Trunks's Q and A for the Area52/updates

[Renara]

The game engine's feature list is huge, and as a result I'm already working on a heavily restricted set. There's not a huge amount of point in me posting what I've done as it's mostly code and unit tests, which aren't much use to anyone, which is why I'm working to finish prototypes as fast as possible so we can get stuff out to the community for testing.

Here's a quick summary of the (probably much more advanced than it needs to be) features:

• Simulated multi-threading - the main difficulty in ActionScript is that everything is single thread (can't do a task until other tasks are finished) so I've had to write a bunch of code to work around that to try and do big jobs in small chunks and so-on. This isn't a big deal normally, but for anything more complex that we might want to add in future it's necessary to solve the threading problem as effectively as possible.
• 3d physics engine - not all of it translates to visible 3d effects, but objects can fly from the background into the foreground and vice-versa, not at all simple, but something I've done several times in the past in various different languages.
• Animation engine - probably the one thing I shouldn't have coded at all, but we didn't really know exactly what we wanted from the animations/scenes, so I just went and did something that should do just about anything we could want. Meaning the engine is aware of animations as a bunch of segments (looping or one-pass), and can string them together in various complex ways. Absolute nightmare but by this point it's essentially done other than bugs (of which there are likely many).
• Scene engine - again we never really decided what we wanted for areas (screens or scrolling), so the game engine handles both, and can do so in a pseudo-3d fashion. Not as complex as it might sound but nowhere near as simple as v0.1 and v0.2.
• Dialogue parsing - partly to better support third-party content, but scenes should be build-able such that they can mix dialogue and animation, but the dialogue is parsed so that gender identifiers can be switched, names etc. Allowing for easy character swapping.
• Level of Detail - we want the game to run for as many people as possible, but at the same time we'd like to be able to do fancy things visually. Which means we need to be able to turn visual features on and off if they're kicking the stuffing out of a player's computer, so things run as smoothly as possible.

And that's just a few of the major bits. We want the project to be heavily community oriented, but the problem is that v0.3 isn't the time to do it as we need some stuff established or it would just end up as chaos as no-one would really know what they need to do in order to build animations etc. The project's ambition has almost certainly been far too great from an early point, and has been forced to cut back but even so we're hugely delayed, but work is still being done. However delayed it may be, and I am acutely aware that it's a huge bottleneck, I'm very pleased with the game engine, and am already putting as much spare time as I can give into getting it finished as soon as possible.

[trunks2585]

First off it doesn't matter if it's of any use to anyone in the community or on the team, we want to see the raw code you've written, we want to see visual proof you've done work.

multi-threading: fine, 3-y i believe also said something like this would be needed, then again he may have been talking about something else.
3-d physics: not needed
Animation engine: and you just said you shouldn't have coded it.
Scene engine: pretty sure we decided on scrolling, no one really raised an objection to it. either way no real complaints.
Dialogue parsing-i'm pretty sure by this point making this was unnessicery, if someone wants to modify the game and put fox in krystal's place they can rewrite the dialog themselves
level of detail-i thought this was a standard enough feature in flash, right click and set the quality level.

Once again, you need help, if this is suppose to be community oriented, then how about we stop isolating the community from the development process? No one is going to pat you on the back for doing all this work by yourself, when you've been offered help and turned it away, it's not like we're forcing you to do everything, you chose that hardship yourself.

[Valentine]

It's probably easier to do all the work yourself because you know what needs to be done. On the other hand, biting off more than you can chew can stagnate the entire process. I guess it would be kind of striking a balance between want you want to put in, and what your capable of getting done. I'm sure that things are coming along nicely, but how long will it take for everything to be perfect? It's been a year and everyone outside the team has only seen scraps (great scraps at that! I'm not sure why they were tossed away?). I'm sure just teasing a bit of the coding your doing would alleviate a lot of the fears.

I also hope that there isn't any arguing going on between the team members, as that will only contribute to nothing getting done.

