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Given the changes, this'll be a brand new game highly influenced by RoTK2, not a RoTK2 mod. Things are just too different!
As for RoTK1, that'd have to wait, I'm afraid.
So is unfy changing the ROTK2 code or starting from scratch? I can't imagine how much work it would be to start from scratch.
Starting from scratch. Yes, it's a lot of work, but it also lets us go form "push the boundaries" to "completely rewrite the boundaries".
You've seen how limiting DoaE modding can be; this way there are no limitations, plus we can leave LOTS of room for future expansions, both official and unofficial.
Midknight: complete write from scratch.
Written in GLBasic (a basic that sits on top of SDL for the most part)… can target windows, osx (x86 and ppc), linux, ios, palm webos, palm pixi, android, gp2x, wince, and possibly a few others. It allows inline'ing c++, which i've already used for only a couple things (reading raw binary data from a file cause the provided file io stuff is kinda slow).
Being that I'm using the inline'ing and might possibly move it to 2d on 3d rendering … it requires the non-free version of the glbasic compiler ($100-ish).
In an effort to make this more friendly for the community to mod it, I'm attempting to do as much as I can for things to be not-hard-coded but rather read in from files etc (thus community doesn't need to touch the code base / buy the compiler).
I dunno if glbasic's free version has gotten to the point of compiled things have run time limits (5/10min)… if not, then some preprocessor escapes for 'slow vs fast' between free vs pro versions might be workable.
The amount of work required hasn't been too extreme… it's been mostly 'time available to work on it' kind of thing. Granted, there's a lot of data entry that takes FOREVER :(.
ROTK2 could be possibly described as a 'core version' of rotk. nearly all stats and numbers are based on 1-100 (only population numbers, gold, rice, get higher iirc), there are fewer stats for the generals (no 'luck', 'health', etc from rotk1….. or no army/war differentiation, no 'politics' stat, etc).
I've always liked how clean and straight forward it was, thus the desire to make an updated version. About the only two things that I can think of that have been discussed to possibly severely complicate it would be my desire to have something akin to 'experience' from rotk1 (each stat or task has a substat, the more you do it, the better you get at it… possibly to the point that your base stat goes up by 1 — ie if you develop the land for 5 years straight, your INT stat might go up 2 or 3 points)… and the block loyalty stuff discussed as of late.
Immediate apparent changes will be removal / upping of limits from the original (generals per province, number of generals fielded during battle, etc). Double or triple the number of generals available. A more proper RNG rather than something that can be predicted. Being able to choose the route a messenger takes while going somewhere.
Larger changes would be random promotion of regular soldiers into new generals (so and so has talent!), more things will affect ruler 'trust' stat, losing the ability to cheat at the game by using the recruit command targeting enemy provinces… this gets you a free list of generals there as well as being able to glean info by sorting them differently (soldiers/loyalty come to mind)… instead you will probably have to 'view' the province with a general and then choose to try to recruit someone with same guy doing the 'viewing'.
More drastic changes would be the block loyalty thing we've been discussing lately (although it seems like we'll have the ability to vary its influence), how free general searching works, possibly allowing the battlescape to be altered (ie: build a fort somewhere ???). Possibly several more game events that tie to historical actions (ie: see yuan shu / sun ce separation).
I'm sure I've missed lots of things in this summary heh.
PS: rotk1 – i had no plans for a rotk1 remake. Is there a point ?
That sounds awesome unfy. I'll certainly give it a spin once it's ready.
Quote:PS: rotk1 – i had no plans for a rotk1 remake. Is there a point ?Not a remake but being able to change the existing version. However I need to show this thread to my brother so that maybe he'll forget about ROTK1 :D
You know, I had someone ask me on gamefaqs for RoTK1 codes as well… >_>
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This may have been discussed before, and if not, unfy has probably covered it already (and so, I apologize). But if not… we should minimize the number of hardcoded caps:
Number of provinces. Number of officers. Number of forces. Number of scenarios. Max stats. Max soldiers. Max population. Max land/flood/etc. All these things — and more — should be put into an easy to edit .txt (or, if we're extra-fancy, .ini) file. ;)
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We need to find someone who can draw portraits from scratch. I can edit Koei portraits, but that doesn't help us here.
