Though it's not the design guide, it's important preliminary work, it's the base concept of the 3 upcoming projects, so you get a better overview of what's really planned and especially how SE and TSP differ from each other. You can get the stuff here, I'm awaiting feedback of all kind, it'd be important (provided you want to take part in such base decisions). I'll move on to writing the detailed SE design guide shortly.

I really liked the text. Things are more clear now, but I have something to say: I don't mean to sound like a smart guy, but the Serpent Power game, which I see like something similar to Betrayal in Antara, it doesn't seems possible to make, at least in a normal period of time. You see, all those dialogues, storylines, and variations will take a huge amount of time, for planning, writting and adding to the game it self. To place all those characters, and make them react to specific events, control those scripts, which will be related to, in some cases, most of the game's world (like the invasion), and that only in the gameplay side. What about the dramatic and grasping story line, (the best one I've ever played was the storyline of Dragon Lore 2, very good in all details. If it weren't for the rude errors in animations, the game would be perfect) that takes lots of effort and talent, since it's it that will keep the player in the chair, playing the game. Don't take me wrong, if I could choose to make a game, that is the kind I would do, but do you think only the 3 of us can do it? I mean, I'm not a writter, so I can't help in big side of the project (although I can give some ideas). What do you think? By the way, some ideas: I think we could have a sleeping system similar to the one in Dragon Lore2. When you sleep (a minimun of 8 hours), you might loose some events or oportunities to meet some people, etc. An example is that in the game you can only meet some peoples in the day time, others in the night time, and some events happens, as you already mentioned, in specific days (like the jousting tournement), and in the game, you HAVE (although you are not forced to) to find some itens which will be crucial in the future (in the game, you have to find an orb before the an event takes place). -People react to you or talks to you differently according to your fame (there are people who didn't like you before the game started, others who don't like the player's look, etc) or according to the way you talk to them (I remember a lady, a female dragon knight, who sympathized with the player, Werner von Wallenrod, and she would help me and encourage me, but if I showed some kind of weakness or cowardliness, by the way I talked, she would loose respect and I would have to gain it all over again. There were another dragon knight who were the best swordsman of all knights, and he didn't like the player at all, because he didn't think the way he became a knight was fair (the player became a knight in Dragon Lore 1, and although I never played it, I think he did it by helping defeat an evil dragon knight). You know, those kinds of things. Maybe the player should have a secret status, which he wouldn't know about, but that status would tell how the npcs would react to him. Example: the satatus go from 0 to 20. The npcs would have a way to know the player's status, and would react differently if he has 5, 10 or 20.

Korax Mod 1.0 was started and finished by me and Camper. For KMOD 2.2, the list of contributors is way longer. Also, for SE while the current team consists of 3 persons, another half a dozen contributed in a significant manner. And once SE is out, we might awake the interest of still more people and get more people to help us, especially that once DOOM 3 is out, mapping for the old DOOM won't be so hot any more... I think there's a chance some of them will migrate to Heretic or Hexen, or at least can be talked into doing that. Also, once we migrate to Vavoom after the completion of SE, AFAIK it'll be possible for people to write a single modul externally, which would make it easier for programmers to help us out a bit but not get involved big time. As for a DM, there might be some out there, I was just never looking for one as I felt no need for one this far, but for TSP most probably we'll need several who will design the dungeons as separate entities. I've got in touch with 2-3 DMs over the last year, they might want to help us out with TSP. And so on... I think maybe 10% of the work time on TSP will be for artwork, 25% for programming (excl. map-specific scripting), 40% for mapping (incl. scripting and monster/item placement) and 20% for game design like concepts, storyline, quests, dialogues, voice acting etc. (yes I know it's not 100% yet, but there are some smaller tasks too, like writing a manual). This means we can most probably get through with only one artist, with 1 or 2 programmers (and maybe some coders who help out a bit), but we'll definitely need several mappers on the project, and either 1-2 full time members or half a dozen part-time contributors to game design. And with mapping I made the estimation for a minimal version, if we want very detailed environments (like half a dozen towns and 35 villages, each with a bunch of houses you can enter and explore fully decorated and furnished insides of buildings, or detail-work dungeons, extensive and non-monotonous countryside etc.), time needed on mapping work will be several times more (though in this case amount of artwork needed will rise most probably as well). And yes, I'm absolutely aware that unless we get more team members, TSP will either take years to complete, or we'll have to omit a lot of stuff. Not to forget is the fact that for Arena we'll do a lot of stuff that will be used in TSP as well, be it artwork or programming (or even music or sound effects or whatever). Also, Arena might be popular enough to get some mappers try their hands on making maps for it, and since it uses the same map format as TSP, that's already half a victory. [img]images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] Another thing to mention, if you followed the happenings lately, a project is going on to create all Heretic and Hexen monsters and items in MD2 format for the Doomsday engine. While the definitions will have to be written for Vavoom anew, the bulk of the work (i.e. the models and skins) will be ready for our use. That means to create 25 different versions of the Ettin, you'll only need to modify one single image file, the skin, 25 times. I think it's a lot less work than creating 25x the full sprite animation sequence (correct me if I'm wrong). Using 3D models exclusively would give us another edge, together with the enhanced capabilites of the world engine in Vavoom that would mean the game wouldn't look decidedly older than a Quake II engine game, making it much more competitive in, say, 2004, than the technology behind SE would be. With the rapid evolution of CPUs and 3D cards, there should be IMO no prob in 2 years from now to display 500 (relatively low-resolution) polygon monsters on an average computer, and for those who don't have the horsepower, we could always keep the sprites as an option. BTW sprites are once again in, if you've seen SoF2 or Jedi Knight II, they use a lot of sprite for foliage, not only for the leaf clusters of the trees, but also for all those wawing grasses. This means we could very well use the same technology for our projects. I'll think about your other suggestions while writing the SE design guide. [img]images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Well, while I think about what you said, here are some more ideas: There should also be a limit to the inventory, and like Dragon Lore 2 or Antara, big objects need more room than small ones. Of course there could be objects like the bag in Heretic, that, if you buy or find, would let you carry more things. If you wanna be realistic, there could be a strenght/stamina measure that, although secret, would be very important in fights. Like in Dragon Lore 2 (again), this measure the fighting capacity, and as every blow takes their respectives points from the strenght, a player with a low stamina would have a hard time to beat an enemie (the attacks would become slower and weaker everytime. In pratical terms, it would be like decreasing the player's levels temporarily). In that game, although the status bar increases automaticly, and fast, the maximun total decreases everytime you deliver a blow, or by lack of sleep or food. This allow players to fight like a madman, and then be in danger while he have to wait the player to regain his breath, or be wiser and fight with balance. It coul be left for Serpent Power, though. Making the player pass through an economic crisis is the best way of letting him know the deeper details of a city. This way he will have to look for jobs, steal or maybe fight in arenas, for money(or even something more dangerous). He would have to maybe sleep in the dark and cold streets (and maybe be stolen and beatten), or stay hungry and thus unabble to fight properly untill he gets money or get some food or sleep (this if the stamina/strenght status is implemented). This could be left for Serpent Power too.

