Back to Roots: Looking For Collaboration
As has become the norm for “help wanted” notes, I am posting this separately from the other Back to Roots news running today.
Fearyourself feels, at this point, that Back to Roots is stable and mature enough for him to branch the project out a bit with the addition of additional people to the projec team. As such, he is looking for a few good people, both programmers and non-programmers:
I believe what is most lacking is most likely:
Non programmers:
– A writer to add some content, some Npcs, etc. into the world
– Some 2D art for the menus, new tiles, etc.Programmers:
– I haven’t got a clear picture of what is needed really here. One could say everything but I’d like to open this side of the project much slower than the non-programmer side. However, any good programmer is always a plus in a project such as this, it would be appreciated.
– For example, a Windows programmer who would like to try to port the code to Windows and we can merge the changes into a single project could be nice
So, Dragons and Dragonettes…if you want to jump on board with another promising game engine project (with an Ultima bent, naturally), leave a comment either here or at the Back to Roots project site and make yourself known!
I’d be open to contributing help – at least as far as content generation, writing, editing, or anything else that falls along those lines. 🙂
Good to hear!
I’ll drop Fearyourself a line by email to let him know you’ve commented here. He can decide how to proceed from there!
Sounds awesome, if you like we can talk via email to figure out how to proceed.
I’ll let Wtf send us a common email and we can go from there.
@Wtf: Thanks for the news update!
Email works for me! Just drop me a line whenever you’re ready, thanks! 🙂
If my rather minor art skills can be of use, I would offer them.
My Minecraft texture pack would be an example of what I’m capable of.
Not sure how much time I can offer, but I have the occasional free weekend, and if it’s tile-based graphics I can get quite a lot done in a short amount of time. Depends on detail levels I suppose.
I can put together some sample tiles if you’d like to look at them. What resolution and file format do you prefer? Also, should they conform to canonical Ultima IV landscape tile types, or would you like more variations?
Finally, do you plan on implementing “interconnective” tiles, or any other form of tile blending? Static is pretty easy to set up (Ultima V), dynamic is a bit trickier but offers endless possibilities (my game).
If you’d like me to come up with some static, canonical Ultima tile replacements, give me a loose description of the style you’d prefer. I like photorealistic, but static tiles probably require a more abstract and “artistic” feel.
@HEATHER BOOTHE
At some point in the distant future I need an extremely vague backstory regarding an abandoned Britannia, whose surviving residents immigrated to a new and unconquered world through a broken and dying moongate. Apparently I can’t use Britannia because the IP is owned by some jerkwads who would send me a cease and desist were I to encroach on their territory.
If this sounds interesting, the summation would require about two hearty paragraphs and I could take care of the rest. I’d do it all myself, but it’s always good to filter your own ideas through the lens of another for that extra touch of depth and complexity.
At your typematic rate you could probably produce it in less than 6.4 seconds, though with some thought it may take 12.8 or so. Let me know.
@Andy_Panthro, @Sanctimonia: if it’s tiles that you’re good at then let’s start with that :-).
My vision for the moment is redoing the tiles of Ultima 5 in a better/modern style. Adding animation tiles etc. The engine should be able to accept any files, they can be one file per tile, though a tilesheet is lighter for the underlying OpenGL layer.
If we could have a 1:1 new version of the U5 tiles with more animations for the torches, npcs, monsters, transparency, etc. That could be awesome.
Thanks for your interest,
Jc
@ Sanctimonia
It’s funny you bring that up…I was never satisfied with the way the Avatar’s story “ended”. For the past couple of years, off and on, I’ve been working on an Ultima-inspired novel that I know will never see the light of day being published thanks to the greedy tarts at EA. But I write the story because I love it.
I’d be happy to help craft a summation for you and give you my two-cents worth. For a good in-depth backstory, it would probably require more than 2 paragraphs. Even if you never use any of the information outwardly in the story being told, as long as you know the “who, what, why and where” you can lead the story anywhere you want to go.
Email me, and we could discuss further if you wish?
On the subject of an Ultima novel…it’s worth noting that the “greedy tarts” at EA helped the folks at the Wing Commander CIC get permission to publicly release the last Wing Commander movie canon novel…just last week, in fact! For free, even!
It’s also worth noting that Paul Barnett of BioWare Mythic (an EA studio) was looking for Ultima novelists a few months ago.
If you have a work in progress draft, I can see if he’d be interested to take a look.
@WtFD
Don’t mind me…I’m just being bitter. 😉 I know that I could certainly attempt at publishing a novel that EA owns the rights to. For a “first-time” novelist, meaning none of my previous novels have ever been published by a major publishing house, it can be a difficult process, but one that I am always open to exploring.
I definitely have a manuscript draft, and if you have a contact that might be interested in taking a look, I’d be eternally grateful! 🙂
@ Heather Boothe
Sweet, thanks for the offer to help. My game won’t have a plot/story in the traditional sense, but it will have an intrinsic culture which will be derived from some kind of backstory. It won’t be overt in the sense of having an explanatory introduction sequence or even quests, but will permeate every aspect of the AI-controlled port city and set the tone for player expansion into the wilderness. My game is about the fundamental mechanics of gameplay, how they may be layered and combined, and how the intelligent and natural use of these mechanics will inevitably result in groups of people creating their own stories without even realizing it.
I don’t have your email address but you can find mine here:
http://www.eightvirtues.com/sanctimonia/
under the Contact link.
@ WtF
Cool news about the WC book and BioWare looking for an Ultima novelist. I’m guessing the latter would find work as a writer for some mysterious and secret project, perhaps for game tomes or the game writing itself. What a blast either would be.