I'm working on getting it to the point that a for-developers-only demo exe might be able to released… cause… until that time it's all just vaporware as far as anyone might know. Having something in your hands able to tinker with goes a long way … particularly if anyone's kind enough to do some of the data entry stuffs heh.
Messing with the netbook lately has cost me many days of working on it (kinda meh in a project that is 9 months old now ?) … but… crappy coder graphics for the ui, making ui more functional / game flow stuff, and handling a lot of the RPN word substition (ie: RULERTRUST gets replaced with the ruler's current trust level etc) is what's needed for the dev release / semi-playable.
One drastic change I'd love to implement down the line is a 'concurrent system'. Everyone plots… and THEN it all happens at once. Immediate affects would be invading another province (what if cao cao and lu bu attack the same province ?) … recruiting people (Mi Fang sees request from both Liu Bei and Cao Cao .. which does he take ?) … and battlescape stuff (two people try to enter the same square ?). It'd be toggle on/off of course when starting a new game.
Something in the back of my head that I think is generally moot – network play.
re: atma's no limits chinese holdem
The only soft limits i see are the 1-100 stuff. I *can* make that configurable though. Beware of doing it on some things… if you change the max on say "INT", you gotta rewrite 500 general settings :)
art: yeah… will definitely need an artist. got an artist or two at work that might be willing to work for free / credits mentioning… but… i kinda doubt it.
for general portraits, i'm currently just using some of the stuff from kongming… but… that will NOT fly beyond this dev-only-demo. to avoid copyright problems, they need to all be originals, not just editing / recoloring / etc koei's.
sound guy at work is somewhat interested in doing a game project. there are also plenty of free / royalty free sfx on the net…
Quote:to avoid copyright problems, they need to all be originalsAre you planning on selling this game?
Not to my knowledge, but you know how some companies can be.
Besides, if we have original graphics and music, the only overlap between this and rotk2 is where we encourage people to play rotk games. ;)
Quote:Are you planning on selling this game?No. Not in the least. Particularly since I'm hoping to get community involvement. IE: Hey, I sold $1k worth of the game this week, how do I divide that up among 17 contributors (of varying degrees of contribution) ?
Does it make it less likely that KOEI would care, yes… maybe. Depending on how great of a game it is, it might compete with their line of games (dream on hehehehe).
But that doesn't matter for US copyright law. Copying a copyrighted work is still copying. And recolor / etc still makes it based on the original work… thus… still copyright problems. So graphics rips (or rip and edit) are a definite no-no.
There are further questions relating to deeper game statistics such as tables of general stats (those were created by KOEI) … and also the lay out of the map of china and the individual battlescape layouts. Within time, much of these concerns won't be a problem as we generate a lot of this stuff by hand.
edit: actually the map of china isn't too much of a concern, it's based on historical facts, not creativity. battlescape maps prolly can't escape that thought.
I believe they can nail you on copying of the game "engine"
Nope. Game style / mechanics can not be copyrighted. IE: there are lots of megaman and mario clones.
Now…. to demonstrate a side where your argument comes into play:
Doom has the doom.wad that contains all of the graphics, sounds, levels, etc. Now, if I completely take out this doom.wad and replace it with an unfy.wad that contains completely original work…. and play doom.exe using unfy.wad — i'm still making use of doom.exe (a game engine). Thus it's a problem.
If I made an unfy.exe from scratch that could play unfy.wad … then everything is fine.
One last important note:
To turn this completely on it's head — don't get copyright confused with patented.
Ugly but functional general select screen done-ish.
Next up: that thing i keep putting off – province gui.
It's good to be cautious regarding copyright but I think you're more than in the clear. Your game would not be sold and it should not impact Koei sales in any way. You're fine as long as what you do falls under "fair use".
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