Ye Olde Blah

Currently, I am in the process of making my own game. I'll just mirror what I wrote in SFC....



As you can see, This is a completely origional game with Precursor Storyline references and styles. The battle system will also be revamped minutely to enhanse the tactile experiance (one feature that will be included is battle platooning, where the charicters can combine their efforts and attack an enemy unit as one.

First of all, welcome around Akir :)

Your project sounds very interesting, and I'd like to know more about it.

How much of the game do you have designed/planned?

What will be your role in the development of the game if you can't use Javascript? We have a number of excellent Java programmers here who I'm sure can give you some pointers to tutorials, give you hints etc.

It sounds a very interesting project, and one I'll be looking forward to seeing develop.

So far, the basic battle design is complete (please keep in mind that I use the word "Complete" in development terms from hereon out :p )  


Current workings are (as of April 3, 2005):

:arrow:  Tile art

 :arrow: Storyline

 :arrow: Staffsearch

Newts, I'll be doing ^this stuff,^   along with publicizing, Project management, and other bricabrac.

How's the search for programmers going?

When do you think we'll be able to see evidence of the development, in the form of screenshots or demos?

Can you reveal any details on the storyline?

Does the game have a title yet?

If you can answer these, we should be able to put up a post on the main page, and maybe get you some more interest :)

Hi Akir,

First of all, welcome to this board as well from me too. I've actually attemted to develop a Sphere game a few years ago, so I happen to know some things about the engine you're working with ;).

The javascript language is not very hard to learn in Sphere, but if it makes things easier I could send the little bit of code snippets I have to you.

I'm afraid that it'll be hard for me to do any production work, as I also manage my own project, but I know plenty about Java and some about Sphere, which might be helpful :).

to Devlyn:

You can't se it, but I'm crying tears of joy right now!

Thank you.

*stopscrying*

(this is where I would ask you for a sample sphere script, but then, beggars can't be choosers)

It's not as if Javascript is hard to learn, but that there's no documentation that speaks my language (which is english). Plus I desparately need some help with the project. Don't worry about production work. Just focus on scripting!

Please Make a conformation Email so I can publsh you as official staff.

To Newts:

Thanks for your interest!

Answers to your questions:

I can't give you any Screenshots or demos, due to the order of operations here. Before I devel. the game program, I need to make the storyline, and before I make the storyline, i need to have a preliminary charicter development session to decide what the main charaicters (protagonist, antagonist, protaganist's girlfriend  :P ) Tha game doesn't have a title yet, thus the codename.

I hope I answered your questions for you. Feel free to email me.



Edit:
Just to make you happy, I made this pittiful thing. http://firstakir.tripod.com/projectcandlelight/
It's sad. It's just proff that I'm doing somthing. Sorry, but they don't allow me to direct link.

I sent you a mail with some stuff ;).

I know I talked to you about it on SFC Akir, website/forums, and since I couldn't help you there, I may be able to do some graphics work for you later on when you have more progress.

THANKS!!!

could you give me a sample? there's a certain substance that I need in the art.

It really depends on what youd like to see.  Sprites, battle animation, portraits, tiles?  Pick one XD

Normal99, Draw anything. I just want a sample.

Anyways, I think I have a storyline! I think This will be a prequil to Shining Force, before the sealing of Dark Dragon. The only thing is, to avoid copyright laws, I will have to change the names. Once the battles have been planned, I will beguin production work.

The next matter of biz. is Music. So far we have none, And I can't compose. participation will be appreciated!

Now I'm confused as to whether you want graphics or hand drawn pictures...

I'm pretty sure he means graphics. Just send him some of your previous-made stuff.

I thought I was clear on that, but...

And I did mean graphics.

Sorry if I wasn't clear on that.

Normal99: what's the progress on the art sample? I havn't heard from you in a while.





In other news The "SF Prequil" idea is a go. I had a talk with a friend who is borowing my Shining Force: Resurection of the Dark Dragon. He gets his daily high off of playing Turn Based Strategy RPGs. He says that making the game in that fashion may be a good idea, and he's an average game markit Zombie (the kind of people that Sony is thriving from), so I think that with good marketing, This may be well receved by the public.



