvs and correcting it, making it go away.. in the hard code. A game aimed on modifications.

I also know graphics, sounds, gameplay and all that is a major part of the game, but there's about 8 zillion mods so somebody has to got a clue..

Anyway, I thought a game like this could have very few limits..

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

The problem is finding a team to do it, and distancing yourself from the RTW name.

[ScionTheWorm]

yes a trusted team (where noone leaves halfways), and of course not calling it total war... would be pretty different actually, it would be better ~D
I don't know if there would be legal issues, I doubt we would include that many rtw details that are so unique...

I guess I should start alone, but just presenting an idea for you to kill if it's no good...

[Ciaran]

In the abstract, the idea sounds good, to be sure. Making it real might be...tough, at best. I don´t know anything about chrystalSpace, so I can´t say what can be done and what not. Is it a sort of engine, or what?

[ScionTheWorm]

yes it pretty much contains all parts for setting up the graphics, sound, colission testing, physics etc through a pretty effective api. it might be slow so I doubt I would go for that.

[JeromeGrasdyke]

Hm, well... if i may offer a few words of advice :bow:

It will be hard. At CA we have funding, which means we can keep a full staff of trained professional programmers, experienced designers, and all-around good talented folks who do this stuff every day for weeks and months and years. We don't have motivational problems because this is our daily bread, and we have publisher-imposed deadlines to set goals for us. We've done several games of this type, and know the genre pretty well by now. And even then we have trouble with certain parts of the job.

As you noted yourself, getting people to stick with such a large and ambitious project would be your first problem - so get people with real passion to join. Then there's "avoiding drift"... a lot of enthusiast projects like this lose time and energy because there is no clear goal, and often no reward for getting there; getting people to finish things on time is problem number two - get a project dictator who is ruthless about these things, and is not afraid to shout at people (i'm perfectly serious). Then there's quality control... finding good people and making sure there is a feedback mechanism in place to actually vet the quality of work and improve what is not up to scratch is another.... problem number three - get competent team leads who know their fields.

There are many more, but if you can crack the above three problems you'd have a chance of actually finishing it, as you'd be avoiding three major causes of Open Source project death: people deserting the project, stuff never getting finished, and things turning to unuseable low-quality goo.

It'd be a fairly substantial technical challenge too - just to give you some idea of the size of something like Rome, it was about 55 man-years of programming time altogether, and only about a quarter of that was the graphics engine. And that's not even mentioning the challenge of making it flexible enough to support multiple different projects, which adds some to the difficulty.

[ScionTheWorm]

thank you for the advice, this gets me thinking

I think it's a scary thought just thinking about the amount of work on a project like this, I know I can't imagine it on this stage (wow... sieges, climates, diplomacy, city plans). much of the game content like graphics would have to come from some sort of community, this game plus skinning hundreds would just not work..

I do have a vision to make things scriptable, for instance being able to define ai behaviour pretty detailed without entering c++... I do believe setting up an engine for this would make the ai implementation much more efficient, though this scripting could slow down the performance significantly.

About the team members, I would (will) start alone. Hopefully get some animated units out there, mostly to see what the graphics engine I choose is capable of. So if I can get some things going I would "start the project". Hopefully I could be able to find some programmers to help me out at this stage. All experienced programmers I would be able to find would make up the core. The community contributions would hopefully, after quite a while, be game contents and scripts. I know the battle dynamics will be quite hard to crack out, so there would have to be something making this easier.

I would prefer a team leadership of three-four members of trust, with possibly voting and me having the last say. Finishing things in time would have to be a very important part of the programming team yes, hopefully we would be so serious we would all make our best to do it.

I really don't know how many programmers this project would need, 55 man years... ouch!

this is an open source idea... but maybe this couldn't be carried out as an open source project, mainly because of the motivation of the development team and the lack of reward i the end. No, I'm not starting a gaming company ~D

[edyzmedieval]

An open source TW is a great idea.

Can't wait to start it. ~d

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

55 man-years!?

And the most frequent thing will hear is "I'd help but..."

If you get something off the ground, maybe you can find help, though.

Know anyone who can help who lives within driving distance? That would help. Correspondence over the internet isn't too good for team cohesion.

I would help, but...

I lack the skills and know-how. :shrug:

[ScionTheWorm]

I have some fellow students who could help me out, but I'm doubting they're interresting in making such a game. So I would probably get people in other countries, which of course is a problem, but the only way (if I don't start hiring people, which I won't do)

I will see what I can cook up. A friggin great idea is still just an idea, or rather more like nothing, when nothing is done with it.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

The big problem is that the majority of RTW modding is based on textures and modelling only. Not so much coding.

Even though Vercintegorix and Epistolary Richards would kill me if they saw that!

[ScionTheWorm]

yeah I know, but that would be pretty important too after a while... and a simplyfied scripting system for non coders would make it easy for "modders" to adjust the ai in detail.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

If you make this happen, you will be a diety among modders.

All I have to say is "May the Force be with you."

:bow:

[Reverend Joe]

If you make this happen, you will be a diety among modders.

All I have to say is "May the Force be with you."

:bow:

Forget the force, man...

May Odin Allfather grant you luck, wisdom and fortitude. If you succeed, your name will be carved into Yggradsil so that the descendants of countless generations may read your name. At Ragnarok, you will lead the men of Valhalla against...

