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christo Member Posts: 75 From: Registered: 07-12-2004 |
I am beginning work on a Final Fantasy style RPG with bible based charcter intros. An example of this is I have a character that like Jonah is running from God and gets swallowed by a fish, this character will be re-introduced later on after he has finished at the game's equivilant to Niniveh. I am planning to have a 2D graphics,fightning system, a major thing that goes wrong so there is a pupose, world map, villages,ect..I have to modify some of the bible stories some so they fit with the story line. The big question is weather or not to use the biblical names for the characters as I am not sure how biblical I can keep it. My artist has not read the bible very much and has done mostly secular story lines to date. I hope to encourage my artist to read more of their bible during the course of the project. This is a three person project. I am doing most of the coding and providing some storyline tips and possibly voices. My artist is making all the pictures, except those I can generate by code, and doing the main storylining. The third is working on audio that may or may not be included. I am trying to get as close as I can to a christian turn-based RPG without scripture only battle and adding a few twists to keep people from getting bored. I have debated a bit about how to include scripture in the battle system or if I should just include it in the senerio. Any thoughts on this will be appreciated. |
buddboy Member Posts: 2220 From: New Albany, Indiana, U.S. Registered: 10-08-2004 |
well, one way to incorporate the scripture into the battle would be making it battle cries... or what would be cool is put in verses in the original greek... then put translations at the bottom of the screen... what do you think of that? this idea sounds cool... i just have one thing to say... why do a christian RPG with a non-christian? lol... oh and welcome to CCN christo!! ------------------ |
CPUFreak91 Member Posts: 2337 From: Registered: 02-01-2005 |
quote: I agree, Battle cries would be a good idea, you just have to make them loud or do something to catch the user's attention. (in that case, wb to the forums christo) ------------------ ``After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless.'' -- Tao of Programming Book 2 [This message has been edited by CPUFreak91 (edited February 19, 2006).] |
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buddboy Member Posts: 2220 From: New Albany, Indiana, U.S. Registered: 10-08-2004 |
really? just like me!! wow... lol... hey christo!! only, i have 562 posts... lol... ------------------ |
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nfektious Member Posts: 408 From: Registered: 10-25-2002 |
Congrats Christo on working with non-believers and trying to get them to read the Bible. That is a noble pursuit and not easy to acheive. I wish you the best in that endeavor. It is refreshing to see people willing to work with non-believers and make it an opportunity to share God with them. Personally, I think you should try to represent the biblical stories as best as you can in a way that works with your game story. You do not have to quote the Bible or use Biblical character names to make that connection - it is the inspiration of the story that connects it to the Bible itself. Sometimes the worst thing you can do in making a game is force something into the game. Your game should flow naturally. This is probably the most common mistake in making a game. [This message has been edited by nfektious (edited May 20, 2006).] |
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christo Member Posts: 75 From: Registered: 07-12-2004 |
The others in my group are young Catholics. And the war cry idea sounds good though if I was going to use any greek I would need a translator.How I would probably do it is give the user a selection of verses they can choose from and have conditional attack or defence bonuses based on the verse and the enemy. |
Jari Member Posts: 1471 From: Helsinki, Finland Registered: 03-11-2005 |
Hi christo! First, it's good to hear that you want to include scripture in the game and sounds like you are not making another fighting game with a christian tag on it. Anyway I think you shouldnt use too much of the names that are found in Bible because it might confuse some one and make them mix the characters between Bible and your game if you use them too much. I think you could use names like John and David since they commonly used anyway but I wouldnt use names like solomon or jerobean, as example. I hope and pray that you can make the game pleasing in God eyes. Pray for the spirit to lead! God bless. In Christ, ------------------ [VoHW] (Help needed) [Blog] - Truedisciple (mp3) |
CoolJ Member Posts: 354 From: ny Registered: 07-11-2004 |
