Community Project for Networking RPG

I am proposing a concept to produce a networked RPG (in order to learn fundamentals of what everyone has been asking such as chasecams, sound, network code) etc ... this project will allow everyone to contribute as well as learn concerning physics and all

just an idea..what does everything else think?

I am willing to post my project as the shared project..not a problem..also learning to model in blender

I think it's doomed to failure. I'm not trying to be negative, but i've been around here a while and i've seen community projects come and go, largely unfinished. In fact, "Bounce Around" was the only one i can remember being sucessful.

You need for a start, a good experienced coder to take the helm and command the project and carry it when no-one else can, so it doesn't get stuck. You also need to assign people specific tasks to individuals, coding wise and art too, else you get all sorts of different styles.

I can't stress enough though, you need people who are decent coders for this to work, else you'll get someone doing physics and making a complete arse of it, not designing code so other people can read it and not making the code "plugable" so it can be removed without too much hassle.

You should try, something very simple, for a community project, just to get the feel for it and get it finished, than move up from there. RPG's generally take years to develop, with teams of people.

I'd be fairly confident its doomed from the start.

Seen it happen a hundred times before. These things end up being no more than a big waste of everyone's time.

Agree with the two above. Plus a lot of people use the guise of 'Community Project' to really mean 'Make my game for me', which is totally doomed.

If you really want to work in a team, the absolute best way to do so is teaming up with someone at your school, college, work, club...or just a friend and working together to make something, rather than forum people.

Im sorta new in programming but i think its a great idea. I tried to do a game with 5 friends at school and they all quit before i got to type the first line of code. As long as you work, ill help, and i learn how to program better!

Ok. Maybe you should learn something a little easier. It will advance your knowledge more, than doing a task your probably not going to be able to complete. There is nothing better for your learning and confidence, than starting a project and actually finishing it. It teaches you the patience and estimation it takes, even for a simple game. You have stuff like front end graphics, GUI, high score tables, computer AI (even if it's very simple)

It might seem like a good idea to do an RPG, because that's your favourite game, but RPG's are incredibly time consuming and difficult games to program. There's a good chance all you'll learn is, "that was too hard"

I'm not trying to belittle you in any way, just give you the benefit of hindsight, and give you something you can achieve and enjoy when it's finished.

Very similar toughs has been discussed in this forum thread:

http://blitzmax.com/Community/posts.php?topic=41442

To shorten up my consensus from the previous thread, do one if these options:

1.) Make your own simple MMORPG engine complete with a server, client, small working starter area, two professions etc to PoC-the code. Then start a public project and invite people to join in.

2) Join someone else that has done just that for example: http://www.planeshift.it/

If you still got lots of basic questions like how to get GUI, Billboarding or collisions etc. (looking at other threads) I'd strongly recommend you to take Ross Cs advise:

Personally, I would advise looking at these separately first, in smaller sample exercises rather than a full-blown (and VERY complex) environment like a Network RPG.

Check out the snippets of various code archive threads that deal with these particular points and play around with putting them into simple working routines from which you can LATER incorporate into a game framework.

Not only will this allow you to learn as you go without getting bogged down with various other parts of the game-writing (for example, just making a front-end/menu system is a real pain for me when I'm eager to get stuck into the game itself :) )
but also, it allows you the possiblitiy of re-using and modifying the individual parts of the code for other projects or more suited to specific requirements.

You could do like me and instead of working on just one big project and sticking with it, you try to code something that you can see how it works in your head. If you get stuck on that project, think of something else you can code and start on it. If you're like me, you'll end up learning enough from all the other projects that you'll be able to work on the one(s) you were stuck on.

You just need to build up your coding "vocabulary" heh heh.

i agree with most of the above, especially the "make my game for me" school of thought

i knew this 'moron' who was a project butterfly when it came to writing and the first hint of constructive critisism normally ened with him ripping up what he had done and throwing it away instead of taking on the advice i gave
one project was a script which he had no plot outline for, so in the end it would just be nothing but people talking aimlessly
i told him
get a story idea, block it out then work out what they are going to say
but in the end all he had was
"the opening credits of family packing luggage into car and driving to the chunnel and coming out the other end play out to the duration of this specific song"

so 'block it' do mini bits of code that work which can work anywhere

i used to paraphrase from pong to quake the evolution of video games
it starts with pong
flips the bat into break out
"wouldnt it be cool if the bricks moved and shot back" voila space invaders
3 games with similar traits

then guantlet and clones one spectrum ww2 themed one, with the aid of 2.5D (not my prefered choice of term) it became wolfenstein
the game was still a 2d game at heart

chess chequers and reversi all use an 8*8 grid and an array would be ideal for working out each game
a larger aray and you could do shogi (japanese chess)
go although played on the lines is still the same concept

learn how to do little things
learn how to make a chace cam?
you dont need a game to do that, just a simple cube would do and keys to move said cube and others to move the camrea around if you so wish, hell id even map them to a 360 joypad too just to know that i could add it to a game should a player wish to use a game pad over wsad etc

I agree with Malice and GIA_Green_Fire - once you get some way down the road you might want to consider some of the physics engines available to remove some of the awkward math you may have heartache with.

Wings posted some pretty good networking code a while back that I developed a 'little', however my interest went off the boil, I'll get back to it some day... maybe.

The code was in Blitz 3D to boot.