create a new freedom force with a freeware game engine like ogre 3d?

[naitvalis]

i wonder if someone have maybe some knowledge of this new free game engines out there, cause i don't see the coming of a new freedom force near, maybe we can start a project over years if someone is interested. i see some screenshots of game created and sure can handle a decent graphic.
i'm not an expert i'm just asking to know.

[Midnight]

Well, I'm not sure there's a call to make a freeware Freedom Force clone, but there might be a call for a sort of top-down tactical RPG toolset, like Neverwinter Night's Aurora Toolset.

[Mr. Hamrick]

might be an interesting project to embark on.  I have not played Neverwinter Nights but i like tactical RPGs somewhat.  (ok, I may be off but I am thinking of Mass Effect 2 as somewhat of a tactical RPG in some ways)

[lugaru]

I will take anything that can be customized and has heroes at this point, be it a flash game or a full on multi million dollar release. If anyone ever starts a freedom force style project I'll jump in with whatever skills I have (english/spanish translator, writer, mechanics ballance, years of comic nerdom).

[lugaru]

http://www.panda3d.org/

Besides OGRE 3D has anyone considered Panda? Seems like a long shot but if meshes can be loaded up in there it would probably open a bunch of doors.

[Epimethee]

I don't see Ogre as a viable choice, as it's a 3D engine, not a full-fledged game engine. Panda, on the other hand, is a game engine which should be somewhat approachable, as one of its goals is rapid application development by students (Carnegie programming students are not exactly computer noobs, but it's a start). Supports mlre than just Windows, mature and comes with solid Python bindings.

While the current FF community doesn't look large enough to support a project of this scope, IMO, it is certainly worth exploring.    

[Mr. Hamrick]

While the current FF community doesn't look large enough to support a project of this scope, IMO, it is certainly worth exploring.

How large would it have to be?  I mean granted the community is not as active as it once was but we are still large enough to lay the ground work, aren't we?  I mean if you are just talking about the engine.

The bigger issue is rather or not it'd be more viable to do a "FF" or something based around original content.  We don't have the rights to the "FR" characters.  Of course, as stated here before, the biggest issue with creating with original content would be similar issues about rights ownership.

[BentonGrey]

If we could get something like this off the ground, I think it would perhaps be a bit silly to try and make it an FF game in terms of IP.  Much better to spin off something like Liberty Bay, some collection of original characters.  After all, we wouldnt' want to give Irrational any headaches about copyright.

[lugaru]

That and the fact that most meshes, mods and skins have nothing to do with Irrational at this point, seeing how we abandoned most of the templates they gave us a long time ago.

[Epimethee]

How large would it have to be?  I mean granted the community is not as active as it once was but we are still large enough to lay the ground work, aren't we?  I mean if you are just talking about the engine.

no, the engine is Panda. We need to build some sort of basic car around it. How much time would it take? Well, something like FFX, a much more modest endeavour, took many thousand man-hours. And how many active professional developers have we got in the community? To get a shipping game, we'd need to attract some really dedicated talent or join force with an existing project. Of course, there might be an existing Panda-based game whose source code we can fork (a.k.a. Copy), saving quite a bit of work on the code front (which is of course only one of the aspects of creating a full game).

The bigger issue is rather or not it'd be more viable to do a "FF" or something based around original content.  We don't have the rights to the "FR" characters.

Compared to the issue of actually building a working (and fun) game, that's not really a bigger issue, no...

With that said, it indeed needs to be fully legal, meaning new community IP, such as Liberty Bay, as Benton mentioned.

...the biggest issue with creating with original content would be similar issues about right ownership.

If that's going to be a big issue, the project has no chance whatsoever in the face of all the other more concrete problems that will crop. Just agree on a Creative Commons license and move on to other problems.

[Epimethee]

After glancing at the Panda 3D docs, forums and looking for a few alternatives, I must say Panda seems like a solid solution. For a full-scale from the ground up project, it looks like our best bet. Thankfully, AI support got added in the latest release, for example. Complex game examples, especially of RTS, seem completly absent, however.

Maybe a mesher could have a look at the docs? What I read looked interesting (3D Max and Blender support, possibility of manipulating bones directly from scripting, etc.), but I know nothing on the subject.

