Name a Good Eclipse Project

[SkywardRiver]

For 99.9% of people, this is just a hobby. Most people are just experimenting, not knowing what they are doing. The dedication dies off as a persons passions start to erode away.

My best advice for you would be to:

~Put together a team full of skilled individuals

~Take criticism with an optimistic approach

~Always remember why you started your project

[Exception]

Name a -good- Eclipse Project?

Well…I couldn't tell you a current good one, frankly, they all currently suck (and let's be clear, visually pretty =/= good).

I could name a few that were good in it's heyday...hrm. Here's some notable projects.

**Kirby's Dream World** - Mapping was absolute crap, but the community was fun. Had tons of content.

**Post Nuke** - Even though it was fairly unrefined, I dunno…I managed to be absorbed by it.

**Aphelion Online** - Ahah, I think this was the one that was in Polish, but the features then, they were incredible for the time. Was fun to play, even if you didn't have a clue what you were doing.

**Origin: The Legend Reborn** - Was fun, and one of the few projects that did show promise. Even if I didn't really like Lightning.

**Avian Online** - Ah, as much as it stabs me and twists in the wounds, it'd be silly of me not to admit that this was the game that had got me bothering with Eclipse in the first place.

**Ambardia (and Caverns of Ambardia)** - Need I explain it? Easily one of the best Eclipse titles.

**World Life Warfare **- Horribly unbalanced, but, who cares? The game was fun. :p

**(tooting my own horn here) The Tower** - One of the few Eclipse games that actually changed the combat mechanics beyond spaming Ctrl. Also was fun to play with Stein. :p

**Lord Of Empire (I seriously can't remember the current title. :x) ** - Proof that you don't need to be a master of English or of pixel art to make a fun game. Shame the team had to dissolve into thousands of pieces, about a couple hundred times.

**Aura** - Like OTLR, was so packed full of features, that I can't think of a single member who didn't want to play it at the time.

**FLYFF Alure **- At the time of Alure's development, Eclipse was rife with plagiarism and repetitiveness. Alure was a (serious) breath of fresh air.

**Silverdale (ZoSo/Robin's older version)** - No need to say it, just go play the version that's currently up, it's more or less new UI + fixes.
**Retarded Online xD! (yes really.) **- Additional proof that you don't need to be so serious and uptight.

And then we have these games, too:

OtherWorld

Secrets of Majilova

R.O.T.H

World of Azure

Krusade Online

Huh. I'm surprised I remember most of these.

Well…anybody looking to make a project, I suggest you search for them, and look up their topics. Look at what made them successful, and I imagine that so long as you stick to it, you'll have something that is actually good.

[VitinhooxD]

> World of Azure

That's still being made.We just moved on to a c++ engine and we have redone a lot of stuff but we decided we weren't going to post it till we had a playable client with content.I'm not gonna get much into that but we have some pretty cool stuff being programmed.

[Nayte]

Anybody here remember Dark Knights? Believe it was on PlayerWorlds engine? Maybe Mirage?

[Helladen]

> R.O.T.H

This reminded me of XtremeWorlds/PlayerWorlds based games like Jerrath, Legacy of the Zodiac, X-Isle, and many others. I still believe that these games were better overall than most if not all Eclipse based games, because they focused on a nostalgic atmosphere for old school games.

[dragonballgenerations]

to be honest i had never heard of Eclipse until about a week ago. I grew up programming with Basic, and over the last few years done alot of C# work with the XNA studio for 360 and pc games. To be fair while i have had some structural issues as far as the engine of the game it is still far easier to figure out then doing anything with Visual Studio and XNA and visual basic 6 is still alot easier to use then VB.net or Visual C++.  But i will say this..im interested in Eclipse V i think it will be easier and a little bit more user friendly based on what i read, BUT for an MMO i think that building it in Visual Basic is still the more secure route to go, especially if you are going to be hosting home servers. But for all these games i keep hearing about i think and hope that alot more development continues to happen because im very interested in playing some of them and hopefully one of my companys games will be part of this good community one day :).

[Nayte]

Well anytime you need a good and serious project, DBG, you let me know!

> to be honest i had never heard of Eclipse until about a week ago. I grew up programming with Basic, and over the last few years done alot of C# work with the XNA studio for 360 and pc games. To be fair while i have had some structural issues as far as the engine of the game it is still far easier to figure out then doing anything with Visual Studio and XNA and visual basic 6 is still alot easier to use then VB.net or Visual C++.  But i will say this..im interested in Eclipse V i think it will be easier and a little bit more user friendly based on what i read, BUT for an MMO i think that building it in Visual Basic is still the more secure route to go, especially if you are going to be hosting home servers. But for all these games i keep hearing about i think and hope that alot more development continues to happen because im very interested in playing some of them and hopefully one of my companys games will be part of this good community one day :).

[Orbegon]

Honestly most all eclipse games are good because people really put effort into making a game and the stress or confusion stops them from continuing the process. Even if someone's game doesn't please yourself, it pleases someone else and that's all that matters. :P

**-V**

[Exception]

> Honestly most all eclipse games are good because people really put effort into making a game and the stress or confusion stops them from continuing the process. Even if someone's game doesn't please yourself, it pleases someone else and that's all that matters. :P

If only we were all as ~~naive~~ optimistic as you, Eclipse may still be the fun state it was back in 2005 - 2009\. :D

[Nayte]

But at the same time, developers should still be able to take some internet flaming if they wish for their work to be public, right? ;p Still fun, just not as large.

