[Discussion] What Kind of Starter Kit Would You Like to See?

ЩѻƦḽᶑʂḽдƴƹƦ™ said:

Maruno and I have been discussing this in private off and on, in regard to the community, purpose and execution. This is not necessarily an open project for everyone to chip in, like essentials is now. At least not go my knowledge. If we do this, we are going ahead as dedicated development crew. You are baselessly assuming that the work will fall on Maruno when you are talking about individuals that actually hold themselves accountable as much as possible.

This kit, in my eyes, is exactly what this section needs. I have watched this section die out more and more each month, updating Essentials is not enough to continue driving the section forward and growing.

MARUNO! My auto correct on my phone keeps saying Marino.

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Baseless? Isn't baseless. Look at Essentials kit, almost all work falls to Maruno, and this is a successful and very used kit. If the new engine doesn't have these features the scenario will be even worse. Look at other people Pokémon Engines, almost all are abandoned. Maruno probably is the best one for an engine like this, but he isn't perfect and even statedY than had problems with boredom at long projects, imagine this huge one...

So you will make a closed project? Why? Why a closed project will receives more support than a open project? Isn't the opposite?

Abandon Essentials and let's everyone waits this new engine have the features/content of Essentials during around 1.5-3 years that will be worse for this section. And there the possibility of this engine would not be completed, a engine half-made almost certain will be useless and all the effort will be thrown away.

You keep being so negative. Essentials won't disappear just because I stop working on it. It won't continue to be popular just because it no longer gets "official" updates (although I suspect much of its popularity stems from being the only viable choice of engine). No one will be forced to drop everything they're doing indefinitely just to wait for a possible new engine to come out. It's attitudes like yours that put people off from even trying.

You're still assuming I would keep improving Essentials if I wasn't "distracted" by making a new game engine. There's no guarantee of that; more than once I've come up against hard limitations which can't be surpassed in RMXP, or been faced with the prospect of remaking huge chunks of code, which I simply don't want to do. That, plus being all by myself on working on Essentials (i.e. being without encouragement to continue), is very off-putting. What if I promise to stop working on Essentials regardless of what I choose to do next? Will your opinion on me helping out with a new game engine change at all?

I think in many senses it's a good idea to not be public about the development of a game engine. The vast majority of followers won't know anything about how to actually create an engine, and will say vague and useless things like: "I think there should be multiplayer support." Oh, and they'll also want to "beta test" the engine, which actually means they just want quicker access to it. That's distracting and frustrating. Having a set and focussed team working on a new engine would be the best way to go about it.

I would like to say this:

Even though we are talking about it, it is really just talk at this point. This thread does not exist to give us an idea of what we ARE going to do with an engine or kit, but rather give developers and idea of what people envision a new kit being. So that if none of us do it, maybe down the line some lurker decides they want to pick something up and this thread is here for them to look at.

There is no need to cry wolf here.

It just so happens that I've been toying with the idea of tackling a large project like this for my own practice and experience. In any case, despite not having personally used Essentials, here's what I've envisioned such a starter kit might need to include/accomplish:

Engine/Language
I would assume that an engine built from the ground up with Pokemon-style games in mind would be preferable. Utilizing Unity could potentially have too steep of a learning curve for those who aren't already familiar with the interface. As far as languages are concerned: Java is the most portable, (I think that) C# seems to have the fastest development time on Windows, and C/C++ is the most ... flexible, for lack of a better word. Based on some light research, if you really wanted to, porting C/C++ to other OS's is definitely doable, although not as easily as Java of course. I'd go with Java or C++ just on personal preference.

Also, the basic engine/kit should include map/npc/pokemon and any other basic editors so that the average user can at the very least create a (content-wise) vanilla game without having to muck around with actual scripting or coding.