Actually, let's just go with the Odin Allfather blessing.

[Lord Adherbal]

I've done several attempts at creating RTS games (and about every other type of game), but never finished any due to motivation problems. I would probably join this project if it starts to turn into something serious (I'm allergic to "forum-post" mods/games). I have a lot of game programming experience (including more advanced things like pathfinding and AI). The only problem is that I don't know any serious programming languages (like C++). The ones I used (DIV, Fenix, DarkBasic) were specifically designed for video game programming, and made things like showing 2D graphics on screen very easy - the downside being that the languages were pretty slow. So I certainly wouldn't be able to be a head programmer on this project, but I would certainly be able to advice on all sorts of algoritms, because the basics of all programming languages are the same.

[ScionTheWorm]

if you're a experienced programmer, the use of libraries already out there would make the advanced stuff that c++ offers less important, but with a little less understandable syntax than java. I think it would be pretty easy. also, scripting via python (and lua I think) is possible, so maybe that could be a possibility for the campaignmap. that would make the campaign map part very maintainable, and the great speed isn't really required here. (could always make c++ libraries for the python to make at crucial places, I know how to do that).

it's nice to know there are people here that might join if I could get something going, but I would'nt assume too much. A major point, is that if the engines out there can handle so many units in an acceptable way. I really don't know, but I'll find out. I have tried out one, and got up some pretty nice landscapes and skies, but no animated units yet. I have also found some really easy ways to make the game gui, and handling the physics of the game.

anyway, I just I could just write down some more ideas I have found the engine to be capable of...
- large(!!) landscapes... wouldn't do much without the gameplay in place, but I've also concluded that the map generation we know from rtw will be very easy. (would use smaller scale though) No need to design "levels".
- multiple textures at models... this would mainly apply for the face, every unit loads their face from a "face database". this way it would be less work to get the animated textures I've planned, giving the units emotions. (only rendered at pretty close range though)

this isn't meant to be any hype and making false hopes, or me just talking and doing nothing. it's the only way it's going to happen. It's a longshot.

[Lord Adherbal]

- multiple textures at models... this would mainly apply for the face, every unit loads their face from a "face database". this way it would be less work to get the animated textures I've planned, giving the units emotions. (only rendered at pretty close range though)

IMO stuff like that should be left out until a very late point in the development stage. It adds nothing to the gameplay and only puts extra strain on the CPU, no matter how few. Believe me, you'll need all the CPU time you can get for unit and individual soldier AI.

I honestly dont care how the GFX look. Eyecandy adds nothing to gameplay and only makes things harder. I you are serious about this then focus on gameplay (and AI).
I would get rid of the zooming function the RTW camera has. If you can't get too close to your men then they don't need to look too detailed. Zooming adds nothing to the gameplay either.
By focusing on gameplay (instead of GFX) you can make sure the game becomes fun to play early in the development. And that's a big stimulance for motivation. I saw many of my game projects die because I focused on the GFX, not the gameplay.

EDIT: some screenshots of RTSes I made (or better, started), to prove them I'm not lying about having experience.

https://img293.imageshack.us/img293/6168/shot00000ne.th.jpg (https://img293.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shot00000ne.jpg)

https://img293.imageshack.us/img293/1993/shot00124vi.th.jpg (https://img293.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shot00124vi.jpg)

https://img293.imageshack.us/img293/7729/shot00279tu.th.jpg (https://img293.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shot00279tu.jpg)

[player1]

Reminds me of some free Civ projects.

At the end, one of those that got finished needed more then 5 years, and end result was nothing more then a bit more customable Civ2, pretty much outdated game compared to Civ3 (or even Call to Power).

Some other projects had big design documents full of ideas, but end result were just few ugly builds and then stagnation due to lack of motivation.

[ScionTheWorm]

I agree that's not a priority at all, and gameplay would be the main focus. however, it would vastly reduce skinning time, for instance putting the skins together from different sources before running the game. for instance, each unit will have it's own directory or package containing optional several skins as well as all stats and all descriptions - in general, everything that defines that unit. this would give the option to use it later on, the fancy animations would be something made in the skinning stage, in photoshop or whatever, not a concern until then (and maybe not even to be used). the zooming could optional be disabled, but it wouldnt take much cpu with the different models for each unit, with different number of vertices for the various zooming distances.

another thing I've been thinking about is having a large number of units on the field. this would typically bring an extended zoom-out, with very low-detail units for performance. you say, the ai would go berserk. I'm thinking about a grouping system where there would be a "2 stage hierachy". For instance 3000 men in group one, 4000 in group two and so on. These groups would then have their own ai, until they would be very close upon the enemy.

Also, there should be some kind of scripting system for ai/enemy tactics and formations.

the main focus would without doubt be gameplay, but I think it's very important to think about as many different aspects that may turn up before starting the real coding. the purpose will be making a better wargame.

