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This community right now is nice, small and very young.
With all of the recent bug problems with DBpro alot of confidence has been lost in the product, making people wait to buy the full product and such...

So I've come up with a simple idea that will help give everyone something to have confidence in, yet at the same time feel that no matter what is created afterwards they've had a part in something that hasn't just ceased development.

The idea is pretty straight forward, I will upload a game design - it is quite comprehensive and right now I'm copying it into Word and Scanning in all of the concepts.
Now everyone will be free to read this Gameplan, as it'll be like a community project.
The game will be created open source, meaning that at all time the source and media will be available to everyone.

A two ftp accounts will be opened specifically for this project. I'll be making a simple FTP Upload/Downloader for this, in account 1 will be the final source download account - which will be where the currently working game source code, media will be stored. Account 2 will be developer uploading account, each person helping will be given thier own directory for thier source code and media. For space reasons media will be basically ONLY what you created yourself, and will be available for download on the other account. Only the Alpha Team will have access to the Final Source Account!

The Alpha Team will be in charge of final production, editing etc... basically we'll be like header coders making all of the good code you guys create seperately and embedding it in such a way that it will then work with the rest of the game
Members for this team will need a very good knowlage of DB/DBpro.

Story
--//--
A law enforcement agent in the city called Chloe Daala, finds something strange with a case she is working on. It takes her on a journey to the ancient ruins of the Ancient Zoidian in the valley of the Pulse Death. Where she will find the secret behind the metallic creatures called Zoids that inhabit planet Zi, and discover the gateway to Terra!

Game
--//--
This will be mostly be a 3rd person game, where you have a city to find clues and travel using these Zoids.
For this reason the terrain of the worlds will need to be a cross between BSP for the city and buildings and Matrix patches for terrain. The games minimum specs in this case are to be quite lapsed so we'll be aiming for ->
800Mhz | 64Mb Ram | 16Mb 3D Card | 16Bit Sound | Dx8.1b | Win9x/XP
Stanard Graphics Mode will be 640x480x16bpp
and a combination of Keyboard and Mouse will be used, however a Sidewinder Gamepad control system is also wanted
Right now I'm unsure about network capabilties, but not too important right now either.
I'd like to impliment a fighting system within this similar style to Oni, however we'll need to make it a little slower and more realistic. And a decent battle engine for the Zoids will be required as most of the later parts of the game WILL be Zoids battles (think Mechs in the shape dinosaurs and animals)

Thats is basically the outline of the game, there is alot more to come on this but that is enough to make everyone think about if they want to join in right now.
Be sure if you'd like to be on the Alpha Team to DBmail me

By the way incase you make it this far down my post , I'm not actually asking for full time from everyone - infact if all you do is say make a single rock that we'll use then you will be credited for your work. Its more of a if you have the time or want to help us then jump in we'll have no objections, however the Alpha Team Members should be willing to put in about an hours work a work atleast to help get everything working
I have to tell you there is no profit in this, so anyone wanting to make a fast buck - then I would doubt it, as no one is planning to make any money out of this.
However once complete this game isn't going to be put into some obscure website no one visits, so having your name in the credits will get you noticed BIG time by alot of people

Well Thanks for your time (^_^)
Hope this all seems worthwhile...

hmm, sounds like a good idea, but it would take a ton of organization!

Its a good idea but like rapscallion said it would need a lot of organisation and effort to make. It would be easier to make a simple game with no story just gameplay with a low aim, and because it is open source this would make a good tutorial learning thing. If this is completed then it would be better to make a slightly larger aimed game i.e. with story etc. Anyways i would like to help you with this

make a open source game, to help the community.

you would have to rely heavly on the dbpro editor since it has a todo list (if you use it).

maybe someone for ai, someone for models, someone for sound, etc etc

to get this game made quickly you would need at least 10 people. 1 person for different bits of the game.

That sounds like a cool idea.. maybe I could design a webpage for it once you get started, since I want to help, but I'm not as good at coding and such

The aim here isn't on speed of development, it isn't on being a tutorial game. What this is all about is getting a complete game developed by the community that will hopefully have a little something from each of them.