Style/Gameplay/Other notes
Direction
One thing that I would most definitely like to see is a move away from imitating gameplay on the NDS: since I'm assuming that most fan-developed games are played on a PC, fan game development should also be free from being bound by limitations or design choices which make sense on handheld consoles but not-so-much on a PC, including but not limited to screen size, usage of the mouse and keyboard, etc. Perhaps I'm expecting too much, but I'm slightly disappointed in the amount of fan-developers who simply imitate and expand on current Pokemon games without giving any thought to the reasons behind various design choices (Although, this may be caused by the inherent limitations of RMXP/Essentials - I don't know).

2D/3D
I think that full 3D would be fairly difficult to pull off, especially if you wanted the engine to also be compatible with 2D. The implementation of position tracking, z-height, and other various things is vastly different between the two (as far as I know... I don't have that much experience), so trying to cram both into a single kit doesn't make sense to me. I'd say that a 2D/pseudo-3D would be the best compromise, if positions are still tile-based. In theory, if the code was properly modularized, it would be relatively simple to switch between 2D and part/pseudo-3D.

(I feel like I'm only going to embarrass myself if I keep trying to talk about the technical aspects of developing an engine, so I'll leave this post as it is and take some time to collect my thoughts and do some more research :d)

Maruno said:

You keep being so negative. Essentials won't disappear just because I stop working on it. It won't continue to be popular just because it no longer gets "official" updates (although I suspect much of its popularity stems from being the only viable choice of engine). No one will be forced to drop everything they're doing indefinitely just to wait for a possible new engine to come out. It's attitudes like yours that put people off from even trying.

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I prefer to say "realistic" rather than "negative". It's attitudes like yours that result in several parallel attempts for making engines that end up in an incomplete, abandoned engines, basically the said at this thread. I'm sure that you are more competent and has more experiences making a kit/engine that the great majority of others attempts, but you aren't perfect.

Maruno said:

You're still assuming I would keep improving Essentials if I wasn't "distracted" by making a new game engine. There's no guarantee of that; more than once I've come up against hard limitations which can't be surpassed in RMXP, or been faced with the prospect of remaking huge chunks of code, which I simply don't want to do. That, plus being all by myself on working on Essentials (i.e. being without encouragement to continue), is very off-putting. What if I promise to stop working on Essentials regardless of what I choose to do next? Will your opinion on me helping out with a new game engine change at all?

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Good points. Your question was:

I've been thinking a lot about this topic recently, specifically about retiring Essentials and moving on to something better (a truly free engine with fewer limitations, better usability and so forth). Would this be a good move to make, do you think?

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So I answer: This will be a bad move. If the question was:

What if I promise to stop working on Essentials regardless of what I choose to do next?

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I encorage you to won't do this because of the huge time about reach at the Essentials points and the chance about giving up resulting at, practically, nothing usable, but if you really wish to do this, just do this, maybe you succeed at this.

Maruno said:

I think in many senses it's a good idea to not be public about the development of a game engine. The vast majority of followers won't know anything about how to actually create an engine, and will say vague and useless things like: "I think there should be multiplayer support." Oh, and they'll also want to "beta test" the engine, which actually means they just want quicker access to it. That's distracting and frustrating. Having a set and focussed team working on a new engine would be the best way to go about it.

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Good points, I understand now.

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At a new engine, I wish to emphasize the importance of the engine has a feature to export the game for playing at mobile OSs or even an engine that only make mobile games. Isn't hard to run a free Android emulator at Windows and this will make the engine more different and interesting, despite more harder to be made. The mobile value is raising at these times and will be higher at the future. What everyone thinks about this?

I agree that mobile gaming is a big trend right now and being able to make games for Android or iOS would be great, seeing as it would create a lot of new players.

I do however not think it should be the only export option.
Having to emulate the game in order to play it on a PC is a very bad move imo. A lot of people easily get confused when they have to use a separate program to run a game, and you would lose a lot of players.

tImE said:

I agree that mobile gaming is a big trend right now and being able to make games for Android or iOS would be great, seeing as it would create a lot of new players.

I do however not think it should be the only export option.
Having to emulate the game in order to play it on a PC is a very bad move imo. A lot of people easily get confused when they have to use a separate program to run a game, and you would lose a lot of players.

