Project Arcterus -- Thesis and Ice Cream
 

Salutations. Yes I am wordy and I like "quotes".

I represent a group of young tech-savvy entrepreneurs seeking to actualize their communitive creativity by the actualization of a intangible super-happy-fun-mega-rad virtual stimulii.

(Translation: Hi, I'm Adam. A bunch of my nerd friends like Graal and want to make a playerworld. I like Ice Cream.)

Okay... sorry. I'm bad at first impressions. Also spelling and grammar. Anyway, Stephen/Unixmad/Whomever has my 44 dollars for a VIP membership so I think I'm already on someone's good side.

I'll start over.

{--Begin Background information--}

Hi, I'm Adam. I used to play Graal waaaaay back in the early days before it went pay-for-play. I have always been a fan of the classic SNES games. Games to me were just more FUN when framerates didn't matter. The 3D revolution is great and all, but I've never seen a 3D character that captures the essence and character of a 16x32x256 sprite. I've had plenty of experiences with 3D as well, I'm the proud owner of a Radeon 9700, and nVidia's Dawn (modified to run with Rady) demo is the closest thing to virtual porn I'm still awed by it.

Alas, 3D has never really given me the level of appreciation that minimalist, last generation 2D games have given. I've got my leaked alpha of Doom 3, Unreal 2, and the lot (which I do play... often), but I still find myself settling down for a good game of Chrono Trigger more than anything else. Before game companies spent more time squeezing extra polys and high-rez textures, games to me were... do I dare say it ...more fun. Before you assume I'm some nostalgic 30-something bald pedophile, let me tell you that I'm not 30-something, but rather the young age of ~6080 days.

I'll get to the point, I like games. I have many friends who also like games. I am talented with a computer. I have many friends who are talented with a computer. We are bored. We need a project. Last year in Pre-Calculus we kicked around the idea of this little world in our heads, to therein be converted to a "really really cool" game after we've all been through college (I'm praying for MIT). We basically just started throwing out these ideas we had all had for a nice little universe, complete with storyline, races, etc. It was all in good fun, I knew Software Development wasn't for me, I don't like sitting behind a desk for hours writing bank software while my wrist turned to chalk. Heck, I had to take a good deal of time explaining how it is "really really long and hard to program a game engine, and no just because your brother is coming in from college that doesn't mean he'll 'teach' you Visual C++ in a week." The whole "universe" was a fun idea for us, and I thought we had enough original, applicable ideas to give a certainly different experience than the standard "mideval world, complete X task to win" theme.

The group pretty much brushed off the whole idea after a while. We talked about it, no one really had anyway to make it all a reality. I still kept it in mind however. Our little "world" seemed to strike a cord with me. (Now, don't go assume I'm some sort of escapist, fantasy, loser that likes dressing up like chewbacca and building model spaceships.) I've spend a good deal of my childhood free-time playing videogames, and the experience has put many an idea in my head.

Now, here comes the part where Graal fits in... but first: I tried looking around for some basic game/RPG engines that might fit the bill for a nice "rough sketch" of what I could do. The only program that really caught my eye was "RPG Maker 2000", which was a japanese program translated by a Russian man into Engrish. At first, the program was amazing. It had some very nice tile and layer controls, EXTREMLY easy to manipulate "objects" and was built to make a completely heartless, carbon copy Final Fantasy rip-off. After a few days I hated it. It had no programming language, just 90 "actions" you could call and a completely illogical switch/flag/array/whatever system. Plus you could only move in a grid formation.

Then I thought: Hey, I remember that old Online game I used to play a few years back. What was it... Graal? Yeah, the Zelda Online thingy. I redownloaded the client, took a refresher on the editor, (I once made pretty mean guildhouse, never submitted though) and I started messing around. I made my own tileset, then promptly realized that after testing that I had no control over whether X tile blocks, does Y, or whatever.

I then go check out Graal's website. Hey! New stuff! What's "Graal Kingdoms"? I take a look, see the very nice lighting effects, simple presentation, and POWERFUL scripting abilities all over again. Yay-happy-smiles.