[Lord Adherbal]

another thing I've been thinking about is having a large number of units on the field. this would typically bring an extended zoom-out, with very low-detail units for performance. you say, the ai would go berserk. I'm thinking about a grouping system where there would be a "2 stage hierachy". For instance 3000 men in group one, 4000 in group two and so on. These groups would then have their own ai, until they would be very close upon the enemy.

unless "professional" languages are a heck of a lot faster then the ones I used, I'm sure the TW games already use that system. So having an equal number of men as the TW games would already be quite an achievement. I know I had to use a system like you suggest, because all the distance calculations between every soldier (1000 VS 1000 = 1000*1000 = 1,000,000 distance calculations every second or so, not including distance checks with friendly units for collision detection) resulted in horrible framerates.

[ScionTheWorm]

https://img140.imageshack.us/img140/2479/sc4vf.th.jpg (https://img140.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sc4vf.jpg)
just to prove I'm not bs, I spelled rtw in the height map ~D

I haven't even heard about DIV, Fenix, DarkBasic. A fact I know, is that for instance python which is a scripting language is highly capable of making games, but then again are minimum 11 times slower than c++. On the other hand it might be 100 times faster to get results. However, as you can see above, I got this up and going after barely one short tutorial (took me 30 minutes). Also I managed to switch cameras, add different lights, add fog, different skydomes etc, and I'm no c++ guru at all. So getting results is pretty easy.

edit:
btw your games look very nice! looks like they're playable and you've worked quite a lot with them.

[Lord Adherbal]

I'm willing to give another look at C++ (I once did but got bored after Hello World ;)) if it appears this project is really going somewere. But that'll be atleast months from now (after ChivalryTW is done).

Good to see you have a map working already, now there are just another zillion things left to do :P

[ScionTheWorm]

hehe yes I'm not exactly planning my victory dance yet...

I'll try things out, get some system to define units. already found some horsemodel, but haven't been able to get it to animate yet. It's day two anyway. So if I can get these units to appear and hopefully move on the battlefield, I could similate ai with some dummy loops eating cpu to see what it can take. That's where the decision will be made I guess. if it can take what I have in mind, it would be awesome..

[alpaca]

Well, I'm not so sure if I have a lot of time really to participate on this as I'm currently doing another project with a friend and will start studying physics and mathematics in late october.
I might help a little, though. I'm no very experienced programmer (in fact I'm currently learning a little, and I don't know much c yet), but I could probably help with the theoretical bases, i.e. work on a concept draft for the game, which you'll need VERY much (I have to warn you though, that I have serious motivation problems in all my projects, I work a few weeks like a berserk and then might drop it for a week or two because I get bored).

I suggest making this as open-source as possible so that everyone who has a little spare time and some programming skills can extend this in a field he is good in (like AI, performance, etc.) and then send it to you; I would further suggest that you make this thing very modular (create a good component model) so that you can easily extend it without much loss of performance.

[ScionTheWorm]

yes very modular is the plan.

the stuff around the programming is extremely important. the whole architecture and design of the game will be a major challange. Especially if I can find some way to make things like ai in some way scriptable or accessible for the user via some easy interface.

What I'm currently having in mind is
- Strategy part (campaignmap, diplomacy etc) written in python: there's not the need for the performance that one need in battle, so this will make this part of the game much more easy to implement. very very much easier. the graphics engine supports being scripted like this. if the ai requires a lot of the cpu, some code (typical path finding) will be external in c++.
- Battle in c++: should work somehow like rtw with some new concepts. major problem is the ai. I have thoughts on how make custom made ai avaliable through python, without much loss of perfomance hopefully.

I have some thoughts about game design, and the two parts of the game will be pretty much two different games, quite like jerome described they did on rtw. it will help a lot to have discussions about the whole design and such before starting the serious coding.

I don't think I will take code contributions from people not in a dedicated team in the first phase (hopefully not me only, but maybe..). that's because everything has to be a very well designed and the code pretty consistent, the basics has to be in place for the modularity to work. when the skeleton of the game is up, the contributions can hopefully come, mostly ai, and not least, graphics and that kind of stuff. contributions to the campaginmap will, as explained over, probably be in python. then a contributor can for instance design a religion system. for the battlemap contributions will probably be in c++ since it has to go fast.

[player1]

I would recommend that you start focusing on one thing only, and then try to do it propetly. Spreading around too early killed many similar project.

So for start, go with custom battle mode only. Battlefiled, some units, some factions, game physics. After that, start working on AI for it (or maybe MP mode, whichever is easier to you).

Then after all its over, and looks good, start to think about campaign.

Too much thinking and too little doing killed many open source projects (large design document draft and very little code).

[Lord Adherbal]

yes the first step should be the battlemap. No point in having a campmap if you dont have a battlemap, while battles are games on their own. By far the most difficult part (aside the GFX engine perhaps, I never tried programming such a thing) would be unit logic. Even something simple like a unit moving from point A to point B is far more difficult then it may appear, and needs a lot of thinking on how the individuel soldiers should stay in formation while rotating, moving etc.

Something I can help with is writing AI logic (would be something between general logic and semi-code). Maybe think of a scripting language for AI scripting.

[player1]

Also, making script languages is not easy. You need knowledge of parsers as well as how to make compilers. There is a reason why developers prefer to keep AI in hard source code.

Of course, the benefit of open source project is that anybody can se source code, so script language is not as much required as in commercial products.

