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I haven’t done much more on the IsoEngine this week, but I thought I’d post two small screenshots as promised. I’ve been having some thoughts on the way I’m handling and managing objects in the engine, and it’s likely that I’ll be substantially reworking the way I do things before I continue any further; funny how sometimes you can’t see the wood for the trees.
I’ve been thinking lately about what my goal is with regards to the game since I think I need some sort of end-point to work towards. Quite a while ago I posted a fairly long post about some ideas that I’d been having with regard to using programming as a game interface method, and the response to the thoughts that I jotted down were overwhelmingly positive, so I think I’d like to pursue this, albeit in a somewhat watered-down form to start with.
So in very general terms this is what I have in mind: a 2.5D tile-based online fantasy RPG, in which players are wizards who must construct their own spells as .NET classes within the game’s framework. Initially the spells available for crafting will be limited to summoning creatures to do their bidding, which will largely be to fight the creatures summoned by other players in a sort of online arena-style combat; think Magic: The Gathering, but you’re making your own cards. So the “spell” in this instance will largely consist of crafting an AI for the summoned creature and defining its power levels and behaviour within certain predefined parameters and limits. Obviously players will gain prestige and possibly power by smacking down their sorcerous opponents. As work on the game progresses I’d like to expand its scope, but this seems like as good a place to start as any, and should make it playable sooner than if I tried to implement a full-on online world.
There’s a lot still to be worked out, but the basics of the engine itself are there, and I’m almost at the point where I can start concentrating completely on the game server and the actual game mechanics themselves. Art for the game is a fairly significant problem, as I’m sure it is for a lot of free independent games, and there are no prizes for guessing where I nicked the art from that you can see in the screenshots, so if anyone out there is a budding game artist I’d be appreciative of any and all help. The look I have in mind for the game is slightly retro, pretty tongue-in-cheek, and perhaps a little campy, something like the *** love-child of Ultima Online and Terry Pratchett.
I’ll post more thoughts as I have them, along with any progress, and as always I’d be interested to hear anyone’s thoughts on the ideas.
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