Might & Magic X Project Update (September 2011)

[MMXAlamar]

M&MX Game Design

Original Post Can Be Found Here.

It's September 1st, and time for another press release of a M&MX Project Update!

M&MX Current Project Status:

• We are beginning the process of a total game engine conversion from Horizon (the MM7-8 engine) to Microsoft's XNA engine, which a new programmer will be helping us out with. Programming for the XNA engine will be done in C#.
  In effort to attract more 2D / 3D programmers and level designers, the developers of M&MX are considering the future release of a tech demo.
  Our lead composer has reported that he is working on over 20 demo tracks for the M&MX soundtrack.
  Our concept artists have finished two character concepts, and two more are currently being sketched as part of a series of character artwork for the major characters in M&MX.
  There are currently 7 writers working on the M&MX storyline staff.
  The M&MX main storyline is over 50% complete.
  Right now there are no plans on the launch of our new website, which has been lost.
  We have acquired the original hand-drawn map of Heroes IV, which we are using as the continental map for M&MX. There are several vacant lands to be filled in, so we're working on that too alongside our project writers. Additionally, we are looking for a cartographer to help us design the complete releasable version of the continental map for M&MX. If you're interested in working on this, please let us know!

M&MX Project Goals for September 2011:

• Continue to work on the M&MX main storyline (the greatest Might and Magic storyline ever!) and bring it closer to completion. Our writing staff has 7 people, and more applicants are welcome to join!
  We are revising ideas on the game mechanics for M&MX, so be sure to visit the forum later this month for more info.
  Continue to work on character concept art. We have 2 character artists, and more are welcome to apply to join the team!
  We need a cartographer to help design the map graphic that will be released with the final version of the game; maybe even earlier.
  The M&M development team requires additional artists with graphic arts experience to design graphics such as loading screens, wallpapers for fans, interface screens, monster concept arts, etc. Please inquire if you're interested in helping out!
  Programmers who know C# or are familiar with the XNA engine, level design, etc. are more than welcome to apply to join! If you do, you may be put on hold until we have the new engine all sorted out. If you'd like to help us with our engine conversion from Horizon to XNA, we would be eternally grateful!

We would be very delighted to answer any questions, comments, suggestions, or inquiries to join the M&MX Design Team. Please either email Vector at MMXDesign@live.com, or Alamar at MMXAlamar@gmail.com. We hope to see many of you inside working alongside us!

Sincerely,
-Alamar, Producer of M&MX
-Vector, Executive Producer of M&MX[/b]

[BTB]

Sweet, a new Might & Magic in the works. I kinda wish I could help more than just offering moral support.

As far as my actual skills go, my forte seems to be game balance. I tend to look over a finished product - such as I have done for TES3: Morrowind and am currently doing for MM7 - and try my best to make every item/skill/class in some way worth investing in. Nothing bugs me more than buffing up my resistance to something I'm never going to have to worry about or choosing a class that is clearly inferior to one (or all) of the others. It's long, tedious, and often maddening work. But I enjoy it.

So, if nothing else, I'd be happy to favor you with any input I might have once you reach the point of development of hammering out the items/spells/classes/monsters/etc.

[GreatEmerald]

C# and XNA? I really hope you're not going to shaft us Linux users here. The C# implementation is pretty proprietary, and I think even Wine can't emulate it properly (at least without winetricks). There is also Mono, but it's not in a very good shape right now, so I'm not sure if it can handle a game engine.

[MMXAlamar]

Sorry GE! We're going to work with the easiest engine possible until we get more programmers. The route we're taking is going to be very similar to MMT because it makes the most sense. We're going to use XNA to make a tech demo, and then if we can acquire enough programming staff, port everything to Unity or Unreal so the game can run on more platforms than just PC. Right now I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible, so XNA is the first choice. Since XNA is coded in C# and Unity is too, it should be too hard to make the engine conversion once we have enough level designers and programming staff to successful make an easy conversion. I hope all you Linux users can understand up until then!

[hatsforclowns]

I have to agree with GreatEmerald, snubbing linux is silly, and warranting snubbing in return.

Irrlicht

Maybe not the best, and I don't know if they've fixed the performance issues, but it's completetly free and very portable.

