I think putting an optional cooldown on powers is a good idea. Definitely makes sense for e.g. something like Quake. I'll add it to the issue list.
I'm not as worried about a ranger having an unfair advantage one-on-one against a melee foe; that's kind of the point. Maybe some behavior numbers can be tweaked to help with this (e.g. increase pursuit chance so the creature doesn't stand there after taking a hit; increase the "take-hit" animation speed so that the creature is free to move sooner).
I'd rather give more enemies optional ranged powers to help with this, e.g. some melee creatures should throw a stun missile (e.g. a Net attack) to help them close in on a ranged hero. Also it helps to mix up creatures in groups. This might be less of an issue when creatures attack in packs rather than one-at-a-time.
It'll probably make sense if mod files completely supercede files from previous mods. So, when opening any data file, look at the bottom of the mod list first. If the file isn't there look at the mod before it. Keep going until the first (core) mod.
Those local overrides can simply be mods too, I think. They can be small mods of only 1 file if necessary.
It could make translation simpler to have e.g. translation files only contain names/descriptions of items and powers; in other words, allow mods to alter parts of files. But those are the easiest-to-translate parts anyway. It'd be harder to separate the translations for events (NPC dialog and map events) because those don't use IDs (those would be harder to work with if unique IDs were necessary).
Anyway. We can always make it better later. Let's plan on this, as part of the v0.15 work required for Translations anyway.
Move game-specific data into /mod/fantasycore/
Any files supplied by other mods completely supercede that core set or previously listed mods
Then if we get to the point where that's holding us back, we can look at allowing mods to change or add data within specific files, instead of completely overriding them.
/mod/fantasycore/ would have all the current sounds/images along with all the current game data files.
/mod/fantasycore_fr/ would probably only have .txt files, maybe some french voice-over files and a translated title screen image.
Then if they wanted fancy weapons they could have /mod/weaponpack/ (or maybe a french version if one exists)
Hm, let me think about that too. Seems sensible. Translations are a very narrow kind of mod anyway (overwrite text only, in most situations). It would certianly make sense to have the engine treat all mods the same way.
Hm I don't know if that's practical. Wouldn't it make load times terrible to have to access that many tiny files? I'm talking about thousands of items and hundreds of powers, potentially.
Seems it would also be painful to edit. Let's say one person wants to go in and translate 1000 items. It's much easier to do that all in one file than to open, edit, save each file individually.
Not quite right but might inspire someone: Seasons Turn? Seasons Dawn? Seasons Wane?
verbalshadow: I like your "Book of Changes" idea quite a lot. I similarly want to take inspiration from Wu Xing. Only thing I'm afraid of is being so unfamiliar with the culture that I'll get it all wrong.
I got to see github in action when we (OGA) participated in the Reddit game jam recently. Git is amazing when there are multiple devs.
So far Flare is mostly single-dev. I sometimes accept well-coded contributions for isolated features.
It gets philisophical from here on...
Switching to Git is a question of what I want Flare to be. To me, Flare is still my hobby project. I get to do things the way I want. I made Flare free (open) because I enjoy freedoms. Not necessarily because I want contributors. I admit I have a strong "not developed here" attitude, and an old school style of coding. But it's gotten me pretty far already -- the demo is sorta enjoyable, the code isn't too hard to figure out.
I get the sense that putting code on GitHub is essentially requesting people to experiment and send me pull requests. That would be great if I wanted to build a community of contributors. But I don't want to manage a team; I just want to write a bit of code every now and then, when it sounds fun.
Maybe my curmudgeon-ness is hindering what Flare could be (some grand free software project?). Thoughts? Opinions?
I think putting an optional cooldown on powers is a good idea. Definitely makes sense for e.g. something like Quake. I'll add it to the issue list.
I'm not as worried about a ranger having an unfair advantage one-on-one against a melee foe; that's kind of the point. Maybe some behavior numbers can be tweaked to help with this (e.g. increase pursuit chance so the creature doesn't stand there after taking a hit; increase the "take-hit" animation speed so that the creature is free to move sooner).
