Esenthel Forum - Game Design

The name

Fri, 03 Mar 2017 17:14:29 +0000

Hello all, I've started a project but am having a total block on the name. I think the name is very important as it is more often than not the players initial impression and idea of the game.

So I've come to ask for some help, feedback, and advice. The premise of my game is an outcast race of divine abilities. This race is called the "godsbreed." So naturally my thought is to name the game Godsbreed.

What do you guys think of this name and what if anything comes to mind when you read it?

Thanks.

VR Game Design

Sun, 28 Aug 2016 15:56:27 +0000

I've not been very active on the game design front of late, as I've been working towards retirement, but I've recently bought an HTC Vive system and have become fascinated with the future potential of VR.

Have any of you been working on any VR projects using Esenthel and OpenVR? If so I'd really like to hear your experiences so far.

Multiple animated meshes within a single file

Tue, 08 Jul 2014 21:49:59 +0000

I wasn't sure if this was even possible but it appears FBX format supports this and what's more Esenthel loads them beautifully. So I can have a first person set of animated arms within my model along with the full animated model of the person for cut scenes and presumably switch between them in game using the object mesh parts ... cool!

Esenthel: Simply a pleasure to work with

Sat, 29 Mar 2014 12:28:51 +0000

You know, working with this engine is a real pleasure because it simply does what you need it to do leaving you free to spend your time implementing things that are unique to your game. I don't have many hours in the week to devote my game so this is critical to me.

I'm now deep into AI design and have made massive advances over the last few months due to being able to concentrate on coding this and relying on the fact that when I need to call on the engine API to do something it's supported and it works.

To me this is the most important requirement of any game engine API as anything less holds you back having to implement workarounds or integrate third party solutions for things that should be there and fully functional.

Sure, occasionally I'll struggle understanding some aspect of the engine but with perseverance, and if need be help from others on the forum, I achieve the understanding I need. But this was never a failing of the engine, just my own comprehension.

Whereas I still have a way to go and there are clearly areas of the engine I have not utilized as yet I am quietly confident that my faith in this engine will be well placed.

Great job Grzegorz and a big thank you for Esenthel Engine 2.0

My Post-Apocalyptic Life - Game Design Document

Tue, 25 Mar 2014 14:40:07 +0000

Hello!

Well, here it is. The game design document I have been working on obsessively for over a week now. I realize there are a few holes still left to be filled. Some of them will be filled on the fly and some will be filled in as a I think of them and hopefully some can be filled in by suggestions from helpful folks like yourselves.

I know it's long and involved, but I would be very appreciative if people want to take a look at it and give me some feedback. Does it seem like a game you might want to play? What seems fun about it? What aspects do not seem very fun. What needs to be better thought-out or changed? etc etc.

I also know the name is kind of goofy and will probably be changed. If you have any suggestions for that, send 'em along. :-)

This game is about overcoming the challenges of living in a post-apocalyptic world. It is designed to be challenging and therefore maybe not designed for the casual gamer in mind. Although I hope it's tons of fun.

The specific numbers given through this document are starting points and the real numbers will be determined by testing and creating a balance between fun and challenge.

I hope some people will read it and give me some advice on how to make it the awesome game I envision it being.

Thanks!

MPAL.doc (Size: 124 KB / Downloads: 25)

Designing Game Mode/Campaign/Scenario

Sat, 22 Mar 2014 19:06:09 +0000

Hi everyone, as for a newbie in game designing, I think I'm stump on designing game mode for my Xenocrystalloid Contentions.

Well, I develop gameplay system first without planning game mode/campaign/scenario. (Well, there is, but mostly scrapped due to limited resources)

Here is my current gameplay and planned game mode.

Core: Single/Multiplayer Co-op Action-RPG.

In-Depth Character Customization in Equipments, Stats, Ability and Talents
In-Depth medieval combat with Swing Detection along with Block, Dash, Interaction, Incapacitate system, Jump, Crouch, Sprint, Flexible dual-wielding, Projectile based Ability and Weight-based Consumable Items.
Multiple playable characters.
Flexible Crafting.
Lobby Based character management. (Cannot changes equipment while playing).
Drop In-Out Multiplayer.
Mountains of Loot.

You can see some from video in showcase topic.

Planned: An Objective-Based Tournament
Player team participate in tournaments season, where they have to fight monster and meet event's objective for tournament rating, entering event continually without return to lobby (restock or changes equipments) for extra rating, losing yields less rating and will event that event immediately and return to lobby.

Sample of event is listed below and is random each time, there's rules on respawning and other stuffs per event. Number of event need to be play before tournament end is (probably) based on difficulty.
World Area is probably random with possibly randomly obstruction as well.