News form the inovation and Look-and-feel section of the brain: The designing of the Battle System is going fairly well. The most important innovation in the battlesystem is the fact that there will be more then 1. As I mentioned before, there will be a grouping ability so that PCs (better known as Player Charecters) will be able to gang up on NPCs and vice versa. (I might also input a combo system, but that would make the game too easy, so it is not likely.) A third possible battle system is a realtime fighter simelar to the GameGear Version of SD Gundam, though that is also unlikely. The last BattleSystem is a secret that I'm developing for the Final Battle.



And everyone, there's an important question that you should answer here:

http://www.shiningsource.net/forum/index.php?topic=379.0





Even more news!!!

There is now a Project Candlelight wiki, courtesy of wikipedia! see it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:FirstAkir/Project_Candlelight.

I'm stumped, where did you come up with Normal99.....it's Noma.  Anyway, I'll have some graphics for you later.

Sory, It's the Bold Font. My Video Card has some blurring problems at high resolutions when it's at low Refresh Rates.

Hi Akir,

You might want to try out an old game of mine, it might give you inspiration as well as it contains two battle engines on its own ;).

You can find it at: http://www.shiningsource.net/releases.php?id=3

There's one very buggy map with screwn up camerawork, but if you walk to the upper right corner, you can easily continue :).

I'm doing some charicter development right now. I'm going to need everyone's help on this one. What I need is a list of your faverate people, and why. thanks.

You mean kind of characters we like?

Well, if you could include a Seolean cameo, that'd be fun :P

Here's some old fanart from old fans that might give you an idea:
http://www.shiningsource.net/projects/ShinySword/fanart.php

No I mean people. like Jim Carry, Sean Connery, Shaquil O'Neal....


By the way, do any of you know Yasunori Mitsuda, Motoi Sakuraba, or Dai Nagao? If you do, convince them that they should compose some music for us :-)

Might I ask why you want us to tell you our favourite celebrities? Is Project Candlelight going to be a celebrity simulator? :P

Also, I asked Matsuda and he said he was busy. Sakuraba hasn't called me back yet and I haven't spoken to Nagao in over twenty years.

It's not a celebrity simulator (I'm trying not to make this M rated)! I just need to know what traits that the Charicters should have.

I'm supprised that you know who Dai Nagao is. Go ans see him and ask if he can score me a date with Tomiko Van :-)

But seriously, we will eventually need musicians.





I should really focus on game structure now...

An Idea for a plot item:

All the while, the world is devided in three: one led by Lucifer, another by "Zeehon," and another by "Shadow Dragon." (Don't know who Zeehon or Shadow Dragon is? to find out Zeehon, think phonetically, and think back to Shining Force II, and consolt your thesorus for Shadow Dragon (Another word for Shadow))

The main charicter is in love with this special girl. By "special" I mean she has unusual Etherial powers. By one reason or another, the leader of another has captured her. The leader uses her as a weapon against the native nation, and uses so much power, that her body deteriorates. Thus, a motivation for the Main Charicter.

This could be bad news for you who have been hoping that this will be a steampunk theme game. however, I've been playing the first Shining Force. The past was high tech. (See: lasereye) This might even be (GASP!) a cyberpunk! I'll try my best to make this as steamy as posible (but in a good way).

I'm thinking on going all the way here. I'm thinking of (after finishing the PC edition) porting it to the Dreamcast, and maybe even the GBA (hey, it's possile!). Javascript isn't really that fast (note that the sphere system requirements says you need 600Mhz). I'm hoping that Python scripts are compilable for the Dreamcast, because I'm pretty good at Python. now to appologise to Devlyn in case he's can't do Python. IN the meanwhile, I'll look into Compileing Python.

I'm lousy in Python allright, but perhaps there are others who can help you out ;).

As for the 600 MHz requirement, I hardly call that a requirement. I had a computer 5 years ago that fullfilled that requirement ;).

Yes, but the Dreamcast isn't 600 Mhz.

It's not exactly under-powered either.

Personally, I'd stick to one platform right now and expand when it's finished. You don't really have the resources to write games for PC, Dreamcast and GBA, especially if you're still seeking programmers, artists, musicians etc.

