QUOTE (Two Jacks @ Dec 28 2009, 03:25 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

If you compile it, they will come.

This has been discussed a lot, and Glenn has serious doubts about the practicality of porting the source at all. Although it would undoubtedly be helpful as an implementation reference, and the code for the scripting virtual machine might be salvageable for instance, anyone undertaking a port of Cythera needs to be prepared to either rewrite most of the engine from scratch. (Or, portably emulate considerable parts of the classic Mac OS that are not available or work differently in Carbon.)

That being considered, I think the most important thing here is getting Glenn and Ambrosia's official blessing for such a project, and the original media files (unencrypted data file to get the text/logic from, sounds, standard format images of the tiles and props, etc).

Multiplayer Cythera: It is much, much harder to write a networked game than a single-player game. Especially a multiplayer game that can run in the high-latency environment of the Internet. (Speaking as someone whose honors project in computer science was a framework for writing multiplayer games in Python. Not an easy thing to do.)

QUOTE (Jehezekel @ Dec 28 2009, 06:08 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

As far as Items go, this proposed editor seems alot like editing items for Moria/Angband et al..
....
As far as I can figure it's impossible to include actual story elements without some programing type knowledge.

If you could make a scenario editor system that has a shallow enough learning curve, for an engine like Delver, I'd strongly consider paying as much as $50 for it.

That's probably a fair comparison, as far as editors go. However, there would be a graphical map editor, because Cythera's map is too complex (what with multiple layers and all) to be an easily-editable text file.

You should theoretically be able to hack together quests from existing ones in many cases, but in general they would require rudimentary programming skills.

Here's a hypothetical example, written in Python. Numbers etc are completely made up; this has nothing to do with Cythera

CODE

class Sword(Weapon):
damage = ((20, Damage.Blade), (10, Damage.Cold))
item_name = "Cool Sword"
item_image = (Image, "CoolSwordPic")
sound = (Sound, "SwordClink")

That kind of thing, mostly. You'd have to edit text files... in all honesty anyone with enough of a brain to write an interesting scenario should be able to figure out what is going on with something like that enough to make, say, a sword of fire with a different picture and different damage, and it would presumably be documented.

However, if you wanted to do something more sophisticated, like, say, add a new scroll that does something that is qualitatively different from a previous one - e.g. one that summons a horde of angry squirrellizards to devour all who oppose you, rather than changing the fireball scroll so that it makes a blue blast and does cold damage instead of fire damage - some understanding of actual programming would be required. But then, it may be that someone has already made a scroll that summons 1-4 rat lizards and all you need to do is modify it. (I choose summoning here because I don't think Cythera has any routine summoning, if memory serves; if you wanted to do something like do damage with a scroll, well, there are plenty of ones you could modify in the game already.)

Scripting quests would presumably be somewhat more involved, as well.

Some people have a psychological barrier against "programming" which they think means having to edit text files... but in reality, the level of logical complexity required is what matters. People do some really sophisticated stuff with EV mission bits for example, which is way harder conceptually than changing a "Damage.Cold" to "Damage.Fire" or such in a text file, but because the later required editing a text file instead of a graphical form... some people will balk at it.

QUOTE (Two Jacks @ Dec 25 2009, 06:50 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The fan in me would pay $30 for sure, but the gamer in me would really only pay $25.

If the editor was as easy to use as say, MASCOT, then I'd definitely be willing to spend more, especially if the editor had the ability to introduce new sprites/music/skills/etc.

Because an editor would be needed to fix most of the scenario bugs/incomplete features, the editor would definitely be able to do all those things, and much more. It's the "easy" part that is in question...

Anyway, thanks for your data.

Cythera remake?

Poll: Cythera Market Questions (14 member(s) have cast votes)
How much would you pay for a remake of Cythera that ran on moden operating systems?
$15
(2 votes [14.29%])
Percentage of vote: 14.29%
$20
(2 votes [14.29%])
Percentage of vote: 14.29%
$25
(6 votes [42.86%])
Percentage of vote: 42.86%
$30
(4 votes [28.57%])
Percentage of vote: 28.57%

Pardon my research.
Suppose there were a (legal) remake of Cythera, using the original media (with minor improvements, but not all new graphics) and scenario (same plot, maybe some new content, but nothing affecting the main story) but with bugfixes and completion of half-finished features like fishing. This hypothetical remake will run on current versions of OS X, Linux and Windows.