Defeats enemy that come by waves, rating based on waves.
Tower-Defense style, rating based on health of defending objects.
Boss Fight, rating based on time left.
Escort, rating based on time left.
Pick Object and drop it at specified location, rating based on number of objects when time is up.
King of the Hill style, rating based on score when time is up.
etc...

When player return to lobby, they can check their rank with AI team (AI's rating is using same rules as players, but their rating gains is probably random based on difficulty).
When tournament ends, player will receive extra items based on their rank. (And possibly upload their stats to server for show off with others player team as well?)
There's survival mode beside tournament mode as well.

It may not sound original because it's probably like Unreal Tournament 2004, but do you think it will work and fun?

Opinions on my game features

Tue, 18 Mar 2014 08:30:52 +0000

I was just recently reading that it would be a good idea to write a list of the core game features I am planning to implement and offer them up for critique by other game designers. Therefore, here they are. Any thoughts you have would be great to hear.

Core Statement: This game is a multi-player life simulator set in a post-apocalyptic world.

Features:
--In-depth character customization

--Your character has his/her own needs, wants, and inherent attributes

--Through game play, discover your character's unique strengths and weaknesses which affect your skills

--Claim an abandoned house in the world as your home and customize it.

--Depending on how you deal with NPC's, they can become good friends, lifetime enemies, or even your spouse.

--Mate, raise a family, grow old and pass control on to the next generation. or die trying... You only live ONCE!

--Children inherit the traits of their parents and can be trained in various skills.

--Craft, scavenge, and fight to survive and protect your family

--Choose a faction in the on-going fight and complete opposed missions to help your side.

Keep in mind, of course, that these are not instructions on how to build the game, but just a list of features as one would find on the back of a game box.

Made a new Model

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 23:22:47 +0000

I made a new model today. A tree stump with an axe in it. I had seen a similar model on a free model site once, so I kept it in the back of my mind and I tried to make a better one than them. this is what I ended up with. I'm happy with it.

TreeTrunkAxe.jpg (Size: 196.5 KB / Downloads: 236)

How to Manually Make Terrain Tiles Disappear

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 23:22:49 +0000

This is a Tutorial for 1.0 but I am sure that these techniques could be applied to 2.0 Do you see that grassy hill in the background with no tiling effects? that only took a few seconds of my time to make, and I'm going to show you how to make it happen. First, cover your whole ground in a ground Material/Texture called, 'Just_Add_Bison' Once you have done that, open up your Material Editor by clicking 1 box number one and finding it in the list below, or clicking box number 5. Inside your Material Editor, you are going to want to drag and drop a grass texture of your own. Before you save it, there are a few things that you will want to do. First, you want the occlusion culling turned on. Make sure the texture you dragged in there is seamless. You also want to make sure your texture is boring, meaning there are no variations in colors. Notice how the grass is all one color, and very plain, no flowers or any patterns that could catch the eye. That is what I mean by boring. Now, you will want this texture to be a little off set in color in comparison to the Just Add Bison texture. Make sure you tweek the texture to be either slightly darker or slightly lighter in shade. Now that you have done that, save it, and set it inside your material brush box, that would be number 5. you will know which brush you are using by the box being highlighted red. Now that you have done all of that, its time to decide what kind of brush you want to use. Just below brush number 4 is your Brush Parameters Box. You will want to set your brush to a slow speed and extremely soft. Time to find an image. Inside your Brush Parameters box, click the image button. This will bring up your image. the is box number 4. Find a height-map image, or an image with a lot of random black and white blotches. drag and drop the image in, or double click the empty box to load an image. Once the image is loaded in, You are ready to Paint! Happy Painting those tiles away!

ModelsTest_01NoAO.jpg (Size: 262.72 KB / Downloads: 181)

Tutorial_01.jpg (Size: 168.14 KB / Downloads: 181)

Humour in games

Wed, 22 May 2013 18:10:29 +0000

Time for one of Roy's Mad posts =)

Games are meant to be fun right? and often people say "we had a laugh last night playing what ever game"

But humour never seems to be in the design document?

The only game I can think of that had comedy in it is the Ogres in Everquest scratching their bums.

I'm thinking it is time someone designed a game with comedy in mind what say ye?

Sample NDA

Sun, 19 May 2013 10:49:12 +0000

Sample NDA. ( You could still use this if you wish, but as for all legal matters you should find a lawyer to help you for your own needs for I am not one. )