I did say that I was going to do the PC version first. The choices I make now will affect the baility of making the port. I may not even do the port. What I was trying to say was that I want a language that will be more adaptible. This may sound crazy, but there are more python programmers then there are java programmers.

Forget I even mentioned it. I'll try to do my best with Sphere.

I havn't come up with any updates yet, so stay with me. I've been away for a while (Physically ro mentally: you'll never know).

I had, however, thought of how cool it would be to have someone start sketching tome base charicters. I can't draw very well, so I'll try to see what I can do within the GIMP. I also thought of how cool it would be if Noma89 would keep her promice and show us her sample art.

I just wanted to show that I was still alive.

I'm alive.

I'm probibly breaking so many rules by triple posting instead of editing my last post, but heck, it's for the sake of orginization.

Here's my proposal: we should use the RPG development studio instead of sphere. It's not as flexible as sphere, But it's easier. way easier. and soon it's going to be made cross-platform, so that takes a load off of my back. It's still in beta right now, but it's new. I'm sure that we can get more product faster with RPGds. the biggest problem will be programming the battle system.

speaking of programming, don't worry dev: it's point and click/parser for ease of use. Now if only I could find a button to start the game :)

Hmm... perhaps a stupid question, but have you ever considered BABS? Then I _really_ can help you with the programming part ;).

Just for future reference, Noma89 is actually a guy.

And I also agree with Dev - BABS was made specifically to help out people like you who can't program but have big Shiny ideas. I would seriously consider it, if I were you.

no thanks, BABS is too slow :)

besides, it works at low resolution, and that bugs the heck out of me.

The reason that I thought that RPGds would be good is because it's flexible without being hard to use. Plus, if there's any commands that we need that isn't already in there, then we can program that in with C++, yet another language that I could never handle. Damn the libraries!

Hmmm.. what kind of machine do you have then?

As for the low resolution thing, I really am not going to change that. The screen is already scalable and using higher resolutions will only make it harder to create graphics for the game :).

Which machine do you want info on?

also, how is it that making it a higher resolution can make it harder to use? that makes no sence to me.

He didn't say it would be harder to use - he said it would make it more difficult to create graphics, as they'd be bigger and therefore take up more time. Imagine the time you would spend on a 24*24 tile compared to a 36*36 or above.

That's what I ment. It's not as if you need to type in colorcodes to create graphics anymore. You can just as easily cretate a 64X64 image as you can create a 24X24 image. just the 64X64 image will give you more room to detail, which is what I want.

Actually it doesn't quite work like that. Because 64x64 provides more room for detail, people want to make use of that and therefore spend longer on developing a single tile.

This slows down game progress, which I consider to be a bad thing (tm). This assessment is partially based on my personal experience, but also on the state of projects in the general Shining scene. Pretty much all projects that have made significant progress are low-resolution. Tatakai is the only exception I know of, but even that game still uses only 48x48 tiles...

However nothing stops anyone from using four or nine 24x24 tiles in order to make something that normally uses only one tile. In fact, I might add functionality at some point for 2x2 tile or 3x3 tile sprites if there are requests for that.

Small tiles are quicker to draw, and usually look quite a bit better than large ones. You could of course draw the tiles as 24 * 24 then scale them up to 48 * 48 or 64 * 64 using a smoothing algorithm. Naturally all other graphics are harder to do in the higher resolution, but it's up to you to decide. Personally I think higher res is more of a problem if you're doing the graphics yourself, but seeing as you're going to have a team it may not be a problem.

If you don't mind me asking, what status would you say your project is at? Do you have a team or is it still just you? How about the actual design/implementation? I'm just curious to get a feel as to where it is and where it is going.

That doesn't quite make sence to me. Resolution = size + detail. The only thing that will take longer to do is detailing. This is supposed to be a relitively high quility game.

It's your choice Akir, but by doing this you're increasing the workload for the game by quite some amount.

I'd also be interested in hearing your answers to Ty's questions.

Sorry about that. Sometimes I just forget about what I'm writing about. I'd say we're in the planning stage still, because we've only got Devlyn, and Noma89 doesn't seem to have us here or even near conciousness.

