Development Info The Broken Hourglass is Forever Broken

[Volourn]

Just another Volourn...

 

[sgc_meltdown]

If you are saying big in terms of, why do they try to make RPGs instead some casual game? Well its because they really like RPGs.

It is huge, therefore it has huge roleplaying.

 

[thesheeep]

Well, I guess that after he had rl problems, he couldn't find the motivation to go on with the project.
There are, however enough people who actually want to see that game, so who knows, maybe someone will take a look at the code.

 

[Notorious]

*sigh* I'm still waiting for an awesome Indie-RPG/Mod to be released *Glances at VD*

 

[asper]

Now some modding team grab this, implement turn based combat and make it very mod friendly and let the cRPG incline fucking begin.

Iron Tower is already busy with it's vaporware. Don't think they can take on a second project.

Its vaporware, not it's.

Hey Vince, isn't it a good idea to continue the development of The Broken Hourglass under the wings of IRON TOWER ?

 

[shihonage]

is Shelter dead? havent heard anything about it for a while

GIRL U CRAZY

Too much of Shelter code is working for it to die. It has succeeded in having a functional dialogue/quest system, combat and object interaction, and even some active skills.

I just want to release a game that nobody cares about, for reasons not entirely clear, first. The retroactive "indie start small" thing. Putting a finished cheap game on a distribution service may not give me a much money but it will give me a lot of energy, anyway.

 

[villain of the story]

Yeah, that worked great for the PtD guys.

Hey Vince, isn't it a good idea to continue the development of The Broken Hourglass under the wings of IRON TOWER ?

I think that would be too much iron to pack at once for them.

Actually, what was TBG even about? They had told us about some nice mechanics but not much. When I think about it, my mind is totally blank about details of combat, magic, dialogue, CnC, writing, story ie. everything that matters. It wasn't even turn-based. The main appeal of the game to me was always the prospect of playing a pre-rendered isometric 2D game that felt and smelled like the old games again. And judging from their development history, that's where they focused on the most instead of getting a working game and plastering it with the shinies later. So I don't feel sad because I have no fucking idea what the game was even supposed to be.

 

[shihonage]

Be positive now, or I'll first kill myself, and then you.

 

[villain of the story]

In that order? That's a deal.

 

[shihonage]

 

[PorkaMorka]

Other than simplifying the graphics I'm not sure what fans of 1999 era commercial grade RPGs could do to scale back the difficulty of producing indie versions of those games.

Free roaming RPGs with a lot of dialog and C&C seem like a very difficult thing to produce.

But there is no guarantee that fans of that kind of game will enjoy a Vogelized RPG with non-interactive dialog and low effort maps full of copy and pasted palette swaps to mindlessly kill in untactical combat.

And there is no guarantee that fans of that kind of game would enjoy a game like KoTC which is lacking pretty isometric graphics which is almost in a different genre (tactical RPG vs storyfag "regular" 1999 era RPG).

Anyone know of a good scaled back model for indie developers who're fans of 1999 era commercial grade dialog and C&C heavy RPGs to emulate?

It seems a lot easier to produce a combat heavy, linear RPG which is light on C&C, you just need to figure out how to do good combat.

 

[kaizoku]

Why do indie RPG developers go for such large-scope games?

Perhaps their initial driving motivation was from the grandeur of their project. Like when you can see in your head how it's going to be, and it's that good that it keeps you going. Big dreams = motivation.

I think I read in Stephen King's On Writing that when every writer starts out, they want to do their dream project first, their dream book, the perfect story that they've always wanted. That's when they have the most ambition but none of the practical experience.

Indeed.
When you're motivated by your dreams and goals you're kicking ass like fucking Bruce Lee.
But when they die... you lose the motivation for everything and start posting in the codex. True story bro.

A notable exception to this trend is AoD.

VD, what's your secret to keeping yourself motivated and not burning out?

Anyone know of a good scaled back model for indie developers who're fans of 1999 era commercial grade dialog and C&C heavy RPGs to emulate?

Instead of thinking on indie mode right at once, why not try to make a small mission (3h-6h) for one of the games out there?
There's http://falloutmods.wikia.com/wiki/FOnline for Fallout.
If AD&D is your thing, I think all the tools for a ToEE total conversion mod are out there.
If you're feeling steampunk, Arcanum allows creating modules doesn't it?

 

[Cassidy]

Anyone know of a good scaled back model for indie developers who're fans of 1999 era commercial grade dialog and C&C heavy RPGs to emulate?

Don't reinvent the wheel. At the very least get an already made graphical engine. At best rely on something like that Open-source engine inspired on Fallout, FIFE... or if you're a total zero in trying anything more complex than script languages, the latter is pretty much the only option.

