On this page, youll find info on my current project.. RAGE: The RPG/Action Game Engine.
Why are you writing it? I've just moved literally all the way across the US on my own, and since i cant live off part time at minimum wage.. i need another way to get some money. I decided maybe if i made something alot of people want, itd sell pretty good, greatly helping my chances of staying where i am.
What can i do to help? Um.. buy my software of course :P
What does it do? Basically, its supposed to make writing a game much easier. I hate to do this, but to get you to understand what im talking about, i'll probably have to compare it to The Games Factory, which is a ClickNCreate clone, which is a Klik&Play; clone, and so on... but this one will be MUCH better. Itll have all the same basic functions as far as the Sprite Editor, and the Event Editor, but the Level Editor is different (See below for more details).
Tell me more! Ok, here are descriptions of the parts i have planned so far:
Level Editor: The Level Editor will differ from the others in that it uses tile-based scrolling, like any normal game... The tiles are locked onto a grid, making it easier to put them together without error, and speeding it up. This way is much faster than trying to draw a few billion sprites off-grid and of multiple sizes just for one level's floorplan. It'll have 3 layers, the Background, the speed should be variable, if not it'll just move 1/4 the speed of the foreground, the Foreground, which is what your character is standing on, and the Superforeground. This one is in front of the character, it can either move the same speed as the normal foreground for effects like the character going into a tunnel, or it can move faster to make it what i call the "Hyper Foreground". The speed on this may also be variable, or just twice the speed of the normal foreground. Also, for levels that are partially underwater, i have a water transparency effect, but it'll reduce the ammount of available level colors by half, but i havent ran into a problem with that yet. I may add color approximation to fix that, but itll take a bit of time on its own, and sometimes things dont look right that way.
Tile Editor: Of course with with the fact that you need to use tiles, youll have to make them somehow right? The tile editor will have a fat-bit grid (a zoomed version of the tile to draw on), a preview to show the tile your currently working on put together in different configurations so you can see how itll look in-game, and a color listing. Just left-click on a color to select it, and right-click to change the color in that position. Keep in mind itll also change the color on any tile that uses that one. For foreground tiles, you'll need to tell the editor what parts are solid, and what aprts arent, along with a few user-defined tile attributes which can be changed in the event editor. There should also be a copy command, to copy over a tile to edit slightly or have the same look but a different solidity setup. Right now tile colors are limited to 150 colors for non-water levels, and 75 for water levels. The other colors are reserved for sprites. Also, hopefully i can make it where you can choose what size tiles you will be working with. The different layers can vary in tile size, but all the tiles in one layer have to be the same size.
Tile Ripper: This part will load in a 320x200 256 color pcx and rip it up into tiles, then if you want, itll rebuild the picture as part of a level. You can also chain multiple pictures to build as big a part of the level as you want. Very useful in some cases, especially backgrounds. For foreground, you'll still need to go into the Tile Editor and mark them as solid if they should be so. But keep in mind, The colors on the picture have to be within the range of colors that can be used by tiles (0-74 or 0-149). I may add color approximation and index reordering to the ripper so you dont have to follow this rule, it shouldnt mess up the coloring here.
Sprite Editor: This one should be similar to the Tile Editor, in the sense of the fat-bit grid, the preview, and the color listing. But on this one, you can chose between the level palette, for drawing enemies and such, or the player palette, for drawing the player. Those colors are reserved so they dont change with the level. You'll be able to designate which animation each sprite goes for, along with the basic ones (walk, run, jump...) and user deffined ones. If that's so, youll also be able to view the animation here. All animations should be sequential though, meaning one sprite after another.. so there will be an insert command just incase you forget one, and a copy command, so if you need that one its there also.
Event Editor: Now we're at the part that makes this an actuall game engine. This should include standard platform movement, maybe a standard 8-directional rpg type movement, and of course, fully user-defined movement. This part will be added to constantly, and one of the main reasons there'll be new versions every so often.
Other Stuff:
Input: The editor includes mouse support, for those of you who are keyboard intolerant :P. I may or may not add mouse support for the games, it depends on how many requests i get, although i DO have joystick support for the games.
Sound: Right now all i have for sound is .WAV support. Hopefully i'll have midi support sometime, i dont know..
Movies: You'll love this, i'm also distributing a freeware dos .avi player with this, and adding support for it into RAGE.
What do i need? I'm writing this in DOS, so its alot more stable than a windows program, and somewhat faster, but it'll run fine under WIN3.1 and 95. It SHOULD run in 98 also, i havent tried that one. This table should help you decide what system to run this on. The bare minimum is definitely not reccomended, it should run, but very slowly. I hope to surpass full speed on my computer, making it faster on the slower ones.
Bare Minimum
What I'm Using
OS: DOS 5.0 Processor: 386sx 10MHz Memory: 8MB
OS: Win95 Processor: 5x86 133MHz Memory: 24MB
Where can i get it? Right now i'm still in the early stages of development, but if you'd like to become a beta tester, here's the info. First you'll need to E-mail me saying youd like to, once i receive enough i'll get back to you, and the charge'll probably be $15, but dont let that turn you off.. its pretty fair concidering why im doing this and what you get. Once i get your check or whatever, i'll send you the newest beta release, and youll continue to get newer ones untill the full release is ready. Now listen carefully to this stuff because its required. If you dont follow the rules, you'll be taken off the beta tester list with no refund. You have 10 days after you receive each copy to send your comments and suggestions. The only way out of this is to have a good excuse, and send your comments/suggestions when its convenient. As long as i get them. I need to know what people want. Once the full release is ready, the estimated cost will be $25, but beta testers only have to pay $5 to upgrade to it. So basically, you save $5 in the longrun, and have something to use in the meantime. I havent decided what to do if you want to stay a beta tester yet, i'll post that later. If you have an old version and want to upgrade to a new one, this will depend on what type of upgrades it is. Small bugfixes should be free, other minor updates, maybe up to $5, and major, up to $10. A new copy will cost the same as the first release, plus what it wouldve costed to upgrade. Also, if you want to write games to sell, i think the "Commercial Version" will be $75-100. This sounds pretty fair concidering if you sold one game for $5 to 15-20 people, youd have made your money back already. With this version you will have full right to sell your creations, as long as it doesnt infringe on somebody elses' copyrights. If that happens, i cant be held responsible. If you dont have the "Commercial Version", your games must be distributed as freeware.
Whats done so far? Right now i have the basic gui ready, and i'm about to add my level editor to it. I already had one of those written, and it shouldnt be too hard to bring into this program. Also the solidity editor is functioning, but as a separate program, as soon as i write the tile editor (i havent written one for myself) i'll add that part in. I also have some character movement functions that should be easily ported over, so basically i have the normal platform movement finished also.
Is there anything else? Thats all for now, maybe soon i'll make some screen-shots for you. Incase for some reason that link doesnt work, my E-Mail address is MStealthA@aol.com. And um, one final note.. if you cant afford $15 little dollars to help me.. your mean :P