We need to start our own thing (Codexjam 2021 recruitment)

[Bloodeyes]

So this thread got moved to the Codex Workshop. I kind of forgot that existed... so what I'm talking about doing is already a thing... Codexers are making shit and discussing it with each other... It's been a thing for a while too. I just never read this forum.

 

[aeternalis]

So this thread got moved to the Codex Workshop. I kind of forgot that existed... so what I'm talking about doing is already a thing... Codexers are making shit and discussing it with each other... It's been a thing for a while too. I just never read this forum.

lol

I'm a programmer, you're welcome to add me to your contact list

 

[Tavernking]

If you want to make this work, start by purging your team members of the idea guys. Everyone has ideas, hell coming up with the ideas is the funnest part. Putting in the hard hours, the time and effort, is different.

That goes for writers too. They're basically an advanced hybrid of idea guys with a longer attention span.

Anyway, I'm a programmer so add me to your list, but I'm mostly joining to see where this circus goes.

 

[Humbaba]

When RPGs began to get worse I think the problem was a completely commercial (capitalist...) view at games and game industry. That's why RPGs became basically action games with items and some light weight role-playing elements (like skills). For the same reason some genres disappeared, just remember what happened to adventure games. At the company level people who make decisions about money tell developers what kind of games are more commercially viable. Which isn't true of course, because anything can be commercial at least in some way. Indie developers follow the same path, because they too are trying to make money.

BG and Fallout sold like crack back when they came out. Commercial logic would dictate that what sells is what to be made more of but between 2000 and around the time PoE came out traditional cRPGs were basically dead. That's mostly because cRPGs are very hard to make when compared to ARPGs or Bethesda style FPSs with RPG elements. which happen to sell even better.

 

[Viata]

Time to make a codexjam. Best codexer game, best codexer (original or fanfic) short story, best codexer pnp module, best codexer rpg rules, etc.
Instead of trying to make a big game at once, motivate people to do small things first.

 

[Humbaba]

That goes for writers too. They're basically an advanced hybrid of idea guys with a longer attention span.

Making an RPG without writers sounds bold.

 

[Bloodeyes]

Time to make a codexjam. Best codexer game, best codexer (original or fanfic) short story, best codexer pnp module, best codexer rpg rules, etc.
Instead of trying to make a big game at once, motivate people to do small things first.

Hmm... that actually sounds good. I'll stand by my offer to reward the winner of the writing contest with a game from STEAM or Epic Games. I'm too mad at CD Projekt to buy from GOG.

The only thing I can't figure out is how to judge it. Polls are easy but too expoitable, and the Codex has never reached a consensus about anything. We need judges, and their opinions need to be respected enough by the community that people will bother entering. Who?

 

[Viata]

Polls are easy but too expoitable

Pool is enough. The point is not to decide the winner, it's to motivate people to do stuff together, after all. Someone may write a short story and another person like it enough to ask them to make some game, pnp module or whatever together. The gamejam is a good idea for someone to throw a prototype and see what people thinks about it and find other people to make it better(in art, music, story, dialogues, gameplay, whatever).

 

[Krice]

Most of the titles considered 'classics' by the codex were big budget titles for their time period and made by major studios.

They were the last ones and I believe for both Fallout and BG the development began years before they were released. Still the good old time. But I'm going to add salt by saying that BG2 (the only one of those I have played) was quite boring game to be honest. You know, maybe it's possible to release good games even today, but the development is mostly based on how much they think it will make money. If you think about the game development in like 20 years ago we still had people who were creative and they did try to make something new. Now games are all exactly the same, even "quirky" games have similar type of ideas. The problem is that everyone and their cousin are only thinking about money. How much money they will get.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

PoE came out traditional cRPGs were basically dead

Pillows sold extremely well, fyi.

 

[Humbaba]

PoE came out traditional cRPGs were basically dead

Pillows sold extremely well, fyi.

Which is why I said between 2000 and Pillars.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

PoE came out traditional cRPGs were basically dead

Pillows sold extremely well, fyi.

Which is why I said between 2000 and Pillars.

The reason traditional cRPGs were "basically dead" was that PC gaming was still attempting to recover from consoles dominating the market. Without Steam, cRPGs would likely continue to be dead.

 

[c2007]

Billionaire Hunter World -

A very basic, Running Man sort of game, similar in aspects. Story mode, but the core of the game is a co-op PvP where X amount of players per team are the Hunters, regular blokes that have won a ticket to the event and have the opportunity to kill or be killed by the Billionaire Boys Club, with an equal player count.

Likenesses will be just off, as will names. Stuff like Felon Tusk, Gill Bates, Cock Industries, President Bo Liden etc for the BBC, set of very appealing avatars that can be as inclusive or exclusive as we want. Personally I am fine with having a big dicked tranny killing billionaires, although I can't guarantee I won't shoot at their dick so we need to consider friendly fire as a gameplay feature. But obviously, we need Chad, Tyrone, Stacy and whatever the black girls name is. Probably should include some different shades too, for maximum profit. No goddamned CC, this is an RPG and you are not yourself you clown, you are playing a pixel version of yourself on a screen.

Hunter Goals - kill the billionaires, win special prizes for kill styles, team combos, yadda yadda.
BBC Goals - survive (waves?)
Endgame content based on vaccine-triggered time bomb, basically CTF.

Influences

• Smash TV. Big Money! Big Prizes! I LOVE IT!!!!
• The Running Man film
• Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer (I warned you about creativity)

Pay me later. I don't care really, make this game I'll play it.

 

[no-return]

Can you do something like CDDA? Open source game.