Hi Christo I think you can create your game and stay true to the Bible all the same. Think of it like writing a work of fiction based around the people, places and times of the Bible. The Bible is your factual historical reference. Now your just creating a fictional game built around or in parallel. This is done all the time with great success by fiction writers. Think of all popular war movies that have been made. They usually have fictional leading characters and story lines, but stay true to the time and the personas of the historical aspects. This makes it exciting and believable. Of course one of my pet peeves is when main stream tv and movies are based off the Bible and they butcher or inaccurately alter what is clearing presented in the Bible, so I might be a little biased with my opinion. I think it will be much more rewarding if you can keep the 'facts' as 'facts' and work your creativity around it. For example with Jonah: Jonah (along with all Israelites) absolutely despised and feared them, and rightly so; they were a ruthless and blood thirsty enemy, poised to strike at the heart of Israel at any time. (book of Nahum) As my student bible states: "The Assyrians themselves left monuments to their cruelty- long, boastful inscriptions describing their toture and slaughter of people who opposed them." So you can see why Jonah hated them! But what our human minds find hard to grasp (then same as now) is that God LOVED them even though they were wicked gentiles, as he does all of us. Because of their wickedness God was ready to destroy them, however He wanted to give them a chance to repent and turn to him. And this is why Jonah was chosen, an Israelite (one of his chosen), to deliver this important message. Jonah was NOT a happy camper!! And of course you know the rest. Here's one idea of what I mean: ex. Could you imagine Jonah's friend is on a covert mission to spy on Nineveh, or attempt to assassinate a leader, or maybe thinking Jonah has been kidnapped, trying to rescue him; and lo-and-behold while there sees his best friend standing in the square yelling for the people of Nineveh to repent so they won't be destroyed?! Talk about being one mad dude!! Anyway, sorry for the long post. New ideas always get me thinking too much, Good luck! |
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buddboy Member Posts: 2220 From: New Albany, Indiana, U.S. Registered: 10-08-2004 |
awesome idea coolj!!! cool.... ------------------ |
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christo Member Posts: 75 From: Registered: 07-12-2004 |
I got some good news two days ago.My artist has increased their bible reading for the project. The one that works on sound still has shown no signs of improvement in the ways of christianity and has lost alot of interest in the project.These two don't get along well so I often have to meet with them one on one to get anything done. One will continually insist that the other leave. |
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christo Member Posts: 75 From: Registered: 07-12-2004 |
I just read more closely some of the other posts. I was thinking about putting my jonah scene at the beginning, but I will be waiting till later to introduce Niniveh and jonah's view of it's inhabitants. My main character cannot become quick friends with jonah due to occupation, though this may change. My main character will meet up with jonah later. I havent determined where yet. Maybe outside of the city waiting for it's destruction. |
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buddboy Member Posts: 2220 From: New Albany, Indiana, U.S. Registered: 10-08-2004 |
so, how's it going since your last posts? ------------------ |
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christo Member Posts: 75 From: Registered: 07-12-2004 |
I have an engine developed that will allow my charaters to walk around on a background.I have started to figure out dialogs. I haven't figured out how to handle walls yet. hope to figure this out when I get my next set of images to play with. And my team and I only meet on weekdays so I haven's seen them since my last post.I intend to meet with them this evening. I don't expect to have much to say about them even after meeting with them. |
HanClinto Administrator Posts: 1828 From: Indiana Registered: 10-11-2004 |
Glad to hear you're making good progress on your engine! |
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buddboy Member Posts: 2220 From: New Albany, Indiana, U.S. Registered: 10-08-2004 |
yah that's cool Christo!! ------------------ |
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christo Member Posts: 75 From: Registered: 07-12-2004 |
I have finnally mastered dialog boxes. Waiting for images from my artist to work on wall detection. My artist is very distracted right now by other pojects.If I don't get the images first I will be working on a scene shift.A scene shift is important to keeping the code modular, and thus organized. |
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buddboy Member Posts: 2220 From: New Albany, Indiana, U.S. Registered: 10-08-2004 |
dialog boxes? oh i get it... lol... i'm glad to hear that you're making more progress.. can't wait to see this when it's finally finished! ------------------ |
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christo Member Posts: 75 From: Registered: 07-12-2004 |
I have figured out scene shifting except the part of it where you return to where you were in the previous scene. Also developed the buying part of the shop system still have a lot of items to add but I set the code up to be dynamic so I just have to give it what is unique about each item and add the item number to the index. It can also keep track of how many of each item was purchased and prevent the number of an item from exceeding 99.Still awaiting images to test wall detection. |
