Open MMORPG Newsletter #02

[This Newsletter post is now quite out of date, however it is included for archival purposes. It may contain information that is no longer accurate and some dead links]

Introduction

We skipped a month, but now we are back on the project! There are also two other things to celebrate like there is a new Core of Three member and we hit over 100 members on our forum! The New core member is Slayer93 and Kenjar was nice enough to fill in for Tinkergirl when she left.

Remember to visit our site, and our forum.

OMMORPG Progress

by Nevereverend

With so many folks being back in school, things have once more slowed down again here at the OpenMMORPG Project. But this is not to say there is not progress being made. This project remains in active development, with quite a few pieces being completed "behind the scenes".

We are moving toward the completion of Phase One, the Demo, whose purpose is to illustrate the broad capabilities of our toolkit project, to highlight its potential and its promise. And to that extent, we are progressing admirably. The culmination of this phase, the Demo itself, is nearly finished (about 85% of the way, by my estimate), with only a few remaining art and coding needs.

As I mentioned, some things have been worked on out of the public eye simply because we needed to move forward with the project and try to close out this phase. Much of what has thus far been available in the SVN repository has been development and testing material, with newer and more complete material being added in the next few updates. This is especially true of the project's art.

Regarding art and design, updates range from new inventory icons to a complete replacement of the "test" zone terrain with something more stylized. Ground textures have been updated or replaced to create more unevenness and realism to the terrain's appearance. A few models have been retextured to improve their appearance or, in the case of several AI Entities (Agents), to make them more suited to their actual environment. There are even a few new models added.

Coding has been moving forward, with a basic quest system being implemented. While this system currently supports only simple quests, such as fetch and carry or kill the monster, it is only designed for use in Phase One, the Demo. Come the next phase, the development of a full RPG, we will be working to expand the structure and capabilities of quests significantly.

There has been much discussion about building skill groups for our skill system. A framework has been finished; designed for flexibility, it will be expanded as coders fill in more and more skills. Again, for the Demo, skills are being kept simple, though they will be expanded and likely made far more important in the near future.

Understandably, one would wonder what is left to finish before the Demo is ready for release? Well, as always, we have a need for animators to rig and animate some of the models. We could also use someone skilled at making decent UV Maps from models to make retexturing models even easier. We also need coders to help build individual skills, finish the character generation system, and implement save/load functions. Of course, this is just what we need for the Demo. We can always use more models, art, code, and ideas for when we move on to completing the full RPG.

Code Center

4 Elements is Back!

by Slayer93

The time of the return of 4 Elements is here and I have scraped the old code. This one is going to be much better than the old one since I have learned so much from this project. 4 Elements is a trading card game where you duel against ai opponents and in the future real people. Have a look at it in the code submissions board at the openmmo forum.

This time around I have planned everything (or almost everything) and I already started programming it. Like the project it is being coded in Dark Basic Professional and is completely open-source! I have done a few things already and I may not be able to finished this project myself so if anyone wants to help out on it you can. This is afterall a community project where anyone can help even if you don't have DBP (Dark Basic Professional) like Nevereverend (the art guru of the project). So go over and help with this small project now or the main project.

In the project the main thing I am working on is getting commands into the script system. This script system is probably the single most best thing I ever made in DBP. The script system is based off the one I submitted to the project much early and you can read about it in the last newsletter. Right now the script system is being used to add cards into the card system, deck system, and the chest system which are all related to each other in some way. With adding the script system it makes it easier to add in what I want without re-compiling the source everytime I make a change or digging through the source for one little piece of code.

Now what you were waiting for...

Screenshots!

[This Newsletter's Screen Shots have been Deleted]

Animation and Particle System
by Slayer93

FoeV, a new member, has joined our project and he has already contributed some great code. The animation and particle system is coming along great and he has a great model to test with made by Nevereverend. Here is the thread to view the code:

[Link - Animation and Particle System]

Here is a screenshot of its current progress:

IRC Channel @ devhat.net

by Slayer93

One of our members (Kentaree) was nice enough to give us our own channel on his irc. This is where you can discuss with some members and occasionally core members usually me (Slayer93) and maybe if you're lucky Nevereverend and RiiDii will appear to talk about the game progress. So go on now at irc.devhat.net in the #openmmo channel to give feedback or just chat.

[Link - #Openmmo IRC Channel]

Media Corner

MattW is Back!

by Slayer93

It seems one of our moderators on the forum has become a bit more active again and he is pumping out some great models. Here are some of them...

[This Newsletter's Screen Shots have been deleted]

4 Elements Cards

by Slayer93

With 4 Elements being a mini-game for the main project there had to be something that connects to each other right? Well all the cards are based on models people submitted to this project and someone (Mostly Nevereverend) had made it into a card and some good ones too. Just check them out by downloading the game and look through the directory or go the an older thread about 4 Elements on our forum to check it out. We already have more than 20 cards to test the game out!

Monsters to Build into Your Vocabulary

by Slayer93

We have lots of monsters in our game and if you look at the forum we just used strange names like its in everyones vocabulary. Here is your chance to put it in your vocabulary so check out these names and screenshots...

Grole
Rox Lizard

[This Newsletter's Screen Shots have been deleted]

I can't think of any more right now, so just take a look in the forums. So now if you ever hear about these on the forum, you will know what it is!

Outro

Hope that was enough to satisfy you and maybe come and pursuade you to contribute to our community project. Until next month...