 

[d1nolore]

PoE came out traditional cRPGs were basically dead

Pillows sold extremely well, fyi.

Which is why I said between 2000 and Pillars.

The reason traditional cRPGs were "basically dead" was that PC gaming was still attempting to recover from consoles dominating the market. Without Steam, cRPGs would likely continue to be dead.

There was a period there where devs were releasing shitty buggy and incomplete games with the excuse that they can just patch because internet. At the same time everyone was pirating games in mass and were only emboldened to because of these shitty buggy releases. Steam and online platforms becoming the norm pulled the pc gaming market out of the toilet. Discounted and easily accessible games stopped the mass pirating. Then there was a recovery and here we are.

The idea that consoles hurt the pc market is overstated. Consoles are full of mainstream and casuals who never played classic rpgs anyway. It’s all just FPS and Fantasy action games(FAG). Does anyone actually think Destiny or Call of Duty players are consequential to the crpg market?

The gaming market as a whole is much much bigger but the crpg demographic is still there, just a smaller part of the overall market, which now includes brain dead flappy bird players.

 

[Krice]

Steam and online platforms becoming the norm pulled the pc gaming market out of the toilet. Discounted and easily accessible games stopped the mass pirating. Then there was a recovery and here we are.

Does anyone actually believe that bullshit? PC market was always independent of consoles, it never went away. Then there is this fairy tale of pirates destroying the industry. They never did that, not even close. Game companies were just fine, in fact more than fine. Most of them are (and were) making ridiculous amounts of money. Pirate problem is much smaller than most people think, because it's limited to those few linux dudes who don't have money to buy games. It's way exaggerated by the industry to make them look somehow a victim which they are not.

 

[Azdul]

BG and Fallout sold like crack back when they came out. Commercial logic would dictate that what sells is what to be made more of but between 2000 and around the time PoE came out traditional cRPGs were basically dead. That's mostly because cRPGs are very hard to make when compared to ARPGs or Bethesda style FPSs with RPG elements. which happen to sell even better.

When BG and Fallout came out - they were one of the best looking games around - but at the same time they were a swan song for mainstream 2D graphics. I remember that Baldur's Gate 2 was presented at E3 on machines with Geforce 2 - not that it made any sense. I guess marketing guys thought that any new game in year 2000 requires latest 3D hardware to run fast and look good.

There were countless smaller studios that tried to copy BG or Fallout - mostly from Eastern Europe.

But once higher resolutions became mainstream - 2D game will either not look as impressive or will take 4 or 5 CDs - bumping production cost. Creating traditional CRPG in 3D in early 00's was also not a good solution - with many NPCs on screen game will run like crap and look like crap.

Most of the studios that tried to create another Baldur's Gate in early 00's went bankrupt, either before or after releasing unfinished game. Not that studios that were creating countless, forgotten Diablo clones have fared any better.

 

[unseeingeye]

ask Varg if you can use Myfarog

Damn, was just listening to Dauði Baldrs and Hliðskjálf this morning in my car, after not having heard or even thought about his music in a few years.

 

[fork]

Meh, older Burzum was better.

 

[Moonrise]

A game jam sounds like a good idea. We could even turn it into a regular thing. Tabletop adventure modules should be acceptable too. Given that RPGs of any subgenre are more sprawling than typical video games, the jam should run for two weeks. Any less or more than that and I think the results would either be lackluster or people would fart around too much.

 

[LudensCogitet]

A game jam would be cool. 2 weeks is better than 48 hours for sure, but even that isn't a lot of time. Unless there is a particular set of modding tools we could limit it to or something? Give everyone the same baseline, cut out a lot of prep work. On the tabletop side that issue doesn't exist, but judging tabletop modules is more difficult.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

but at the same time they were a swan song for mainstream 2D graphics.

Pillows 1 & 2 were likely the last we'll see of that style. The cost to produce them was exorbitant, but they were also visually beautiful games.
iirc, sawyer said he would have went with full realtime 3D if he could do it over again because of the difficulty of implementing it/costs involved.

Also, it's just not a technical necessity anymore. Even pillows was pushing it, the difference between realtime and prerendered graphics is becoming much smaller.

 

[Viata]

A game jam would be cool. 2 weeks is better than 48 hours for sure, but even that isn't a lot of time. Unless there is a particular set of modding tools we could limit it to or something? Give everyone the same baseline, cut out a lot of prep work. On the tabletop side that issue doesn't exist, but judging tabletop modules is more difficult.

The idea is to throw prototypes and see what people think. But we can go for anything, anyway. Most people wouldn't want to use modding tools because that limits the game they want to make.

 

[LudensCogitet]

A game jam would be cool. 2 weeks is better than 48 hours for sure, but even that isn't a lot of time. Unless there is a particular set of modding tools we could limit it to or something? Give everyone the same baseline, cut out a lot of prep work. On the tabletop side that issue doesn't exist, but judging tabletop modules is more difficult.

The idea is to throw prototypes and see what people think. But we can go for anything, anyway. Most people wouldn't want to use modding tools because that limits the game they want to make.

It depends on the expected skill and experience of the participants, how much time they're expected to commit, and the purpose of the game jam. Are we judging ability? concepts? starting points for further development? resolve?

Only having 2 weeks limits the game they can make. So does having no baseline to work from. So does having a baseline to work from.

I've talked myself out of liking the idea of a game jam, lol. What is the point, exactly?

 

[aeternalis]

I've talked myself out of liking the idea of a game jam, lol. What is the point, exactly?

Not sure, tbh. This thread went from "let's assemble a team and make a cRPG" to "let's have a forum game jam" and the two are very different goals.