{--End Background Information--}




In a nutshell for those of you who hate reading, Graal has an incredible engine for our needs. It's 2D, it supports very nice detailed animation, the new version has a wonderful terrain system, (this is important for our "world", I'll get into more later,) the style of fighting is Action RPG (My FAVORITE), the scripting language is phenominal compared to other games, it has (massive) online play, it isn't Everquest, and it isn't quite so large and commercial that you never get to "meet" the creators.


I'm splitting this up into two posts, because there is a 10,000 character limit and I'm wordy.|
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Read below to continue

{--Our "World" Ideas--}

I'd like to share a very small portion of what our goals are for our project.

First off, never have I played a game that was truely "alive". By alive I mean day/night, seasons, weather, characters that actually go about their business, cities that could actually function as cities, and a million insignificant details (ie: fireflies that come out at night in the summer, and move around realistically in realation to the player) that all make you feel like settling down and just accomplishing nothing all day.

Zelda has given me some prime examples as to what I want to accomplish. In the rather off-beat and not-as-good-as-OoT Majora's Mask, the way the town sprang to life as people went about their daily tasks fascinated me. In Graal, things like this could easily be accomplished. Day/Night systems are just fancy timers, and any NPC can just go off of this to decide whether to go to the store or stay in due to rain. Piddly, insignifigant details like these make games have a true "universe" feeling rather than just a linear set of paths that sometimes modify NPCs actions.

For instance, everything in a virtual universe must have a purpose. If a person is standing on a street corner, he/she MUST have a reason to. A normal human being would not appreciate a person entering their house in the middle of the night searching for hearts, a NPC shouldn't say the same thing over and over no matter how many times you touch him.

You might be saying "That kind of excessive coding is pointless and time-consuming". My retort is this, quality over quantity. It isn't hard to make an NPC do this: "If its between 6-8am and sunny, I should be at the cafe eating breakfast, if it's rainy I should stay in my house". You can even take it a step farther and throw some randomness into it all: "If it's noon and sunny I should either go to the park, visit a friend, or go shopping". Notice these are all simple IF conditional statements, and albeit the actual code would be much more complicated, the right attitude and persistance will pay off with a truely alive dream.

Another favorite is the pointless interactive "doohickies" simply roaming around the world. Clocks telling the time, streetlights that turn on at night by a NPC walking along with a torch, ambient sound effects that actually have a source, wildlife that intelligently sleeps, eats, and roams without the need other than to simply make the "world" a more magical place. Graal Kingdoms is already a wonderful world, and I myself would like to take a stab at making my own.

No matter how many "quests" or "items" you put in the game, eventually everyone just ends up sitting around one central area either talking, trading, or killing each other. What if you could have a world so massive, so intricate, so interactive, that you could spend and entire day just roaming around without any purpose in mind, and throughly enjoy it? What if you could actually enjoy spending time with NPCs, what if they all had their own personalities? What if you could communicate with them on a very basic level, and build relationships? Simple statistics like "if the player visits me on my birthday, +5 to me liking him/her". When you attempt to interact with the NPC again, you could have a different routine depending on whether that NPC liked you enough or not. This idea would never be too complicated, you could never actually get the NPC to marry you or start following you around, just maybe give you a better price next time on that new piece of equipment, or give a brighter "Hello" on the street.

Imaging this model. I have a NPC named Ariana. She lives in a little house outside of town, and occaisonally can be found walking in the park or visiting her grandmother up on the hillside. She normally buys random amounts/types of fruit at the store, then can be seen eating them later that day at dinnertime. She goes to bed at ten, unless she has a new book to read then which she stays up another hour reading. In order to make this possible, simple IF conditionals that read flags set by a global time/weather system, global flags for the NPC "instances", and random numbers can be deployed. The same NPC would have an "instance" of itself at every location it "could" be. If the conditions are correct for said NPC to be "active" at the current time or situation, the NPC simply "turns on", and does it's task while the other instances remain invisible, waiting for their turn to be "active". Now, I myself need to do a little reasearch, but I'm sure this could be accomplished by simple server-side global flags. I'm a bit rusty on the details of these, and right now I'm just throwing out my ideas, so bear with me. Simple logic forks and randomness in a well thought-out way can accomplish a lot when it comes to NPCs that "beathe".

