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lol…. while veterans of the game wouldn't have any problem identifying by number, it's just a usability thing that's greatly handy (and important enough that i think it should be on that screen rather than something requiring a click or something :)
being skinable is highly useful.
Well, there are plenty of games that use a paper-ish background for lots of different ledger things…. even stuff up until ww2-era stuff.
i debated going with a stark cold typical 1980-1990's era pc game sci fi-ish look … they're easy enough to create and look 'okay'… but… i figured i'd try the whole paper look. granted, it needs to go from papery-screen to papery-screen with sfx and stuff to feel proper.
—>8—>8—snip—>8—>8—
i typed out something then deleted it.
—>8—>8—snip—>8—>8—
1024×768, display everything ya want displayed, keep note of x/y positions for all dynamic elements of the screen (names, values, portraits, etc). dynamic strings use mono spaced fonts fwiw.
graphics can be bmp, jpg, png (maybe others) … i really do suggest png.
Something that hit me that i 'wanted' while doing this last night… was a spot to have a mini-map of china (as it looks at that point in the game) and to highlight which province you were working with atm. just something to think about :)
if ya wait on doing it 'serious like', you can just fiddle with the dev-demo release that'll be rolling around soon (crossing fingers).
liu yan: heheheh, if portrait's not found, it uses the kitty pic.
overdoing it with the chinese influences ? the only chinese influence would be the use of that particular font (which is 'bonzai' btw, from a '4000 fonts' cd i picked up years ago). which was 'found 1 font i kinda like and stuck to it'. font selection can take FOREVER when done correctly, so i'm just running with 1 font right now. expect to see it everywhere at the moment heh.
all of the original graphics are in the paintshoppro native format with multiple layers etc… so easy to swap out font in those. from there it's exported to a png. game fonts for dynamic text are just a font -> graphic converter that's easy enough to feed other fonts into.
the papery info area was frayed on the edges by cutting out lots of partial star shaped things (netbook making precision mousing difficult heh).
i call it ugly for a reason :)
edit:
Quote:Also we need to decide on which stats — both for the provinces and for the officers — to use.whachu talkin bout willis ?
chinese posting to a forum that actively discusses romance of the three kingdoms era stuff ?!
SAY IT AINT SO!!!!!
Quote:Nah, we'll just bug you to switch form RPN to the math system of civilized people. :ÞI might be able to do something like that. It'll be strictly left to right (no 'my dear an sha') and make use of parenthesis. Dunno how it'll handle:
"8 + 3 – 5 + 3 * 7"
With how I *think* it'd work out… it'd be:
8 + 3 – 5 + 3 * 7
11 – 5 + 3 * 7
6 + 3 * 7
9 * 7
63
It's also a bit uglier to implement in code.
Final answer: we'll see… but that comes after all of the current phase of gui work is done (ie: rpn already works, thus implementing 'normal math' would be redoing something that already exists).
And just to be snarky, "8 + 3 – 5 + 3 * 7" in left to right to eval like the above did would be rpn written:
8 3 + 5 – 3 + 7 *
hehehehe
So in 6 years time or so, we'll see another extension. Yay. Or something.
Anyhoo, tonight will be the beginnings of the province screen gui stuff (again, all ugly and just 'hey it works'). won't be much on animation or anything, just buttons to press.
Then either later tonight or the next time I poke at the project with a stick… it'll be actually having it take ya into general selection screen and causing that to flow / work.
Lastly, after entering / leaving general selection screen works (already does?), it'll be starting to fill in the RPN equations and such. They'll just be dummy equations for now (but read from file etc).
I'll be attempting to get this stuff done in such a way that it'll handle the more complicated commands (spy, recruit, etc) as well (has to keep multiple lists of generals etc).
After all of this, it'll either be letting people poke at it and say what a pile of shit it is (which it is at the moment heh), or getting some of the battlescape stuff implemented etc.
I believe within the last 10 years or so, Congress ended up pushing that to 75 years. I believe movie & music industry was behind it (dunno about book publishers).
I whole heartedly disagree with such a huge length of time, but the laws are what they are.
There was also an awesome meme-esque thing that started out with a solid color'd rectangle and slowly increased resolution over a half dozen or dozen iterations… constantly asking "is this copyright infringement yet?". 'twas a nice example piece.
I suppose this is a particular point in the project where I am being anal about it heh. Besides, in all honestly – I'd rather the project have it's own artistic feel. Can the portraits be similar to the koei art – yes… but the degree of how derivative they are would definitely be a judgement call. Thus any releases by *me* will have to pass my judgement.
Being heavily mod'able and skinable and stuff – there's no stopping someone else from doing it hehehe.
You're grabbing at straws and y'all know it :)
If you take 'educational use' to that extreme, then what about edutainment games ? You're free to copy those as you see fit ? I think not :)
And yes, ROTK1/nes was my introduction to the three kingdoms stuff, too heh.
Oh, and why would we want to use the koei art ? because it's good ? well.. that's fairly damning in of itself heh.
Simple answer is simple: no koei art beyond this dev demo thing. The dev demo won't be posted publicly but a link will be emailed … or i'll post it without the koei art, etc.
If we got any questions about the art or any of this, feel free to bug me, unfies [at@at] gmail [dot.dot] com
Don't think a copyright discussion is vary appropriate here ? :)
If ROTK2 hadn't been re-released on the iOS platform, I'd be inclined to agree with fair use as a viable option. Much like DoaE mods are very squarely protected under fair use.
Quote:1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
Clause 1's 'non profit' is connected entirely to 'educational' – there is no comma there. While the nature of the project is an homage to the series and such… it might offer competition to it if it ends up very good (knock on wood).
Clause 2: it's an entertainment piece. being based on a well known story helps some (but not as far as the art goes)
Clause 3: proportions would be legal argument crap. How much does the general portraits take up of the games graphics ? How important is facial recognition ? etc. How much of the general statistics lists could be considered derivative etc ? How important are they ?
Clause 4: i had eventual plans to release the project on iOS platform, this would make it a possible direct competitor.
…. not using koei art is just the best bet for the project. besides, being a game developer myself for my day job (and hobby) for over a decade, it's just bad mojo as well as karma etc.
Ugly but functional general select screen done-ish.
Next up: that thing i keep putting off – province gui.
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.
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.
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…