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Really? The people at Emulation & ROM Hacking section (the biggest at Pokécommunity) disagree with you.

Making an engine that can export for PCs AND mobiles its a very hard task.

Thanks for all the demotivation FL, it is just what we need here in GD.

I think it would be really cool to look into android/os porting! it would be amazing to play pokemon games on your phone, and I think it might be a way to add a little diversity to fangame designs? apps really lend themselves to casual gameplay, like candy crush or words with friends, where you play for five minutes here and there. I know this is like My Gamedev Issue, but I really do think it would be super awesome to see some different game designs.

to be honest, I feel like retiring from essentials isn't a terrible idea! we're at the point as a community that everyone should be able to contribute - at least small fixes and scripts - to keep adding functionality. as a basic pack, it's fine. it's great! does it need maruno's full attention? should it? I don't think so, not when there's the possibility of an game engine that we could do so much more as game developers with. essentials is as cool as it's going to get, let's face it!

ЩѻƦḽᶑʂḽдƴƹƦ™ said:

Thanks for all the demotivation FL, it is just what we need here in GD.

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Yes, GD need to be more realistic. The newcomers need to stop trying to do a game with all regions or MMO as the first game. We have more complete games this way. If the people know the two sides of the coin, we would have less disillusion and resigns.

Your post sounds too personal. I only gave my opinion and never says that the Maruno project is "impossible".

Let's discuss this subject in other thread or by direct messages, this became too off-topic.

FL said:

Yes, GD need to be more realistic. The newcomers need to stop trying to do a game with all regions or MMO as the first game. We have more complete games this way. If the people know the two sides of the coin, we would have less disillusion and resigns.

Your post sounds too personal. I only gave my opinion and never says that the Maruno project is "impossible".

Let's discuss this subject in other thread or by direct messages, this became too off-topic.

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Off topic? The topic is a new kit/engine, I honestly feel like we are right where the topic should be. Discussing ideas and what is and is not feasible.

Someone making their first post about a game having all regions and all of these fantastic features, is not equivalent to Maruno and I making it somewhat known that we are interested in a new engine.

I get that you are trying to take a realistic approach and look at what is feasible and what is not, but you are being incredibly subjective in doing so. You act is if this discussion is one man taking on the world, and it is not. To top it off, you carry with you this mentality of "It has to be done right now". There is a difference between building something from scratch, and building something from something else. I am not saying that you cannot be critical, but at every single juncture?

I am sorry, I do not want to carry this chat over private messages, talking to you has proven to be poison.

An ideal starter kit would have all of the same functionality as Pokemon Essentials but be open-source, cross-platform, user-friendly, easy to mod, and not rely on paid software (like RMXP). Online functionality would also be a huge plus, especially if it allows players to trade and battle each other.

Also, ideally, being able to port pre-existing Essentials games over to the new system would allow for older game developers to make the switch easily and not have to wipe everything and reconstruct their projects from the ground up.

This is all purely theoretical, though, right? It's not something we'll be seeing for at least a year or two...

What knowledge/experience/whatever would you be looking for when assembling a team to make something like this?

Question: are you guys taking into account the potential cost for someone to develop on this new engine? For example, Essentials is free, but RMXP is $30. That's a reasonable amount of money. However, correct me if I'm wrong, but Unity Pro costs $1500 or a $75 monthly fee. It's completely unreasonable to expect any developer in these forums to put down that much on a fan game, so every feature you rely on in the case of Unity would have to be available in the free version.

Food for thought.

Style - I'm fine with 2D, although I know lots of people are fond of isometric or 3D graphics. 3D does seem like it could be harder to work with, though.

Gameplay - I think it'd be neat if the system were flexible enough to cover most of the play styles from the Pokemon games in some way. Like, maybe it wouldn't have to be capable of directly making a clone of Mystery Dungeon/Ranger/Stadium/Snap, but it would be awesome if some of the most important elements of those games were somehow incorporated into the main style of play somehow and capture the spirit of some of the other games. Like, rather than a straight-up clone of Snap, I'd like to be able to play a game where I could wander around and take photos rather than have to get railroaded the whole way through.

