4th Space Game

[Mipsus]

Hrmmm, that's a good question. I've been spread really thin here lately, which doesn't give me much time to work on stuff. So updates are kinda slow going...on all my projects.

It always seems like I just never have enough time in the day. It's like having the opposite of depression, where instead of not wanting to do anything, I want to do *EVERYTHING* and I keep trying. I should probably try and reorganize my life a bit and focus on just *ONE* project at a time, or maybe just 3 or 4...instead of like FIVE HUNDRED. o_O

I'll spend the next few days working on the game though and see if I can't put up a good update.

[Mipsus]

*sigh*

And suddenly I remember why I started putting this project off. o_O

Well, the next update isn't going to be too spectacular, but it will mean I'll be able to start making spectacular things ~with~ it. Basically I've got the sprites done for all the teachers and the main characters, along with various outfits for all of them...but now I have to do all the *REST* of the orphanage kids. Which is basically 33 custom sprites along with a basic wardrobe including school uniform, pajamas, and at least one set of casual clothes.

To complicate things even further the kids aren't all the same heights because they're all different ages, so I can't simply make one basic uniform that will work with all of them, but rather I have to make several different sizes/heights of each one.

This is the basic height formula I'm using, the ages are just approximations and don't represent the actual height of each individual, like there are some 16 year olds that are a bit shorter than 5'8". The number on the left there indicates the height in pixels:
46 - 18 years old+ - 6' 4"
45 - 18 years old+ - 6' 2"
44 - 18 years old+ - 6'
43 - 17 years old - 5'10"
42 - 16 years old - 5' 8"
41 - 15 years old - 5' 6"
40 - 14 years old - 5' 4"
39 - 13 years old - 5' 2"
37 - 12 years old - 4'10"
35 - 11 years old - 4' 6"
34 - 10 years old - 4' 4"
33 - 9 years old - 4' 2"
31 - 8 years old - 3'10"
30 - 7 years old - 3' 8"
29 - 6 years old - 3' 6"
28 - 5 years old - 3' 4"
27 - 4 years old - 3' 2"
25 - 3 years old - 2'10"
23 - 2 years old - 2' 6"

Thankfully I've already worked out all the individual kids names, ages, heights, etc. So that makes it a bit easier. I haven't assigned any personality traits to any of them yet though, because I haven't really gone too much into the story line. But the good news is that once the sprite models are all finished *THEN* I can finally actually do that and put out some demos with some real character interaction and such.

At that point too I'll probably start getting some art commissions from various artists. I'd like to have some little cut scenes for various scenarios and such, from various artists in the community. I might even do a bit of basic animation. My forte is in graphic remanipulation, so it's pretty easy for me to take some static art and make it animated on various levels, so I'll likely do some of that as well with the artwork I get commissioned. I'm budgeting around $300 for art work, which I think will cover everything I need, at least for the basic begining of the story/game.

[Mipsus]

I've got a big-little update today on the Fourth Space game! It's little in that it's not related to lots of finished graphics or code material, but it's big in that it basically explains the entire "Fourth Space" reality and how everything works. It's essentially the basis behind the entire game, so that's why it's "big". You can read all about it here:
http://farfoos.livejournal.com/10226.html

[athomson]

Thanks for the update!

What you have is very good, I hope it will be as fun to play as it is to read about. However what you seem to have is more of a 3D cube than a 4D hypercube.

A 4D hypercube has 8 cubical sides (or hyperfaces). Each cube is connected to 6 other cubes through its 6 sides (or hyperedges).

This is much like how there are 6 faces on a regular 3D cube, and each each face is adjacent to 4 others, all the other faces except the one on the opposite side.

Although it doesn't matter to me how many dimensional realities you wish to have, I think your present explanation would be more consistant with a 4D hypercube if there were 8 total. If the space folded continuousely as in the animation, each reality would only connect to the adjacent 6, however passing through the middle or 'interstice' as you call it would allow you to connect to all 8, altho the space folding transformation would not be as continuous.

Actually, that gives me an idea. What if the interstice was one of the hyperfaces, and each reality is a hyperface adjacent to the interstice? Then with the 6 realities, the interstice, and the hyperface oposite the interstice (some kind of anti-interstice?) you would have the 8 hyperfaces your hypercube needs.

[Mipsus]

Thanks for the info, I'll see about incorporating your ideas into it. The "science" of the story definitely needs some ironing out. I'm not trying to make it extremely exacting, but I would at least like it to be semi-plausible and at the very least believable by the average player. It's the old "Hollywood Illusion" as it were. Convincing the audience that sheer bullshit is actually plausible, potential reality.

*Mipsus goes off to eject the warp core and realign the pattern buffers for the transporter*

^__^

[athomson]

Yeah, I know it doesn't have to be scientificly perfect. Sorry, I just had to post that because my math sense was tingling.