@ FEARYOURSELF
By 1:1 do you mean the tileset’s tiles or the tile pixel resolution? I’m assuming the tileset. I think at least 128×128 pixels would be good for the tiles (that’s what I use).
Also, by transparency do you mean all the tiles or just objects like torches? For example, a vertical river tile could exclude the background so that a pure grass tile (or whatever) could be rendered beneath it. The Ultima V tileset didn’t support transparency so everything was just “hard drawn” into each tile. I suppose it comes down to whether or not the map files will support layering or just a 2D grid of tiles.
Yeah I meant the tileset’s tiles. The issue I have right now is that you don’t only need to have cool looking tiles, but they must blend well with the monsters, the npcs, and the player’s tiles.
That’s why getting realsome tiles can be good but only if you can blend in well the rest. It’s for those reasons that I prefer something that stays in the same style of the old Ultimas or less real.
As for transparency, yes that is what I meant. Anything is possible since I’m writing the engine but as I said before, without a full tileset: objects, characters, and background, I can’t yet determine what needs to be done.
The foundation of a universal tileset is a common background. In Ultima VI and earlier, it was black. It could be a series of similar tiles to simulate those most commonly surrounding it. A shared “sub background” of black could be used by each at half-scale resolutions to provide the illusion of blending. A common and canonical tileset could be created using this, but new tile blending procedures could take that further.
I like the idea of keeping the largely black background for blending static tiles. At higher resolution and with decent tileability, it could look fantastic. I’ll submit a sample after some experiments.
I’ll do a few test tiles over the next week, for static images (items or something), 128*128 w/black background. See if you like those, and then can proceed from there.
Alright, I came up with a decent background texture: grass. I used the Ultima V tileset as my reference layer, added to it the background grass texture only over tiles which had some grass, then overlaid the original tileset with the black pixels set to transparent.
Yes, it’s nowhere near perfect or refined, but for an initial phase it makes a good proof of concept for further work (hopefully). Many of the black pixels from the original tileset that were set to transparent should not be showing grass, such as those between ripples in the water and in windows of buildings. These will be manually flagged as “not transparent” using the low-res original tileset, then overlaid so more appropriate backgrounds may be chosen.
Anyway, let me know what you think for a first pass. I know it will look iffy at best if used in its current state, but I’m still curious to see. The 16×16 pixel tiles of the original tileset have been scaled to 128×128 pixels. The files are here:
http://www.eightvirtues.com/sanctimonia/backtoroots/
Was just thinking, if I have an executable, or the source and dependencies, I can test the tileability in-engine. Is this possible?
So I’ll try to find a second to update the wiki for the installation but it should be relatively straight forward under linux. Under windows, I’m convinced it won’t compile.
Tell me when you want to play with it and I’ll send you an email explaining it.
So I looked at your grass, it looks great, I wonder how it would look in the game, I might try later just for fun.
So I tried it out. Your pictures are so nice that actually the only way to make it look good would be to cut them up into sub tiles of the grass and then make the grass tiles in the game have different values depending on their position.
For example, your tile could be cut up in four parts :
A B
C D
and then in the game, if ever there is a four by four patch of grass it would use the tiles:
A B A B
C D C D
A B A B
C D C D
Also to answer another question: you can create the tiles separately, either I’ll merge them into one tilesheet or I’ll simply use them separately. The engine makes it work quite nicely if we don’t do what is said above.
@Andy_Panthro: sounds good, you can directly send me an email, WTF has my email
I’ve downloaded that large PNG from Sanctimonia, (the U5 tileset) and I’ll email that to you once I’ve had a bit of a play around with things. I’ll email WTF to get your email, unless he reads this and emails me first! Will probably be Saturday by the time I get stuff sorted, but shouldn’t be hard to get a couple of dozen tiles done.
Thanks. I was thinking it would use the 128×128 tiles normally by either scaling them down or increasing the rendering offsets and such. Splitting them up is a good idea, although it would clash with other tiles that also shared the same grass background because they wouldn’t correspond with their A/B/C/D counterpart every time. One possible solution is that the tiles that share the grass background could be made to have a transparent background, and you could first write the grass, then write the object on top of it.
Your A/B/C/D idea is very similar to what I’m already doing with my game. For example I have a 2048×2048 pixel grass texture. When I render a grass tile from it (128×128 pixels) I use this formula to figure out which part of the large texture should be rendered:
MegaTextureX = (WorldX Mod 16) * 128
MegaTextureY = (WorldY Mod 16) * 128
In your case (assuming your normal tiles are 64×64 and we’re making my 128×128 grass texture the “megatexture”), it should look like this:
MegaTextureX = (WorldX Mod 2) * 64
MegaTextureY = (WorldY Mod 2) * 64
(MegaTextureX, MegaTextureY) should be the upper-left corner of the 64×64 pixel tile to grab from the megatexture for the tile at world position (WorldX, WorldY).
Creating a logic layer between the data files and what gets shown on screen gives more flexibility, as you could render an Ultima IV (or earlier) map in a more seamless way without having to manually change the data files.
Where’s the link for the source? I couldn’t find it on your web site. I’m running Debian Testing so it should compile alright.
Sounds good to both of you. I’ll see what I do on the rendering front as soon as I get new tilesets. I’m supposed to be getting a more manga style tile set soon so that will also be interesting.
I’ve kept the fact that you can go from one tileset to another in game so I’ll be pushing to keep that feature even if the tilesets change drastically.
I’ve updated the installation process here:
http://backtoroots.gamengine.net/wiki/index.php?title=Download_and_installation
Tell me if you have issues,
Jc