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Technical forum / A few questions
« on: July 22, 2006, 08:02:22 PM »
I'm an experienced coder wrapping up on a 3D action game that I've been working on, and I wanted to start something I've not tried before. I came across your site with just some random Googling, and I've always loved a good adventure game, so what the hey. (Shoot I still have my copy of Kings Quest 1 for the PC-JR somewhere..)
I did look at a few other engines (AGS, Sludge and so on) and from what I've seen and read, WME looks to be the best solution. I do have a few questions tho. I did do a few searches, and some of my questions I found answers for, but here's a few that I didn't find.
Windowed/Full Screen Toggle: I know you can specify if the application should run windowed or full screen via the startup dialog, or forced via a script. Can this be toggled during run-time? (Mostly for debugging purposes)
Restarts: Can I force a scene to reload on command? Again, mostly for debugging purposes. Example, I spot a script glitch, I can edit the script and tell the engine to restart that scene. I know I can just exit and restart, mostly just for saving time, not a big deal.
Plugins: I've been playing with WME for all of almost a day, so excuse a dumb question. I have two possible ideas for plugins for a project that sort of popped into my head. Do you have access to the engine's internals via plugins? Or would I need to pass a bunch of parameters back and forth? I have two that immediately come to mind. First is that I have a Logitech G15 keyboard, and I would like to use the LCD display as a debugging aid. I would think that would be pretty simple to do, I can write a DLL in Delphi to spit out passed data to the display. The second is a little more complicated, and that's multiplayer. Sake of argument I have a simple TCP server I wrote in Delphi that handles the core communications stuff. Could I write a plugin that communicates with the server, and have it hande synchronization with other players? The DLL would handle all the communications, I would just pass back data for the other actors and whatnot.
Theora entities: Again, only been toying with this for about a day. I saw that an entity can render a video encoded with Theora, which isn't an issue, I'm all for the OGG codec's. What sort of limitations are there? Can I display multiple videos at once? (Within reason of course.. I wasn't going to try and render 1000 videos at once..) Any issues with video renders being mixed with a 3D actor/scene?
3D Lights: I saw that you can import lights with your 3D scene. Will the lights affect 2D data as well? Just for sake of argument - my 3D actor is carrying a torch, which has a light source with it. If that actor moves around, can I get it to light up somewhat realistically the surrounding area? Or would that be more effectively done with a 2D alpha type of thing?
Running: A nice little touch for the impatient people (me), click somewhere and your actor moves to that spot, double-click and he runs. Easy via script I would think yes?
License: My last project was commercial. I put a lot of work into it, and hopefully it'll make some money. I designed this for someone else however, and it really wasn't "mine" per se, I was hired help, and it was a job. That being said, my next project is just for me. I have a story in mind, but I really just want to have fun with it. I want to create a fun "experience" that others can enjoy, and I'm really not looking to make money with it. I saw on the FAQ that it's free for non-commercial use. That's more than reasonable. What about some sort of shareware model? A few examples: It's free, but if you really like it, you can send some money. Or, bonus material. The regular game is free, but for some sort of extra money, you can receive bonus scenes or whathave you. How would that work? I've no objection to sending some money; shoot even for a freeware program I think WME is well worth it and I would like to send something along to show support and to ensure development of the engine.
I'm really looking forward to working with WME. My past few projects I had to spend tons of time working on the guts of the engine before I could actually work on a game.. I'm not shy about hard-core programming but it looks like this engine will not only save me a lot of time, but I can jump right into making a game, which will be a much more enjoyable experience.
Thanks for any input.
I did look at a few other engines (AGS, Sludge and so on) and from what I've seen and read, WME looks to be the best solution. I do have a few questions tho. I did do a few searches, and some of my questions I found answers for, but here's a few that I didn't find.
Windowed/Full Screen Toggle: I know you can specify if the application should run windowed or full screen via the startup dialog, or forced via a script. Can this be toggled during run-time? (Mostly for debugging purposes)
Restarts: Can I force a scene to reload on command? Again, mostly for debugging purposes. Example, I spot a script glitch, I can edit the script and tell the engine to restart that scene. I know I can just exit and restart, mostly just for saving time, not a big deal.
Plugins: I've been playing with WME for all of almost a day, so excuse a dumb question. I have two possible ideas for plugins for a project that sort of popped into my head. Do you have access to the engine's internals via plugins? Or would I need to pass a bunch of parameters back and forth? I have two that immediately come to mind. First is that I have a Logitech G15 keyboard, and I would like to use the LCD display as a debugging aid. I would think that would be pretty simple to do, I can write a DLL in Delphi to spit out passed data to the display. The second is a little more complicated, and that's multiplayer. Sake of argument I have a simple TCP server I wrote in Delphi that handles the core communications stuff. Could I write a plugin that communicates with the server, and have it hande synchronization with other players? The DLL would handle all the communications, I would just pass back data for the other actors and whatnot.
Theora entities: Again, only been toying with this for about a day. I saw that an entity can render a video encoded with Theora, which isn't an issue, I'm all for the OGG codec's. What sort of limitations are there? Can I display multiple videos at once? (Within reason of course.. I wasn't going to try and render 1000 videos at once..) Any issues with video renders being mixed with a 3D actor/scene?
3D Lights: I saw that you can import lights with your 3D scene. Will the lights affect 2D data as well? Just for sake of argument - my 3D actor is carrying a torch, which has a light source with it. If that actor moves around, can I get it to light up somewhat realistically the surrounding area? Or would that be more effectively done with a 2D alpha type of thing?
Running: A nice little touch for the impatient people (me), click somewhere and your actor moves to that spot, double-click and he runs. Easy via script I would think yes?
License: My last project was commercial. I put a lot of work into it, and hopefully it'll make some money. I designed this for someone else however, and it really wasn't "mine" per se, I was hired help, and it was a job. That being said, my next project is just for me. I have a story in mind, but I really just want to have fun with it. I want to create a fun "experience" that others can enjoy, and I'm really not looking to make money with it. I saw on the FAQ that it's free for non-commercial use. That's more than reasonable. What about some sort of shareware model? A few examples: It's free, but if you really like it, you can send some money. Or, bonus material. The regular game is free, but for some sort of extra money, you can receive bonus scenes or whathave you. How would that work? I've no objection to sending some money; shoot even for a freeware program I think WME is well worth it and I would like to send something along to show support and to ensure development of the engine.
I'm really looking forward to working with WME. My past few projects I had to spend tons of time working on the guts of the engine before I could actually work on a game.. I'm not shy about hard-core programming but it looks like this engine will not only save me a lot of time, but I can jump right into making a game, which will be a much more enjoyable experience.
Thanks for any input.