PD
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Dragon is a very descriptive codename.
I've been throwing around ideas for a fantasy-based game involving dragons around for awhile now. Most of my time has been spent on the story side of things which a few days ago made me realise that all I really had was a story and not a game so I started thinking about gameplay and then decided that I should prototype the game in a sense. So this is Dragon. I'll be using EO 2 for the game because I saw the folder for it and just decided to use it :)
**Story**
>! Initially I wanted a world rich in lore that a player would be dropped into. As I started developing that lore I came up with some great ideas that would make for a great singleplayer game. This led me to spend some time thinking about how to incoporate a rich story into a multiplayer world where there really can't be a single "hero". I came up with the idea of events to drive story foward. These events would be global in nature and would to some extent affect all players. But I think that requires a large player base. I just can't reveal the Big Bad when there are only a handful of players and have an all-out war which results in the death of Big Bad because then I can't reuse said Big Bad or rather I don't want to recycle story driven events.
>!
>! So, I've decided to stick to the initial idea of a world rich in lore that a player is dropped into and then the player can go about discovering this lore and then have a sort of grand storyline that is played out through events. For example, if Big Bad appears and releases his army of Evil then this should affect the world and the players, with towns getting attacked and players having to decide to defend or just watch etc.
**World**
History
Culture
Races
>! There will be quite a few races in the game but with the player being restricted to Human because I want players to learn of and experience other races through interactions with them.
>! * Elf
* Dwarf
* Dragon
* Orc
* Human
* -Maybe more.
Languages
Geography
Technology
**Gameplay**
**Player**
Appearance
>! Skin colour, clothes …
Stats
>! Stats will be broken down into two categories of Needs and Attributes.
>!
>! Needs
>! Hunger
>! Thirst
>! Rest
>!
Attributes
>! Strength - Physical strength.
>! Dexterity - Movement.
>! Endurance - How long you can go for.
>! Intelligence - Einstein.
>! Perception - Skill sensibility.
>!
>! Your Attributes will suffer reductions if your Needs are not taken care of.
Skills
>! The game will not feature a class system but instead a skill system. This will allow players to mold their characters to their liking and of course make it harder for me to create a balanced skill system with good skills :P
>! Skills will be broken down into the categories of:
>!
>! Player - Skills that have an impact on Needs and Attributes.
>! Crafting - Skills that allow a player to craft items and equipment.
>! Combat - Skills that determine how a player will fight.
>! Magic - Skills that unlock the wonders of Magic.
>!
>! Instead of having skill points that are earned on level up and then can "unlock" or "buy" skills, the player will have to find a teacher and learn the skill of choice from the teacher. The quality of teacher will also be important.
>!
>! For example, there are only a handful of Humans that use Magic but there are many Elves that use Magic. Elves are more in-tune with Magic so you may only be able to learn basic Magic skills from Humans but from Elves you could learn numerous advanced skills.
>!
>! A player will start out with a number of unlocked skills and then will learn more a long the way. Books will be a good place to "stumble" across new skills.
Inventory
>! A player's "inventory" capacity will be determined by the containers he is carrying. A container is a sack, pouch, backpack etc. Each container will have a maximum weight capacity and hence each and every item will have a weight. This should become a nice little gameplay mechanic asking the player if he wants to travel light or heavy. Also the more weight is being carried the slower a player will move.
Equipment
>! All equipment will have a health, weight and a list of materials it was made from. Once a piece of equipment's health reaches 0, that piece will either be destroyed or it will survive but become useless allowing that piece to be fixed later on. A player will have a number of layers for equipment.
Crafting
>! Crafting will allow a player to create new items out of other items. Before an item can be crafted, a player must have a recipe, the required items and possess the appropriate skill(s). Recipes can be found and bought. Once again, books would be a good place to look. A player will start off with some basic recipes.
>! The appropriate skill(s) will depend on the item you're trying to craft. For example, if an item requires leather work then you would need the leather work skill.