It would certainly take a while, but given the eventual streamlining of the process, filling a town full of life and interesting situations is highly possible. Also, if the number of different "actions" of NPCs becomes too predictable, and players begin to find them boring, you can simply add a new "instance" at a certain place or move around others. Heck, you could even make a certain "action" that did this automatically every few weeks or so. The exponential randomness could make process that wouldn't become passe for months or years at a time.

The "instance" idea is just my lack of knowledge of the NPC programming language after falling out of it a few years back. What would be best is to have a single NPC that has the ability to roam from one board to another. I do not know if this is possible, but a server-side NPC that could move freely to whatever board it wishes instead of having many "instances" eating memory would be wonderful.

Our "world" isn't just wishful pointless interactivity. We DO have a nice little storyline. It's not a futuristic, medieval, or some other cliché that everyone has done before. I really don't want to go into details, so I'll just say that yes, there is an extremely tightly woven plot, complete with many friendly characters that the player can actually form an emotional bond with. What I want most is a completely open-ended adventure, where the problem at hand needs remedy, but you are never forced through a linear path of "go do this, get this, talk to this, then get this, now fight boss." The player should always have a strong direction and constant guiding as to what he/she SHOULD do, but never be forced to complete or limited until the task is completed. Only positive re-inforcement should be given. ie: "If you find a way to solve this problem, or explore in this general direction, you will be rewarded with X item that lets you do Y." I don't like vague games, where you are just thrown into a world you do not understand, with people that for some reason speak English, eat American food, never offer to help you out, or continue to jabber on about some task when you are obviously at a loss of what to do. Again, everything must have it's place.

Races play a very important role in our "world". The current situation calls for five different people, each vastly different from one another. I wont give details as to the individual races as that would spoil a lot. Each race would have sharp opinion of another, whether it is contempt, fear, anger, kindness, pity, or bigotry.

This all sounds like a pipe dream from a overly zealous nerd right? Well, I'm gonna try dammit. My whole team is gonna try even if we eat a year's supply of nachos and mini-pizzas. We may just be a group of hick high school students, but we are also extraordinarily bored with lots of free time and no girlfriends (yet). We'll start with one town, that's it. Once it is deemed "finished" we'll move on. All I need now is the new editor for Graal to get started.

Now, this thread has to have a purpose for response, and here it comes. I have many questions . Not playing Graal for a few years and the lack of an organized database of information relating to Kingdoms has left me with many concerns. Please, if you can help me out please reply and do so. I'll even number them so you can pick and choose which to talk about.


Questions:

1a.) For any good scripters out there, is my idea of "active" NPCs possible? More specifically, can I have a guy that moves around even when no players are present (server-side) and can move between different boards? I've noticed many NPCs doing this in Kingdoms, and I hope I am right.

1b.) Also, how are things like global flags or global variables handled? Can I have a set of information solely for the server's manipulation of an NPC without crowding the player's flags?

2.) When is the level editor for the "new" verson 3 coming out? The pseudo-3D landscape if very important to our world and being able to play with this is important to me.

3.) Does the new terrain generate itself by deforming specific "nodes" as it were, setting an angle of a slope with points, or do you use a heightmap grayscale image where the lighter the pixel, the higher the terrain? I know Tribes 2's engine used heightmaps, and I've done some work with them in Cinema 4D.

4.)Here's one for those who aren't involved with Graal much and just like posting in the forums: "Do you like Ice Cream, if so, what flavor?"

5.) Would it ever be possible for me to get a local server set up test out our game? For example, could I take a computer on my home network, turn it into a server, load it up with my levels, and play on it with my friends to test it out over the LAN? I have almost no idea how to properly do serverside/clientside programming stuff.