[Lord Adherbal]

btw are you considering MP ? I you do then you should take it into account as soon as you start coding, cos adding MP code to a game that wasn't especially written for it is very hard.
I've written MP code for RTSes using an SDL Net dll (I think that exists for C++ aswell). It's very simplistic and only worked for 2 players but maybe that's enough for a start. Worked fine over LAN (keeping the game in sync) and should work over internet aswell, altho I never tested the speed there.

[ScionTheWorm]

scripting will not be made by me, rather the game will be made in scripting. the battle engine will be called by scripts which call the c++ über fast code.
I thought an optional scripting language would contain loops and such, but mainly api calls from ai functions implemented in the c++ code.

No I've not considered mp, intentionally. it shouldn't be any difficulties to add the feature if the code is structured the way I would want it to be. the difficulty here lies in number of polys in the renderer window, so there has to be some kind of heavy detail adjustment system. it's an area I have little knowledge, so that's for later.

about focusing on this or that, I have to have some visions and ideas for a new thing going on, if not it's not anything in it for me. I will certainly focus on the battle engine, because this is the most interresting part. if I end up just talking and not doing nothing, I will conclude the project as closed. however, making this a hell-ov-a-gameplay-thing with 2d graphics and ultimate battles with the ultimate ai because it's so simple engine is not an option for me. it should be spetacular.

[King of Atlantis]

Ah, please finish up this one...

https://img293.imageshack.us/img293/1993/shot00124vi.th.jpg

[Divinus Arma]

Ah, please finish up this one...

https://img293.imageshack.us/img293/1993/shot00124vi.th.jpg

That would only be cool if it DIDN'T SUCK! I am not saying that it sucks (becasue I couldn't do that and I'm pretty impressed), I'm just saying that we are all merciless critics here and if it gets old in five minutes, the people who deal with it will be driven to lemming-like behavior. ~D

[edyzmedieval]

Hm, well... if i may offer a few words of advice :bow:

It will be hard. At CA we have funding, which means we can keep a full staff of trained professional programmers, experienced designers, and all-around good talented folks who do this stuff every day for weeks and months and years. We don't have motivational problems because this is our daily bread, and we have publisher-imposed deadlines to set goals for us. We've done several games of this type, and know the genre pretty well by now. And even then we have trouble with certain parts of the job.

As you noted yourself, getting people to stick with such a large and ambitious project would be your first problem - so get people with real passion to join. Then there's "avoiding drift"... a lot of enthusiast projects like this lose time and energy because there is no clear goal, and often no reward for getting there; getting people to finish things on time is problem number two - get a project dictator who is ruthless about these things, and is not afraid to shout at people (i'm perfectly serious). Then there's quality control... finding good people and making sure there is a feedback mechanism in place to actually vet the quality of work and improve what is not up to scratch is another.... problem number three - get competent team leads who know their fields.

There are many more, but if you can crack the above three problems you'd have a chance of actually finishing it, as you'd be avoiding three major causes of Open Source project death: people deserting the project, stuff never getting finished, and things turning to unuseable low-quality goo.

It'd be a fairly substantial technical challenge too - just to give you some idea of the size of something like Rome, it was about 55 man-years of programming time altogether, and only about a quarter of that was the graphics engine. And that's not even mentioning the challenge of making it flexible enough to support multiple different projects, which adds some to the difficulty.

Excellent advice Jerome. You're the most modder-friendly man of the CA. ~:) :thumbsup:

And this thread is an excellent piece of advice to anyone who starts a mod, and wants to get it finished.

[Rodion Romanovich]

It's a cool project, but like the CA guy said, it's so much work that there'd be lack of motivation if it would be given away for free and not sold. It would take forever to produce anything unless the team consists of 200 persons, and then you'd probably even need object oriented programming or something in order to get easier cooperation between that many programmers, which would result in slower code.

I think C/C++ is the way to go for a project like this, writing an own engine with almost unlimited possibilities through scripting, but that takes quite a long time. I'm not sure a regular FPS graphics engine can be used, further optimizing might be required. For example the R:TW engine replaces the models with sprites when the distance of the soldiers is great, meaning that in reality only a fraction of the thousands of soldiers are actually rendered. There are also a great amount of other optimizations I could think of, that would make a free graphics engine hard to use.

The game engine would also need similar optimization, especially for multiplayer. R:TW doesn't seem to be entirely synchronized, it seems like calculations happen on the host computer mostly, sending out synchronizing packages to help the guest. Probably the killing of men is carried out on both computers independently, but the host does the actual calculations and sends out a package saying how many died, but not who in the formation died. But I'm not sure of how in detail this lack of synchronizing in R:TW mp works, but it's necessary to do simplifications of the type in order to get a good enough speed. It's probable that many calculations are also carried out on a per-unit basis as opposed to the by CA claimed per-soldier basis. If it's per-soldier basis, it's at least optimized to have a quicker execution for soldiers that aren't close to any enemy soldiers, which is the most common case.

[Lord Adherbal]

The game engine would also need similar optimization, especially for multiplayer. R:TW doesn't seem to be entirely synchronized, it seems like calculations happen on the host computer mostly, sending out synchronizing packages to help the guest. Probably the killing of men is carried out on both computers independently, but the host does the actual calculations and sends out a package saying how many died, but not who in the formation died. But I'm not sure of how in detail this lack of synchronizing in R:TW mp works, but it's necessary to do simplifications of the type in order to get a good enough speed. It's probable that many calculations are also carried out on a per-unit basis as opposed to the by CA claimed per-soldier basis. If it's per-soldier basis, it's at least optimized to have a quicker execution for soldiers that aren't close to any enemy soldiers, which is the most common case.