Reading
>! I've mentioned books twice now and how they can be helpful in obtaining skills and recipes. Plus that with a world rich in lore, I think the ability to read books would be good. I also want to mention libraries. You'll be able to go into a library and check out a number of books but only a few pages of each book making it so you would have to check the book out of the library to access all of its contents. But be sure to check it back in, in time or else!
**Combat**
Ground
Sea
Damage
**World**
Time
Weather
NPCs
Quests
Materials
Guilds
**Eye Candy**
None.
Many thanks to Azkanan for 'The Ancients' GDD from which I've borrowed a number of ideas and probably will continue to :rolleyes:
Being a prototype game this may all be changed, tinkered with or just dropped. -
What would the terrain system actually do? :)
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Very nice. Just a quick question; for lighting are you using D3D8 lighting or just using a custom render method?
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> umm yes you can control the print screen.. that is simply the clipboard. and if you clear the clipboard in a timer or loop while the programs open it will not work. and to be honest suing cost money, so unless you have money to put out first, you will have an uphill battle. you could also put the graphics inside a Resource file in vb6 and call it from there if you really wanted to protect it.
Instead of a loop just check for when the **PrtScr** key is pressed and then clear the clipboard. Resource files are a bad idea. First of all, resource files are compiled within the **.EXE** and if a resource file is massive you're just going to bloat the **.EXE**. Second of all, the resources within the resource file can be extracted.
I would just grab an encryption algorithm, load a graphic file into a byte array, encrypt the byte array and then dump the byte array in a binary file. So load **test.PNG** into byte array, encrypt byte array and then dump byte array into **test.DAT**. After you've done that for all graphic files you can then delete all the graphic files and you'll be left with **.DAT** files.
Then at runtime or whatever just load the **.DAT** files, decrypt them and then you could use the **CreateTextureFromFileInMemoryEx** function to allow DirectX 8 to use them. I imagine that it would be possible to extract the decrypted files from memory but that is going to be hard and this method will thwart most people. -
More often than not, when I check out an Eclipse project, the author either has no story or something really basic and states that he/she can't write. So as a creative endeavour, I've decided to just look through some projects and pick out some stories and try my hand at rewriting them to be more appealing. Now they may end up being worse but hey atleast I'm being creative :P
If I do rewrite your story I'll send you a PM just to let you know and if you want me to rewrite your story then you can put in a request. Mind you, I'm not obliged to actually finish a rewrite if I do start one so don't pester me about it :) I'm also going to be quite picky about what I choose to work on. If you can show that you've been doing some work on your project and have some sort of dedication towards it, you'll have a better chance of me accepting your request.
But with all things, I may just end up doing one rewrite but hey let's get started. Do provide some feedback, thank you.
**Drachen Eclipse**
>! A Goddess named Diana had entered the realm of the humans, to live amongst them and create new creatures and life to sprout on the world. Then she created a creature, so terrifying that she had to lock them away in her own Dreams, into a zone known as the Neutral Zone. The creature was called the Dragon. Diana's dream began breaking out, a portal from the Neutral Zone broke out and monsters and demons began creeping out and spreading around the realm. Diana had to sacrifice her knowledge to shut it, the Goddess was put to eternal sleep with the help of a young warrior. The warrior took down the entire neutral zone without any assistance of any kind. Then before everything was at peace, the dragons roared, and the Dragon God Realm had come to its peak. It was too late.
>! –-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>! **Diana** - Probably derived from an old Indo-European root meaning "heavenly, divine", related to dyeus (see ZEUS). Diana was a Roman goddess of the **moon, hunting, forests, and childbirth**, often identified with the Greek goddess **Artemis**.
>! **Artemis** - Meaning unknown, possibly related either to Greek a?teµ?? (artemes) "safe" or a?taµ?? (artamos) "a butcher". Artemis was the Greek goddess of the moon and hunting, the twin of **Apollo** and the daughter of Zeus and Leto. She was known as Diana to the Romans.
>! **Apollo** - From Greek ?p????? (Apollon), which is of unknown meaning, though perhaps related to Indo-European *apelo "strength". Another theory states that Apollo can be equated with Appaliunas, an Anatolian god whose name possibly means "father lion" or "**father light**". The Greeks later associated Apollo's name with the Greek verb ap????µ? (apollymi) meaning "to destroy". In Greek mythology Apollo was the son of **Zeus and Leto** and the twin of Artemis. He was the god of **prophecy, medicine, music, art, law, beauty, and wisdom**. Later he also became the **god of the sun and light**.