Unfortunately I suspect that FIFE ended just like this project and like the super-vaporware ideas that sometimes flow in my mind and never get anywhere.

Hopefully the OSS community will fix it, but one thing I have to say on open-source is that almost always multiplayer games or games with procedurally generated content tend to attract way more volunteer developers, because they allow the people coding and designing them to also enjoy them without knowing everything already on how they play and their plot goes. In truth there are very few single-player centric Open-Source games that aren't procedurally generated that ever got anywhere. Maybe it will be different here.

 

[Sitra Achara]

Other than simplifying the graphics I'm not sure what fans of 1999 era commercial grade RPGs could do to scale back the difficulty of producing indie versions of those games.

Free roaming RPGs with a lot of dialog and C&C seem like a very difficult thing to produce.

But there is no guarantee that fans of that kind of game will enjoy a Vogelized RPG with non-interactive dialog and low effort maps full of copy and pasted palette swaps to mindlessly kill in untactical combat.

And there is no guarantee that fans of that kind of game would enjoy a game like KoTC which is lacking pretty isometric graphics which is almost in a different genre (tactical RPG vs storyfag "regular" 1999 era RPG).

Anyone know of a good scaled back model for indie developers who're fans of 1999 era commercial grade dialog and C&C heavy RPGs to emulate?

It seems a lot easier to produce a combat heavy, linear RPG which is light on C&C, you just need to figure out how to do good combat.

This reminds me of some alternative to scripting method someone once posted about, IIRC Davaris. Never really got my head around it the first time, does anyone know what it was and what exactly made it so great?

 

[Davaris]

Anyone know of a good scaled back model for indie developers who're fans of 1999 era commercial grade dialog and C&C heavy RPGs to emulate?

It seems a lot easier to produce a combat heavy, linear RPG which is light on C&C, you just need to figure out how to do good combat.

What you could do, is grab a well written open source dungeon crawler and add the C&C parts onto it, as a separate library. However that roguelike would have to be very well written, so it is easy to write an interface between your code and it.

Of course you wouldn't be allowed to sell it and you may have to release your source code depending on the license, but it would be a step in the right direction.

This reminds me of some alternative to scripting method someone once posted about, IIRC Davaris. Never really got my head around it the first time, does anyone know what it was and what exactly made it so great?

What I did have was an idea for categorizing all known quest types, then writing and fully testing scripts for them, so you have a library of quests that are correct that can be combined in any combination that is desired.

Of course these quests would be vanilla, but you would design them so they could be customized, while still retaining their correctness.

Lots of correct components combine to make one big game, that is also correct.

The other bonus with that system, is you could also use a random generator to build trees of of quests instantly and go in and customize them later.

Edit:
Writing the code would be the easy part. Categorizing the components would be the difficult part. There is a book written by V. Propp called Morphology of the Folktale, where he breaks folktales down into their components and shows how they can be recombined in any combination. This is what I was thinking of when I wrote the above.

 

[Lesifoere]

Now some modding team grab this, implement turn based combat and make it very mod friendly and let the cRPG incline fucking begin.

Iron Tower is already busy with it's vaporware. Don't think they can take on a second project.

Its vaporware, not it's.

 

[Barrow_Bug]

Considering they used the 'Chiller' font for their company logo, they deserve to fail.

 

[Piety]

I'm actually surprised they dragged it out this long... Such a shame.

 

[Davaris]

From Jessica's blog, the art and coding for the game is pretty much done, but Jason doesn't think the game meets community expectations. So this is all we have to go on, which for me is incomprehensible:

"I have concluded that it is infeasible for PWG to deliver the game promised, and unacceptable to try to market a product that would not meet expectations"

Seems weird to abandon a project that is virtually done. Surely you'd know it did not meet community expectations, a lot sooner in its development?

At any rate it sounds like people will be getting a virtually complete, open source game, that is free to play.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

Seems weird to abandon a project that is virtually done. Surely you'd know it did not meet community expectations, a lot sooner in its development?

this sounds akin to the artist who spends a long time on a sculpture and then, frustrated at his work, smashes it in a fit of disgust and hatred

except in this case he has the sense to not delete everything and release it instead

 

[RPGMaster]

Fuckin' slacker.

 

[Melcar]

Tell us about your game, VD.

 

[Scruffy]

Now some modding team grab this, implement turn based combat and make it very mod friendly and let the cRPG incline fucking begin.

Iron Tower is already busy with it's vaporware. Don't think they can take on a second project.

Its vaporware, not it's.

THANK YOU

god, i hate that