I will be editing the FMTau Labs forum for added Threads specifically for the Development of this title, which should help ease the organisation problem.
It was thought long and hard about what the best setup for people developing for this would be, and I eventually decided that if we gave everyone complete freedom - it might force everyone to develop some basic team skills. The Alpha Team will be posting up about the sections done and such, so stuff complete won't be worked upon... however we expect alot of people to talk about what they are doing not only with the team but each other. After a while Organisation will just cease to be a problem as everyone learns to become a big team

The story for this game right now is quite extensive and if the story is developed exactly would mean this isn't going to be a little game
However alot of it still has yet to be developed like areas, puzzles and such... which I am now asking for help with this part.

And Nazca you've made some pretty sweet sites, as it always takes me years to finish them... be cool if you could help out on that front - thanks

Right, I've edited up the forum ... rather than changing it for the use of the game, i've decided to just add a forum thread as part of this.
"DarkBasic Pro - Ancient Shadows" is the forum title.
Althought it doesn't look like it from the fact only a couple of post have been made, there are about 25members right now ... all bar 2 have been exclusively invited.
http://www.arborwood.com/forums/fmtaulabs
Yes it is a cheap self serviced forum that doesn't accept big attachments. But it has the basics that most forums have, and it is really a temporary solution setup whilst my personal server is down - basically it is being overhauled, adding better Virus protection and greater Security.
Hopefully once that is all done I can then get the proper forum back online

It is a complete forum so if you want to just have a little fun there to, feel free too...

Oki, right now i fell like free time is one of those mythical things people talk about ...
Hehee - well atleast I'm sure i'm not the only one working til i drop

I've been working on making the design smaller, as right now the Readme.doc is about 10.3Mb
I have sketched two new things ->



I think for a while atleast I'm just going to upload parts to my ftp and let everyone take a look at the design. Until there are enough people its gonna just be me designing alot of this
I have a some of the Organoid - Cypher to sketch up properly, a few action poses for Officer Daala and part of the first city to make.

In case anyone wants to think about it, we'll be making the game in sections - starting with getting the main 3D Engine in order along with things for creating the model formats and such.
As the actual game models will need to have LOD, some internal parts, multitextureing (shaders) ... and the worlds are to be a combined Node BSP and Patch Quads, there is alot of the technical difficult stuff to actually develop mostly first. Really could do with some oldies who know thier way around DBpro for this, and one or two who also know some VB/C++
I'm still mostly in the format planning stages, because making a BSP setup for a world isn't easi from scratch.

The benifits will be very very very great however once done. First Benfit is DB will have its OWN world format, created by the community completely commercial free. Second is that I'm using Qoole '99 as a base for the Developer of it, so its a pretty easi setup for actual creation.
On my own this will take forever, especially with my problem of helping most people who ask for me to :$

Really need a good brainstorming session soon
Well I know a few of you do have idea on formats and such, so you guys should really contact me ... [email protected] <MSNM>

Well hopefully this is enough for now, I'm going to create Daala in Max tommorrow, just for practise and also to have some sort of nice Character model just for showing off

Oh and Nazca, I have a site design all done if you're up for a challenege
My ftp (althought free) can handle asp,php,MySql,cgi-bin so although your limited to 2Mb per file - should be enough for a decent Dreamweaver & Flash Combo site

Oh and i've setup the 2 ftps for the source use, i'll be making a dbpro based uploader/downloader tonight for them

Well, i wanna show everyone the new character, zoid, organiod and a few area sketchs ... however my scanner is on the fritz - i guess it'll have to wait until i get home, perhaps i'll have more luck with it. Its annoying after all the work i've been made to do and finish by today the coders have been slackin' off and they've not even close to finished ... they turn'd around and told me "there was no rush, we've been takin' things easy" - all i can say is thank god chiq was there to drag me outta there
After some quality time with the cube releasing my frustration on pikachu - i decided to make a start on some more graphics, which is why right now i'm cursing at WinXP not wanting to regonise the scanner.

i've also got the slimmed version of the design to upload a lil later ... can't do it from work no more the NIS 2003 seems to have setup a firewall around bloody everything, so until i figure out how this new one works gonna have to wait until i get home for that too.