>! **Leto** - Possibly derived from Greek ???? (letho) "**hidden, forgotten**". In Greek mythology she was the mother of Apollo and Artemis by Zeus.
>! **Zeus** - The name of a Greek god, related to the old Indo-European god *Dyeus whose name probably meant "shine" or "**sky**". In Greek mythology he was the highest of the gods. After he and his siblings defeated the Titans, Zeus ruled over the earth and humankind from atop Mount Olympus. He had control over the weather and his weapon was a thunderbolt.
>! **Origins**
>! In the beginning the God Zeus constructed the world and let his two children, Apollo and Diana onto the Earth. Diana gave birth to life on Earth with her most precious children being the humans. Apollo gave the humans wisdom, medicine, music and art. Everything was great until Diana gave birth to the very first Dragon. A creature so terrifying and powerful, it wrecked havoc on the Earth. The children of Zeus fought this beast on the motherland of the humans, Leto. A land which possesed such beauty, it was turned into a wasteland. To save the rest of the Earth, Apollo and Diana made the ultimate sacrifice giving up their lives to stop the Dragon. Apollo pulled out the fiery soul of the beast and rose up into the darkness of the sky where he sealed the soul within himself becoming the Sun. Diana followed suit, lifting the Dragon's scaly, grey body into the sky and sealing it within herself becoming the Moon. The life that had survived on Earth began to migrate and as generations passed, their beautiful ancestry land of Leto was lost and forgotten about. Yet the Dragon that almost destroyed their ancestors still even in death had its claws around the Earth, bringing it light from the Sun and dictating the night and the waters with the Moon. Oh, what a cruel twist of fate!
>! **Comments**
>! I really like that. For about 15 to 20 minutes of work that is a nice origin story for a universe. The name Zeus could probably be switched with Dyeus if you wanted to kinda seperate yourself from Greek mythology a little. Or maybe a name meaning sky could also work. Diana could be switched with Artemis to solidify the twin nature of **A**pollo and **A**rtemis. However the name **D**iana plays nicely with **D**ragon. I'm pretty happy with being able to incorporate Leto as the ancestry land and with it being wasted and forgotten about that can lead to a nice story point where the player finds Leto and sees the destruction and dwelling of early man. I picture a desert like wasteland with some nice ruins dotted about. There could be inscriptions on the walls of these ruins that tell the above origin story. Apollo and Diana becoming the Sun and the Moon fits nicely with their name meanings and with the Dragon being spilt between the two makes a nice fit for the title, Drachen Eclipse. If you've ever seen an eclipse, you'll know how beautiful yet powerful an eclipse can be. This could play into the story. With the Sun and the Moon being so far apart, the resurrection of the Dragon is kinda impossible but with the alignment and the eclipse maybe that is when this prison is at its weakest and maybe some dark mage who knows the origin story deduces this fact and performs some ritual when the eclipse takes place to try and break the Dragon free. If the Dragon gets out, it is going to be pissed and will destroy the Earth and maybe in his madness this dark mage is trying to take control of the Dragon once it's out for control of the world or something. And of course the players will try and stop this from becoming a reality. -
Search the project for **vbKeyUp** and you should find what you're looking for. Here is a list of key codes for reference:
[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/0z084th3%28v=vs.90%29.aspx](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/0z084th3%28v=vs.90%29.aspx) -
Great idea for a topic.
Just wanted to do a bit of writing. This was meant to be the opening chapter. A couple of different versions (re-drafts):
>! -Main Character
>! –Chris, Christopher Rage
>! --Intelligent, Conflicted, Angry
>! --
>! -Write Something
>! --Friday the 26th. I remember that day. It was when I ... It began back
>! then. Now, look at me. Holding a gun to my head ... How did it end up
>! like this? Well. I guess its time to put an end to this. Chris do you
>! have any regrets? Aha, a lot.
