Cube's potential - a Zelda 64 game maker.

by Televangelist on 12/05/2005 06:16, 19 messages, last message: 12/10/2005 22:09, 3836 views, last view: 05/02/2024 21:50

It seems, for virtually every genre of game, a single opensource engine is beginning to predominate that will allow amateur game-creators near-unlimited flexibility.


For 2D fighters: Megazeux.

For Zelda 1 clones: Zelda Classic.

For Super Mario World clones: OpenLegend.

For Sonic the Hedgehog clones: SonED and E02, as well as ROMHacking.

For realtime RPGs: Dungeon Siege and NWN are currently the best out there.

For turnbased strategy: Civ 4 promises to be one of the most moddable games of all time.

And for FPSes, there's Sauer.

This begs the question, though - what if someone adapted Sauer to essentially make a toolkit for Zelda 64-esque games?

The only new capabilities for the engine would have to be:

-Third Person capability.

-Programmable melee attack interface with conditional success/failures depending upon state, and which can change the state of enemies upon impact (i.e. not just simply "run up and hack them with a reskinned CS knife style weapon")

-The ability to create programmable NPCs with which the player can interact.

-Variables that can be manipulated by the NPCs, and when triggered can do things such as award an item, change NPC behavior, or deform world geometry.

-The ability to reorient the player's gravity on the fly, for instance, the loop-de-loops in Sonic the Hedgehog.

Hell, the on-the-fly deformable nature of Sauer suggests to me that games could be made even more impressive than the original Zelda 64, not just a facscimile remake.


Sauer is already shaping up to be the king of opensource FPS. A few more features would push it over the edge into being the king of pretty much any game that requires a fully-navigable 3D world - be it Zelda 64-esque games or 3D platformers.

It could bring a whole rush of new people into the game's development.

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#1: ..

by dcp on 12/05/2005 14:40

for zelda or 3d platformers you should buy a nintendo gamecube.

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#2: ..

by makkE on 12/05/2005 15:59

Don´t think so.
Since it is planned to make a rpg project as the main game for sauerbraten, it´s likely that it will have the features needed to make, or help making such a game in the future.

"what if someone adapted Sauer to essentially make a toolkit for Zelda 64-esque games?"

If someone does it, he does. It´s just not the focus of the core developers.

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#3: Re: ..

by Televangelist on 12/05/2005 18:39, refers to #1

Um... a Nintendo GameCube is all well and good for playing such a game. Not so good for *building* one.

Second post is interesting information; didn't find that when searching on the topic, but then again, the Wiki is down.

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#4: ..

by makkE on 12/05/2005 19:36

Plans are also to have a more powerful scripting language to handle gameplay stuff, but I think c++ will still be neccesairy to mod it to the desired kind of game. I could be wrong though, I´m not a coder.

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#5: ..

by loz-linuxizer on 12/05/2005 20:23

If it's Zelda you want, take a look at Tentus' mod, Cube Legends.

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#6: ..

by >_< Sauceofallevils >_< on 12/05/2005 23:18

Well anything is possible if you code enough. But the thing is will someone stay on task long enough and wil lthey ahve help? Hell you could probably make a sidescroller if you had enough time, but the time needs to be existent, and same with the want to do it. Well if you want it can be a good project for you:) I would rather an online starfox remake though.

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#7: meh

by tentus on 12/06/2005 00:29

i once started a Zelda mod, based on Cube. After four months of working on it, i became too phobic of Nintendo's propietary nature, and switched the project to Cube Legends.

Originally, i had wanted many of the things you mention. Third person was a biggy, but once i saw it in action in sauer the desire lessened. I wanted melee weapons, and still do, but not quite as elaborate as you put it. i just want to swing the weapon differently depending on how i'm moving.

NPcs- this is a tricky one. A lot of stuff could be done to make cube monsters look like NPCs without having to have hardly any new code. In theory, just a tiny amount of editing to Rick's bot mod would cut it. A big thing that would make this work would be a third variable changing the set of stats for the enemy (ie, a 0 is normal, 1 is extra aggressive, 2 is super passive, they all have different skins, etc), and then a fourth variable which turns the monster into a trigger, depending on what state it is. Imagine
alias dead_monster_trigger_1 [tag 1]
once you kill the monster with trigger 1, then a door opens. or, you could do this:
alias pain_monster_trigger_1 [ echo "Hi." ]
if your moster has lots of health and defense, and no aggression, this would mean you have the equivalent of a talking NPC.

About gravity- i just want to be able to adjust it so i can kill people's jump, unless they have the Roc's feather :)


You have a lot of ideas, but nothing to show yet. I didn't even mention my Zelda mod until i had at least a few little things to show for it.

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#8: ..

by >_< Sauceofallevils >_< on 12/06/2005 00:47

Tentus is right, no one has faith in you until you have a beta. If you werent thinking of coding that yourself then dont think anyone else will, people dont like coding other peoples ideas. But proove are non existent belief that you will do this, proove us wrong, use it as fuel to stive high atop a peer above all of the Sauer mods:) lol, I went a little overboard, hehe

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#9: ..

by loz-linuxizer on 12/06/2005 05:54

You're right, nobody likes coding other peoples' ideas, especially the weekly "I'm not a programmer, I haven't read the license, I haven't looked at other mods, I don't understand how Cube works - write a game for me and I'll take the credit" threads.