[Mr D]

Ok here is a question - will we be using for V.03 the Krystal model that Ebonizza uploaded in Scrapped flashes ? ( viewtopic.php?f=7&t=602#p12862 )
I think that this is an impotant question to ask. (if it wasnt asked already if it was than sorry I didnt notice ) . There are a lot of new characacters that are appearing in Creative Corner and I think that it is imporant for us to know in witch direction we should go, while making new models.

[trunks2585]

no, we arn't useing that, it's one of kal's old models, and we arn't using any of his work.

[Rinzler]

no, we arn't useing that, it's one of kal's old models, and we arn't using any of his work.

Why? it's simple, Kal's pulling a Mark Zuckerberg! for more information watch "the social network" therefore, Kal's work is off-bounds!

btw trunks, what do you know about the .fla files??? I mean, i know kal's working on the artwork, but has any of this been turned into ,fla files?

[trunks2585]

do you mean Kal or ptoon? let me be clear here, Kalypso is not doing the artwork for the team anymore, it's being handled by ptoon-t. We arn't using kal's work, for one because it's incomplete, in the sense that he didn't do all the characters so his style would clash with ptoon-t's. And two because it was very rough around the edges, i'm sure he's ashamed to even look at those characters (most artists do tend to hate work they did even a month or two ago, i'm living proof of that rule.)

Some demo's of kal's work when he was lead artist were made into short test animations by 3-y or yoyooyo, whatever you prefer to call him. These are in creative corner somewhere, under scrapped flashes or something like that, but i think those were posted as .swf files. i don't know if the actual .fla files were posted to the public or not.

As for ptoon-t we do have a character in full fla. format, hopefully with more on the way soon.

[dudelikeporn]

no, we arn't useing that, it's one of kal's old models, and we arn't using any of his work.

Why? it's simple, Kal's pulling a Mark Zuckerberg!

Last I checked, Kal isn't releasing the whole thing under his name?

[ThatGuy]

Dam i had no idea it has been a year already that .2 has been out.

In my oppinon (yes i am but a lurker with nothing better to do so sorry if my oppinon does not matter) I think it would be great if when ever there was a development even if it was small it would get posted.

Just like in the much ado to samus thread and perial on pokemon (island i think thats it is)

when ever some good artwork or a new cool animation gets done it gets posted so we can see that there is proggres and try out some of the cool new features .

But thats just me and i have no real controbution to the site so feel free to disregard what i say.

Thanks.

And because this is a Q&A thread Trunks do you know how long it was between .1 and .2?

[Octogon]

Random comments from a game dev:

It sounds like everyone on the team is working on their own sections of the project (the models, the engine, ect.) individually without ever sharing or combining them. In my experience, it's much better to have a single prototype that represents the current state of the game, with everyone adding onto the prototype. In general, you want to focus on features rather than systems, and having a prototype can give a team both motivation (you can see the game coming together day-to-day) and insight (it becomes really obvious who's doing what, and whether something is working or not.) It doesn't matter if the prototype is full of incomplete work or "add scene here" signs, it just needs to exist and be accessible to everyone on the project so that people know what to work on. Ideally, you want to have the prototype on some version control system (I know Flash supports SVN) so that people can easily make changes and add things without overwriting each other's work. Given the creative community here, it might even be worthwhile to have the prototype made public at regular intervals, so people from outside the team can contribute their own features and content for evaluation.

If the project is stalled working on a lot of unconnected systems, just start fresh and make something simple that you can put together in a week. Then start expanding on what you made and adding new things. Every successful game project I've ever worked on has been defined by a focus on features over systems.

It's a shame to hear Kal's models aren't being used, as the level of detail is amazing compared to other models I've seen (no offense to the creators.) Hopefully he'll at least decide to release them as .flvs at some point so other creators can play with them.

