Ye Olde Blah

Hi dudes :P

Ty and I have been running The Shining Source for a good four years in total now as you already know ;), but the resurrection of the Shining Series had an effect on our site we didn't quite anticipate. Until the new Shining games came out the whole fangame scene slowly grew and developed, with usually several active projects out there.

Ever since the SF1 remake came out though, the scene is remarkably quiet and much of the projects are diverging much more from Shining Force than a few years ago. Things like Shining Card Games, Pen & Paper roleplaying games and even a movie (I just read ;) ) are dotting the surface.

These projects don't quite overlap with the current concept of the Shining Source and hence we've been noticing an increasing downturn in traffic and updates. We are a little caught off-guard by this turn of events, and we're not totally sure yet how to respond to this, considering we don't have sufficient time to breath very much new life into our own projects either.

A couple of ideas are floating around however, and I would like to mention them here so that we can have an open discussion about it :).

- One idea is to keep things the way they are right now, of course :P.
- Another idea is to broaden the scope so that TSS does not only aim at Shining Style computer games, but also specifically on any kind of fan-made Shining inspired game (card games, P&P RPG's etc). Although this would increase the activity of the site, a large drawback is the amount of help we can supply. After all, with such a diverse variety of games, it's hard to provide those resources that the project developers are particularly looking for.
- A third idea is to broaden the scope, but this time to any turn-based tactical RPG. This would increase site activity, and we would still be able to provide very focused help. The big drawback though, is that the site would lose a good bit of its Shining games, as there are plenty of non-Shining tactical RPG's.

These are basically the things that I thought of, but if any of you guys have a vision on what is best for the future of TSS, I would really love to hear it! Also, feedback on my ideas is very much appreciated. Without it it is nigh impossible for us to determine what is right for the community.

So take a few minutes time to think about it and do us a favor. We'll owe you one ;).

You are pretty much doing this already arent you ? With penn pong and that. Also, as those sort of projects join up, they might be able to help themselfs between them here in the forums, as they are working on the same thing, like you do to the SF tactical turn based games.

The third option is nice, but then you get FFT/FFTA clones, and FFTA sucks :P . Also you'll have to redesign the site so its less shining-y and more tactical rpg-y. All the time you've spent on the current one would be wasted ( ok you could just change the logo, but still, its using up more time for something that is fine as it is ).

So go with the second option, thats my opinion, as you are pretty much doing it already.

I must say, I'm not sure the decrease in site traffic is entirely related to the types of Shining games being developed. The forums have been practically dead for a while too, but we've come to expect that over the summer. Generally though, I suppose we do notice an increase amount of work going into Shining games, but this hasn't materialised this year.

Personally, I always thought the point of The Shining Source was to provide exposure and help for Shining-style projects, of which there are still lots and lots (I believe our project list is the biggest it's ever been). Although we have a few D&D experts here, and those who might know how Magic: The Gathering plays, I'm sure we have more experts on A* pathfinding, artificial intelligence and other aspects of Shining fangamery. (If I'm wrong, I apologise :P)

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that we should stick to our strengths, and try to help Shining developers in the best way we know how. The odd post here and there to help other projects is fine I suppose, but personally my vote goes to staying the way we are. As I constantly reminded myself in my school days, "popularity isn't everything" :P

Hmm, I've certainly been absent a long time. *Ahem* sorry...  :(
It is a real shame that so little progress gets made, but it seems inevitable: rpg's that take a full team of developers a good year to make are being made by (mostly) one-man teams.
Sorry, that sounds really pessimistic, and I dont have any good solution to that. This site has been awesome, and I'm really impressed with the dedication of you guys who have kept it running. Maybe you could broaden it out to include other tactical rpgs 'n stuff like that if it gets more people in. That way, you could then expose them to SF, and im sure they'll immediately transform the game they're making into an SF game! ;)
Perhaps part of the problem is the complex nature of SF - i think the big turnoff to fangamers is reconstructing the engine, from battles to AI to items. I suspect that almost no one gets as far as implementing much of the stories that they've created, which seems like a real shame. Maybe one big project should be made - which has been discussed before, i know, and probably wouldn't work. Damn.
In any case, keep making posts like this, coz it tends to motivate me! I've thought up some things that actually have a good chance of getting finished - a 2-player battle engine, perhaps, and maybe mini-SF games, which have a few battles each.
Keep up the good work!

I have to admit, I haven't been updating SFW alot recently and I haven't been visiting TSS as much as i should.

In september I am hoping that i will have some more free time to add extras to SFW as well as contribute to TSS in general!

Currently i am working a full time job which consumes not only my entire day but the majority of my evenings as well! :(

TSS rules! Keep the faith :)

On SF:
I did some work today on SF and i finally implemented map transitions and connected the two maps that i had. I'm just a little baffled at the moment as to why my new and sophisticated character layer begins to slow down terribly as you move around. I had high hopes for this new character layer, but i guess the old one will do.

On TSS:
I always thought it would be a terrific idea to have it so that every member of the forum had a small shining force to control and could battle against the computer or other users for fun, earn money and points to improve their force. If we could have something like that going on i'm sure alot of SFC's members would migrate over here. I'm a realistic person though and i'm aware of the difficulties but if i could get a simple battle engine up and running for SF i think it would be a more viable project than a full length game. I think something like this would get the source going again. It's really always about the challenge.

If player-vs-player becomes too demanding an option there are always other ways to go at it that'll still make a fun game. It could be like hattrick for example where the computer generates the battles based on the strength of the fighting parties. This would still give the sensation of player-vs-player interaction, and the duel between the two forces could be then animated in typical shining style. You'd be able to choose your strategy, choose who you want to be in the force, like in hattrick. Then maybe training day would be where the elements of your force leveled up in their qualities, whichever those might be, then they might get injured or "exhausted", ...etc
I've been playing too much hattrick maybe. :P

hahahah Brilliant  :) ..... Brilliant(old) that is  :twisted:
combining Hattrick ans SF games... ohh nice

Zeon Being the swedish team..... A 13* defense