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buddboy Member Posts: 2220 From: New Albany, Indiana, U.S. Registered: 10-08-2004 |
lol awesome... keep up the good work! ------------------ |
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christo Member Posts: 75 From: Registered: 07-12-2004 |
Both buying and selling parts of the shop system are now complete except in the fact that I still have yet to add most of my items and the need for a scrolling feature which hasn't been required yet. The scrolling feature will be required once I have enough items in the system to more than fill the screen. I currently have 17 items in the system. Don't know yet how many it can hold without scrolling. Both systems are set up to use the same item dictionary function so I don't have to define items twice thus reducing code size and making code management easier. |
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christo Member Posts: 75 From: Registered: 07-12-2004 |
Shop Scrolling code complete. Beginning to work on wall detection and hiding characters behind the walls. This task is much harder than anticipated.Currently working with a grey box for a character image untill I get a real one to work with in the correct size. Using strictly horizontal and vertical walls for simplicity in character hiding. I just thought of something else that could complicate matters. I forgot about the character comming in and out from behind corners. Because of what I am programming this with I think I am going to need to split my image into two parts in the code or else the charcter could be missing their legs or their whole body until they clear the corner. This could take awhile because while I am doing this I am trying to make my modules array/file loadable. Well until next time. |
dartsman Member Posts: 484 From: Queensland, Australia Registered: 03-16-2006 |
Couldn't you just render the characters/moving objects, and then the environment? I know for a side scroller I worked on, I setup different layers, and each layer moved at different speeds. I'm guessing urs is like orthographic view though, but still, rendering the moving objects first and then the environmnet next might help, different layers might also be good too. What have you programmed it in? Another step though would be to calculate the virtual position of the building, and then decide if it's before or after the virtual character position and then you'd just render who's first Good luck, with the project and your team. God bless ------------------ Startup Christian Games Company Producing Mobile/PC Games/Tools |
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christo Member Posts: 75 From: Registered: 07-12-2004 |
I am programming in VB.NET with the GDI+ graphics engine.I solved the problem by creating a copy of the part of the background image that I wanted to overlap the caharacter and rendering that after the character image. This allowed me to get 2 layers out of a single image.So far I can only handle rectangular walls. I am trying to keep the game small. Getting as much as I can out of my images is a plus as most of the program size will probably be in the images. I am not currently doing work on this project due to homework. Will continue after homework is out of the way.Hopefully my artist will get me some pictures for when I pick it up again. |
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christo Member Posts: 75 From: Registered: 07-12-2004 |
Just thought I would give a small update. My shop system is a little more complete now in that it will now show the attack and defence power of weapons and armor. My artist from the time the project started up to now has only given me one image. For this reason I think my artisit has given up on the project. Personally I have little or no artistic talent so I don't know if this project will ever be completed. I still might work on the engine but a full game is kinda hard to do without pictures. I can only hope that the engine might help me get a job. |
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buddboy Member Posts: 2220 From: New Albany, Indiana, U.S. Registered: 10-08-2004 |
cool... are you (eventually) going to get together a demo for us to see? and if so, how close are you to that do you think? ------------------ |
luke Member Posts: 311 From: I use your computer as my second Linux box Registered: 10-30-2005 |
I haven't read the *entire* post, but as for how you should weave the bible into the story, one word and its a great example *NARNIA* (I first typed out ninevah, and then figured out my mistake  )------------------ |
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buddboy Member Posts: 2220 From: New Albany, Indiana, U.S. Registered: 10-08-2004 |
LOL ROFL... ------------------ |
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christo Member Posts: 75 From: Registered: 07-12-2004 |
Right now all I could do for a demo would be my last working stage of the project which is basically just enough for me to prove that the functions I implemented worked. It is not very playable becuase I have only one background image and a character image I got from a DirectX tutorial site. So far only two buildings have wall detection which may increase soon. I may do some research later into free webspace to host the files. Fortunately my project takes well under 1MB of space. |