One last word, the project name "Arcterus" is the (I think) appropriate spelling of the project Homer worked on with his boss Hank Scorpio (Albert Brooks) on The Simpsons.

Ciao.

1a: I'd assume so too.
2: I think the level editor for v3 won't be out for a while, but keep in mind, you can make the 3d terrain and everything you see with the current editor - you just need to know how to work it.
3: The way I've seen the 3d terrain made, doesn't use heightmaps at all.
4: I only like Chocolate Chip Mint (Or Mint Chocolate Chip as more commonly known).
5: I don't think that is possible now for one reason. If it could be set up like that, we would be getting "free" servers popping up everywhere, and Unixmad and Stefan are trying to run a business, not plow it into the ground.


And it seems like you have a good idea going here. Admittedly, I haven't read the message at length, but if you've typed that much for an idea, it would seem appropriate to assume that I'd like to see it. :)

While reading through all of that, some of your ideas reminded me of games like Shenmue, and a game in the works for X-Box called Fable, which sounds truly amazing. And I'm a very avid "old-school" gamer myself, but I disagree, you can find very many intriquete (sp?) plots and intriguing characters nowadays in games. It isn't all about the graphics like most people think, that's just a small part of games today to give them "realism". Anywho, games like Metal Gear Solid (not to mention 2) has the best plot I have ever seen in a game (IMO), and not to mention the wonder known as FF7. Those are just two gems out of the many others out there, though.

Moving on, all of your ideas are very do-able. Although I believe Koni is also doing the whole 'npcs say different things' bit also, however, I don't remember how in-depth he is making it when he explained it a long time ago. Version 3.0 is out now, although buggy..

Isn't hard? That depends. You could make the NPC instantly warp to wherever he wants to be, and then it would indeed be easy. On the other hand, you might want the NPC to walk between destinations. Then it gets more complicated. Some sort of pathfinding is necessary (unless you want to hardcode everything, which you do not), and that can be tricky, especially when you throw interfering players into the mix.

Two thumbs up. I've often extolled the benefits of such things and appreciated them in other games.

Yes, NPCs can move around of their own accord, irrespective of any player's actions.

Each NPC has its own list of variables and strings. Nothing needs to go in the player's strings, or be stored globally.

From my understanding of Stefan's progress, I think it will be relatively soon (sometime in July, certainly).

I'm not sure about the internal storage system. The world is made up of tiles, and the designer can use the editor to change the height of any vertex. I'm not sure how multiple tiles are changed at once - I'm a scripter, not a level guy.

I had some pear ice cream a few years ago. Unexpectedly delicious.

Unfortunately not.

Like i would read all that, LOL.

I started then went to see a reply to something I read at first, then saw how long both of his posts were! x-x

He seems to be a hard worker, judging from his post lengths. :p

Terrain
 

Yes you can use 3D terrain already. You first need to know how to use the 3D terrain. To use it you should have a program called the terrain genorator. Which I happen to have :). Then it allows you to make a world by how ever many levels you want and how ever you want it to look. once you design your world on the terrain gen you should save 2 copys of it 1 in gmap form and 1 in levels form. Once thats done then you put a spific code in the starting level or in a players npc so that it will show the terrain when ever you are on the set of levels made with the terrain gen. The gmap is actually like a map txt allowing you to use terrain when activated with an npc on the levels that start with a certain word. The word you chose should be the name of your server. Then in the level editor there will be little + signs over the tiles that will allow you to move them up or down to make the terrain go up or down. Ill explain the npc thing later k :). Also In the npc code you put in the name of the gmap which will connect all the levels like a map txt file does only it lets you use terrain.
There is also another code youl need for your tileset to work which Ill explain about later. Also when your tileset is finshed youl want to make it a little lighter then usuall because the terrain has a habit of making tiles a little darker then they really are.