RTSes only send player commands, nothing else (nothing like unit coordinates, health, ... or such things anyway). As long as the random number generators are seeded identically on every computer (resulting in the same random events on every comp) that is enough to keep the game syncronized. The difficult part is making sure each player command is executed at the same time on every computer, so the game has to run at the pace of the slowest computer in the network.


Ah, please finish up this one...

I had to give up on that one because it ran much too slow. Each individual boat has to do too much calculations (detailed collision detection: you could destroy the oars of other ships, ram them, ...). It's a pitty cos I was contacted by a small publisher who focused on naval warfare games, and they intended to publish my game if I finished it.

[edyzmedieval]

The RTW engine package is a good goal to start of with. Replacing with sprites is an excellent idea, saving more energy and less "stress" on the graphics card.

The RTW engine has many posibilities, which makes it an excellent example. But, you need to de-hardcode the source, which I doubt CA will approve.

The open source is a good way of creating a game, but, I understand CA why they used the hardcoded source, especially when they sold the game for a price, not free. Plus, motivation is the key on creating an open source program or game. No motivation equals no game/program. And, if you have a lot of fans, and you start off with a good team, the mod looks very promising then suddenly motivation is off, then you lose many many things.(friends, no one will ever want to join another mod made by you....)

The C++ language script is the only thing you can start it, and fortunately, it's a great program. But, you need experienced C++ script makers, who know their job very well. And many of them, because the lack of team members slows the progress of the source code, and possibly, the inability to finish the game.

Edit: 1800 posts! ~:cheers:

[Lord Adherbal]

Btw MP games work by sending player commands, and this is quite simular to how replays work: only player commands are saved and executed on the current time when playing a replay. So if you want to have one of both it's not so hard to have the other aswell.

[ScionTheWorm]

I thought I should use the rtw system with sprites and various levels of models. it's easier to get some 3d models going, so I'll start with that. The engine can render as many polygons as I like, but terrain alone has quite a lot of polygons.

Maybe it shouldn't be open source. I totally agree motivation is the key factor for making a game like this, I am just motivated at start that I do not see that at the moment. Maybe it shouldn't be open source, because of this. Another thing is that people might appreciate it more if they paid a fee for it. I don't know. If it would turn out good, I don't think it would be unfair to pay something to the developers. but this lisence issue can wait for later. i use mostly engines with lisences that allows for redistrubution and even selling them.


It's a cool project, but like the CA guy said, it's so much work that there'd be lack of motivation if it would be given away for free and not sold. It would take forever to produce anything unless the team consists of 200 persons, and then you'd probably even need object oriented programming or something in order to get easier cooperation between that many programmers, which would result in slower code.
Actually it would be pretty impossible to not object orientate it. The most crucial part may be ai algorithms, but this will go pretty fast in c++. not object orientate it could reduce some calls here and there, but then again it would be totally impossible to get the warriors running around and killing each other.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Actually it would be pretty impossible to not object orientate it. The most crucial part may be ai algorithms, but this will go pretty fast in c++. not object orientate it could reduce some calls here and there, but then again it would be totally impossible to get the warriors running around and killing each other.

I was actually working on a game written in c++ that was only partly object oriented, but I don't know how to use the latest DirectX API and how to take advantage of the hardware rendered graphics it provides, so I'm sticking to 2D graphics and skipping battles, focusing on the stratetical aspects and auto-calculating battles. But since I started the AOVAF mod I've taken a pause in the project. Could be interesting to finish, perhaps possible to sell as a budget game... But it would take pretty much all of my spare time in the coming year... Maybe it could be extended to 3D battles too eventually, if I'm not alone in the project.

Needless to say, I'm making the game fully moddable ~:cool:

[ScionTheWorm]

I'm using an engine that uses directx 9. direct x is pretty messy to use directly in my opinion, but for instance adding a 3d model to the scene my way is a statement like this:
ent = mSceneMgr->createEntity( "House1", "house1.mesh" );
mSceneMgr->getRootSceneNode()->createChildSceneNode( )->attachObject( ent );

pretty easy I think ~:)

[Rodion Romanovich]

Cool! Have you managed to make something that's possible to run? And is it easy to make the actual game engine, i.e. the work horse behind the rendered scenes, and adapt it to the engine? That's my biggest concern when using some free open-source engine made by someone else than me... Also, is the engine full screen only, or is it like the Common Files Framework including both window and full screen code so that full screen gets awfully slow?

Anyway, I had in mind starting to learn the latest DirectX and write my own simple 3D engine once I finisheded my 2D game. I'll probably by then have enough knowledge about engine making that I'll be able to reuse much of the code and get started pretty quickly.

So far I haven't even completed the game menu... I'm working on a system for controls for the menus, i.e. buttons, textboxes etc. It'll be possible to use also in the in-game dialogue boxes. I'm making the menu entirely scripted/text file coded so that it'll be easy to mod everything there too. The good thing is that I think the setting up of the actual game for test running will be really fast once I've completed the menu structure, because the game dialogues will also be scripted/text file coded, so that they can be modded quite a lot too. Then comes only the adding of AI and load save features (hopefully without siege bug :P, j/k ). Ah well, then there's also all the graphics files and stuff, and I've got to implement a sound system...