I'd rather give more enemies optional ranged powers to help with this, e.g. some melee creatures should throw a stun missile (e.g. a Net attack) to help them close in on a ranged hero. Also it helps to mix up creatures in groups. This might be less of an issue when creatures attack in packs rather than one-at-a-time.
It'll probably make sense if mod files completely supercede files from previous mods. So, when opening any data file, look at the bottom of the mod list first. If the file isn't there look at the mod before it. Keep going until the first (core) mod.
Those local overrides can simply be mods too, I think. They can be small mods of only 1 file if necessary.
It could make translation simpler to have e.g. translation files only contain names/descriptions of items and powers; in other words, allow mods to alter parts of files. But those are the easiest-to-translate parts anyway. It'd be harder to separate the translations for events (NPC dialog and map events) because those don't use IDs (those would be harder to work with if unique IDs were necessary).
Anyway. We can always make it better later. Let's plan on this, as part of the v0.15 work required for Translations anyway.
Then if we get to the point where that's holding us back, we can look at allowing mods to change or add data within specific files, instead of completely overriding them.
/mod/fantasycore/ would have all the current sounds/images along with all the current game data files.
/mod/fantasycore_fr/ would probably only have .txt files, maybe some french voice-over files and a translated title screen image.
Then if they wanted fancy weapons they could have /mod/weaponpack/ (or maybe a french version if one exists)
Hm, let me think about that too. Seems sensible. Translations are a very narrow kind of mod anyway (overwrite text only, in most situations). It would certianly make sense to have the engine treat all mods the same way.
A possible way to do it is to treat the core files as just another mod. Hm...
/mods/fantasycore/
would contain all the current game data.
/mods/index.txt
would list "fantasycore" as the first mod to load. Then it would be quite easy for someone to do a full conversion, as the core is easily extracted.
It would also simplify the code if the core files weren't treated as special cases.
Hm I don't know if that's practical. Wouldn't it make load times terrible to have to access that many tiny files? I'm talking about thousands of items and hundreds of powers, potentially.
Seems it would also be painful to edit. Let's say one person wants to go in and translate 1000 items. It's much easier to do that all in one file than to open, edit, save each file individually.
Not quite right but might inspire someone: Seasons Turn? Seasons Dawn? Seasons Wane?
verbalshadow: I like your "Book of Changes" idea quite a lot. I similarly want to take inspiration from Wu Xing. Only thing I'm afraid of is being so unfamiliar with the culture that I'll get it all wrong.
eoc: here's an example of 0AD's art. This one is marked CC-BY-SA; maybe all of 0AD's art is the same.
0AD's art is fully 3D, so the pieces you want would have to just be rendered in the correct directions, right?
Do you have guidelines on asset size? What scale are your tiles (pixels per meter perhaps)? What size tiles are acceptable?
Ooh, nice high quality art.
Is it possible to port some assets from other projects, e.g. 0 A.D.? What license is required?
After talking to some of you on IRC, I've decided to give github a spin.
http://clintbellanger.net/rpg/blog/20110603
https://github.com/clintbellanger/flare
I will try to be more open to contributions. Don't be afraid to send in pull requests. And please bear with me while I learn to manage a git repo.
I got to see github in action when we (OGA) participated in the Reddit game jam recently. Git is amazing when there are multiple devs.
So far Flare is mostly single-dev. I sometimes accept well-coded contributions for isolated features.
It gets philisophical from here on...
Switching to Git is a question of what I want Flare to be. To me, Flare is still my hobby project. I get to do things the way I want. I made Flare free (open) because I enjoy freedoms. Not necessarily because I want contributors. I admit I have a strong "not developed here" attitude, and an old school style of coding. But it's gotten me pretty far already -- the demo is sorta enjoyable, the code isn't too hard to figure out.
I get the sense that putting code on GitHub is essentially requesting people to experiment and send me pull requests. That would be great if I wanted to build a community of contributors. But I don't want to manage a team; I just want to write a bit of code every now and then, when it sounds fun.
Maybe my curmudgeon-ness is hindering what Flare could be (some grand free software project?). Thoughts? Opinions?
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