As I said, I am going to implement many new battle features, like combining forces into a single unit. One thing I didn't mention is that I may be concidering taking out the Land Effect System. Though it's good in ideal, it's rather surrealistic. Just because you're in a forest, you won't get any battle breaks. plus it's hard to program in, unless you can assign a values to map tiles. I'll have to do some resarch.

It's actually quite easy to implement. I think it took me a single day for me to implement it in BABS (and the BABS implementation is at least as advanced as the SHF2 one). Especially considering that you have to use different attack backgrounds for different land types anyway.

Since it's so easy to resize graphics, it is also fairly trivial to switch from a low-resolution game to a high-resolution game. Program-wise it's a matter of double all graphic-related constants and graphics wise it's just a matter of resizing.

However, I think it takes me (and you too) already quite a lot of time to make a decent low-resolution game. And the choice between a low-res game and no game is rather easy to make ;).

Also, the switch from low-res to hi-res takes a neglectible amount of time compared to the time of making the game in the first place.

In short, my advice is to start low-res and switch to high-res once you've completed the low-res version. :)

That's a bad strategy. If we make a low resolution version first and then make a high-resolution version later, no one will care to get the high resolution version. I say we go all out and start with high resolution (as 64 x 64 is high resolution!). Think of it this way: most of the people who even have computers will likely have large screens, right? The one I use the most is 20". If you play this game on a large screen (Especially if you hook it into a Big Screen TV), you'll feel as if you were left into the dark with higly pixelized graphics. A 64 x 64 tile isn't that big, but still,  it's a little better.


And I have one more reason why we're going to use high(er) resolution graphics: Because I said so :P

That's obviously your decision, but let me tell you about Shining Online's graphics.

We're using 24*24 tiles and characters, and there are two of us doing the graphics, and it's still a lot of work for us. We have anywhere between sixty and one hundred tiles for each town, which is an awesome amount of work, even at this resolution.

I can see absolutely no reason why anybody would want to artificially create more work for themselves just in case somebody "hooks it up to a big screen". That's twat language, that is.

But, as I said, it's your choice. You won't be doing the graphics, so what difference does it make to you?

This isn't soley for if the end user will plug it into a large screen. It's for looks.  When you chose to use your game's tiles in 24 x 24, you probibly did it to make it look like a Shining Force (1 or 2) game. I'm trying to make this origional while retaining most of the gameplay mechanics: the real Shining Style. My goal is to make a Shining game, but better. Things have to stay somewhat according to the time that they're in.

Sega and Camelot both knew that they would put it on the Genesis, not the Master System. Why? (besides the fact that the Master System was loosing popularity,) They did it because it would match their time frame.

This isn't a clone. It's a new game retaining Shining Force's Ideals and styles.



And about your comment of me not needing to care about the tiles, Newts, all I can say is how much that could annoy me. I'm not only the creator of this, but I'm the director, too. I have to make all of the creative decisions, and with tiles being art, I have to maintain quality with that, too.
And I didn't say I wouldn't try to help! You wouldn't believe what I can do with the GIMP!

I seriously doubt that, especially as any high-res version I'd make would come with all sorts of other extra's too ;).

But in the end it's your decision. I'm merely worried that you're underestimating the amount of work that comes with high-resolution games. I know I did 5 years ago...

As everyone is saying, it's your choice. I can guarantee that producing 200+ tiles of 64 * 64 (that's 819,200 pixels) will be a lot of work.

Doing them at 24 * 24 first and then switching to 64 * 64 would be a good option, and if your engine is scalable should only require two lines to be changed (or none at all if you're really smart ;)).

I look forward to seeing what you and the GIMP come up with.

Speaking of tiles, i've switched from 16*16 to 48*48, hence the speed boost. I'll probably still keep the 16*16 tiles, and use them to build the 48*48 ones on the fly. This change has been a long time coming.

That's enough about tiles for now. Right now, we should be focusing on Storyline. I've been playing around with what I want for the introductory Sequence. How's This;

(Note: "_____" Indicates an indention. For some reason, this forum doesn't show them to wel. Also, notes are in brackets [like this].)