[edyzmedieval]

Great job Scion.

Guess I'll have to start learning DirectX 9.
I hate C++, it is so spartan.

[khelvan]

As you noted yourself, getting people to stick with such a large and ambitious project would be your first problem - so get people with real passion to join. Then there's "avoiding drift"... a lot of enthusiast projects like this lose time and energy because there is no clear goal, and often no reward for getting there; getting people to finish things on time is problem number two - get a project dictator who is ruthless about these things, and is not afraid to shout at people (i'm perfectly serious). Then there's quality control... finding good people and making sure there is a feedback mechanism in place to actually vet the quality of work and improve what is not up to scratch is another.... problem number three - get competent team leads who know their fields.Wow, can we at EB relate to this. As someone who has been both a product manager and project manager in "real life," my experience with EB has been completely and utterly different than I thought it would be, and truth be told, much more draining and stressful than in a compensated position. I never thought it would be this hard, to be honest.

[Big_John]

Wow, can we at EB relate to this. As someone who has been both a product manager and project manager in "real life," my experience with EB has been completely and utterly different than I thought it would be, and truth be told, much more draining and stressful than in a compensated position. I never thought it would be this hard, to be honest.interesting.. were you as emotionally invested in the subject of your real-life projects as you are in EB?

[khelvan]

No, absolutely not. Emotional attachment is all that keeps us going, truth be told. There really isn't much other incentive. I mean, our music composer wanted to do the music to get recognized for paying gigs, but he has attracted several paying gigs for games since, without having put music into EB yet, so that incentive is gone. We have a few other members who want their work seen and appreciated by everyone, but otherwise we all work toward the same ideal.

Most of the stress comes from trying to manage a group that doesn't get paid for this. As you can imagine, in many cases things aren't taken very seriously. That can be quite frustrating for those of us who do take it seriously, and want to put out a quality mod.

In addition, while I have cultivated some skill in PR through my career, said emotional attachment (without the benefit of a monetary detachment, so to speak) has made it very difficult for me to keep frustration and such from creeping into my responses to the public. Well, I'm sure my medical situation has a big part to play in that as well. Sort of a snowball effect.

Any way, it has been very difficult and trying, and I feel exhausted in many ways. I really can't wait for the public release, for very different reasons than you guys.

[ScionTheWorm]

suddenly I feel a little cocky, suggesting a project much larger than EB and believing I could get to the finish line without too much trouble. After thinking this trough, I've come to the conclusion I won't try this. Will require too much work and frustration over such a long period of time.

[JeromeGrasdyke]

In addition, while I have cultivated some skill in PR through my career, said emotional attachment (without the benefit of a monetary detachment, so to speak) has made it very difficult for me to keep frustration and such from creeping into my responses to the public. Well, I'm sure my medical situation has a big part to play in that as well. Sort of a snowball effect.

Any way, it has been very difficult and trying, and I feel exhausted in many ways. I really can't wait for the public release, for very different reasons than you guys.

Sorry to hear that Khelvan... here's a few things which might help.

It is very important to keep good control of "cheap" rewards -- it's a principle in game design, but it's just as important in managing people ;) Most folks who do mods are very interested in recognition (and truth be told, games industry professionals as well). There's a vein of rewards there which can be used to motivate people... for example, say you feature a piece of work on the project front-page, and you pick the best of what is contributed, with mention of the contributors name. That's a pretty good incentive to produce good quality stuff on time. And there are other things in that area - how you handle credits in the mod in the end, for example.

Also it's good to encourage people to reward themselves at the end of an important section, say alpha or something. If people live close enough to eachother to make it work, throw a party. Or even spend some precious ready cash to have some momentoes made - little trinkets for "Europa Barbarum Beta - I was there!" for instance.

The most important thing though is to encourage a team spirit where everyone strives for quality. Without it, criticism becomes a personal thing, confrontational, and things can deteriorate badly. In the end, the leading part of the job is always stressful, regardless of whether it's a mod or a commercial project, and it's very normal to need some time to destress afterwards.

[edyzmedieval]

Jerome is very right.

It's normal Khelvan to be exhausted, because the grandour of the project. Europa Barbarorum is the most awaited mod on the "market".

And don't forget, respect matters more than money. I understand that it's very frustrating to keep united a team so large. I'm speaking from mod leader to mod leader. ~:)

[Lord Adherbal]

I understand that it's very frustrating to keep united a team so large. I'm speaking from mod leader to mod leader.

getting people to do things can be difficult (and thus frustrating) but it has nothing to do with the EB team being large. It's not like it's any easier to get people to do things if your team is small - unless you consider ending up doing a lot of those things yourself "easier". EB is extremely lucky having attracted such a large team including some of the most skilled people in the modding community.

[edyzmedieval]

Adherbal']getting people to do things can be difficult (and thus frustrating) but it has nothing to do with the EB team being large. It's not like it's any easier to get people to do things if your team is small - unless you consider ending up doing a lot of those things yourself "easier". EB is extremely lucky having attracted such a large team including some of the most skilled people in the modding community.