[trunks2585]

thatguy: don't sell yourself short, last thing i want is for this game to have a bunch of fans that will love this no matter what we produce, even if we produce crap. that's how terrible artists get popular and terrible games get sold. I do agree i should be able to do more than tell you when something in the developer section has been posted or changed, however that call i have to leave up to ptoon-t to post his artwork, even though i think he should share the lineart he has done. the animators are kinda stuck waiting, i'd share the script except...well i don't think you all really want storyline spoilers do you? and ren, well we already know the problem there. the time between .1 and .2, i don't recall exacally, it wasn't more than 2 months 3 tops if i recall correctly, and that just involved some small changes like adding idle animations and like two new scenes, and was done completely by ren, he had started it before the forum even was founded.

octogon: the only one that's not sharing what they are doing is Ren with the engine. I've written and laid out the gamescript, everyone has talked and given their imput and changes will be made to fit what we all agree on. ptoon-t shares the characters and backgrounds as he makes them and we critique his work so he can improve them as needed. the animators can't really do much but 3y has done stuff with kal's work in the past and shown some cool animating tricks and visual effects. it's really Ren we're waiting on by this point.

we work together where we can but the bottleneck of this is the 'engine' if you will, the coding that ren's doing, and he has insisted he do alone. we have incomplete backgrounds characters and story and dialog we can throw together, but we don't have the engine to throw them all together in, unless someone decides to hijack coding from ren (which it may come down to if we don't see progress by say, the summer). I agree with what you say, it would be better for us to take babysteps and build this up from there, and i wish ren would take note of it as well and at the very least let 3y help him make the engine for this game. I also agree about making this more public to the community, i've said before, either here on the forums or to other team members, i think seperating the forums into 'the team' and 'the community' was a bad mistake, sure not everyone can contribute, but if we weren't so closed off, we'd at least have more people offering to help that are capible of helping, instead of this 'the community can help AFTER we release our version' thing that's going on.

Kal's models were detailed, but they also had anatomical problems and some other limitations that 3y found when he used them, ptoon probably would go into overkill with detail, but for an animation that's ok, sometimes less is more, and ptoon has an established style, something that helps a lot with the process, i just wish he had some more public works to showcase his talent.

[KaTsuO_O]

To make the community more like a team you could make different levels in the forums and then if you do enough good stuff you get to a higer level so you can have a better look over the people who can help and the people who dont have much to come with.

Also i think that you should put up a deadline, its the only way for us to know 100% that this will be done.

[trunks2585]

If we post a deadline, we'll most likely fail to meet it. Case in point, we gave Ren a deadline to give the team a demo for just a part of the game, we're still waiting on it.

[yahtze wannab]

is there actually an end planned like a script? Read we aren't supposed to ask but would be nice to know there is something down the road

[Surskit]

I'm pretty sure this has been suggested somewhere else and I just don't recall where...

How about a v0.2.1? Just take what's been done, put it together with what's currently completed, and let us all see how it is. Even if the coding isn't complete and walking into certain areas, or completing certain sex scenes freezes up the game.

I think by producing a 0.2.1, it will satiate the communities' expectations, stir up activity (Both in posts and in third party submissions) which has stagnated since the end of November, and motivate the team to completing it sooner.

Edit: (Here I go with my edits... I should just write this out in notepad and let it marinate for a while) If the artwork being incomplete is too much of a problem for 0.2.1 then, create a deadline among yourselves for something to be done. Even if it's just a small piece of what 0.3 is supposed to be. Even if it's just an intro with the sharpclaws taking down krystal's ship.

For instance, if all you've got is krystal's head, a hand, and a cock, I think that's all you need for 3y to make a passable teaser.

[trunks2585]

we have the beginning, ending, and the majority of the plot, villians, quests, etc figured out, the finer details are only written up for the first parts that will be in .3. i'm not writting up the rest because no sense in doing it, untill i know if you all are going to like or reject what's currently been done.

as for a 0.2.1 game, we can try to convince ren this would be the best method, but it might be faster for you guys (the community) do use this idea instead, I really do think you all need to find who the most creative minds are in the community, get together, and push to extend LoK yourselves, rather than waiting and hoping for something from us, and MAYBE ren would even use the basis of what you guys come up with.