[tommyboy]

After glancing at the Panda 3D docs, forums and looking for a few alternatives, I must say Panda seems like a solid solution. For a full-scale from the ground up project, it looks like our best bet. Thankfully, AI support got added in the latest release, for example. Complex game examples, especially of RTS, seem completly absent, however.

Maybe a mesher could have a look at the docs? What I read looked interesting (3D Max and Blender support, possibility of manipulating bones directly from scripting, etc.), but I know nothing on the subject.

Does this answer your questions? (with apologies to Alex)

[Epimethee]

!

You rock, Tommy.

What are you thoughts on Panda so far?

[ow_tiobe_sb]

Does this answer your questions?

No, but it does raise a host of other questions about how you've been spending your time of late.

Let him be known as "tommyboy, International Man of Mystery."

ow_tiobe_sb
Phantom Bunbueyist and Whirled Braker

[tommyboy]

What are you thoughts on Panda so far?

That it's pretty "friendly" like most python type engines. It has several distinct advantages over working with netimmerse (or any other proprietry game engine).

1. Bump mapping (this one is better than ff/v3r, not other game engines which all tend to have this now).

2. The meshes are actually text files, editable in word, notepad etc. You can imagine how this opens up editing and mesh making possibilities.

3. It's open source (sort of) so its being developed and updated a lot, but if a feature you want isnt in it, you have a chance to add it yourself, or ask for it.

4. Animation is theoretically "mixable" via python commands. So you can take two walk or idle loops and create a third that is 20% anim a, and 80% anim b, or any other mix, or a random mix. In theory, one might never see quite the same animation twice, even in the same character. And it uses mostly individual anims (ie walk is one separate anim, run another, each in a discrete file), not long strings of them packed together in "keyframes". So you can pick anims from other similar sized characters and mix and match.

5. Programming is mostly beyond me. Or if it isn't, I'd have to give up meshing to have the time and energy to learn it. Thusly, my own attempts ran aground months ago. But I could get stuff on-screen inside of 10 minutes of starting, and there is a fair amount of code already in existence on the panda forums.

6. Nothing, and I mean nothing, feels better than starting from scratch, doing it the way you want it done, doing it "right". Want true airborne melee? Code it in. Want no upper limit on characters? Make it so (though obviously there will still be limitations). My dream was an open world 3d beat-em-up superhero-team moddable game with some tactical features and a watch mode. A cross between MUA, Tekken, GTA4 and of course our beloved FF. You could play directly controlling one supe, or guide a team a la FF. That may not be anyone else's dream, and I'm sort of happy to make stuff for other peoples games, but Comic-Book-Fight-World will always be the dream, for me.


Now, I might be up for some collaborative efforts in panda with a small team of people who deliver. Large teams of volunteers tend not to work well, and those who have no track record in getting stuff done need to go get stuff done first, then offer to participate in this sort of thing. For my part, I can offer meshing, skinning, animation, a smidgeon of coding and general old-school comic-book sensibilities.
I can make a thread with tutorials for meshing, skinning and so forth if people want it.

[Podmark]

This is getting interesting. There isn't much I can offer beyond skinning at the moment, but I'm curious what can be accomplished.

[Epimethee]

2. The meshes are actually text files, editable in word, notepad etc. You can imagine how this opens up editing and mesh making possibilities.

Yeah, it also makes parsing the file with a python script much easier.

3. It's open source (sort of)

The core components are now fully open source, using a very reasonable version of the very permissive BSD license.

so its being developed and updated a lot, but if a feature you want isnt in it, you have a chance to add it yourself, or ask for it.

The only issue about adding a feature by ourselves is that the game engine is actually C++, not Python, so it's harder to code. Still, it's possible, which is huge. The time we've spent working around the FF engine's limitations... what if we could have fixed them instead?

4. Animation is theoretically "mixable" via python commands. So you can take two walk or idle loops and create a third that is 20% anim a, and 80% anim b, or any other mix, or a random mix. In theory, one might never see quite the same animation twice, even in the same character. And it uses mostly individual anims (ie walk is one separate anim, run another, each in a discrete file), not long strings of them packed together in "keyframes". So you can pick anims from other similar sized characters and mix and match.