I've had some good ideas for the world format, for example the matrix should be setup from patch splines - this would allow vertex points to be based and charted due to complexity, and pave the way for basic on the fly LOD (tesselation). Might tinker with a basic design tonight see what i come up with
Also I'm aware of how BSP works with its leaf, node, geometry type - however i was thinking perhaps this isn't the best way to produce this... becuase the vis portal system in this manner still needs to run the full length, whereas you could setup a simple distance modifier which means that the portal nodes could be setup as the distance of say 100 units (which could represent a meter per unit), and then give priority to the single nodes closest for the vis draw then zbuffer... so that based upon performance will depend on how far ahead the cpu will detect the nodes for the vis beam
I guess another idea just to tinker with over the next week or so - probably have another thought on howto do this tommorrow, don't have the skill to code that many versions -but perhaps someone here does have the skill to work up prototypes.

I've yet to check out the DBpro meshmemblocks fully, because without the header setup, i'm wondering if the mesh from memblock is actually open due to code - is something interesting to know.

If anyone else has any idea for this, be good to hear them

Oki well i've decided that the concept is way to large to all be in a single chunk
so i've posted up the start of the game and a breif Zi history on the FMTau Forum (link in a post above)

I'm still working on getting the sketches scanned and also on the chloe model, however as Max seems to wanna crash whenever i put a pic in the bg it hasn't been easi

hopefully in a few hours before i start off for home i'll have finished her - if so i can ask my skinner to work on it, be better than anything i can do

I know this isn't related to the post so sorry but I'm interested in how/where you got a free forum
If you could let me know how to get a free forum and/or a free chat room I would be most appreciative

Thanks, Incandescant

my brother showed me actually... he has a knack for finding things on the net
http://www.arborwood.com isn't exactly state of the art, but its a decent enough place
i used to have a Microsoft Community Forum, but it ran far too slow.

The arborwood one will be there as a backup community for whenever FMTau's main forums are down - however right now as the Server is down for redevelopment, i decided to get a professional in to redo the forum... being updated for the .Net age

Minor updates to the story tommorrow morning (probably about 5-6am mytime) and if anyone hasn't noticed - gameSpace is back and lookin' sharp
It'll be the world creator for this project, so probably worth taking a look... not much yet - but soon wil be ALOT to offer.

Will be updating the FMTau Forums in a little while, gonna actually go offline (well by offline i mean afk, i mean seriously why would i turn off my computer? ) - Gonna be working on alot of new concept sketchs and a flow diagram for the dynamic story base
"All paths lead to the great beyond. Which you choose to take defines you as a person"

After recieveing my beta copy of TR:AOD yesterday from my bro who actually came here to deliver it in person :o - to say i was shocked is an understatement as he hates to fly!
Well anyway if i had to start making the top 100 for next year, tell you the top 10 would be the hardest yet.
Tomb Raider may not seem like it from what they've shown, however it is now an OUTSTANDING game that requires more thinking and planning this time... you do something in it - off the wrong person. You job is a little harder. The story isn't quite as dynamic as I was lead to believe, however that combined with some ideas i've gained from playing Tiberium Sun over and over again (blame Flyer_Commander_Dude ). The setup for the game has been planned and even the guys at work are saying if we can pull this off it'll be outstanding

Now you may see that I've been getting stuck into DBpro head first ... well - there is alot of hidden potential within DBpro which everyone else is going to see as more and more plugins are created.

I'd like to let everyone know that gameSpace is back ontrack and really comming alone well
gameSpace is being developed as a plugin product, so the modeler/animator - world crafter - paintshop are all within the same product however each are a seperate DLL.

it will be released in 3 versions - Basic (free), Standard ($100) and Professional ($500) ... each will use the same plugin libraries however the compile will detect what to use.
I will release later news on what each version will contain
However the Basic version will be available soon (after testing) for everyone and should be all most will require to help.