The First Demo

I think we should set goals for what we'd like to have in the first demo. That way we have an easy way to keep track of progress. Thoughts?

~Asomath

I'd suggest releasing a demo rather early, so only basic features would be implemented, but we could get feedback early.

In a first demo users should be able to create characters, walk around, talk to NPCs, aqcuire quests, equip items and fight against monsters.
It could present a little region with maybe 2 or 3 different enemy types, a little town with npcs, shops, a temple, training hall and some basic quests to solve.
We might even implement some spells and skills.

Akkarin

So, dont have Serenity be the demo map, but rather have one specifically created for the demo?

Since theres a basic generic spell-field for the starter class, I would like to at least have a Magic Bolt spell in the demo as well. Otherwise, most of those things listed sound good.

~Asomath

I've already scheduled demo to Q2 2012 in roadmap.You guys are too much optimistic.Until we won't release demo with absolutely perfect graphics we can't expect crowds of people to join us
Problem of open-source games is they are mostly rated by graphics.Thats usualy the thing which divides open-source games to already released and those which were stalled (=terminated)

So is what your saying is focus on graphics and aesthetics before getting the gameplay mechanics? Or did I misunderstand? If it is, wouldnt it be harder to do that as we have more programmers than we have modelers (by that, 2 vs 1)?

~Asomath

asomath wrote:So is what your saying is focus on graphics and aesthetics before getting the gameplay mechanics? Or did I misunderstand? If it is, wouldnt it be harder to do that as we have more programmers than we have modelers (by that, 2 vs 1)?

~Asomath

What I say is there shouldn't be any official demo release until we have high quality models.It is obvious the programming will be finished long before all the design is complete (my guess is it will be within one year).
Fortunately there is more vegetation than buildings in Serenity map.For the beginning we need the pyramid, two cliffs, two villagers (woman and man), goblin, dragonfly, spider, few houses, some rocks and trees which are quite easy to do since UDK has SpeedTree modeller.

So do you think when we release a demo, it SHOULD be a Serentity demo? And its nice to have that list.

~Asomath

You think there should be more than Serenity or even less would be enough?

No, I think we should have Serenity and a few quests. Just the overland map though, no dungeon. And shops should be put off too, as that requires more modeling. And there is more than one town in Serenity, but for demo purposes, perhaps it would be better to focus just on the starting one? Unless it is easy to do the other one.

~Asomath

As far as the interior renders are concerned I don't plan them to even consider before the game is finished.It's rubbish

I'm thinking less is more in terms of our first demo.

* One town with enterable buildings. ( I agree with schveilder that these don't need anything amazing in terms of interior renders... )
- Needs functionality. i.e. weapon shop with weapons you can purchase
- Needs building UI with selectable dialogue options etc.

* One quest ( maybe find an item or something )

* One Interior dungeon ( The abandoned temple? )

* One monster class ( i.e. giant rats )
- Could have different strength levels i.e. large rat, giant rat, rodent of unusual size :p

Here are the things I believe need to be finalized in time for the demo:

* Character designing system

* Game engine with physics and pretty looking models ( even though we'll only have a very small play area for the demo )

* Item system ( paper dolls and identify items, alchemy, inventory etc. )
- We could just use 1 paper doll picture for all characters since drawing them all up / rendering them would take forever. ( save it for the end of the game like the interior renders )

Cheers,


- Sinbad

More or less, I agree.However I would suggest to make more than one quest.I also consider to use 3D models instead of paperdolls since rendering paperdolls would result in much more work.It had some purpose when computers hadn't so much performance, it looked well.Nevertheless today it only takes a lot of time to create such a renders.What do you think?


EDIT: What exactly do you mean by Character designing system?Only player creation menu or something more?

Now when you say using 3D models instead of paper dolls, do you mean modeling the character, positioning it, and then rendering the front of it? Or do you mean actually incorporating a rotatable model inside the inventory screen with equipping capabilities.

I would assume he meant the character creation screen, as the ability to design your own character would require resources we don’t have. I think 3 is a good number in terms of quests.

~Asomath

Yeah I just meant the player creation menu, but fully working.
I think we had it working in the last MMT demo, but that wasn't using the new engine.

Personally I would be more inclined to continue using 2d paperdolls, because detailed character images would be a lot easier to create and modify using photoshop then a 3d model.
we can put that idea on the back burner for now though because as I said, it's going to take a lot of effort to create the character paperdolls, 3d or otherwise.
So I say we just carry on with a 2d inventory system such as the one used in mm6-8 until this demo is complete

It doesnt matter if it would be possible to rotate with character, I thought it would save us some work since many of all items will be as 3D models.We would only need to make characters head (body will be made anyway for npcs)

Before releasing anything I would like the game to have finished menu graphics.What I've done so far are only placeholders and since Flash makes me crazy noone persuades me to do it (however I have idea how it should look like).

so what is with all the stuff made before?

Hi Gizzzmo, glad to see you here.
3D models are useless since they are too old and their textures too.Problem of MMT's earlier development was that nobody managed design of every piece of 3D objects so the result was terrible - the game made of models having diverse concept.If it would continue this way then at the end we could see some Frankenstein-like game sewed of many different pieces .
Concept art is the same case however there are several very good pieces(I like especially yours and Veenans') which I would like to use.And renders are usually very good but again same problem as before but the most important reason is we don't plan to use them since it is very time consuming to create each one and there are problems with aspect ratio etc.

^Exactly. The material that still transfers over to the UDK MMT is used. However, as Schveider said, not having a coherrence and understanding between contributors over the past years have led to a patchwork of resources which, in some cases, are unsalvagable. This is, of course, depending on the type of resource; a sound (such as Oren's soundtrack) transfers much better than a visual asset. We will be working to make sure contributors are in-tune in terms of Visual Asset specifications, so that we don't end up with wasted effort!!!

~Asomath

yeah, shit happens.