Put this way, I must say it is possible, and with some help, we could create something big. [img]images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] But I don't agree in the definitions you gave for wrtittings and art. Although I can make singular sprites and graphics easily and in a fast manner, I don't think I could make all the npcs/enemies sprites in a sane amount of time. I'm having problems to make some for SE, which will use much less ones, if I'm right. Unless most of the npcs will be like the ones in Antara, where they have only the standing position. And the writting will be also complicated. Unless you want to do as in Antara (again), when you kinda ask people questions, instead of choosing phrases for yourself (resulting in a simplified talk system and less text), you will have to think of dozens of different answers and questions for each character, just to have a normal conversation. And making them react in different manners and differently for each player class will take even more time. I'm not trying to put you guys down, I'm just trying to call your attention to those subjects. "a project is going on to create all Heretic and Hexen monsters and items in MD2 format for the Doomsday engine. While the definitions will have to be written for Vavoom anew, the bulk of the work (i.e. the models and skins) will be ready for our use. " It seems I'm out of a job... [img]images/smiles/icon_sad.gif[/img] Yes, it is much easier to make skins than make sprites. Although as a individual graphic they take much more work, in the end they are much easier than make all those frames. And although I can make some skins, I really MUST learn how to model decently, so I can participate in projects such as this. And animation are so cool... I could make some really good models, if I just just had time and material to learn. And what is sad is that I found a good free program in the Net, called Blender, but when I finally decided to buy their manual, so I could really learn about it, they went bankrupt and closed their site.

To give you a concept of how much time mapping can take, the shop map in KMOD 2.2 cost me somewhen between 4 and 8 hours. And it's not even something very special. Imagine a town with 3 buildings which are all more detailed than that shop... and that's only one town from a dozen. I guess now it's clear why the huge world concept of TSP won't be possible without a score of mappers. Before you get into a state of shock, let me tell you it's not that much work now seems like, as I'm planning on working with prefabs ( = small elements of a map that can be reused in other maps), like making 5 different type of village houses, and using slightly different texturing to create a village of 30 houses where you don't have the feeling you're walking the demonstration fields of a mansion fab. [img]images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] As for learning how to skin models, you still have at least until the end of this year, since we won't use 3D monsters in SE. Also, in TSP we could very well work with sprites until nearly to the end of the project.

Hey, just to say it's my birthday today, I'm turnning 19. [img]images/smiles/icon_cool.gif[/img] By the way, where are you guys? RambOrc, I'm almost finishing the logo, as soon I as do it, I'll send the pic for you all, alright?

You should've mentioned it a week ago, then I'd have been able to send over Witchaven in time to arrive on this (BTW boringly, yearly repeated [img]images/smiles/icon_razz.gif[/img] ) occasion. This way it might get to you a week or more after your birthday, making it a somewhat belated "present". [img]images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]

Then you are sending the game itself? I thought you were sending a cd with the graphics!!! I'm so idiot! [img]images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] I don't know how to thank you again RambOrc...

LOL, next time I'll give you a present instead of other people too, I think, you're at least enthusiastic about it. [img]images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] ...take for example my former father, back in the 90s we gave him several times big presents worth a lot of money (and I mean a thousand bucks and more), and he didn't even really say "thank you". [img]images/smiles/icon_sad.gif[/img]

It has happened to me before, too. [img]images/smiles/icon_sad.gif[/img] We should always thank whoever give you something, because it is, at least, a demonstration of care or friendship. I always felt that whatever te "present" may be, it's worth our gratitude. Anyway, thank you very very much. I just thought about something that I could make to compensate you... [img]images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

The logo is 80% done. The major enhancements are done, the big pixels gone and only the helmets and the cape remains.