Ok, I felt it was time to make a WIP about this project. Firstly (and unfortunately), this project is currently on hold. I'm now working full time on games and apps, and currently my efforts are in the Android market. However, I intend to finish my first app by the end of March. I'll then be making a decision on which way to go next, based on success with Android.
I do think there is money to be made creating a series of single player RPG games using this engine though. The aim is to appeal to the hardcore RPG players out there, rather than the mainstream, and make modest money, rather than big bucks. No delusions of grandeur here. Just a steady earner to supplement income, while getting to make my own RPG series.
So the aim of this thread is two fold. One, I don't want all my hard work to sit on my HD doing nothing and never being seen by anyone, and two, I want to rouse interest in a person that may want to help. Specifically, I want to team up with a single artist with great modelling/animation/texturing skills, who can concentrate on making the visual world well I make the game mechanics.
But anyway onto the game ....
Here are a few screenies that I post on the forum a while back while testing the visual concept, and seeing how people felt about it (i.e. does this look good enough to sell as a budget game to a small audience).
As you can see, the game will be a Dungeon Siege/Diablo type perspective. However, unlike those games, the control mechanism with my more FPS oriented, rather than point and click.
After this I started development on the world editor:
This is a tile based mesh system, with sculptable seemless tiles and textures, blending textures, foliage with animation, water, interactive entities, paths, lightmapping etc. You can create quite good looking worlds quite quickly, which can be extended with new meshes and prefabs, objects, textures. While the editor looks basic, it's quite powerful, though still unfinished.
Then I moved onto the animation and armour system:
Using Ron's Enhanced Animations, I've got some good movement and animation potential in here. The armour system allows several layers of clothing attachments and armour pieces which can be knocked off and destroyed in realtime.
Here is the video blog I started a while back on YouTube, which gives more detail.
Proof of Concept
World Editor 1
World Editor 2
Character System
That's it for now. Let me know what you think about the progress so far. If you have any interest in working with my on the project, or any business related advice or comments, give me a shout too. As I said, I hope to be returning to this in March, if all goes badly with Android.