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christo Member Posts: 75 From: Registered: 07-12-2004 |
here is a link to what I have gotten done. http://home.earthlink.net/~silentlightning/bin.zip To access the shop portion of the program press the esc key. I tried to mimic the controls of a playtation for this project. Z=X,X=O, other controls are not implemented as they were not needed yet.for those that don't have a playstation, x was used to like a enter or accept key and O was used to cancel an action. One other feature is if you go up to the top left corner and press Z=X a dialog box will come up.The dialog box cannot be canceled. press Z=X to progress through it. It currently only contains a list of some of the items.Pressing the esc key in the shop will exit the program. |
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christo Member Posts: 75 From: Registered: 07-12-2004 |
Forgot to mention this program does require version 2.0 of the .net framework. |
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buddboy Member Posts: 2220 From: New Albany, Indiana, U.S. Registered: 10-08-2004 |
well, i'll either wait till i switch to my windows pc or try it in wine... looking forward to it tho!! ------------------ |
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christo Member Posts: 75 From: Registered: 07-12-2004 |
Here is a new copy. http://home.earthlink.net/~silentlightning/region.zip I have added the ability to do wall detection on polygons which is demonstrated with the building at the top. I only defined 8 points so it is a bit rough. just enough to prove it works. Controls are still the same as the last one. Considering adding a Bible quoting mechanisim for the dialog system. Note:If this doesn't get released as a game it may become a game creation program. |
bennythebear Member Posts: 1225 From: kentucky,usa Registered: 12-13-2003 |
how are things coming with the other two members of your team? you're making progress, keep up the good work  .------------------ proverbs 25:7 www.gfa.org - Gospel for Asia www.persecution.com - Voice of the Martyrs |
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christo Member Posts: 75 From: Registered: 07-12-2004 |
I got to talk to them one or two days ago. Mentioned the project seemed like my artist might still be interested in making images but so far has sent me nothing. The other person was doing audio, but the audio was thrown out to keep program size down and maintain simplicity of programming. The soundman haven't shown interest in any other parts of the development proccess yet. |
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christo Member Posts: 75 From: Registered: 07-12-2004 |
Just wanted to metion that I am still working on this project. Progress has been made in the Game Engine but not in the artwork. Progress includes support for regions(without curves),ellipses, some file loading support, and I have made significant progress in making it object oriented(which is closely tied to the file loading support). The last of these has speed up the game to a point where my 800Mhz computer can play the test scene I made at about the same speed my 2.8 Ghz computer could play the game before the modification yet after the conversion to GDI++. I May ask for artists once the engine is more complete. |
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JeTSpice Member Posts: 433 From: La Crosse, Wisconsin, USA Registered: 06-10-2006 |
God be with you, Christo! |
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christo Member Posts: 75 From: Registered: 07-12-2004 |
Thought I would mention that development on this project has ended for now as I work on another project(LBD).(I actually stopped a few months ago but forgot to post.) I may post a copy with the source sometime soon so that someone can pick up where I left off(is the showcase an appropriate place for uncompleted projects? if not where). May pick this back up when I finish my current project but that could be months away. And sorry for reviving such an old post. |
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HanClinto Administrator Posts: 1828 From: Indiana Registered: 10-11-2004 |
No worries about the revivication of the old post -- I'm glad to hear the update, and it's nice to hear where this went. It sounded like you learned a ton working on this project, and it's great to hear where this went (even though we're sad to hear that it didn't reach completion). --clint |
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christo Member Posts: 75 From: Registered: 07-12-2004 |
Just posted this project to the showcase. And it may still be completed after I finish LBD (eventually...). whether completion = game or completion = engine depends on how much help I get when the time comes. |
you can also speed this up by finding out what buildings are in likely to have this problem with the player and then cull the others out. If you want to chat more about it I can be contacted on MSN at dartsman(at)hotmail.com, just replace (at) with @