[tolich]

as well as OGRE

[MMXAlamar]

OGRE would be my second choice, because our former lead programmer recommended it to us. I'll have to discuss it with Vector, but our two candidates right now for engines are XNA and OGRE.

[GreatEmerald]

Also, what games are there on PC created with XNA anyway? I can't find a good list...

Also, there is the Mono.XNA project, but they're kind of aiming to render their first triangle now, so yeah...

[GrayFace]

We're going to use XNA to make a tech demo, and then if we can acquire enough programming staff, port everything to Unity or Unreal so the game can run on more platforms than just PC.

This doesn't make sense. Remaking all sorts of windows, moving all other code to a different language, converting the world etc., all just to support another platform.
I know little about engines. I only worked with Irrlicht and I didn't really like it. I expect OGRE to be better than Irr, but googling "ORGE level editor" seems to give unfortunate results. You need an engine already with some sort of map editor. UDK has a powerful toolkit, Unity too AFAIK. Don't know anything about XNA, but googling "XNA level editor" doesn't give much hope. You are to develop a massive project that would need technologies traditional for main-stream games, so the bigger packages are the ones to look into.
In MMT thread I suggested that you could work together on the engine.

[Xography]

There's even the CryEngine3 SDK out there: http://www.crydev.net/.

The main issue with all those engines is, that they're either tailored for a specific genre or general use.

Since you don't have access to low-level code & shaders, UDK will always look like Unreal, not like M&M and CryEngine will always look like Crysis, not like M&M. Plus they're tailored for FPS games, modding them to a RPG without full source access is nearly impossible even with hacks (e.g. invisible weapons = spells), ever tried adding more than one player character (party) etc to a FPS?

Unity is targeted at casual and mobile/browser games (http://unity3d.com/gallery/game-list/).

And for all other engines mentioned above (XNA, Ogre, Irrlicht) there's no Editor/Toolchain available.

Plus, why support more platforms than the Windows PC? The target audience on Linux/Mac is negligible and not worth the hassle. Forget about porting anything to consoles (License fees, $2000 dev kit, closed-source policies, plus the questionable legal status of all M&M clones). And seriously... mobile platforms? Stick to Windows.

And before deciding to write your own RPG engine from scratch, let me link this for you all: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2 ... ger_effect - no offense, but as I told Alamar in the past:
Making a real time 3D game (engine) is one hardest tasks in software engineering - and making RPGs is one of the hardest in game programming. It takes years, even for whole teams of professionals working full time.

I second teaming up with the MMT Team in order to find a solution.

[hatsforclowns]

as well as OGRE

Is OGRE and OGE the same thing?

EDIT:

On a sidenote, I'm almost interested in helping, be it design or maybe even trying to do something with my basic, very basic, programming skills.

[GreatEmerald]

Plus, why support more platforms than the Windows PC? The target audience on Linux/Mac is negligible and not worth the hassle.

It's bigger than you think, the scene has been and still is expanding rapidly. Plus, at least for me, developing on Linux is way easier than it is on Windows, and it's also a principle of mine to support free and open projects. Not to mention that there are very few games that run natively on Linux, and the Linux scene would really appreciate the addition. Sure, a second option would be developing a game that can be wrapped (emulated) by Wine, so that it's possible to play it on both Linux and Mac, although with possible issues and lower framerate. However, XNA doesn't seem to be even possible to wrap by Wine, and the Mono implementation is way too weak to work, making it impossible to even play the game here. And that would be a major loss of interest.

[hatsforclowns]

The only thing keeping people from developing for linux is FUD

[MMXAlamar]

On a sidenote, I'm almost interested in helping, be it design or maybe even trying to do something with my basic, very basic, programming skills.

Hatsforclowns, we could use your help with creating a game mechanics design plan. I don't think Vector ever made one because he was pretty much modding MM8 with all of the previous work. If we're going to design a new engine, we need to get our game mechanics and infrastructure laid out so we have a map for the programmers to use when they start creating content with the engine. Let me know if you're interested in work on this with me.