The other huge advantage I could also see, if I understood correctly: you can supplement the built-in animations with script-based one. So, for example, if you need Minute M... err, Doc Astounding to sit for a cutscene, you could, even if there's no animation for this. And you might even be able to say, give stretching powers to a character on the fly. Also quite handy for Jivaro-Man's head-shrinking beam.

5. Programming is mostly beyond me. Or if it isn't, I'd have to give up meshing to have the time and energy to learn it.

If the urge to do so ever takes over you, with your productivity, you could probably rewrite FFX from scratch in a week or two.

6. Nothing, and I mean nothing, feels better than starting from scratch, doing it the way you want it done, doing it "right". Want true airborne melee? Code it in.

And therein lies the rub: coding it (or designing it, or creating art assets, etc.) is lots of work. Making a finished product and an enjoyable one to boot requires way more work, plus talent, expertise, dedication and cohesiveness – after all, most commercial games take years of professional work and not many of them are all that good. Realistically, I'd trade some liberty for more "out-of-the-boxness", were it available.

My dream was an open world 3d beat-em-up superhero-team moddable game with some tactical features and a watch mode. A cross between MUA, Tekken, GTA4 and of course our beloved FF. You could play directly controlling one supe, or guide a team a la FF.

I'd think that's something most of us FR'ers can agree with. I'd target something a bit more general than a superhero tactical RTS as far as the game platform goes, to attract other developers, though. But for an initial non-beta release, something very focused, such as an arena superhero melee duel would be a more realistic goal (i.e., your beat-em-up in its simplest form).

That may not be anyone else's dream, and I'm sort of happy to make stuff for other peoples games, but Comic-Book-Fight-World will always be the dream, for me.

<Offended voice>Well, MY dream is peace, justice, liberty and free cheese for everyone, but to each his own, eh?

Now, I might be up for some collaborative efforts in panda with a small team of people who deliver. Large teams of volunteers tend not to work well, and those who have no track record in getting stuff done need to go get stuff done first, then offer to participate in this sort of thing. For my part, I can offer meshing, skinning, animation, a smidgeon of coding and general old-school comic-book sensibilities.

Agreed. Most successful projects seem to have a few core members and a number of complementary contributors. However, this kind of project can (at first, at least) be separated into different tasks with limited overlap, reducing the impact of member turnaround. For my part... well, responsibilities prevent me from putting all that much time on this, so I can't be more than a secondary contributor. If you'd like my help, I can
work on user interface/user experience and visual design (my day job and formation, after all), Python scripting, plus some project management knowledge, web development, marketing, in addition to a few art & literature related skills, including French translation when the project takes the planet by storm.

I can make a thread with tutorials for meshing, skinning and so forth if people want it.

That would be great, Tommy!

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

The key to a successful open source game project is to get something fun and playable released as soon as possible.  The ones that die or crawl are the ones that go into closed development for years with nothing to attract interest or new blood.  Get a playable basic game out the door with a few playable characters and that might be enough to both attract interest and get new devs on board to develop it further.

Now what would my concept for a superhero tactical game campaign be?  Taking inspiration from Starcraft 2's storybased, strategical based hybrid campaign, I see a city world to explore.  Heros are assigned to patrol, which opens up random encounters, which may unlock other missions.  As time goes on, arc missions open up the map as well.  There would be multiple arcs, some related to the main story arc, some completely optional and indepedent.  Some would unlock as time went on, some would require certain things done in the course of patroling, and all would need the previous arc mission done.  All arcs will standby and wait until the player wishes to do them, and all can be ignored entirely if the player wishes.  In addition, things happen in the game world effecting these thing, new villain groups coming out, crime waves, and such.  Some would be triggered by missions, some by time, and others just randomly.

The beauty of this setup would be that a basic version with just the random encounters and a few unlocked missions could be put together relatively quickly, with the other things added gradually.  Perfect for an open source project.

[abenavides]

To clarify -The Panda core is c++ but meant to be called from Python. A lot of the actual implementations of user functions are actually Python (i.e. written in python). I have personally added features to some Panda engine objects by coding python. C++ is of course faster, but Python will be fine for just about anything outside a calculation you need done super-fast.