Ok here are the npc codes youl be needing.

if (created) {
loadmap yourgmapname.gmap; (This loads the map txt file which is the gmap and allows you to use terrain on the levels all starting with the name you chose for the levels to start with when saved on the terrain program.)

addtiledef pics1.png,start,0; (Add tiledef is another story entirely. I will post my entire guide of how this works in a minute.)

addtiledef2 newwatertiletile.gif,start,0,0;
}



First you must understand a tile is 16 pictules by 16 pictules
and once you make a tile you can add it to Graal in a way less lagy way like using it as a npc. there is a thing called addtiledef now in Graal level editing there is a big menu of tiles to use now what addtiledef2 does is it takes a tile and covers it over any tile on that menu a easy way to do this is put a npc in the level you want lets say this level is named newtiles now put a npc in your level and put the following script in it
if (playerenters){addtiledef2 nameoftile.gif,newtiles,0,0;}
its really hard to guess where to put the tile so to make it easy I just copy pics1.png and add what ever I want this way I can control which tile is ground and which is not which ones the player can walk on and which he can not now your probly wondering why the nameoftile.gif and the newtiles and the 0,0 thing ok ill explain that first copy pics1.png and add what ever you want then lets say you name it pics to the script would be addtiledef2 pics2.gif,newtiles,0,0;} but why the newtiles thing ok well lets say you just put new rather then newtile that would make all the levels with the word new have that tile in the tile menu but this can be good for like making a server when you want to have all the levels in your server have this new tile set but if you just want one level to have it just put the name of the level with out the .nw or .graal ok so you understand that now for the 0,0 thing
well that's the y and x of where the tile will be put on the menu this is why I copy pics1 because I can just cover the whole thing over and have what I wanted added added so now you understand addtiledef your welcome :):) also if you added something you dident want to add just get rid of all the words in this file tiledefsoffline.txt

Please note my addtiledef guide is old so there might be some grammer "mestakes".

Re: Terrain
 

The terrain generater is a outdated program, because heights are not stored in the gmap any longer...from what I understand, it may cause problems. Plus, personally, I think it looks rather ugly, no realism to it. Best to do it all manually, especially the water...A gmap is a mere 3 line long text file which tells the width/height of the levels, and the last generated. Use levelgen to create a number of levels, then plug in the proper width/height in the gmap. From there, load the map in the levels using the command loadmap, and be sure to use a new tileset otherwise it will look rather...odd.

Personally, I prefer a flat terrain, because I enjoy the classic feel. But either way, gmaps are needed because they allow a variety of things, including level preloading, more commands, and the NPCs can jump levels without being database.

Hah! Good to head there's a helpful community that appreciates the value of exotic ice cream. Seeing that it is possible to make the 3D terrain now completely roxxors my boxxors. One I get a little more familiar with scripting again I'll start on something I can show off. I need a catchy name... this will probably take more time than just making the demo... "Super-Happy-Phase-Alpha-Test" should do for now.

Today I'll start messing with the terrain, and my current goal is this:

Make a single, non-actually-going-to-be-in-the-game town full of characters than will probably also not make it into the game, as default human sprites aren't my "theme". I'll concentrate on making this little village as "alive" as possible, and after getting the basic structures and ambience down, I'll start adding people and fleshing out the little mini-village. Hopefully this can give me some good practice in general design, and I'll be sure to post any major developments for all.

As for some of your replies:

"...you might want the NPC to walk between destinations. Then it gets more complicated."

If at all possible, I would like to have the NPC's walk/travel to their destinations. I think this would be possible if I can get the movement distances memorized, and just cut and paste little routines to walk x amount left, walk y amount up, pause for z amount of time, etc. The characters should stay within a fairly small number of boards, so I don't think it would be out of the question to code everyone. I could even duplicate certain people and just change their head/body/characteristics and add a few different places without having to rewrite much.