Would you pay $30 for it? If not, what would you pay?

Suppose that the remake above also included an editor allowing users to create and share their own game content. This editor would require rudimentary programming skills to use on more than a trivial level.

Would you be willing to pay more for it, if it included such an editor?

Don't read too much into this.

Ferazel_09 and I are working on the Ostendi engine, www.ostendi.org
We are still working on it, of course, but it already has a resource manager and GUI kit, although we are still adding widgets to the latter. It may already be of some use to you. We're also currently writing an RPG using it, but that's a year off or so. Everything is open-source of course.

Email me if you have any specific technical questions or there is something you want me to do for the project.
bryce.schroeder@gmail.com

Best of luck on this project.

QUOTE (Jehezekel @ May 8 2009, 07:38 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Is there a better way to learn Python than the online Tutorial? I'm in the 3rd Chapter & it isn't making sense to me. (Admittedly, it doesn't help that my {delete} key won't work & I have to use ^/ instead)

The tutorial is targeted at people who can already program, I think, although there are others online. O'Reilly has two python books, one of which, "Learning Python," is targeted at beginners. I don't have it, but I've had uniformly positive experiences with their books in the past.

- Bryce

Good to hear from you, Selax.
You can contact me via email, bryce.schroeder@gmail.com

gandreas' permission is definitely essential if Cythera is to be recreated with a new engine, for legal reasons and because a unilateral attempt would require the unpleasant and laborious capture of all the game data, or else hacking the data file encryption/compression.

The project is indeed unlikely to get off the ground without any data, though, which poses an unfortunate problem if one buys into the theory that Glenn would give us the data, if only we had an engine.

Next week is "dead week" for me, but this Summer I'm open to working on this project. Selax, check out the Python programming language. Learning a second programming language is much easier than learning your first one, and Python is in many respects a much better language for applications programming (including games.)

This post has been edited by Bryce : 08 May 2009 - 11:15 AM

QUOTE (Two Jacks @ Apr 7 2009, 07:50 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Bryce, you mentioned you working on a team and that you all are working on making an open-source RPG engine. So when you in your short answer that you'll probably Change the engine, I'm assuming it's after your team is done with the current project. So will you be doing it alone or will you have help?

I don't know when I'd do it in relation to finishing the other project, but it's sort of immaterial since I don't have the authorization or code I need to proceed at this time, and I don't know when, if ever, that situation will change. I don't know if I will need additional programmers, but I don't think so. One of the other people working on Ostendi is the programmer you know here as ferazel_09, so I'm sure he'd be willing to provide assistance on a Cythera port if I needed it. If it goes the open-source route, the more the merrier.

QUOTE

From what I can tell, and from what I've seen, all it takes is someone like you to give that initial push and then all the pieces will fall into place.
With Xsera all it took was RedSteven to convine Nathan Lamont to give out some code and programmers joined together.

We'll see how things go. I'm cautiously optimistic.

QUOTE (Two Jacks @ Apr 7 2009, 01:32 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

At the point your at with your current engine, wouldn't it be easier to modify it so that it could create a singleplayer RPG? I suppose you could make it a controlled multiplayer RPG with different users playing the different characters in the party.

Short answer: yes, that's probably what I'd do.

Sure, you can use Ostendi for a single player RPG. At this point, that would provide you with a pre-made resource manager, a halfway finished UI and some other things (it has a level renderer, for example) but there would still be a lot of work to do. I explicitly had Delver in mind when designing the UI, but that is as they say "an area of active development" and only about half finished. I've done the major architectural work and we're supporting at this point things like buttons, sliders, progress bars, text areas, drag and drop and all that, but we're operating under the constraint that the UI be totally platform independent. OS-independence of the UI is very important but also slows things down tremendously because we don't count on the OS to give us anything but a blank window on which to draw. (Cythera's wonderful UI, depending so heavily on Classic Mac OS, is really the reason Cythera wasn't successfully Carbonized.)

One issue with a direct port would be altering Ostendi to understand Delver's scripting language. It already has support for two "mini-languages" (one for character dialog, the other for animations and sprites) so that it is possible to add another one. It would be a very significant amount of work, though, given the vast scope of what the Delver scripting language does. Changing the Delver-scripting-language scripts to Python (the language used for the same purpose in Ostendi) would be an alternative but it would also take a significant amount of effort, there isn't an easy fix. On the other hand, writing a new engine from scratch would require facing the same issue.