I can see that changing with E V though.

[Helladen]

> What I was wondering is if there was anybody on this forum who has led the design of a game using one of those engines. It seems like a lot of projects get scrapped half way through and I may need someone with experience to help me so I don't run into the same issues.

This is a bit late, but the only way to avoid project scrapping is if you sit on an idea for a long time, plan it out very carefully, and do not give up easily. It also depends on how many resources you have at your disposal, if you try to make a custom engine/art/music/etc. it could be impossible to do no matter how hard you try. You got to understand what you can and can't do most of all.

This would be a good thing to write about in my blog. I'll have it be my next subject. I'm not the best game developer by any means, but I do have some experience which allows me to share my perspective on it. :P

[deathtaker26]

*intrudes on topic*

I've been on this forum for a very long time… and in the past nearly 5 to 6 years... I haven't even fiddled with eclipse... I get sick when I touch VB6

[Richy420Rich]

Might be off-topic but the point is on-topic.

1\. To be perfectly honest, Eclipse based games really don't get that far, the reasons are black and white. The market now and days demand something cross-platform, mobile and facebook. To grab an audience outside of this market, it's going to require major advertising, simply put.

2\. Eclipse game developers, as great as they can be. Most (if not all), reasons become apparent over the course of their development. They scrap projects in the middle because they start questioning scenarios.

2 A. Why can't I get any players on my game!?!?!?!

2 B. C# > VB6

2 C. Yeah, I'll be your programmer; That is until I get to learning this language and then I'll go solo!

2 D. Meh, what is the point?

2 E. I have job, college, wife, a baby boy on the way. I have to cut my time on this development… I hope my team can hold the game until I get some time back.

2 F. Where's the money? If there's no money to be got, why waste my time?

3\. There's a big difference between creating an engine and creating a game, and most of the Eclipse projects were just a first step to either learning to create a game, or learning a programming language in hopes to creating an engine.

Good Eclipse projects? Basically all they were/are, projects. Games are hard to find. :P

[Matt]

Spot on, except VB6 > C# ;D

[mrmiguu]

> VB6 > C#

~~Spot-on~~ Right-on(?) with this statement. VB6 has more substantial longevity than C# for a reason. Same goes for VB6 vs VB.NET.

I have nothing against those languages though and would be more than happy to code in them (and I have). The only Visual-language I have things against would be VC++. But that's mostly because it's C++ and the .NET framework.

**edit:**

I don't mean to start/continue a whole argument about which language is superior than the other. I just know that we all can't help how long VB6 has been around merely because of the requests from its user base.

[deathtaker26]

> Spot on, except VB6 > C# ;D

 Matt, you're drunk go home

[BeNjO]

Zoso's SilverDale is the first and only game I put hours into never really knew Zoso / Robin when I played and to this day barley know them [que robins an a** comment]

then skywarden's beta test [or what ever it was called]

I put a few days into becoming a 'top player' for it to be taken down and upgraded - will be shocked if it actually comes back out with the updates that have been talked about. If it does I would continue to play.

Can anyone remember before Eclipse? Elysium based games were popular because that wasn't much choice back then. I remember my old game having 200-300 people online and crashing as not being able to hold that many connections. I was young and could not figure out what was causing it so I scrapped it. I must admit back then was a lot easier to get a team together than it is now. I had several mappers and god knows how many people willing to test any features out. Plus a guy who would intentionally try and break features and "hack" [lawl] stuff to see if there were any flaws. Today you can't find someone even if you are paying.

The only problem I seem to hit when fiddling about with engines is the graphical part of it, I can do my work and be 90% complete with what remains is to be tested by players and optimizations, but without original graphics a lot of potential players see the old 'been around the block' graphics and do not even download it. I know a lot of very good mappers with rpgmkr tiles, but people see them in a screenshot and they presume it's a lame game.

My 2.5 cents.

[SkywardRiver]

> then skywarden's beta test [or what ever it was called]
>
> I put a few days into becoming a 'top player' for it to be taken down and upgraded - will be shocked if it actually comes back out with the updates that have been talked about. If it does I would continue to play.

We're well on our way, don't you worry ;D

We'll also see what we can do about reimbursing you for what was lost :D

[CDQ]

I didn't think this would get that much attention

Um, my main reason for making this topic was to find something I could hang around in, and maybe join up working with others on a project, I guess you can say that I am not content with what I made because I'm still trying to figure out the IP/Port things and the Autoupdater things, I just wanted to join a project's team or find something I find worthwhile  :D  Thanks for all the replies though, I'll consider what you guys have named

[BeNjO]

I know a few people are eager for skywardens to come back out and would actually like to see some updates [screen shots etc] maybe im missing out on some action on a forums somewhere. I do not want to be reimbursed i was just stating that to "prove" it was a good game, wrong wording but w.e lol

msg me skywardens <3

[SkywardRiver]

Terribly sorry, I've just seen this >.<

Yeah, new info always available at our Eclipse board. (you may want to re-read the main thread) and at our site to which the link can be found on our main Eclipse Thread.