Some of the pics Tommy showed are from a panda project we've worked on (off and on) since 2009. He did the meshes/anims/skins. I've done the coding. The above pics are from an older version, actually. I've added some newer ones below.

The 2010 version is actually semi-functional - you can edit character files and save them. I haven't added all the powers capacibilities yet. The battle scenes actually work, the heroes fight each other with basic melee AI (haven't added range powers yet). It's based on a game design I've done (at the moment very influenced by FF of course, but it has certain advantages over FF already)

Epimethee's point is well-taken, this is a huge undertaking. I have about 3,000 lines of code to do the basic shell you see in the pics (started on it in  May 2009, edit: oops, realized itwas April 2009 after looking at my log)

[abenavides]

More pics:

[tommyboy]

Of course the project could go quicker if the lazy bum doing the graphics actually produced anything...
But the coding side is actually being worked on, and looks good. So much so that i may actually make some more panda stuff sooner rather than later..

[tommyboy]

OK heres my note/tutorial on how to create meshes in panda.
I can create a thread somewhere for it too, but wasn't sure if it should be in "other games" or "meshes" or what. So for now its here.

OK lets start at the very beginning, assuming a little familiarity with FF meshing.
Also I'll assume that you have installed Panda, and put its importer/exporter files where they should go.

I use Max 7 for Panda exporting. You could use 6,7,8,9, theres even an old Max 5 exporter (supposedly, though I've yet to find it myself) but no max 4 one.
I have, however, downloaded the Panda source code, in which is the source code for the Max exporter, so in theory, we could make one. In practice, I can't. Yet, probably forever.
Because Disney and Carnegie Mellon (the main driving forces behind Panda) both tend to use Maya, not 3ds Max, the Max exporters are not as well supported and developed and up to date as the Maya ones. So some stuff the Panda engine itself supports, like mulitextures, are not in the Max exporter. Go figure.
You can also export from Maya, Blender, Gmax, Wings3d, (though I think some of these wont export anims to Panda).

Anyway, back to Max.
Lets say we have our old FF mesh Max file.
We can just export that to Panda as is, but it will look weird. Why? Nothing is hidden in Panda, and Selection and Boundingboxes appear as solid objects.

So, FF Max file to Panda .egg file tutorial.
1. Open your FF mesh Max file in Max. Now save it as the same name, with say "_egg" as a suffix, so you now have "male_basic.max" and "male_basic_egg.Max". So when we make changes, we still have our works-in-FF max file original.

2. Go to "display" and click on "unhide all". Delete the bounding box, selection box, weapon node, handle, pickup base, cape top, bottom and cape dummies. Delete any extra stuff that would be hidden in FF (no "versatile" meshes allowed, I'm afraid". All we want left is the biped, and the basic geometry of the character. Probably time to save.

3. Go up to "rendering", "material editor". Select the material (we'll just assume it's male_basic"). Change the "shader" type to "phong" (the only shader Panda likes). Now in "maps", "diffuse" put "male_basic.tga" (Panda accepts .tga, .dds, .png, .tiff, .jpg, though I think the best choices are .png or .jpg, for technical reasons. But I'm lazy, so for now, I'll just use .tga here).


4. Bump/normal mapping:Still in "maps" in "bump" put your bump/normal map texture, lets assume its "male_basic_bump.jpg". I'll assume for now that youi know how to generate a "normal" map (I use the Nvidia Photoshop plugin to make mine)

5.Gloss: In "specular" level, put a monochrome, alpha'd map saved as a .png, and the same one in "Glossiness". Panda gets its Gloss info from the alpha channel. I'm having some trouble getting gloss to show as glossy as I want, so take this section as unfinished, and read the Panda manual/Forums and find out for me if I'm doing it wrong.

6. Glow:In "self Illumination" put your alpha -enabled .png glow file. Panda also reads Glow info from alpha maps.

7. Opacity: What we would think of as Alpha-d tranclucency. Use the "opacity" map slot. Havent played with yet.

8. You don't actually need anything but a diffuse map, but all the other stuff will help it look good. I believe (but could be wrong) that you can actually add gloss/glow/bump/opacity to a mesh via Python scripting, and/or editing the .egg file format (which can be done in a text editor surprisingly easily).

