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[Hello new member,]

Hello new member,

Welcome to the OpenWar community board. This topic is here to make catching up with older members easier for you. It will give a brief history of the project and covers a few important subjects that are currently being discussed. Links to the related topics will be supplied where possible.

The project is about developing our own Real Time Strategy game engine for the PC platform. One of our main goals is to make it easy to make fully customized games with the OpenWar engine. To show the possibilities of the engine, we will also make our own game, which will showcase as many features of the engine as possible.

Both parts of the projects have only just been started by a small group and we welcome new additions to our team.

If you've come to reading this, then you are interested in learning more. The second post will contain everything to get you up to date about the engine development. If you are rather interested in the game we are developing, check out the third post for it's current status.

Links for navigation in this topic:
- The engine status
- The official game status - Intro & factions
- The official game status - Gameplay

Solinx

[The Engine]

The Engine

The name: OpenWar

The name of the project is chosen because it relates to both Open Source, and to Real Time Strategy, two key elements of the project.
- Choosing a name


Purpose...

The OpenWar project was started by 2playgames. He decided that he had had enough of the limitations that came with modding commercial games, and started a topic at The Third Age, the Battle for Middle Earth modding community, to see if there was any intersest among his fellow modders. The beginnings of this community were the result.
- The Third Age topic
- The purpose...


General Concept

To be open for modders, the engine will be standalone executable with all game data externalised. Classes in the exe will be made public, so they can be inherited from when desired. And naturally, this project being open source, developers can always adapt the engine to their own liking, although this should be prevented as much as possible.
The more people use the same engine, the greater the 'market' for the mods.
- The concept discussion


Basic Technical information

Programming language:  C# with XNA
Graphical Engine:          Microsoft XNA

Being aware of our limits, it was decided to use an exsisting graphical engine and keep the required skill level for programming fairly low. With the eye on the future, XNA was our choice.
- Information, including more details about the choice
- New discussion, XNA not the best choice?


Current status: Choosing a design structure

The design is a very important part of any software project, at the moment there is some discussion going about the general lines of the design structure. From the start the MVC (Model-Viewer-Controller) structure was named, but quite recently, the Morphic structure has been put up to see if it would be a worthy alternative, after some discussion around the catagorisation inside the MVC model of various important parts of the code.
- Design Discussion


And that concludes the status post of the OpenWar Engine. Next is the game status post.

Solinx

[The Game - Intro & Factions]

The Game - Intro & Factions

The name: ....

The game doesn't have a name yet. We feel that the name should have a connection to the story and/or the theme of the game and shouldn't be thought of lightly.
- Naming the game


The game type

Due to the OpenWar engine being a Real Time Strategy engine, this should be pretty obvious
What may be interesting is the Environment & Feel topic. In that topic you can show us what you want the game to feel like, by posting combinations of other games.


The story

Every game should have an interesting and original story attached to it and seeing as it's pretty defining the course of the game, this is one of the first things that we started a discussion about. It was soon agreed that the theme of the story would be medieval with a hint of magic. After a few general ideas to start off with, Darvin posted his ideas for a few faction, describing not only the factions strenghts, but also their relations toward eachother, laying the foundation of the game story.

Darvin has now posted information about all of the 5 factions, but he still has to get into detail about 2 of them. He even supplied a map (not completely finished yet):


As an alternative to Darvin's factions, CoonDawg posted his own faction topic. The most important point being that there should be a faction that is able to use a tunnel system as primary play ground. His ideas are more specific to game data, comparing strenghts and weaknesses of the factions by comparing units and technologies, while Darvin had a greater focus on creating a world with a history. Once Darvin has completed his final detailed descriptions, the ideas from CoonDawg will be attempted to be merged with his factions.
- Darvin's factions, including map
- CoonDawg's alternative factions

Next is the gameplay post...

[The Game - Gameplay]

The Game - Gameplay

Having a story is an important part of a game, but without a good gameplay system, the game would never get popular. Right from the start, there have been a good number of topics that have been opened up around gameplay items.


Early gameplay discussion

The discussion around gameplay started with choosing a setting, the speed of the game, and the scale of the game.

The setting was decided to be medieval, with a touch of magic. Since the factions have been thought up with that setting in mind, this is very unlikely to change.
The speed and scope are still up for discussion, as it's not to late to change anything about that yet. Currently, the speed is set between slow paced empire building and fast arcade.
The scope, more or less meaning the size of the armies, is still being discussed, although the faction descriptions by Darvin suggest that there will be factions that depend on large scale and factions that depend on small scale.
- Setting, speed and scale
- faction descriptions by Darvin


Building and resources

The base and it's economy, the two building blocks, which create and sustain the armies you are going to lead into battle.

It was easily agreed that the game, being the showcase of the engine, should show as much of the variety of the engine as it could offer. It was Darvin, who proposed the following three styles for bases:

The first is a base that is completely connected, not a single building not attached to another. This system will result in dense and strong cities. The idea is that walls are part of the system, and can have buildings attached to them as well.

The second is a build anywhere system, such as with BFME 2 and the C&C series. You are free to place buildings wherever you want.

The third and last system is based on BFME 1, a plot based system. You are free to place a town center wherever you want. That town center will have build plots around them, on which you can build the rest of the base. The town center is upgradeable, to increase the number of plots.

The resources, there will be three main resources. Raw materials, used for various means, food, for unit upkeep, building materials, for... building
Next to these three, each faction will have it's own unique resource, with unique properties and uses.

For more detailed information about bases and resources, read:
- Build system & Resources


Heroes and ranks

A week ago, discussion about hero units started, or rather Darvin posted his ideas about them.

Still being worked on!
Game status is to be finished the tonight Correction, due to an endless, though succesful, meeting this will have to be finished another day.