Non-Disclosure Agreement
This Agreement is entered into this ___ day of May, 2010 by and between __________________________, of _________________________________ (hereinafter "Party A") and ____________________, of ____________________ (hereinafter "Party B").
WHEREAS each party possesses certain ideas and information relating to software and game development that is confidential and proprietary (hereinafter "Confidential Information"); and
WHEREAS each party is willing to give and receive disclosure of the Confidential Information pursuant to the terms of this Agreement for the purpose of evaluating shared business opportunities in software and game development;
NOW THEREFORE, in consideration for the mutual undertakings of Party A and Party B under this Agreement, the parties agree as follows:
1. Disclosure. Party A and Party B agree to give and receive disclosure of Confidential Information to each other.
2. Confidentiality.
2.1 No Use. Party A and Party B agree not to use the Confidential Information disclosed to them by the other party in any way, or to manufacture or test any product embodying Confidential Information, except for the purpose set forth above.
2.2 No Disclosure. Party A and Party B agree to use their best efforts to prevent and protect the Confidential Information disclosed to them by the other party, or any part thereof, from disclosure to any person, except for the purpose set forth above.
2.3 Protection of Secrecy. Party A and Party B agree to take all steps reasonably necessary to protect the secrecy of the Confidential Information disclosed to them by the other party, and to prevent the Confidential Information from falling into the public domain or into the possession of unauthorized persons.
3. Limits on Confidential Information. Confidential Information shall not be deemed proprietary and the Recipient shall have no obligation with respect to such information where the information:
(a) was known to Recipient prior to receiving any of the Confidential Information from Discloser;
(b) has become publicly known through no wrongful act of Recipient;
© was received by Recipient without breach of this Agreement from a third party without restriction as to the use and disclosure of the information;
(d) was independently developed by Recipient without use of the Confidential Information; or
(e) was ordered to be publicly released by the requirement of a government agency.
4. Ownership of Confidential Information. Each party agrees that all Confidential Information shall remain the property of the party that disclosed it, and that the disclosing party may use such Confidential Information for any purpose without obligation to the other party. Nothing contained herein shall be construed as granting or implying any transfer of rights in the Confidential Information, or any patents or other intellectual property protecting or relating to the Confidential Information.
5. Term and Termination. The obligations of this Agreement shall be continuing until the Confidential Information disclosed is no longer confidential, or a period of 5 years from the date below, whichever is shorter.
6. Survival of Rights and Obligations. This Agreement shall be binding upon, inure to the benefit of, and be enforceable by (a) Party A, its successors, and assigns; and (b) Party B, its successors and assigns.
7. Neither this Agreement nor the supply of any information grants the Recipient any licence, interest or right in respect of any intellectual property rights of the other party except the right to copy the Confidential Information disclosed by the other party solely for the Purpose.

8. Nothing in this Agreement will prevent the Recipient from making any disclosure of the Confidential Information required by law or by any competent authority.
9. The Recipient will, on request from the other party, return all copies and records of the Confidential Information disclosed by the other party to the Recipient and will not retain any copies or records of the Confidential Information disclosed by the other party.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the parties have executed this agreement effective as of the date first written above.

Party A:

Signed: ______________________________
Print Name: ___________________________
Title: ____Game Developer____________________________
Date: ________________________________

Party B
Signed: ______________________________
Print Name: ___________________________
Title: ________________________________
Date: ________________________________

Sample Game Design Document

Sun, 19 May 2013 10:45:35 +0000

This is my old Game Design Document. I am giving this out as a sample but is not to be used or the idea taken by there as.

I am doing this for the community. Because when I first started... this was a pain.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TyKG...Kaad0/edit

Simple overview of custom object creation in Esenthel

Sun, 05 May 2013 10:54:12 +0000

I've spent a bit of time digging into the Bloody Massacre code and other examples and also watched Scarlet Thread's excellent video on game objects (many thanks Ken ... you saved me a lot of time) and have come up with a basic overview of how the system appears to work in Esenthel to get it straight in my mind.

I thought a written exploration of it might be useful to others and also allow people to put me straight on any misconceptions or glaring admissions. Please feel free to comment/correct/add detail.

I would recommend people watch Scarlet's video for detailed implementation.

Overview

Esenthel's underlying framework supports the generation of game objects based on a base object game::obj that adds some base functionality (interface) for game objects which is inherited by objects derived from it. This functionality is declared in the following file and definitely worth examining:

Esenthel Engine\Game\Object.h

There are a series of classes and objects already derived from this and present in the engine by default which include for example:

Game::Static
Game::Kinematic
Game::Chr
Game::Item

along with others.

Game::obj and the other classes derived from it can be used as the basis of your own classes for game objects as most of their functions are virtual and can be overriden in your own classes to provide the functionality you need and extend the underlying objects.

Note, some of the functions are abstract and as such have to be implemented in your derived classes.

Implementation in the Esenthel Editor

The new game object classes are created under your application folder as new Code items. Code the class functionality overriding virtual functions where needed and adding the functionality you require. For example:

Class MyTestClass : public Game::obj
{
...
}

Create a new Object Class item and give it a representative name for your class and add any parameters you want objects based on this class to have by default.

For example:

OBJ_MYTESTCLASS

The framework handles the passing of parameters to your objects via the struct ObjParams which is defined in:

Esenthel Engine\Game\Object Params.h

Once you have created the Object Class you can create new objects based on this by assigning your new class to them in the Object Editor params screen. You can set values or override default ones for parameters or define additional parameters specific to this object.