9. OK textures are sort of done, what next? Lets start by exporting our basic geometry, then do animations in a bit. Go to "create" tab, "helpers" button and click on the drop down menu that starts with "standard", just below it. At the bottom of that list is "exporters", select this. In "object type" you should now see a "panda 3d" button. Click it. Under "parameters" you'll see "panda egg exporter". Click the "add" button and a new "export settings" widget/window/box thing opens up.In "animation type" select "model". Type in a filename and browse to where you want to export to. Select "export entire scene", and click on "OK". The widget closes and back over in the "eggs" section your mesh name should have appeared with a ticked box by it, and the type saying "model". Now click on "export now", and it will. I have the "pview output" selected so it runs pview and shows me the output.

And that it.
Except, one caveat about texture paths. I now export directly to my game/mod, and have the setup similar to FF, so the hierachy goes Mod/game>Models>characters>male_basic>skins>standard. And in the materials of Max, I set it to load the textures from there, because that path is then stored in the .egg file, and the textures read from there.


One last thing, Panda can load .egg models, or a compressed version called .egg.pz or a further optimized version called .bam.
Until the latter stages of game development, I'd stick with .egg, as some of the compression routines are one-way (ie as if you could zip up a file, but nor unzip it). The compression ratios are very good though, for instance I made a massive level file of new york that was a 170Mb .egg file. I pzipped it and it shrank to a mere 17Mb. So if it looks like the files are big, this can be dealt with.

[Epimethee]

Alex and Tommy, I'm very impressed by what you've done so far!

The 2010 version is actually semi-functional - you can edit character files and save them. I haven't added all the powers capacibilities yet. The battle scenes actually work, the heroes fight each other with basic melee AI (haven't added range powers yet). It's based on a game design I've done (at the moment very influenced by FF of course, but it has certain advantages over FF already)

Epimethee's point is well-taken, this is a huge undertaking. I have about 3,000 lines of code to do the basic shell you see in the pics (started on it in  May 2009)

So, basically, you are already where I would have expected a group of 5-6 of us to end up in two years.

Could you tell us a bit more about your plans and how the project going? What are the needs, difficulties, etc? I've noticed that the frame rate varies wildly from screenshot to screenshot... Has performance been a major issue so far?

And lastly... <puppy eyes> would you like help? If you do, how could we be useful?

[Panther_Gunn]

Here's a rather basic question that may have already been covered (I have not done my part in reading *every* line of this thread).  How convertible are already existing meshes, skins, fx, etc?  Would *everything* have to be reaccomplished, or can we still make use of some of the excellent work that has already been done?  I can't exactly contribute any content, but I can offer my thoughts & ideas (I know, there's plenty of that already).

[Epimethee]

Thanks for the tutorial, Tommy. I hope it stimulates meshers to look into this.

OK heres my note/tutorial on how to create meshes in panda.
I can create a thread somewhere for it too, but wasn't sure if it should be in "other games" or "meshes" or what. So for now its here.

I guess if this takes off, we could probably ask our FR overlords for a dedicated forum, for example.

I use Max 7 for Panda exporting. You could use 6,7,8,9, theres even an old Max 5 exporter (supposedly, though I've yet to find it myself) but no max 4 one.
I have, however, downloaded the Panda source code, in which is the source code for the Max exporter, so in theory, we could make one. In practice, I can't. Yet, probably forever.
Because Disney and Carnegie Mellon (the main driving forces behind Panda) both tend to use Maya, not 3ds Max, the Max exporters are not as well supported and developed and up to date as the Maya ones. So some stuff the Panda engine itself supports, like mulitextures, are not in the Max exporter. Go figure.
You can also export from Maya, Blender, Gmax, Wings3d, (though I think some of these wont export anims to Panda).

Speaking through my hat (I've only skimmed through the manual and forum and played with the tutorial and demos so far): Would converting to Blender and exporting from it be an option (assuming Blender support in Panda is better than for Max)?