_____ "For centuries, the three major powers had battled for rule of the earth. They were very evenly matched against each other, and neither one could win. The constant battling between the forces had left the rest of the earth in shambles.
_____ "Fhe first force was of Shadow Dragon [Dark Dragon], whose goal was to rule world; The second, Xeion [Zeon], whose goal was to distroy the world; and the third was Lucet [Lucifer (see SFC)], whose goal was to slowly degrade the world into nothingness.
_____ "The world was forced to tear into three militias by the demons, forced to fight against each other. The people were depraived of their hopes, and were united with their fears. The more brave creatures of the world - Centaurs, Kyantols, Dwarves, and countless others - were killed oftenly as a sign of the death of their hopes.
_____ "However, there were some with hope left. They only wanted the war to end. Those people never even knew that there were others with their will. Their hope was that one day there would be an opposition. An end! They wished with their hearts and souls for a wonderous shining force!"

[Cue the magnificent "Wowee" title screen.]



It's not that great in my oppinion, and it's rather long, and prehaps it leaves open a little too much of the storyline open, but this is still an idea sketch.
I put in the part about the other races being killed off because I noticed that there weren't as many of them in the Shining Force games (especially the ones without camelot), so I make a reason.

If that's intended to be the pre-title screen schpiel then it does basically give away the whole of the game, what with naming the three major villains and all.

I like the overall triumphal tone of the piece and I do think it could work, although I'd be curious to know how you'd go about developing the storyline to prevent the game from simply being an exercise in collecting fighters.

yeah, it does give too much off. However, a lot of it I want to keep (like the who the major powers are and the fact that they all each controll a third of the earth). The killing of the "SF rare" (and I use this coined term very loosely) creatures is probibly too much, and the last paragraph is far too chesey. However, I do need the last paragraph to be "wowee" so it climaxes at the title screen.
Summery: get rid of 3rd Rgf.; Revise 4th Pgh.
This is pittiful for me. I'm supposed to be a good writer, too. I wish that I could find a critic as honest as the public.

I'm getting desperate for a good composer. I think that I'll just grab the next one that comes along. If I can at least get a theme, I could baybe manipulate that into different songs and work with that.

And as to how I'm doing the story, All I'm saying is "plot twists."

:^P

1.) I'm a he, not a she as someone mentioned.

2.) Just call me Noma

3.) I've been busy for the past month or so.

4.) I'll work on some sprites and such as well as a hand drawn sketch for a character for you.  If you don't like him, dump him and just consider it a sample of what I can do.

I should have it done by Friday, until then, adios.

WE LOVE YOU NOMA!!!!!!!!

*takes a second to normalize*

Anyways, I have modefied my webpage. Now it says "Hello World" Creative, which is the name of my Psudo Business. Note that under "Our Products" is Project Candlelight. I know that it looks sad, but I wanted it to happen ASAP. ignore "Akir's Pages," It's nothing to do with "Hello World" Creative.

Now that I think of it, I don't think I've told you where it is. It's at http://firstakir.tripod.com/

P.S., Free Hosting would be appreciated :^P

I can't wait for Noma to finish his art.

Anyways, Ive been playing all three Shining Force games "interogatively" lately so that I could write the scripts a little better (so I could get all of the little details). From the start of the game, They all have their town attacked, or have a battle in their town (excluding Synbios, because he wasn't from Saraband). So that's what i'm going to add to the start of the game. I also note that here's something cute in every game (Yogert, Kiwi, Grace {=^P}). Now I have to make ANOTHER charicter! It's hard enough to make one!

Running behind schedule as usual.  I'll have everything posted ASAP.  Sorry for the delay.

Later.

Big mistake! I said that Dark Dragon was one of the Demon Kings. I wasn't paying enough to the transilation of the storytellers scene. Dark Dragon isn't a king. It's an ancient creature that was summoned by Darksol, who is a real Demon king!Now I'm at a dilema, as I can't think of anything that sounds like darksol :^P

Euhh.... Dorksoul??

I already thought of that. I'm not quite happy with it, though.

Of course you could also try thinking up a completely distinct name?

Or you could do OSIWM a favor and call him graysoul :P.

Darcsle/Darksle/ Darcsul

OSIWM?

None of those proposed names sound very good. I think I will just give him (*gasp!*) an origional name.

Ok So It Was Me.

Still working on this stuff, btw.  I'm flooded with other stuff.  -_-  But I'll try and get this stuff done as soon as I have time.

