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Null Null

Arbiter
Joined
Aug 2, 2014
Messages
542
RPG maker's good for 90s-style JRPGs from what I hear.
 

Tavernking

Don't believe his lies
Developer
Joined
Sep 1, 2017
Messages
1,216
Location
Australia
An RPGmaker game will never be considered an RPGcodex game. What we need is a few good men willing to spend their entire lives in their basements for us.
 

Nathaniel3W

Rockwell Studios
Patron
Developer
Joined
Feb 5, 2015
Messages
1,226
Location
Washington, DC
Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming!
Hey, not sure how serious anyone is, but I will totally donate some keys if you want to build RPG Codex: The RPG in my game. If you'll excuse me advertising my game, this is what you would be making:

That video is about two months old and it was the first time I really showed off the mostly finished engine. I've added and improved a lot since then. It comes with an editor, source code, tons of assets, and free support from yours truly. Combat, level-ups, ally and enemy AI, potions, equipment, shops, dialog, quests, and a whole lot more is available immediately with no extra coding required.

In my opinion, it's super easy to work with. I've tried to make everything drag-and-drop. You want an enemy spawn? Drag and drop it into the level, then fill in how many enemies you want it to spawn, and which enemy template to use, and it's done. You want a shop? Drag and drop a shop into the level, then fill its inventory from the premade potions and equipment. Then drag and drop an NPC and give it an event to open your shop. I made some tutorial levels in the editor. You play them, then return to the editor to poke around and see how they work.

If you really want to make an RPG, this might be the best place for you to start.
 
Joined
May 7, 2021
Messages
206
Hey, not sure how serious anyone is, but I will totally donate some keys if you want to build RPG Codex: The RPG in my game. If you'll excuse me advertising my game, this is what you would be making:

That video is about two months old and it was the first time I really showed off the mostly finished engine. I've added and improved a lot since then. It comes with an editor, source code, tons of assets, and free support from yours truly. Combat, level-ups, ally and enemy AI, potions, equipment, shops, dialog, quests, and a whole lot more is available immediately with no extra coding required.

In my opinion, it's super easy to work with. I've tried to make everything drag-and-drop. You want an enemy spawn? Drag and drop it into the level, then fill in how many enemies you want it to spawn, and which enemy template to use, and it's done. You want a shop? Drag and drop a shop into the level, then fill its inventory from the premade potions and equipment. Then drag and drop an NPC and give it an event to open your shop. I made some tutorial levels in the editor. You play them, then return to the editor to poke around and see how they work.

If you really want to make an RPG, this might be the best place for you to start.


Okay I really adore your engine, it looks good, and I want you to know that.
 
Joined
May 7, 2021
Messages
206
This thread has huge potential. So I'll hop in. I'm an amateur game dev myself, never released anything (yet) - still working on a ton of games, simultaneously, including RPGs.

I also have the added benefit of being a solo indie dev. Meaning, I do everything from the art, to the code, and music all by myself, and the only thing I've ever outsourced is the engine.
If somebody here wants me to make some tracks for their game though, I'd be more than happy to oblige. I can't guarantee the quality of the track, but I think it would range from decent/bland to surprisingly just good.
So let me know anytime, jack of all trades to glue things together but never specialize is probably something I can realistically do. This honestly sounds very fun, and I do wish the rest of the codex sees it this way.
You can think of me as like the glue for any project you want, or a step-in, with the absence of somebody, but as far as reliability, you can certain find somebody better if they're autist for this. Music though is the best I can offer.
 

RaggleFraggle

Ask me about VTM
Joined
Mar 23, 2022
Messages
990
If anybody is interested in hiring a writer for modern urban fantasy settings, I’m game. I loved Bloodlines and I’m really annoyed that there aren’t any new games that offer a similar experience. I’ll work for free, maybe even pay you. I have some amateur prior work that I can share on request to show what I’m capable of. I’m flexible too
 
Joined
Jun 23, 2020
Messages
202
If anybody is interested in hiring a writer for modern urban fantasy settings, I’m game. I loved Bloodlines and I’m really annoyed that there aren’t any new games that offer a similar experience. I’ll work for free, maybe even pay you. I have some amateur prior work that I can share on request to show what I’m capable of. I’m flexible too
Do you have any sample writings to show? I've been wanting to make a short RPG for a while, but having to do programming, art, animations, writing and maybe even music/sfx all alone would be a bit too demanding for me.
 
Joined
May 7, 2021
Messages
206
If anybody is interested in hiring a writer for modern urban fantasy settings, I’m game. I loved Bloodlines and I’m really annoyed that there aren’t any new games that offer a similar experience. I’ll work for free, maybe even pay you. I have some amateur prior work that I can share on request to show what I’m capable of. I’m flexible too
Do you have any sample writings to show? I've been wanting to make a short RPG for a while, but having to do programming, art, animations, writing and maybe even music/sfx all alone would be a bit too demanding for me.