Delete any extra stuff that would be hidden in FF (no "versatile" meshes allowed, I'm afraid".

Speaking through my hat, cont'd: But would the hidden extras be needed anyway? We could add them as separate meshes linked to the main one, no? 

8. You don't actually need anything but a diffuse map, but all the other stuff will help it look good. I believe (but could be wrong) that you can actually add gloss/glow/bump/opacity to a mesh via Python scripting.

Worth looking into. I'll check the doc to see if I can find an answer.

One last thing, Panda can load .egg models, or a compressed version called .egg.pz or a further optimized version called .bam.
Until the latter stages of game development, I'd stick with .egg, as some of the compression routines are one-way (ie as if you could zip up a file, but nor unzip it). The compression ratios are very good though, for instance I made a massive level file of new york that was a 170Mb .egg file. I pzipped it and it shrank to a mere 17Mb. So if it looks like the files are big, this can be dealt with.

Aren't .bam generated on the fly from the .egg? If so, unless doing an official release, there'd be no need to compress the .egg themselves (anyway, if this is a XML, putting every file in an .zip will probably compress by a similar ratio).

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

I'm really shocked that something this far along is already being worked on and as functional as it is. I would love to see it opened up as a full community project with the current peoples working on it as the leads. The fact that so much in Panda can be done via Python is good news to, making it quite moddable and accessable by many of the people that have been working on FF mods.

If you two were interested in pushing this for an actual release, I would suggest working first on making it a fully workable skirmish system, so basic ranged attacks would need to be finished up, but a lot of powers, attributes and stuff could wait until past the first release.  The releases themselves should not have proprietary characters in them for legal reasons, but all that stuff can easily be made separately downloadable.   After that, an actual campaign mode can be looked into, if desired. What do you all think of my ideas on that?

[tommyboy]

Could you tell us a bit more about your plans and how the project going? What are the needs, difficulties, etc? I've noticed that the frame rate varies wildly from screenshot to screenshot... Has performance been a major issue so far?

And lastly... <puppy eyes> would you like help? If you do, how could we be useful?

Well, there are sort of two projects really.
Alex's, which is actually getting made and going somewhere, and mine, which is just a bloated rotting vapourware carcass at this point. They share art assets and some similar goals. We both want something with as much, if not more flexibility and modability as ff, something which will let users add their own characters, (though of course we could not possibly condone the use of copyrighted characters). Alex's is a more tactical approach, closer to FF in that way, mine was more of a free roaming beatem/zapem-up with some tactical elements. I floundered on implementing the physics engine I wanted, (which was probably unnecessarily over-functioned), and on being lazy and distracted by shiny objects.

As for frame rate, bear in mind nothing you see has been optimized in terms of the art assets (see my post above near the end on egg.pz and bam filetypes), and, neither has the python been optimized as far as I know. But I can seem to get about a hundred meshes on-screen without much slow-down partly because the engine supports instancing (that may not be the term, I'm rusty). Ive had a fair number of meshes on-screen without major problems, but it's early days partly because I stalled out on making scenery. There is a reason few full 3d games only have one artist, theres a bucket-load of stuff to make, and then I go and raise my standards and have to remake 90% of it.

So for me, as the art-assets guy, I could use other modelers/animators/texturers, but its not for me to invite people to join Alex's team without his say so.
Of course anything made as open-source or creative commons license would be welcome in my own little project, assuming I ever resurrect it.

[abenavides]

For any dev types out there, here's my log of the coding effort. My background is professional software development (though not a professional game developer), so I'm quite geeky about logging things.

I realize a lot is gibberish - but it does show the effort thus far.

