New FPS game project

[gemmahenchmen]

Hey everyone.

I've decided to start work on a game development project for ubuntu (possibly multi-platform). I'm looking at something along the lines of a FPS, MMORPG of some kind that could be fully or partially open source (depending on the kind of support the project gets). I'm open to ideas at the moment, and any support would be greatly appreciated.

I'm planning to program it using the Java 3D API, but if anyone can recommend a platform-independent or ubuntu-specific way to achieve this that is better, using either C++ or Java (I'm actually more competent in C++, but the Java 3D API seems like my best bet so far), then I'd be happy to hear it.

I have a decent grasp of animation in Blender and such, but if this gets real then animation and design people would be great too.

My current concept for the game is as follows:
Some sort of First Person Shooter. They are my favourite games to play and it saves any extra animation work from making a 3rd person game.
Some sort of MMO, I like the idea of being able to work together with other people and it being really helpful, but not necessarily required.
I don't have a theme yet, but I'm thinking zombies? Nuclear apocalypse? Something where society's collapsed and it's all about collaborating with each other to rebuild fortifications and stuff, but zombies/terrorists/enemy soldiers keep trying to attack you. The idea's probably that there'll be lots of weak enemies that are NPCs but a few real players that are particularly powerful.

If anyone has ideas or is keen to help, then reply here. Until I've got some indication of its success I'm directing my efforts at mastering the 3d API before making a website or anything. This is probably going to be a big project, but I've got the next 3 weeks free to do some intense work to get the wheels going then will supervise and contribute from there.

[gemmahenchmen]

So far upon reading through the j3d documentation, it seems that it's founded on the concept of a "scene graph", which I need to learn about. Is this standard over most 3d APIs or is it wasted time if I choose to use a different method?

[jpv89]

If you are going to use Java I recommend trying out JMonkeyEngine. It's an open-source engine, with it's 3rd version currently in beta. Being written entirely in Java this ofcourse also means it's multi-platform. It seems to be able to do some really neat things!

[gemmahenchmen]

Thanks! It looks awesome, especially that it has a physics engine built in. I'll see if I can integrate that with the project.

Also, any ideas for the concept of the game?

[jpv89]

Yea, I got some ideas. I like the idea of a game set in a post-apocalyptic world, but I would suggest something new entirely. About a year back I've witten up the idea of a game set in a frozen-over world, where only a small group of island near the equator aren't affected by the glaciers that dominate the earth. It would be entirely different from some of the post-apocalyptic games out there (fallout, fallen earth to new a few) that are set in a grungy cyberpunk-ish world.

[tapasapat]

A few more words about the technical part.

Choosing to use jME also means that you'll be choosing LWJGL/JOGL over Java 3D. Good choises every one of them, but the way J3D is used is a lot different when compared to the other two. Why I'm saying this is that you might want to think a bit ahead and decide which one you are going to want to master. Java3D is easier to get up and running, but a low-level OpenGL binding like JOGL is a more popular choice and closer to the "real" OpenGL stuff people seem to like to tinker with. I myself am not all that familiar with jME, but considering its LWJGL/JOGL relationship I'd say it's a good choice - if you don't want to write everything from scratch (but where's the fun in that? )

So, what I'm saying here is that you can do it with anything you like, but if you maybe want to join some other game/graphics projects in the future, the OpenGL skills you develop with low-level APIs are more likely to be of any real use there.

In case you weren't already aware of these:
- javagaming.org: The place for Java language specific stuff
- gamedev.net: A very good place for pretty much anything else. No question goes unanswered here.

*(...and I thought Java 3D was close to dying. Seems like the newest pre-release build was updated in November. Nice. I'll have to go check that out.)

[jpv89]

Also, I would be interested in setting up this project with you, although I wouldn't be a lot of help on the programming part. I do have some Java experience, but nothing having to do with graphics. I'm more of an art guy: sketches, mockups, concept art and some basic modelling. So if you're interested give me a shout!

[gemmahenchmen]

@tapasapat
I'll look further into jME then. At the moment I'm wrestling with the multitude of dependencies for my java setup (given that this is my first real java project). If there are any good tutorials out there for jME then if anyone could give me a shout that'd be great. I've got jME installed already, and will give it a go.

@jpv89
The ice-world one sounds pretty cool! How does the gameplay work though? Why is anyone fighting? Limited land maybe? I think it'd be cool to have at least 3 factions the players can choose between, each with their own reason to be fighting.

Also, any concept art would be awesome too! I don't really have a mental image of what it's going to look like, so you can be really creative. Don't bother with 3D models yet, mainly just concept sketches are what I need now.

[jpv89]

Sure, I'd love to go into more detail. This is what I wrote up about a year back:

In an attempt to fight global warming, scientists created / genetically altered a species of algae to consume the excess carbon-dioxide. First contained in a dozen lakes, the algae escaped as one of the lakes was flooded. As it reached sea the algae spread rapidly over the world's oceans, in it's growth consuming more and more CO2.

CO2, being a greenhouse gas, has been keeping our planet at a nice temperature for billions of years now. Depleting the atmosphere of too much CO2 would cause the sun's heat to escape the earth too easily, thereby cooling off our planet.

So this is what happened. The only places on earth the ice hasn't reached are some island on the equator, which due to their location have remained ice-free and at medium temperatures.

On one of the islands is a massive city, with rich suburbs and and nice downtown area. Overlooking the city, against the mountains, are massive favelas (a bit like Rio de Janeiro). I'm guessing the city would be dominated by gangs fighting over territory, where players are the ones who conquer territory for their gang and good tactics have to be employed to achieve victory. This means the neighborhoods would evolve constantly, all depending on the gang that has it in it's power.

If the players would go north or south they'd meet the ice. With dozens of stations scattered throughout the glaciers, these would also be part of the struggle. A captured station would supply the gang with valuable resources to improve their territory in the city.

Same goes for the forests on the island.



So that was my idea. Tell me what you think!

[mdshann]

jpv89 that sounds awesome I would play that!