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
(Possibilities: animated skins, particle system for blood, , 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...

[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
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

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

[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.

[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."

[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."

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.

[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]

just to prove I'm not bs, I spelled rtw in the height map

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.