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#10: ..

by Televangelist on 12/06/2005 08:23

" If you werent thinking of coding that yourself then dont think anyone else will, people dont like coding other peoples ideas. "

Are you kidding? This is the philosophy upon which most OpenSource game projects are based.

For instance, the Sonic ROM hacking community - it's almost entirely about people coding other people's ideas, taking each other's features, etcetera.

Same with the people who make games using 3DGameStudio; they actually have a damn good Zelda engine (The game Axys Phenomenon has a video demo that shows it off in action) that's available to all - because one guy took the initiative to code it, took him the better part of a year I think, and then released it.

Nearly all the features added to MegaZeux back when that was a popular game engine were based upon someone saying, "Wouldn't it be really great if..." and then someone with coding talent putting it into action.

The whole idea that "If you think an idea is a good one, be prepared to code it yourself" is silly and asinine. If you don't think it's a good idea, feel free to list the reasons why. But the idea that it matters somehow where good ideas come from is a poor one.

I wasn't making some haughty demand of "OMG SOMEONE MAKE THIS NOW FOR ME PLZ!!1111oneoneone". I was saying, "Hey, if you add in some functionality that is on the whole trivial when compared with the scope of the Sauerbraten project itself (NPC scripting), you would increase the group of people that Sauer appeals to exponentially."

The broader the appeal, the more people actually create things with what's coded - and then we all get better games to play.

That's Sauer's edge over the competition; it has low barriers to entry for creative people with low levels of coding knowledge, or who can't necessarily hack it with Worldcraft, but who given the opportunity can design and build interesting things. I see no reason not to suggest ways that potential could be developed to its fullest.

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#11: Go play Egoboo

by Pxtl on 12/06/2005 19:37

http://egoboo.sourceforge.net/

More of a roguelike than a Zelda game - but still, a cutesy/cartoon dungeon crawler for Zelda fans.

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#12: ..

by >_< Sauceofallevils >_< on 12/06/2005 21:07

Well in my experience in these forums is that this communty usually doesnt, i have probably over 1000 posts in this forum(ive ultered my name many times) and I havent once came across a situation where someone wanted to, and suceeded.

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#13: Re: ..

by Gilt on 12/06/2005 21:51, refers to #10

"OpenSource game projects": you've got the words the wrong way around. cube and sauerbraten are game projects that happen to be opensource. not the other way around. there's a difference.

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#14: Re: ..

by Televangelist-at-work on 12/07/2005 02:31, refers to #12

Fair point. To be clear, I\\\'m not saying, \\\"code this idea because it\\\'s mine.\\\" I\\\'m saying, \\\"this idea is objectively good for what Sauer could become, therefore someone should code it.\\\"

Which, the more I look, it seems like someone already is - the \\\'game\\\' for Sauer is going to be an RPG of some sort, and then there\\\'s the scripting language hopefully as well. Between the two of those and the FPS mode, that\\\'s a whole lotta flexibility right there.

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#15: Re: ..

by tentus on 12/07/2005 02:41, refers to #10

the reason we're laying it on so thick is that we see a Mod "suggestion" almost every month, sometimes more, while the actual number of Mods is very low- look at the main page and Quadroplis and you've got a rough idea how many good mods there are out there for cube.

If you want to help with someone's mod, i'm sure most of us will welcome you with open arms and chocolate. My mod is not to be found on the main site or Quadropolis, largely because I don't think I've modded the code enough to qualify yet. Yeah, i've changed a few small things, but because i can't code C++ yet, i haven't actually added anything.

Another thing that tends to happen is coders show up, start something, and then fade away. Sparr, though he still shows up once in a while, has been missing. So has Wasda. Both of them wrote working code, but not anything huge (i've actually added Sparr's pusher entity to CL).

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#16: ..

by Televangelist on 12/07/2005 09:07

Just curious, after tooling around with it more; is there a reason the RPG maps drop to very low FPS, no matter where you go in the map, whether there's a lot of cubes in your line of sight or not? I tried searching the boards, couldn't seem to find an answer.

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#17: Re: ..

by tentus on 12/10/2005 05:53, refers to #17

bah, you're the one who has successfully come up with new stuff, i should be sending you M&Ms... :) i'm pathetic at coding. it took me at least 3.5 hours to get something as simple as a logo to show up when you load cube (and the code that actually works mirrors existing code very closely :P )

the big Mod thing that i'm looking for is an edit to the engine which makes it easier to change what models are used. I believe Sun Dog has already begun the process of rewritting bits of code so as to reference cfgs, rather than have coded-in values and directories. Imagine being able to switch what set of item models you use on the fly. it'd be a potent, but inexpensive, tool to mappers so far as art goes- we've all noticed some of the incongurity that the dcp mapmodels cause (i mean, bullet cases in a medieval town?) This is the kind of thing Sauer will need to be able to get around soon, be referencing data/default_items.cfg and so forth.

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#18: ..

by Televangelist on 12/10/2005 12:09

What I'm *really* interested in right now is what Aard was showing off a day or so ago, the "export to 3DSMax" feature. That'd be so helpful it's unbelievable.

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#19: Re: ..

by tentus on 12/10/2005 22:09, refers to #19

that'd probably work. i probably can't help much with actually coding that, but i can certainly test it. i'll see what i can do codewise, though.

Aard, has there been any consideration of making the ammo re-spriteable?

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