Then why is he complaining? ~D

Now really, if you have a very large team like EB, it's very hard to keep them united, without a specific motivation. One wrong step, and it's fallen. Shall I remind you of some arguing in the EB forum, when somebody requested to appoint some mods to control the situation?\
But fortunately, khelvan done an excellent job keeping them under control. And he should be admired for this. I'm not saying that other team leaders shouldn't be(you are also to admire Adherbal for all the work you done), but he is a special case, keeping united such a large team, and also, creating an excellent mod. ~:)

[Lord Adherbal]

sure he's doing a great job, I'm just saying: if he had failed to do so and the team would've felt apart, then the EB team would probably still be larger and more effective then some other mod teams :) I guess if you are big you have a lot to lose, but EB and RTR are lucky with such big and talented team if you compare it to other mods. Harder to manage yes, easier to get people to do things - no :)

[khelvan]

Jerome, thanks for the advice. We've picked up on some of it; see our "Countdown to Open Beta" threads as examples, with the ever-growing blocks of "thank you" text. Unfortunately, our membership is spread across the world; I think we have, at most, 3 people within driving distance. I would love to get together with the guys, but it is probably impractical to think it will happen.


Adherbal']getting people to do things can be difficult (and thus frustrating) but it has nothing to do with the EB team being large. It's not like it's any easier to get people to do things if your team is small - unless you consider ending up doing a lot of those things yourself "easier". EB is extremely lucky having attracted such a large team including some of the most skilled people in the modding community.Well, the larger the team, the more stress for me, because keeping individuals happy (and in the absence of monetary or other rewards, happiness is pretty much all we've got) is always a tough job, even more so if you have twenty or thirty people to talk to.

Then of course we have, with such a large group, factionalism at times, and other interpersonal problems which serve to create rifts in the team. As someone who has studied organizational behavior I find this quite interesting, but a whole lot of hard work to try and overcome (I studied it during my MBA courses, when I found it quite bland, not realizing how much I would need it in the future). In addition, as the head PR person, trying to create and get everyone to stick with a consistent message, when everyone wants to be helpful and post in their own way, is in and of itself a challenge.

I'm not comparing our team to smaller teams. I realize that with a large group that has, say, ten highly active people we'll always be more productive than smaller teams, even though we run into snowballing inactivity at times (those who do hard work see a big team with little activity, and are less incented to do work, and so on). I was merely discussing my own experience as the "organizational manager" for lack of a better term. In addition, I would not term it all luck; we worked very hard to recruit the expertise necessary to do this, and to cultivate those skills internally when we could not find them externally. A huge part of the early PR was done to attract skilled members, and keeping the correct skills on the team and active is an ongoing, constant battle. As our scope is much greater than most projects, so our membership must be.

Thankfully, it is not all a downhill battle; for instance, we (as a modding community) do have ongoing support from Jerome, who I think made our scripters' years with a few recent posts on the scripting language. The fact we made it into a few gaming magazines was a big lift for us, and the release of the open beta is bound to be a highly emotional one. In the end, I think every individual believes that the stress and hard work will be worth it.

Edit: Actually, Adherbal, I think that if any of our core of really active people who consider ourselves friends started to leave, the project itself would end up dying out unless a new set of people came on board. That handful of people is what keeps the project going through long periods of inactivity; without it, I am truly afraid our vision would never be reached.

[Geoffrey S]

From all the signs, it does look like all the hard work will be worth the effort. From what I've seen EB is one of the most ambitious mods for any game, and it's a tribute to the orginisational skills behind the mod that it's lasted this long and come so far. To me the wait for EB is the thing that has kept me interested in RTW, and in the meantime has taught me much.

[khelvan]

We, and I, have learned a lot as well, believe me.

[Lord Adherbal]

Edit: Actually, Adherbal, I think that if any of our core of really active people who consider ourselves friends started to leave, the project itself would end up dying out unless a new set of people came on board. That handful of people is what keeps the project going through long periods of inactivity; without it, I am truly afraid our vision would never be reached.

of course, large modding projects depend on loonies like you and me ~:). Without people willing devote a great deal of their free time in such a project it would take years before completion and probably never get there. I've seen many of my personal projects (like the games I showed in this thread) die because I got bored working on them. I need a team around me to help and motivate me, even if I still have to do the majority of the work. At some point I wanted to take over leadership of the ChivTW mod because I lost faith in the current leaders (they weren't really doing any work, just a lot of forum posting, and everything went slow and chaotically). So I ended up taking responsibility of more and more parts of the mod (I started as a mere skinner) because no one else was doing so. Sometimes I wonder if my passion for this mod has scared others from taking responsibilities though, maybe if I had been more patient new people would've joined in and the Chiv team would've been a lot bigger. Guess I'll never know ~:)

[DavidtheDuke]

I would just like to let you all know if you OR CA or any development company used the TW format, made it fully moddable (including AI), maybe even a few more thousand troop capacity onscreen, I'd pay $100 upfront or and then $10 a month if you continously and honestly focused on it and ironed out bugs, and occasionally introduced features and stuff. I don't know if everyone would pay $100 upfront, but alot would pay $10 a month for this! RTW is a great, great start but the AI being so crippled, wonky pathfinding, and unmoddable faction and unit limits just show where it could be.