The reason why I chose XNA is because, in their tech demo, MMT has already proven that it's possible to make a successful Might and Magic game using the XNA engine. While CryENGINE 3 looks very interesting, because it's so detailed, I'm not sure if we'd be able to import our graphic assets.

Bottom line - we need an engine that can support our *.BMP assets and not look like a freakshow with the contract between low and high res objects/graphics.

The only evidence I've seen so far of an engine that could successfully do this is XNA, but then again my knowledge in programming is almost nothing.

So with that said, what is our best option for an engine to use for MMX? None of them are perfect, so we'll have to go with the clearest and easiest route.

[MMXAlamar]

For our brand new game design overview, please visit this page: M&MX Game Design

It may be reposted here in the future!

[hatsforclowns]

Ouch! Just one programmer, and a novice no least! You really need at least a few GOOD and EXPERIENCED programmers, otherwise you can kiss the project goodbye At least with a new engine.

[GrayFace]

The reason why I chose XNA is because, in their tech demo, MMT has already proven that it's possible to make a successful Might and Magic game using the XNA engine.

I don't understand what you mean. AFAIR, Oron's demo only had fully 3D stuff in it, the first MMT demo wasn't using XNA and the ones inbetween weren't playable at all.

If you can cooperate with WoX2 or MMTNO team, that would be a really good option. They already have their engines working and support for *.bmp assets can surely be added. How *bmp assets would look next to 3D ones is up to artists.

[MMXAlamar]

The reason why I chose XNA is because, in their tech demo, MMT has already proven that it's possible to make a successful Might and Magic game using the XNA engine.

I don't understand what you mean. AFAIR, Oron's demo only had fully 3D stuff in it, the first MMT demo wasn't using XNA and the ones inbetween weren't playable at all.

If you can cooperate with WoX2 or MMTNO team, that would be a really good option. They already have their engines working and support for *.bmp assets can surely be added. How *bmp assets would look next to 3D ones is up to artists.

I'd really love to use the WoX2 engine. I'm not really sure how to contact them though. Their whole website is in Russian and I couldn't translate anything last time I checked. It wouldn't hurt to ask them for help though!

I also didn't know MMTNO was still around. Don't really know anything about any of the developers of it.

More about my choice of XNA - more programmers are familiar with the engine, so we should have more of a market for programmers. Unless we can share programmers with the other M&M projects, that is.

[tolich]

IIRC, Grayface and XEL are members of WoX2 team.
Or, at least, they have connection to it.

[koval321]

Thanx for informing about updates, good to see that project is alive

If i may advice something, i told about it before and still have this thoughts about design:

CHARACTERS
This is most important part of game, if player dont feel good with team he lead, then he obviously dont see reason to play game because RPG is all about Rolle Playing. Player feel some connection to them he act them. What am already seen in your progress is that there is almost none characters what i like! In fact some of them i hate, and this very bother me. There should be more humanoids instead of animals- something- weird- etc Well its just option, nobody need to choose it, it just should be more options. To me in fact is best when am begin game as human peasant, some dumbass with broken pitchfork, its cool. Kind of that begining was in Dungeon Siege, just love that.

SPELLS
Magic is something very rare and mysterious, its secret. But when am go to shoop and but spell like piece of bread, that is just ridiculus. Spells should be extravagant, cost thousands of gold and hard to get. They are obviously very effective so this way game would be balanced. Am imagine it as street life most common, so player would begin with peasants, they even will be no knights at all because it require some deed.

GAMEPLAY
Ok so am imagine it this way: every or most characters as poor humanoids with street class as let say: rat catcher, stable boy, tavern wench, fisherman etc. which have some skills to survive begining. Then after quest they may choose profession and follow it to end of game. From i imagine that magic professions would be most difficulty. Ofcourse worth effort to see its results later like kill few hydra by cast one meteor storm etc. Somebody may ask and what about vampire or warewolf class, well this you can get after quest where beast beat character and he transform. Divine or animal like characters may join party later, am sure it will broke balance when begin as angel or dragon (he must be super hero if he is what he is, but game should start from zero and then become hero) What is like start as superman but weak and stupd, he is no superman then. To me Genie Angel Dragon Minotaur etc are superman, dont feel very good with begin as that because in RPGs is always begin from nothing, am really hate that you do it.