I also am flooded. I need someone who will do everything for me!


just waiting for the art now....

I have gone through many new revolutions while Shining Source was down.

The first was the descention of the spirit of Ubuntuism. Yes, I got Ubuntu. It works approx. 999999999999999999999999999999999999999 times better then windows, give or take a few.

The second is not so good for the heritics who love windows. The old clunker took out 1 gigabyte out of my hard drive partition table. So I just reinstalled everything, sans Windows. Now my GB has returned to me, and my computer runs more efficiently.

The Third, I believe I have already published. I have messed with my tripod page (www.Firstakir.tripod.com) so that It's a "Hello World" Creative Webpage ("Hello World" Creative is a psuedo-business of mine). I have added a few mentions of Project Candlelight (and this spiffy logo that I made with the GIMP even faster then I did making the webpage with their crappy webpage creator). I even added a Java Game Gear Emulator and The US version of SFG2.

The fourth is both focused twards programming. This news is Two-part: A Teriffic and a Terible part.

 :arrow: The Terrible Part: Some Windows development apps will not work
 :arrow: The Terific part: (Yet another division)
 :arrow:  :idea: I have way more development applications/IDEs then ever
 :arrow:  :idea: Blender works correctly, so now I can work on art personally!
 :!:  :idea:  :arrow: Now that Blender works, we can make the entire game in 3D! I propose to make it like SFIII in that the charicters and the like are 2D (Sans battle scenes) And the Terrain is 3D
:!:  :idea:  :arrow: With the game in Blender, I no longer need to worry about the game being impossible to port because both Blender and Python are open-source and are already compiled for a variety of Operating Systems! Woo Hoo!
 :arrow:  :idea: The good outweighs the bad!!!!!!!!!!!!

I pretty much have a good Idea of a good deal of the storyline and am progressing into planning the maps and battles. I've thought about it, and I will not add Half-, Quater-, or any combination of such (For land effect), as I had proposed to the "Invisible Audience" when the server was down.

I hope that you are as excited as I am about these revolutions. I encourage all who are using an x86 computer to switch to Ubuntu or some other Linux distrobution; you can really unlock your potential with it! At the same time, I must ask that 'staff' and anyone who wants to beta test to retain windows on one partition so that we can test the game out periodically.


And Noma, just because you're not the only one doing art doesn't mean that I don't want those sample drawings!



On a closing note:
Woo Hoo!!!

P.S., If I can't get a good composer, I'm going to have to do it myself, and no one will like it

Hmm.. Akir, what do you mean by a composer? Someone who tracks music?

yes. Most musicians that I've seen aren't very good at composition though. especially the type of music that I want.

I have Proof that I've been working. I know it's not much, but this is actually a smother rendition of a model that might actually be included in the game. This is a pair of legs. Notice the plesant shade of green.

http://firstakir.tripod.com/feet.jpg

Note: you may need to copy and paste this into your browser bar instead of clicking on it.

I'm sorry for the absence. I've had some electrical problems in my house. I won't be back for a while. please wait for me.

I've been thinking; we need to develop Project Candlelight in a more Homogenious environment. At first I thought we might use the Pocket PC, but then I realized that it isn't a good gaming platform, first because of certain Button limitations, then by it's lack of durability.

[TROLL][RANT](MY POCKET PC BROKE 5 MINUTES AFTER THE WARRENTY. IF ONE SINGLE THING GOES WRONG WITH IT, THEN THE WHOLE STINKING THING GOES BAD!!!! AND YOU LOSE A MINIMUM OF $220!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)[/RANT][/TROLL] *cough*

Then I  thought of a slightly less modern approach. Why not use an Amiga? I personally own an Amiga 3000 (Although anyone reading my blog or my Amiga 3000 Questions topic in NFG.2Y.net's forum will know that I need a keyboard and mouse). All Amigas are basically the same, but with upgrades. I think that It would be best to program for the Amiga 3000 as it wasn't the last "Classic Amiga" and most will be able to meet the requirements of one. Even if someone has an older Amiga, they could probibly get an enhancer board to meet the requrements. There is even still a large user base. They are still manufacturing Amigas, though now the archetecture has changed, but the OS is still backwards compatible.