I've been busy with personal things lately so haven't moved coding forward recently, but a lot of the roadmap is designed.
-Performance has not been an issue (though, of course, I've only been working with about 10 characters at once). The frame rates do vary in the pics, but most likely because I'm running in a Windows box and haven't optimized for that. (thanks to Panda, this game should work on Windows, Mac, Linux, and evene browsers theoretically)
-I'm waiting for Panda 1.71 which will fix some things on compression/distribution which I need (the panda team is very good about updating, I think we started this project with version 1.5 of Panda)
- I need to go over some mesh things with Tommy as soon he gets back in panda mode. In SuperSquad (my codename for the project) - meshes can share animation folders, this cuts down on total space needed and will make it easy to "customize" a character's animations.
- I was coding the HUD (heads up display)  - you see a very basic version of it on the screenshots
- I was also coding the power editor

Code Select Expand


# Version Date Comments
# 0.2.9 30May2010 showHUD(), clickable portraits, move chkMelee to character class and set KO() there,
# fixed sort when adding new character, squad lifebars, charEditor class
# 0.2.8 25Apr2010 Created new modules: CAMERA, CHARACTER, GLOBALS and moved all non-GAME class code there
# Added New, Copy, and Del Character options, character class handles all loading and
# gameplay options for characters, switched to single myGUI() handler func
#                               Much better OOP design, faster to extend
# 0.2.7 18Apr2010 readCharFromFile(), charSkin(), myGUITextBox, myGUIScreen
# myGUILabel, updated hero file format, showCharSave(), WASD controls, slowed down AI
# more buttons for main menu, better extra anim handling, Char Edit screens,
# dynamically handle anim sets by checking all files in mesh folders
# 0.2.6 04Apr2010 Added screens and navigation, logFile(), GAME_VER, myGUIButton(), GAME_STORY
# moved all load functions into myGame class, new format for hero files, playBattle()
# 0.2.5 15Jun2009 Fixed picker warning msg, made this the main program,
# panda stdpy.file, fixed object click crash, gameControls, render.analyze
# 0.2.4 23May2009 flying melee, cannot click dead chars, MISSION_FOES and MISSION_SQUAD melee auto-attack,
# loadMap, str2tuple, changed camera rotate control, camera zoom limits, togglePause,
# prevent camera from going under scene, toggleLabels, charMoveToPos (click and move)
# 0.2.3 15May2009 combatMsg, melee distance check, charDodge
# 0.2.2 03May2009 loadLight, RPG_FLY_HEIGHT, chkMelee/attack click, AI_DISTANCE_DETECT, Wframe/Texture toggle
# 0.2.1 28Apr2009 Anim set choice in hero files, support 3 sets of anims: MALE, MALE_CAPE, and FEMALE
# 0.2.0 26Apr2009 mouseClick(), getCharByName, implemented switching squad member by clicking
# 0.1.9 25Apr2009 Fixed AI flying, ConfigPrc settings, more global constants
# 0.1.8 24Apr2009 charTurnTo - to correct char running backward, updated charAI and charMove -allow AI flying
# 0.1.7 18Apr2009 toggleFly, charTakeOff, charLand
# 0.1.6 17Apr2009 MISSION_FOES, charAI, getNearestTgtChar, getDistance, taskAI, charIdle, updated charMove
# 0.1.5 16Apr2009 Camera Compass use
# 0.1.4 14Apr2009 Log file, cameraDump, "art" folder paths, camera follows char, ";" delim in files
# 0.1.3 11Apr2009 Portraits, camera controls, eliminated need for XAN files, switchChar and WASD move
# 0.1.2 10Apr2009 GAME_DIR, hpr options on loadChar, hero and XAN file handling, MISSION_SQUAD objects
# 0.1.1 07Apr2009 MyGame class (user controls), auto-loading of anims:global and xtra
# 0.1.0 05Apr2009 Initial version: loadObject, loadChar



[abenavides]

My game is based on an idea I had over 10yrs ago (and which FF was shockingly close to). It would be similar to game likes the original Champions which never happened (not the current champions online) and the never-released Guardians:Agents of Justice. (but in real 3d like FF)

I have gone back and forth on controls (it's like Marvel: Ultimate Alliance / Warcraft at the moment, but I can easily switch to FF -like controls).

The screens look like FF right now, but that's because of the art assets I'm using for testing.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

Okay, sound like you have a very definite direction you plan on.

As far as licensing, were you going or open source, closed source freeware, or indy commercial?

What are your plan for campaign mode?

Are you planning on focusing it on player created heroes, pre-sets, or a bit of both?

Are you open to making this a team effort, with you being in charge of course, and allowing a lot of other people to help you out?