As for possible paths for NPCs to follow, I'm intrigued at the idea. Maybe I could just fill the town with "hotspots" at corners, obstacles, etc. NPCs could be free to move at their own wills, and move around players if they happen to be blocked (along with a rather rude speech for bumping into them). If I kept the paths narrow and free of possible debris (The game itself will probably not give players the freedom to plant blocking objects wherever they please.) I'll definately want to put a lot of time into this, but how can you make an NPC test for the location of another NPC? Another possible outcome for the game would be no combat in a town zone, I'd rather stress cooperation outside in combat areas than in towns with ****s. People need limits to their interactivity, and should not be able to do something detrimental to the world or its inhabitants without repercussions.


The part about not being able to have local servers makes perfect sense. Although it would be nice to have the option to purchase a "development kit" for your use only, and if "free" servers started popping out Stephen and Unixmad could go medieval on whoever bought the kit. Ahh, that's too risky.


In regards to the "Terrain Generator", I do not have it, I searched the Graal Dirctory and all I have is the old "Level Generator" that always made me angry. As for the tilesets, I already knew that much, but the part about making the 3D terrain is really what I wanted.

I'm a little disapointed that you dont have the ability to modify which tiles are blocking, water, etc. It will be a pain to constrict every new tile to a certain form. Bah, I'll do it anyway, I'll get used to it.

Also, can I make my tileset larger than 2048 pixels wide? Will the properties just wrap around or will I just have major corruption?


A few more questions

6.) Is there any problem if I happen to use some of Kingdom's characters/graphics/NPCs for a test? Will Stephen or Unixmad get upset at me even if it is just temporary?

7.) Somewhat in realation to 6, but is there anyway to have the nice GUI in Kingdoms and statistics for my own purposes? I have no intention of simply ripping them off, but I have no idea how to properly do something like they have already done so well.

8.) In even more relation to 6, is there any way I can take a look at the code for devices in Kingdoms like the Bows, and most importantly, the enemies and their health bars. I don't plan on stealing the code, I just want to see the best was to do something, then write my own according to my own specifications.

9.) Will the new level editor have the ability to modify such things as the statistics for players like in Kingdoms? Classic-style fighting just isn't in depth enough, and having HP, MP, etc. is what I really want. Can I do this now?


Also, DavidPsy, in the name of all things holy try to use periods when explaining something.

Read your PMs. I have stated I would be happy to answer your questions on AIM, so contact me some time...

To make it simple, anything is possible on the Graal engine, it is simply a matter of doing it efficiently. Heh, I believe Kaimetsu has even proven 3d functions are possible as well ;).

But anywho, I know just about everything there is to know when it comes to world developement, so just send me a message and I can answer all of your many questions.

To answer some of your questions, no, you cannot have tilesets larger than pics1.png. They can be smaller, however.

To answer 6 and 7, it is suggested you use the default images or create your own. What is GK's is GK's and that is part of the deal you make when you use terrain. Same thing goes with 8. Its unlikely they'll just hand you the script unless you are trusted.

For 9, its been done long ago and can still be done today :) Its easier, in my opinion, to do your own HP/MP system than re-vamped controls. But as long as you know what you are doing there should be no problems :)

You could do it that way, but there are possible problems to being so static:

1) What if a player is standing in the way? Walk around or through?
2) What if the NPC finds a monster in its path? Do they ignore one another?
3) What if you want to change the behaviour of the NPC or the layout of the town? Respecifying the nodes would take a long time.

Yes, dynamic pathfinding is usually the best approach :)

That depends on the type of NPC. Usually I would expect townsfolk of this type to be database NPCs, which means that accessing their information is a simple matter:

NPC Code:

---

with(getnpc(NPCName)){

 (now 'x' and 'y' refer to the coords of the NPC specified in the line above)

}

---

The whole tileset cannot exceed that limit, but that's not usually a problem. You can specify different tilesets for different areas, so you usually have enough space.

Probably not, if the material isn't made available to the public.

You could take the graphics, but the script will have to be recreated. It's not as complicated as it looks :)

Unlikely, but maybe. You'd need to talk to Stefan.

Sure you can. Such information is usually stored in strings, and the level editor has full provision for such things.