ЩѻƦḽᶑʂḽдƴƹƦ™ said:

Someone making their first post about a game having all regions and all of these fantastic features, is not equivalent to Maruno and I making it somewhat known that we are interested in a new engine.

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I was refering about the need of demotivation at PC

ЩѻƦḽᶑʂḽдƴƹƦ™ said:

I get that you are trying to take a realistic approach and look at what is feasible and what is not, but you are being incredibly subjective in doing so. You act is if this discussion is one man taking on the world, and it is not. To top it off, you carry with you this mentality of "It has to be done right now". There is a difference between building something from scratch, and building something from something else. I am not saying that you cannot be critical, but at every single juncture?

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Adapt more than 50.000 lines of code of a different language is a huge task.


So, please, prove me that I am wrong. Make an awesome kit and bring a new light for this section, just like Poccil did more than 6 years ago.

There is a difference between keeping people grounded, and demotivating people sir. You are motivational.

You have not touched on any points in a manner that is even remotely supportive of theory crafting, not even provided jack in the way of being constructive. Instead, you opt to a "Sitck ot Essentials because it is not broken" approach.

OBVIOUSLY there is something wrong with Essentials at this point, as both myself and Maruno have been discussing something else.

I did not say it would be easy, anywhere in this entire thread, nor did I claim Rome was built in a day. You are sounding straight up pretentious with your last remarks, but I will disregard that.

Don't expect a response from me again, you are clearly the current problem that this idea has, not the number of lines that need to be re-coded for a new engine.

I honestly think that FL is right, starting a new engine and even just the idea of doing that would just kill off essentials.
Who would start a project that is already old? They'll just quietly wait the new engine...
People want easy copy/paste scripts and things like that, give these to them and they will be happy.
They want essentials....less essential.

Essentials would be bigger if every one who has resources give them to every one...
I'm not saying to give me more things, because I want all already done, but be more user friendly, make tutorials and a more in depth explanation of every script, I know that just knowing ruby is good enough, but reverse engineering essentials is taking me quite a while for example and the wiki is nice but it's like just maruno goes there....others just skip it. (A point for Fl, he goes there sometimes, but I've never seen slayer....and I've even seen FL scripts too there. )

What I'm saying is that if someone wants something, he should study and do it himself, the community should be there for help him to make things easier.

We should be realistic, we can do enough with essentials and what we can't, may be implemented.
We don't even have all 4/5 gen moves right and we think to do a different engine? Bah...
What I'm sure of, is that Maruno should rest and do what he likes, we shouldn't put all on him.

People say that a new engine would kill essentials as if there are no contributors posting scripts for essentials as it is...

That is so far from true. What would kill essentials is individuals moving over to the new engine at their own will. Nobody is putting a gun to their head.

People are failing to realize that not everyone is gonna jump on this new engine simply because it will have this and that ...

The new engine will most likely have just as much of a learning curve as Essentials, and, as a matter of fact, the curve will probably be even greater when the engine is still new. Scripting is scripting, people will still need to know a language if they want to heavily customize anything. I highly doubt Maruno's goal with this is to create "a completely user friendly engine that requires absolutely no knowledge of scripting in order to create a game," so all of the new blood will still go to Essentials because it will be more user-friendly and complete for a long while.

I also don't see why everyone on here thinks "THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!" ROM hacking and Essentials exist side-by-side, and one can say both are still "alive". Even if it wasn't Maruno making the engine, on what grounds do you think a new engine is a bad thing? If I released an "Essentials Unity" engine tomorrow and it was "better than regular Essentials in every way," would people reject that too? It's called progress people. What if people refused to use computers because the typewriter worked just fine? If Maruno wants to make a new engine with the hopes that it will surpass Essentials, we should be helping him, not hindering him. If anything, we should be happy with the idea that the community may someday have access to an engine that is better and stronger than the current one.