Care for an 80% solution?

[User137]

You say it is an engine for making RPG's. A game engine can do anything, 3D first-person-shooter game up to just some fancy mediaplayer. All begins from abstract classes, and specializes to things like certain sound or graphics API. It can support many of them. At the present moment we don't know when or if we'll be adding SDL in the mix, even 2D can be done with OpenGL, using basic or GLSL rendering. Lastly all of the functionality should be crossplatform from the start, and possibly usable on mobile or android platforms. Unless engine was specifically written with all that in mind, it would be difficult to adapt.

[masonwheeler]

You say it is an engine for making RPG's. A game engine can do anything, 3D first-person-shooter game up to just some fancy mediaplayer. All begins from abstract classes, and specializes to things like certain sound or graphics API. It can support many of them.

Every game engine has a focus. The Unreal engine does FPSs, SMBX does Mario-style platformers, OpenZelda does Zelda-style adventures, and so on. With a lot of abuse you can make a game engine do some other style of game, with varying degrees of success, but there's still a basic focus.

Mine is on RPGs, but with the TURBU system being plugin-driven, it wouldn't be too difficult to adapt it to another game style once the first engine is finished.

At the present moment we don't know when or if we'll be adding SDL in the mix, even 2D can be done with OpenGL, using basic or GLSL rendering.

That's part of what I'm offering: those questions have been answered. I've looked at what's available, tried various different choices, and made my pick based on what works, from real experience actually trying to do it.

Lastly all of the functionality should be crossplatform from the start, and possibly usable on mobile or android platforms. Unless engine was specifically written with all that in mind, it would be difficult to adapt.

Why do you say that? The editor is heavily VCL-based, but the vast majority of the engine code is pure Pascal over SDL and wouldn't have much of a problem at all in being adapted to other platforms.

[pitfiend]

Nice offer. It's something to consider, but as User137 said, our goal is more ambitious than an RPG engine. We want to build a definitive engine with solid foundation to use for any kind of game you want to create. We start to talk about modularity design with lots of abstracts to derive from. Anyway it's a team decision we need to discuss.

[User137]

Every game engine has a focus. The Unreal engine does FPSs, SMBX does Mario-style platformers, OpenZelda does Zelda-style adventures, and so on. With a lot of abuse you can make a game engine do some other style of game, with varying degrees of success, but there's still a basic focus.

My nxPascal does not have a focus. https://code.google.com/p/nxpascal/ From the ground up being just a higher "layer" kind of for different API's. It can do all mario-style, FPS games and anything you can imagine. But being a game engine does not come with a statement that it must include editors for all kind of things, some could say they should be developed separately as per game. Each game has different needs for its editors, and i cannot even imagine how something like that could be generalized. Not even for 2D platformer game.

[masonwheeler]

My nxPascal does not have a focus.

And is anyone using it?

That's not intended as snark or as an insult, just an honest question. Do you have a user base? Because that's the other thing my project can bring to the table: a strong community of RPG Maker developers who would like nothing more than to ditch an old, outdated system that has not been updated in over 10 years in favor of something that's backwards-compatible but more powerful, flexible and customizable.

If we build an engine from the ground up, even when it's ready we will then need to build a community from the ground up or all that work ends up being meaningless.

[User137]

And is anyone using it?

That's not intended as snark or as an insult, just an honest question. Do you have a user base? Because that's the other thing my project can bring to the table: a strong community of RPG Maker developers who would like nothing more than to ditch an old, outdated system that has not been updated in over 10 years in favor of something that's backwards-compatible but more powerful, flexible and customizable.

If we build an engine from the ground up, even when it's ready we will then need to build a community from the ground up or all that work ends up being meaningless.

It gets couple hundred downloads every now and then, but that's about it. I blame the smallness of pascal gaming community I know some things of RPG maker myself, and been scripting something for it on someone elses project.

RPG Maker is software very clearly, not an engine. If we build community engine, it could be used to make a new RPG maker-kind of software package, but in my opinion it shouldn't be part of the main engine. I don't personally have much interest for Zelda type 2D-games, but i know many do. I wouldn't want to restrict the engine to anything at least. I think RTS genre made 3D and things like that can have potential still, but there are many more types. Most exciting ones are propably the ones nobody has thought before.