If you need an amazing writer, that does happen to be my best skill.
 
Joined
Jun 23, 2020
Messages
202
If anybody is interested in hiring a writer for modern urban fantasy settings, I’m game. I loved Bloodlines and I’m really annoyed that there aren’t any new games that offer a similar experience. I’ll work for free, maybe even pay you. I have some amateur prior work that I can share on request to show what I’m capable of. I’m flexible too
Do you have any sample writings to show? I've been wanting to make a short RPG for a while, but having to do programming, art, animations, writing and maybe even music/sfx all alone would be a bit too demanding for me.

If you need an amazing writer, that does happen to be my best skill.
Send me some samples and info about the kind of game you would like to make. I'll see if it fits with what I'm working on.
 

Not.AI

Learned
Joined
Dec 21, 2019
Messages
305
Nathaniel3W: You wrote your own rpg engine? Awesome!

Art style is great if you also did the art.

Everyone in the thread:

For all practical purposes, if you want to make a game (for those who haven't yet), the very first thing is to - absolutely - totally - make sure you will have enough people on the team who can sculpt and makes textures of some kind. (Blender, Zbrush, Substance Painter, ...)

At least basic things like rocks, terrain, and placeholder assets. Quickly test ideas in working builds.

Second thing is always to have at least one person making docs. Docs can take almost forever. Backlogs pause projects. Docs are what help onboard rapidly when more people are needed.

Test with however many tris you expect in the final. (If not using Unreal 5, Godot 4 based on Vulkan should be properly out soon enough. With several performance features promised that are must-haves to make large open areas performant.)
 

Nathaniel3W

Rockwell Studios
Patron
Developer
Joined
Feb 5, 2015
Messages
1,226
Location
Washington, DC
Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming!
Not.AI I started with Unreal Engine 3, wrote my own game on top of it, and then released it with the editor and assets. So it is a complete RPG engine. I don't think I could really claim to have written it all. All of the hard stuff was made by Epic.

Not sure I agree with the sculpting/texturing being the most critical part of the team. A lot of developers will be able to get that all from asset stores, and it can be outsourced. A good coder who knows how to put everything together is definitely the most important role. And I don't know about docs either. I keep notes, but not documentation. I certainly wouldn't dedicate an employee to making docs, unless maybe I had like 500 employees.
 

Not.AI

Learned
Joined
Dec 21, 2019
Messages
305
The majority of employees will not read documentation.

Could be wrong employees then.

Jokes aside though: the people who join later will typically ask you for it. "Where docs. Why no docs."

You can't assume that you won't need to add people over time. E.g., to get some features done.

If you don't have docs ready, you and people already present will need too many meetings with the new people.

People will be talking, you will be talking. But now fewer rather than more people will be working.

Brooks' Law: Adding people to a project can slow it down.

Re: 500. It's a problem even with 30.

The issue is (a) delegation plus (b) certain things need to be done exactly to spec otherwise the whole will (c) look bad or worse (d) can't be put together or (e) can't be maintained. The problem is catching up on documentation is surprisingly hard. Huge slog. Most knowledge is tacit or communicated by long conversations, which must be repeated, otherwise, when onboarding.

Docs could be even more critical in a project where most people are not contracted employees but self-organizing. Such projects need to move forward and to be fun. Going over mundane things over and over is definitely not fun.
 

J1M

Arcane
Joined
May 14, 2008
Messages
14,616
If you have docs the new people will ask for docs that aren't outdated. If you have docs that aren't outdated they won't ask for them.

The best you can do is socialize 5 to 10 pillars of design as if they were the Ten Commandments and make sure the project has a visionary leader to fill in the gaps that never leaves the team.
 

Not.AI

Learned
Joined
Dec 21, 2019
Messages
305
The best you can do is socialize 5 to 10 pillars of design as if they were the Ten Commandments and make sure the project has a visionary leader to fill in the gaps that never leaves the team.

Not always the best you can do, but there is a lot of truth in that statement, agreed.

Document-driven design is anathema to some extent, because writing docs does consume so much time.

Reminds me there is a meme video of Steve Jobs talking about how "really great teams" self organize. Quite true. But as teams scale, they become exposed to risk.

Probably not everyone that joins is going to be really great.

But they can be useful, if and only if there are updated docs. Then they can contribute to the vision. Just everything has to be spelled out for them, explicitly, otherwise they just do the completely wrong thing, because they have almost no commonsense.

It's really about common sense, rather than abstract thinking or leet skillz or anything like that. Common sense is surprisingly uncommon.

This, true, affects larger teams more than smaller teams.
 
Joined
Jun 23, 2020
Messages
202
I'm looking for artists/animators/musicians for this little amateur 2D action RPG inspired by VtM:B project I and fellow codexer RaggleFraggle have been working on for a few months already. Anyone interested?
 

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