Hi all.. First I would like to give thanks to dmitrig01 and aaron because of the great effort to move on this topic.
During the last month I've working in a set of modules allowing the creation of RTS games within drupal. I'm about to start publishing the work in the docbook way, as a chaptered howto about framework design. The final result could allow the creation of games like ogame or travian using plugable modules, and even more than one game can be played in the same server at a time by users. Part of the goal was to finish the integration of the games and the drupal core and improvement modules like forums and alike. I succesfully build up three games in the examples: one is really close ogame, other one is really close to travian, and the last (to prove the possibilities of the engine) is a version of the urbz for web gaming (just in a basic status).
I've divided the effort into spaces for a better approach in the documentation. I'll start explaining the advances due to it's space implication: game, user and site spaces.
As from now on, at least two frameworks are being developed and mantained, I would like to push dmitrig01 to set some order in the kind of the publications within this group. I'm not sure what to do about the rts engine and their internal discussions, I mean, should I open a new group and leave this "games and apis" just as a center of information for all the engines, or .. well, dunno.. aaron, what do you think? do we split the game designs internals into rpg and rts groups? do we share the same group?
I guess we are going to share most of the code for the user and site spaces, but not for gamming purposes.. my framework design is really very diferent than rpg one.
Well.. I would like to have a running site for demonstration, but as I'm writting doc and installing functions, I still haven't finished all the modules. But soon.. very soon..
Comments
What's an RTS?
would like to push dmitrig01 to set some order in the kind of the publications within this group.
Which two? Game and RPG? RPG is replacing Game... Game is long dead
Real Time Strategy
games.. I was talking about rts and rpg..
Just one group for now...
Can't wait to see what you've come up with! Seems like this group would be a good central place for all game engines, at least right now. There's always going to be overlap -- for instance, I can envision how the RPG module could be used for RTS as well, though it would require some heavy work to push it in that direction, and certainly the MapAPI will be a cross-over module that might be used for several purposes. If nothing else, it helps us developers keep a tab on what's happening in other directions, and we can learn from each other, ultimately making all the contributions better in the end.
If things become busier as the modules mature, we might need to branch into other groups. But my vote at this stage of things would be to maintain this is a central group for now. I suspect that most game developers are at least peripherally interested in several types of games, and the most interesting will probably be games that cross-over into other genres.
Aaron Winborn
Aaron Winborn
Drupal Multimedia (my book, available now!)
AaronWinborn.com
Advomatic
I agree
So the purpose of "Game and Game APIS" group should be to see engines evolving, and "Games" group to finished and online game announcing.. right?
There's (but) an great difference between the two engines, as fas I know rpg for now: It's audience. While RPG is more non-programmer user oriented, rts will be for developers, with the improvement of several kinds of "game applications" evolving as defined and plugable modules to build the final game.
There are also a lot of support modules I don't like in current distribution, or some functionalities not being yet released that I solved with my own modules, and they can be also shared.
Ok, let me take some time to writte an introduction before the whole HOWTO so you can get the point. I'll set up an online site with a sample game the next week, I hope, this two weeks I'm going to be really busy working outside of my city, and withouth resources, but I think I can get some time to write.
subscript
Looking forward for any updates...
just updating..
Ok, I finally took some time and start to build things up. I've got a lot of features working, and as the rpg module I was scared about the many many changes to adapt the job to the D6 API and requeriments, so I decided to stay at version 5 of drupal instead of moving everything to D6.
I've developed and re-developed and re-design things several times, thus the final code and modules are smaller and few in number, and the integration between them is now in somehow.. smart.
The site with documentation about development will be http://drtsg.net, where I'll be posting some information about the framework, the modules and documentation and links to games being setup. This site will hold 3 game demos (with different functionality and gameplay) as sandbox, so people could try the framework without needing to install it. Also I've started (and this will be the main project, leading all the development) a game site at http://ncounter.drtsg.net , where I setup and play the final modules and configurations of the framework.
Currently the site is still being built, but in a short time an "registration request" process will be launched for people interested in the framework/game development, not only in features, but also in the game rules and definition itself. This people will be able (using the invite module) to join some friends in the site, with the intenttion of having enough users to stress the site.
The Ncounter! setup of the site was a hard work, with some tweaking to well known modules like private_message and userpoints, but most of the setup process is documented enough to be automated in an installation profile.
During the development of the site I've found some modules and features to be shared with the rpg game framework also.. I'm remembering two modules right now, the "account sitting" and "production" modules. I've created a module at drupal.org for the account sitting called "in behalf of" (it's commited) and will release a -dev one soon.
Now I will just need time to finish tasks, but it's moving on.. I would like to see all of you playing ncounter very soon! (I'll publish the roadmap at drtsg.net soon)
Also, it's not a help request, but if someone would like to be involved in the graphical part of the game, I'm overloaded with coding stuff, so I'm leaving this part realy at the bottom of the TODO!..
This kind of update sounds good for me.. what does it seem for you? :D