Programming for the Amiga would allow us to prove the modern computer industry wrong (yet again, I admit, but those manufacturers have thick skulls). Plus, since the amiga has been emulated on allmost all platforms, Still every computer will be able to play it! A Bonus for programming for the Amiga will be a strong support from the Amiga Community (and trust me, that's a big community).

Please concider this option. Recompilation for other systems is almost always difficult, especially if we don't use a standardized language. PowerPCs are costly to emulate, and windows emulation is almost impossible if you don't have a fast computer or the funds for a VM. Amiga programming would allow us to make our game worldwide!

*coughs* why don't you just use a standardized language and work on your own machine?

I'll tell you why not - because Amigas are shit and Ataris are better ;).

I think you really just need to settle on a single idea and get started. You can always write it in C++, write your own platform dependent wrappers (i.e. PC version can be compiled with a DirectX / OpenGL wrapper, Linux with something else, Amiga with something else) and then release it that way. An over-simplified view maybe, but still valid.

Either way, decide what you want and do it.

One last thing:



You have no idea how funny I found that.

I'd love to program in C++. It seems that it's a good solid language. The only problem is the stupid godforsaken libraries! I spent $40 on a book to learn it, only to find out that it's totally uncompatible with what I can get ahold of, AKA, having no libraries. The GCC supposedly has libraries, but I can't get sufficient documentation on them! If possible, I'd use GCC, but it doesn't seem to be possible.

Even If we program on the Amiga, we'd be fooling around with the different languages. The only reason that I said that we should have the Amiga 3000 as our target platform is because it's gonna be the same EVERYWHERE. Even the newer Amigas, AmigaOne computers that don't even have the same archetecture, will be able to run them. And with Amiga Forever, Amirage, or UAE, Every computer can play this game, despite differences.


PS: Amiga's still alive: Atari is dead forever. Plus, the ST was their "best," but it still isn't as good as the Amiga. And MOD sounds better then anything Atari ever turned out.

Yet Another Website! This time an Update/Project Journal in the convienient form of a Blog. Hey, I can't afford Web Hosting!


You can find it at http://projectcandlelight.blogspot.com/

I have good news and bad news.

The bad news. my timeframe has past, and I once again will have little time for Proj. Candlelight. I am entering a school, and I will have to pass every single class.

The good news: now that I'm at home, I can do something.

As I said befoer, now that I'm home, I can do something and - despite my silence for a while - I have been. Research. Research, a bit of learning, and a bit off refreshing on an old language - and in a different sense, a new language. The results: definitions. I've made some decisions that probibly should have been made already.

The programming language: BASIC

Don't be fooled. I don't meen Microsoft QuickBASIC or any of that old outdated stuff. I mean FreeBASIC. It's a relatively new language that practically every programmer knows already. check out freebasic.net for more information.
The reasons why I chose this language Follows:
(A) almost every programmer has had experiance in BASIC
(B) It's cross-platform so I can bring it all over to Windows, Linux, Mac, and appearantly even the XBOX.
(C) it has something for everything; FMOD BASS and OpenAL for audio, GTK2+ for video (With DirectX for all of the things windows refuses to do), Allegro to do various game things, OpenGL for 2D and 3D effects, and even XML for various XML-related utilities
(D) Although smaller then other languages, it has some community to help us Debug.
(E) BASIC structure makes for easy programming.

We're probibly going to use SCREEN 18 or 19.

Also, Ive decided to scrap the 3D prerendering idea. It looks very tacky in low resolutions. I will, however, use it for any FMVs I need, which may just be the intro video.


If you don't believe how good my choices are, go check out Gryffin's Tale (please take note that it's a victom of bad programming, but at least it looks good) at http://syn9.thingie.net/?table=griffonlegend





P.S., I don't suppose you know BASIC, devlyn?

awesome akir, can't wait to hear about your progress :)

I know someone who knows BASIC.

Good luck - I hope to see some progress soon :newtshappy:

good luck with seeing progress soon:

SDL=Hell
(GTK2+)=Confusion, and then eventually death.

seriously. There is some definite problems with the implimentation of these libraries!

I'll tell you when I'm out of SDL Hell.