Hell just as more incentive, i for one will work with anyone in this community that decides to take matters into their own hands, like how I helped katsu with his krystal model. This includes sharing the game script with you guys as you prove your serious about doing work to finish this, giving suggestions of how to better direct the RPG element so it feels like there's a purpose to it, and continued critique of models and such if you guys decide to update them.

[imp32]

Hey all, just got done getting caught up on the progress of the game and I'm both in shock and aw. From what I read, the plans for the game are exceptional, exquisite, extraordinary, more e-beginning verbs. The plan that Ren wrote for the game engine is on point with what makes a versatile release of any game engine. The amount of communication between the team and the community are even better. Needless to say; your scraps, assistance to the community, raw talent in the community, forum organization are whats creating more projects and making the community that much bigger.

Continuing a project where the original creator isn't the main idea person isn't easy at all so props to you guys. Proof can be seen way too obviously from failed sequels and how many reboots are currently happening this decade. Its much easier to just start from scratch and go from there.
From the tempo of the posts revolving around LoK right now, this month is probably the most important month in which big changes are gonna happen to the progress of the project. I hopefully won't repeat what's already been said. There are some great ideas that I'm for and against at the same time due to its pro's and cons like a closed community team and open community team.

To help out, I'll add facts that I can gather from what I've read, outside of this forum as well, that can hopefully help the LoK team move forward =D. Of course I'll do my best for unbiased info.

Bill Gates didn't invent the DOS operating system, which powered his future products, but payed someone cash to write QDOS (quick and dirty operating system) for his first big deal with IBM.

Steve Jobs was always a manager who motivated his team members relentlessly to always make the product better and faster.

Video game sequels have a tendency to have a graphics overhaul and new engines created for them (Metal gear solid 1, 2, 3, 4; Super Mario 1, 2, 3). Video game expansions often use the same engine with slight variations for optimization, bug fixes, and slightly updated graphics (Dragons age, of course WoW and various MMO's).

The Mario is Missing hacked forum thread was started by Blargh around 12-10-10. He played the game made by Playshapes and changed a little of the game to what he believed would make the game better. After a few days of avidly updating and fixing the game little by little, through peoples posts from the his thread, people started to queue in ideas about the game. The project's features quickly got bigger due to community suggestions and support via sprites, reference material, etc.
The project currently has added to it roughly 75% more dialogue, correct hit detection, level design modifications, 775% more costumes from various artists. Various features are planned such as new levels and items.

Daikatana was a game planned by the creator of Doom and Wolfenstein. The game's first complete design was finished in march 97 and was planned by Romero for a Christmas release that year. the team was inexperienced and short staffed with a high amount of work planned. To keep the game looking new, the game was planned to switch engines with all updated graphics with a release date of 98. Engine switch complete but 99 hit and their product was incomplete until the year 2000 with a greatly retreated community, outdated graphics, little product movement.

Duke Nukem.

Another tail was started by AnotherArrow in oct with progress updates until nov. The project began with a previous 3 month workload that completely overhauled LoK's level design to a more RPG style game including various alternate costumes and character colors.

Other notable works with updates from the community requested are Samuls Platformer (Jun 09 to Nov 22 author updates), Greed is good (Jun 12 - Nov 29 author updates), Any of playshapes material =D.

Large corporations used closed source development teams to ensure their money invested in software development and that their software remains exclusive and unique before product release. This technique yields high profits but often low stability (iphone 4)

The Linux community is one of the largest communities available that fully support open source activity with little to no profit yield or intellectual property security but has high product stability and versatility (a million and one anything, linux servers are standard/default).

My only suggestion is a reconsideration of your project name =). From the work load you guys are doing, it would be a crime to you guys to say that your new engines, complete artwork update, and story only amount to .3 of an unfinished product not originally yours.

My question is, would you consider changing the title of the project's name?
LoK 2 sounds right.

[trunks2585]

We'll consider renaming this if we make any headway, but this really is a continuation of what playshapes did, maybe Lok part 2 or something.

[yahtze wannab]

where is he anyway? Is he not going to help out anymore? Guy was really talented

[MrBear]

I believe hes working on his own side projects and is too busy to work with the LoK team.