Online 2.5D RPG Engine

[MrBen]

Hello everyone, I'm quite new to this community. However I've been working on a 2.5D online RPG engine for some time now, that allows you to use your sprites in a 3D environment where players can interact with each other. The client uses sprites for players and NPCs and 3D objects and terrain for things such as houses and scenery. I'm posting it here to get some feedback and perhaps some help with sprites for it. The base of the server and client are very much down and players can connect, walk around and talk to each other. The plan is to have a fully featured editor similar to that in programs you know like RMXP, but in a 2.5D world.

The idea is to make the toolset available to anyone(on a windows machine) to create games with.

The main features I have implemented so far are:

Client

• Player Movement
• Chat
• Zoning
• Other Player management
• Basic NPCs
• Terrain system
• 2.5D Sprite system
• All Major networking
• Heightmapping

Server

• MYSQL Database use(for accounts and player data)
• Player and NPC pathfinding and management
• C# Scripting for users to define behaviour and events within their game
• All Major networking

Both are written in C# and the client makes use of DirectX for its 3D graphics.

Below are some screenshots just using a sprite from Ragnarok Online and a tileset from RMXV to demonstrate tiling(similiar to that in 2D games) on the terrain and 2.5D player and NPC sprites, the graphics are temporary and I mean to come up with some default content(users will be able to easily add their own). This is pretty early on in its development and your ideas and help for features are welcome!

Multiple Clients

100 NPCs

 

[Velocir_X]

Looks like something along the lines of the old Runescape classic
Nice work,

Dude if you make this free and provide a toolkit for us that works on the game online,
I will forever be in your debt

One suggestion - hopefully you'll get us a working ABS because the turn based battles in Runescape are one of its main problems

 

[MrBen]

I'm hoping to build a fairly flexible server controlled GUI. Server side you can use its c# scripting to create menus and a battle system so hopefully I can build something flexible enough for that.

 

[Ricoman]

If you need some help with the 3D models let me know. Just please let me know what format you want the 3d models in and what size limits you have for texture maps...

I personally love the 2.5d stuff like paper mario, it just looks cool... :cheers:

 

[MrBen]

Sure, that would be great, have you got any examples of your work?

On a different note, I've began work on the actual game editor and got tiling terrain done, and loading and saving of the maps.

 

[Ricoman]

yeah, I have several in this thread, it was for another project but I don't know what's happening with it anymore...

http://www.arpgmaker.com/viewtopic.php?f=179&t=64022

this was from the forest-016 tileset, I believe. I could be wrong about the name though

 

[MrBen]

Nice some good stuff, can you create as this will be needed since it'd be better to avoid legal issues and such so textures have to be hand painted. If not then that's not a problem as I can create textures when I am not working on the engine.

Texture and polygon wise, it'd be very low since there is always a potential of alot of content on screen due to varying amounts of players and NPC's on screen, and since the camera is quite far away from objects detail doesn't matter a huge amount. So poly counts obviously varying by object would be around 300 polygons and textures 128*128 or lower.

 

[Ricoman]

ok, so do you want to do the worldmap stuff first, or the indoor stuff, or the town map stuff? I'm kinda wanting to try the worldmap stuff, i think that'd be a ton of fun! What do you think Mr B?

 

[MrBen]

Worldmap models sound fine, although I was thinking of doing a small village/town so those kind of models would be good to. I got a lot of stuff done to do with placing 3d models through the night, just some more of the fiddly bits left on that really.

Screenshot of a model loaded in-editor(on a messy map):

 

[Ricoman]

hey MrB, what format do you want the models in? texture maps?

i need to know what format to export to lol :biggrin:

 

[MrBen]

DirectX's native format(.x) and textures either in DDS or PNG will do nicely.

 

[Ricoman]

well, Maya can only export in formats like .3ds, .lwo, etc. I don't know of any 3d program that exports to .x

 

[Jason]

Isn't there a converter from .3ds to .x in the DirectX SDK ?

Or if not, can't you use Milkshape3D, if I'm not mistaken, you can import the .3ds model file, and export it as a .x model file...

 

[MrBen]

Yeah jъГìsт is right, 3ds is fine also as I can convert it. The problem with 3ds is that your texture names can only be of a certain length, .OBJ would also be fine since I can convert that also.

Edit:

Almost finished the Zone Editor