Instances of these objects can then be dropped into your game world in the Editor.

Relationship between the Class code and the Class Objects

This is not immediately obvious other than the fact that they have been created to work with each other. Two additional steps are required as follows:

You need to create a memory container in your code to hold the objects of your class. This is done by declaring a global container. For example:

Game::ObjMemx< MyTestClass > MyTestClassObjs;

Then a second function placed before you load the world tells the World Manager which container to use for your Object Class items in the world and hence which class to use to instantiate those items as the world is loaded. For example:

Game.World.setObjType(MyTestClassObjs, OBJ_MYTESTCLASS);

Place these for each object class before:

Game.World.New()

since that is when the world manager will be allocating objects to those memory locations.

This is a really cool system, I like it a lot!

[EDIT] Included Ozmodian's observations below. Many thanks!

Scope Creep

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 21:51:08 +0000

Ever had a simple idea and then that quickly go out of hand.... This is the kind of thing I deal with everyday in my day job as a civil Engineer but I find is just as common in Game Development . Scope Creep can have a massive effect on the time spent doing something that should have been more simple to begin with. Most of the time scope creep is bad and should be avoided like the scourge.

However, As I recently made my elevator system for my game, my scope creeped little by little to a point where the elevators were rather complex. Luckily in doing so the elevators also have the ability to behave like floating platforms and extendible bridges. Therefore, It turned out ok since I was going to have to do those things anyway. The below video shows my Elevator system in action. Like everything I make, I like to make it very diverse and flexible. Enjoy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdPWMWrAYxg

An NPC System

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 22:27:35 +0000

Hey guys,

I made this super long, probably boring video on how I make NPCs in my game. Maybe some of you are interested. It's also on my blog as well enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqOP5XG96...e=youtu.be

TriggaVerse: A trigger system.

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 12:51:16 +0000

Hi all!

Since I have switched engines to EE recently, I have had to re-do a lot of things. Luckily with relative ease.

Fortunately this means that I have been able to rethink a lot of my systems second time round and it has helped me get better solutions. I won't bore you with text I'll just show you straight out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pla...VDN6GcDXxI

How does everyone else approach triggers in EE? I'm just interested to spark some discussions.

Animation management

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 16:00:52 +0000

Working on code for managing the animations and mapping them to ids to avoid hardcoding animation file paths and wanted to hear the communities thoughts/experiences if thats okay?

I have had experience of this before where I used four character codes defined in .csv or tab delimited files that map the codes to an animation file and other attributes were available too such as looping, affected bones etc.

In code, the four character codes were defined in an enum, so for example, ANIM_IDLE = 'idle', WALK_BACKWARD = 'wlkb', RUN_FORWARD = 'runf' etc.

Benefit of these csvs was allowing the artists/builders to swap out animations as they saw fit. One of the problems that came up was whenever you want to add more animation types you'd have to edit the code to add a new type and I was wondering what ways there are around that? Also wondered if anyone has had experiences using strings instead of enums or maybe hash tables and if you managed to make a flexible system for managing animations that avoids the need to rebuild the code every time a new animation is required.

Look forward to hearing some thoughts on this

Is Esenthel a MMO only engine?

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 01:43:44 +0000

Hey,

I just have a simple question to ask. Is Esenthel a MMO only engine or can it be used to create other types of games with a redistributable dedicated server executable or batch file?

I am asking as I am seeing allot of MMO games here on Esenthel. Personally I would rather make a FPS game not a MMO.

Edit: I guess I should put out in plain words what I want to do with Esenthel. Simply put I want to make an 32 or 64 player game with Esenthel. I just need to know if the current networking implementation can handle it.

Edit 2: I also need to know if the current server / client can be redistributed to the users in executable form or batch file form.

Thanks,

Ben

If you could choose...

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 04:21:39 +0000

... any composer to score the music for your game/project... who would it be?

For me, it would be Bill Brown, no question.

His work for the Lineage 2 soundtrack alone is at the top of my personal list. He created some beautifully orchestrated music, which was performed and recorded live... Perfect for a fantasy setting.

Here's a few favorites of mine:
Caravans Crossing - Gludin Town Theme
Love this song's lilting melody.

Unicorn's Rest - Elven Village Theme
Another mellow, lilting and very atmospheric song.

Call of Destiny - Main Theme This is one of the title themes that has been used for Lineage 2. It's my favorite, by far. This one picks up a bit more a little ways into it.

After The Storm - "Closing Theme"
This theme is the "answer" to "Call of Destiny" and really book-ends the game's setting, musically. You hear the vocal theme from Call of Destiny echoed at the end of this. Beautifully done.

That's just a sampling.. there are many, many more examples.

Enjoy!