*athomson quantum teliports instantly to the other side of the universe by hitching a ride on a stream of entangled electrons* :-)

[Mipsus]

Nah, yer post was good, it gave me some good ideas. Critiques, suggestions, maps, character forms, story lines, art work and ideas are always welcome. If there's something you want to see in the game just tell me and I'll see about incorporating it. The game's going to be big enough to include plenty of ideas, so there's tons of room for expansion.

I just finished up making one of the basic maps:


Each pixel represent a 32x32 tile. Dark green represents forest, light green is grass, tan is dirt/sand, dark brown is lower mountainous areas, dark gray is high, rocky mountainous areas, white is snow, faded green is snowy forests, light gray is snowy mountains, the blue is water obviously and the light bluish outlines are shorelines or shallow waters.

I think how I'm going to make this work is that the worlds are going to come in sets, so each world will have a kind of "mirror world", that'll be somewhat the same, but slightly different. Like in this one, the alternate world is going to have a complete land mass on the bottom right there and it's going to be explained that the reason it's mostly gone in this world is because of some nth level, cataclysmic destruction.

The original universe is going to be a mirror of our own, but basically a few thousand years older with some various small changes in events, land mass, etc. Along with highly advanced technology since they'll be a few thousand years ahead. It's going to be that the 4th Space, the alternate realities, were basically created accidentally in an experiment gone awry. The original experiment was to try and travel through time, but instead it fucked everything up and cubed the universe into various, fragmented, folded dimensional realities.

In some respects it'll be similar to the episode of Farscape when the ship tried to travel at warp and then everything went wrong and it got split into four realities with holes between the four in various locations. Only on a universal scale. That's basically where I got the idea from. That and the episode of Voyager, "Shattered", as well as the "mirror universe" in Star Trek were also inspirations.

The over world maps are going to work a little different from traditional RPGs. As they're suppose to represent an entire planet you're not going to be able to just wander around on foot, which is kind of ridiculous. So in each world, to travel around you *HAVE* to find various means of transportation. Each world will have different forms of transportation, some more advanced than others. Also, as you're traveling around, in some worlds you'll encounter random enemies of various sorts and in others not, depending on the circumstances of that particular world.

One of the things you'll be able to do as you're traveling is to stop on the map screen and "get out" of your transportation. Which in most cases will lead you to a random, generic map that matches the terrain you stopped on. Most will have nothing there, maybe some common items, maybe some monsters. There will be a few spots though in which there will be really good/hidden items, quest items, people to talk to, houses, "Easter eggs", various puzzle related factors, etc, etc. You'll be able to find these hot spots via researching, sleuthing, talking to people, etc, etc.

In some respects it'll be similar to Zelda, "The Ocarina Of Time", where if you have a rumble pack you can find hidden chambers that can be bombed open. That's what the idea is based upon. Basically the whole game is sort of like a massive conglomerate of all the best ideas and my most favorite ideas that I've seen in other video games, anime, cartoons, movies, etc. Along with my own original story. Although even my story is going to be based somewhat on mainstream tropes that I'm fond of, in anime, as well as video games, TV shows and movies. They'll then be refined, expanded upon, broken apart and combined in various ways and developed more indepthly (so as to avoid obvious cliches).

[Clop]

Is there any chance of this becoming a mac game... wow the only thing the switch between windows and mac that is difficult is program compatibility issues and yes i refuse to use bootcamp.

[Mipsus]

Well the game is being built with RPG Maker XP, so it's basically restricted to whatever that'll work on, which I think is Windows only. I do know there are various Windows emulators slash virtual machines for the Mac that may allow RPG Maker games to run, such as VMWare Fusion and Parallels...although I have no real experience with either of those so I can't say for certain. I don't think they're free either, although you could probably get a pirated copy via torrents.

Using RPG Maker is pretty well essential to the game, otherwise I'd basically have to write my own game engine completely from scratch and that alone would probably take me a couple years...unless I magically win the lottery and don't have to work anymore.

Even with the RPG Maker base engine I'm having to do some pretty massive over-hauling to its base code in order to get it to work with all my ideas, like the whole wetting system. It really wasn't ever designed to do anything like that, so I had to add in huge chunks of code into its window initialization base code. Not to mention altering all the code so that I could use 32x32 pixel icons instead of the usual 24x24 ones. And then the whole clothing lock system, clothing equipment icons and the linked relation between equiped clothes and the sprite forms, all of that required massive editing of the RPG Maker base code.

To have to create the *ENTIRE* system completely from scratch though...yeah...that quite literarily would take me *YEARS* to accomplish all on my own, given my current work schedule and so forth.

At one point I did run some figures and did a few basic test models of a game engine, the first being based on javascript:
http://www.backwater-productions.net...platform/game/

Just to do that little, simple test, it took 119 lines of code:
http://www.backwater-productions.net...e/internals.js

The RPG Maker's default base code...it's in the tens of thousands of lines of code.

[Kaori Rocks]

I can't get this game demo to work!!!!!!!!!!! WHAT THE HECK DO I HAVE TO DO TO GET THE GAME DEMO TO WORK ON MY COMPUTER!!!!!!!!!!