>! --A dark room, bed on the left, chair in the middle with Chris on it,
>! wearing a trench coat, black boots, face showing the strain, gun in his
>! hand.
>! --Beep. Beep. The alarm clock rang at 6:00 AM, stirring the little
>! creatures. The room was dark and dusty. There was a little cupboard in
>! the corner of the room and a bed next to the window. In the middle, sat
>! a chair. A sturdy, wooden chair. Sitting on top of the chair, a dark
>! figure. His trench coat was touching
>! --Beep. Beep. The alarm clock rang at its daily pre-determined time, 6:00
>! AM. The creatures of the dawn stirred, not wanting to wake up. Yet, he
>! was awake, like the day before, always waking up before the alarm clock
>! woke up. What was the point of the beeping annoyance? He didn't need
>! it. But, oh, he did need it. To remind him. To remind him that he was
>! alive.
A new project based on dragons/fantasy theme that I've wanted to do for awhile. I have many more ideas but have only gotten this much down. Check it out if you don't mind spoilers for a game that I'd like to make.
>!  -
Go ahead. I was going to do this (create a UI system with DirectX 8 using classes) but never got started. Well, I did get started but never got far enough. Instead of using Visual Basic 6 controls, I was using DirectX 8 to render custom ones.
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Kid, you patsy. Assassinate him!
The next entry should be interesting. -
Cookies!
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> oh dad :X Help me… i try and try.. but nops... now i put the code in "Drawplayer", below pic
>
> [http://imageshack.com/a/img600/1889/nn9r.jpg](http://imageshack.com/a/img600/1889/nn9r.jpg)
>
> But, in compilation surge this error :X help me plz! this system is wonderfull but missing something in my EO perhaps?
Dad? What am I missing here?
'GuildString' isn't defined. -
> This is important. Trying these engines out first before sitting down to work with them is important. Three months down the line only to find out that the engine doesn;t support what you need is not going to make you happy.
>
>
>
> Having said that, I;ve searched and don't see a thread on tools and/or procedures one may use for planning out a plot line. I know Fred over at Megatokyo has written a bit on the tools that he's using but they're all Mac based:
>
>
>
> [http://vn.megatokyo.com/](http://vn.megatokyo.com/)
>
>
>
> Any suggestions on plot planning for windows based folks?
>
>
>
> thanks
Two tools I use:
FreeMind - [http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page](http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page)
yWriter5 - [http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html](http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html)
There are better tools out there I'm sure but these are free and get the job done. -
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Try it and then report back if you get a problem.
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Because you're a using the LoadPicture method to load a file type that is not supported. If you want to use a PNG file then you must use DirectX8 to render that image to the PictureBox.
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Max Players
in Q & A
If you take a look at PokeCyrus it had a couple hundred players on at the same time and that game's base was EE. So you should be good using EO but ofcourse there are more factors that play apart in how many players you can have online at the same time. -
Give it a few days before you bump. You should also list what you want done.
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Interesting…
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Divine rain? Awesome idea. Very nice :)
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Wanna work on a manga or rather a small comic?
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You need to create a label with the control name of 'Label8' and place it on 'frmServer'.
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I'm checking it out now. Seems like an interesting idea.
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I didn't know Crucible = Green. Damn, that hurts my eyes.
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I love your accent :) Nice little video.
Creative Writing Thread
in Off Topic
Posted
>! I take a step back
>! And they call me weak
>! When I'm not
>! Even though I've been to the top
>! It's like trying to seperate peas from the pod
>! You need to be able to see through the fog
>! To understand the opinions that people have got
>! A step back doesn't mean that you stop.
Awake at night/early morning, on the site and I produced this in the shoutbox:
>! I've decided not to go to bed…
>! Anyone else awake?
>! In the land of Eclipse...
>! Everybody slept but one...
>! He was tired and sleepy...
>! But he kept himself awake...
>! Awake? Oh why did he keep himself awake? ...
>! He was on a quest for work...
>! Trying to defeat the laziness...
>! Fighting against the morning light...
>! He struggled to complete his quest...