Project Arthur (was June 6)

[IsmAvatar]

I'll set an example. If your rpg dies, please say so in your post, so that a mod can come along and close the post.

Project Arthur
This is the project name. The actual name probably won't come until the project is nearing an end.

Note, this question is asked far too often. Project Arthur will not be for online play. Not an mmo, it's just a normal RPG like Morrowind or IceWind Dale in which you pick up off the shelf, buy, come home, pop in the CD, and sit and play it, alone, without anyone else on the internet.

I can't say too much about this game, because I plan to sell it, and I don't want anyone stealing my ideas.

It'll be based on Midieval time, during the reign of King Arthur, England. I think that's around 500 AD.?

The game uses my old grid movement script. Gameplay is incredible, the way the character moves around and all, and dialogue is quite a feat.

A demo is out. Please make sure to take a look.

userweb.nni.com/cmagicj/arthurfix.zip

I'm working on a site for it, so people can watch it's progress, and such. There i'll include in depth details of what I do to the game, and what goes into the making of that game.

The Project Arthur Team
Project Leader & Programmer - IsmAvatar
Storyteller & Dialogue writups - Tomewrym
World Artist - d2king
Sprite Artist - Pending Severene
Composer - Dino
Testers:
Alpha - Jeff Craven (and all main team members)
Beta - Ben Rostik (and all alpha testers), and possibly DragonLord

[IsmAvatar]

Ok, since the storyline was having trouble putting itself together, and someone told me how it wouldn't work, then I've told them that they could do the storyline. I've added them to the credits and they will work on it. This means we now have our 4th team member. Alpha tester says he gives a go ahead to anything, and only tests each time I release the game, and not before then, and alpha tester 2, my sprite artist, only alpha tests for a second opinion, and doesn't require his name in the credits for alpha testing. So, he is the more important one because he's making the sprites for it, and him and my storyline teller have better contact than through email, and I have better contact with my storyline teller, so it all works out.

Anywhom, our current idea is to keep the King Author idea, only instead of the main character being author, he's just a random citizen, who lives in the kingdom that author rules over. we'll make it possible that he can become a knight of the round table, but we won't allow too much interference in the quests of author, as to not rewrite history.

Current updates: there's been a lot of external updates to the game, stuff that affects how the game reacts to your computer, or vise versa. encryption, resolution, etc. that has all in all improved the computer-related aspect of the game. The game itself has not changed much at all, but the Credits screen got a big boost.
Ini files have been added for enhanced gameplay for remembering how the settings were when the player left, and an ini file hack file will be used to hack various aspects of the game for my testers, such as enabling screenshots, and changing the screen resolution, and such.

[IsmAvatar]

we now have an introduction script from the storyteller of our group. It's very cool, but rather long, meaning that the introduction will probably have to be done using GM, and not some avi or something, because that would make the game humungous... lol.

The sprite artist has submitted his first piece of work, a scroll. This will be for the title screen, in which I will be giving you a screenshot soon.

userweb.nni.com/cmagicj/j6title.png

We are also working on a new name for the game, and a name for our team.

The game is expected to be done this summer (August maybe) and as for you foreigners, that's USA's summer... No idea what that would be for you...

My sprite artist says he should be done by March, since he's going away to Japan to be a foreign exchange student then (my birthday present... March 8)

[Vexen]

Sounds like a really awsome idea. Where do you plan on selling it?

[IsmAvatar]

Haven't got a clue. It's nowhere near done yet, so I haven't looked into that yet. Near the end of spring, if it's getting close to finished I'll check out the distributing your games forum on the GM forums and see what they say about distributing games. Then I'll look around my local community to see how far I can get it at the cheapest price possible.

I'll probably just wind up selling it to a company and having them sell however much they want.
I am in Pennsylvania, so if it goes local, then people in PA will be able to buy it, and I'll look into taking mail in orders for the full version.

I also may look into having some other people help sell it with me.

Expect a demo around mid-early April, perhaps.

[Vexen]

Well good luck on selling it. If I'm able to get a copy then I reckon I will. The concept of your game just sounds amazing, and I'd love to see it in action.

[IsmAvatar]

You should take a look at the demo first to make sure you like it. Heaven forbid you spend $10 on a game you're never gonna play

Yeah, I know your ambition, I am in best eyes in getting this done.

[Vexen]

I'll play the demo don't worry. But you're pretty expierianced with RPG's so I reckon you'll make something good of it.

[IsmAvatar]

Save/Load system is now the Slot system, having 6 slots.

Screens have changed, new screenshots up soon.

[Vexen]

I'll be looking foward to the new screenshots.

[IsmAvatar]

Screenshots up, but I ran into an odd snag that didn't appear before, some stupid bug just developed itself in my game, and I can't find the cause. This bug has prevented me from
1) completing my slot save/load
2) accessing my inventory/interaction screens.

it has to do with my room_gosub code that I'm using, it keeps making up some stupid negative array. I'll figure it out. I'll probably just wind up rewriting my room_gosub code, rather than looking through everything, but on an unrelated note, my save/load has been giving me problems right when I tried to prevent 2 slots from having the same name. This one may be a bit harder to figure out.

anywhom, here's the screenies I promiced. Nothing big.
userweb.nni.com/cmagicj/screenshot.html

In the meantime, I got a new game for christmas, so I'll be playing that as a break from my game. It's an RPG, so I'll try to learn from it, but from what I've played of it so far, there's not much to learn, everything's a bit too advanced for me yet.

[IsmAvatar]

tweak tweak... tweak poke *owe*... tweak... tweak... poke *owe*... Success!!

I bought myself some bug repellent and my game works now (hehe). Interaction screen is now up. Same link.

Tell me what you think.

As for the slot system, well, Loading never was pleasant, but creating a new game works fine now. At least there's no bugs

I figured out I was comparing a filename to the same filename, and if they weren't the same, it would say "person already exists". It kept saying person already exists, even when it wasn't supposed to. I discovered I was comparing the filename with the filename... with the extension removed
so, now I got that much working. I'd love to release a demo, but there's nothing to see, beyond the screenshots. The gameplay screen uses graphics from other games. I'll release a minidemo soon, though, just so you can see how gameplay goes, despite the graphics.

Argh, if only I knew how to make GM read its sounds from the same folder, without having to move them to the temp folder and then delete the temp folder, I could save 10 seconds off of the loading time. I got so annoyed with those 10 seconds, I just replaced the sounds with a homemade sound of silence, about 1 second long, 50 bites in size.... the game loads in less than one second now, but there's no sound...

[Vexen]

Well the system looks very easy to navigate. Which ios good because then I don't have to spend to much time learning how to use it. Glad you figured out that bug. Took me a whole day to fix one bug once.

[IsmAvatar]

this bug took me a day
Hey, at least it didn't take me 29 days (wink wink)

Alright, now I think I've got a composer, so we'll have sounds and music soon.

my storyliner submitted some more stuff, so I'll be fitting it into the game.
The first area, I think we were planning on calling it Llederach (or drop one of the L's), and you get introduced to the world, and then go out on a quest. It'll be a lot to program, though.

[hamalnamal]

how long will your game be?