[DavidtheDuke]

I can't seem to find a way to edit my message yet, so I'd just like to add maybe we should put a poll up and see hwo many much people would be willing to pay for this

[Lord Adherbal]

well the problem is that everyone would just vote yes to see this project come true. Whether they would actualy pay for it cannot be assured.

[DavidtheDuke]

True. I guess I'm gonna have to become a millionaire ~:rolleyes:

[Lord Adherbal]

I guess if financial support is gonna be a required motivating factor then it's best to set up a Paypal donations account or something, were people can make donations while the game is being developed. Then perhaps if it gets to a more advance stage the game can be sold (like Mount & Blade)

[Dromikaites]

Adherbal']well the problem is that everyone would just vote yes to see this project come true. Whether they would actualy pay for it cannot be assured.
You're very right about that! Asking people "would you pay x for this new product?" doesn't give you any clue about the actual behavior when they meet with the product.


I would just like to let you all know if you OR CA or any development company used the TW format, made it fully moddable (including AI), maybe even a few more thousand troop capacity onscreen, I'd pay $100 upfront or and then $10 a month if you continously and honestly focused on it and ironed out bugs, and occasionally introduced features and stuff. I don't know if everyone would pay $100 upfront, but alot would pay $10 a month for this! RTW is a great, great start but the AI being so crippled, wonky pathfinding, and unmoddable faction and unit limits just show where it could be.

1) I'm not sure how CA could make the mod fully moddable without giving away valuable trade secrets. Don't forget people working there need to put bread on the tables of their families. There are people who develop open source code and some of them are into developping games, but I'm sure they have other sources of income.
2) The factions limit is actually not a big problem: look at "The First Triumvirate" mod, which uses only a fraction of the available factions. Or look at Imperium:TW which would be released soon and you'll see another approach to the faction limits ~;)
3) Honestly unit limit isn't really an issue either, because any faction (including the player) would only use a handful of units at any time. Those ones adequated for the job, that is. Besides look at real life armies at any time. None used too may different types of units.
4) More units on screen (aka epic battles) - yes, I've seen in the polls I've run at TWC http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=32757 that this is a very popular feature. Well, this is in a way still availabe today: you need to have the option "unlimited troops on the battlefield" on.

[DavidtheDuke]

I'm not talking about individual unit-to-unit combat or pathfinding "secrets", just the ability of the battle AI, which is kinda nill right now, and also the campaign AI, which I don't think there really is any secrets of :P

There is a limit to men on the battlefield? I'm not talking about hardcoded/preventive limits, just the actual efficiency of processing several combatants AKA better FPS.

About the faction limit: an unlimited or moddable would allow different-age mods, as well as multiple mods without having to switch data folders.

In event, I suppose I shouldn't have said 'fully' moddable, I wouldn't really need that. I do however think RTW could be much more flexible

[ScionTheWorm]

fully moddable could be in the sense that when an AI bug is found or another feature is wished as changed or added, that could just be done in the hardcode by the active members, who would update the executable or make it an alternative. also, we wouldn't require everything to work for everybody (therefrom the limits in rtw I think).

if we'd get some entusiastic and skilled people signing up, I'm totally in. we should maybe have some kind of commercial goal because it would probably never be finished if not, but besides from this it would be pretty hard because of the conditions (developers spread worldwide etc.)

[Simetrical]

1) I'm not sure how CA could make the mod fully moddable without giving away valuable trade secrets. Don't forget people working there need to put bread on the tables of their families. There are people who develop open source code and some of them are into developping games, but I'm sure they have other sources of income.It doesn't have to be fully moddable, that's a pipe dream, but it can still be extremely moddable. Look at how much Garry's Mod changed Half-Life 2, it's incredible.

[Dromikaites]

It doesn't have to be fully moddable, that's a pipe dream, but it can still be extremely moddable. Look at how much Garry's Mod changed Half-Life 2, it's incredible.

Sure having a very moddable game is great and it also helps sales because the people still need the original in order to play the mod.

I would love for instance a feature like a simple way to check through script who is alive and where is he on the map (my biggest frustration at the moment ~:)). I would also love to be able to "export" the unit list from any stack into a custom battle, so I can improve the units' behavior in battle beyond tweaking the formations.

In the same time I see CA games' moddability improving with each new version. While we have the right to expect more moddability because we are customers who have fun both from playing and from modding (or maybe even more from modding than from playing ~;)), the company owners also have the right to a good return on their investment. So the budget allocated to the development of a game will allways be limited. This means the number of man-hours put into developping a commercial game will allways be limited. A finite number of man-hours means a finite number of features. Therefore it makes business sense to develop first the features who appeal to the majority of the potential customers and then those for the modders. CA accumulates experience with every new project so they will be probably able to do more within the bugetary constrains next time.

[ScionTheWorm]

do anybody have some good name suggestions for such a game? open source total war isn't exactly very exotic, neither should it contain "total war" or be directly associated with it since the game would in fact be very different in many aspects. just wondering... ~:handball:

edit: also it shouldn't be related to a certain timeperiod. could be ww2 as well as biblical wars

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Howza bout:

Open War(s)
Free War(s)
Free Battle(s)
Open Battle(s)