Open Source Total War Clone: Community Help Requested

[dyous87]

http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Dark_Ages:_Conquest

I want to start an open source project cloning the Medieval Total; Rome Total War series. I have plenty of art work and story ideas but I am not much of a coder myself and I want to build a community in order to get this project started. Anyone who would be interested in being part of such a project please look at the above temp wiki and emai me at dyous87@gmail.com

Thank,
David

[BWF89]

I think i played a demo of that game at Gamestop. It was pretty cool. I'm not a coder but wish you luck in your project. Can't wait to play it if you manage to get it worked out.

[dyous87]

I've added some screen shots of some of the progress I made but I still need help especially as far as coding and programming go. There's gotte be someone on this forum who is interested in working on a project like this.

Visit: http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Dark_Ages:_Conquest to view some of the screenshots and for more information.

[tbroderick]

I'm not a programmer but you should look into using the Stratagus engine. It's seems a little more like AOE then Total War though,

http://stratagus.org/

[v8YKxgHe]

I'm not a programmer but you should look into using the Stratagus engine. It's seems a little more like AOE then Total War though,

http://stratagus.org/

Another great open-source engine is FIFEngine (http://www.fifengine.de/) - the mad thing is the guy who is making the entire engine is only 15/16 !!

[jclmusic]

i preffered the shogun one, any chance of a clone of that? actually it'd be better if you could just have different music, units etc at ur choosing.

[dyous87]

Thanks guys, the Stratagus and FIFEngine engines look pretty interesting and may be able to be used.

I have set up a sourceforge page but I still need interested people to help work on the project.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/conquest/


i preffered the shogun one, any chance of a clone of that? actually it'd be better if you could just have different music, units etc at ur choosing.

jclmusic I would like to make it so that it would be highly customizable and so that anyone would create different campaigns and scenarios not necessarily dealing with the Dark Ages. I would also like to make the units, factions and music all customizable.

[EdThaSlayer]

The Total War series are some of my favorite games to play!
I hope this project gets developers! Game sounds awesome...
*dreams about thousands of footsoldiers preparing to crush the enemy's castle*
Too bad I'm not a professional programmer :(. I only know a bit of python.

[dyous87]

The Total War series are some of my favorite games to play!
I hope this project gets developers! Game sounds awesome...
*dreams about thousands of footsoldiers preparing to crush the enemy's castle*
Too bad I'm not a professional programmer :(. I only know a bit of python.

That's aright, you could still help out regardless of the extent of your knowledge. Testers will be needed to and besides it could always be used as a learning experience. :)

But yes these games are great fun and I would love to get something similar working for Linux OS's.

[EdThaSlayer]

That's aright, you could still help out regardless of the extent of your knowledge. Testers will be needed to and besides it could always be used as a learning experience. :)

But yes these games are great fun and I would love to get something similar working for Linux OS's.

Guess I would be one of the testers. :popcorn:
btw-Great idea(I wonder how many times I will repeat this), hope you can attract some programmers to help you with creating an alpha version. :)
I will email you just to sign up so I can be a game tester.

[dyous87]

Guess I would be one of the testers. :popcorn:
btw-Great idea(I wonder how many times I will repeat this), hope you can attract some programmers to help you with creating an alpha version. :)
I will email you just to sign up so I can be a game tester.

Great welcome a board, I'm going to e-mail you a png of the game map to get your opinion. Just make sure you zoom in 100% when viewing it. Also its still being made, only part of western Europe is done.

[dyous87]

I've been looking around for a flexible turn based strategy engine similar to the turn based non combat out side battle mode of Total War but i can't seem to find one. Does anyone know if any such engine exists.

I was thinking of using this type of engine combined with a Real time strategy engine for the actual battles.

[jclmusic]

can't wait!

if u need another tester or whatever, pm me :)

[mvBarracuda]

Another great open-source engine is FIFEngine (http://www.fifengine.de/) - the mad thing is the guy who is making the entire engine is only 15/16 !!
So I would be _very_ interested where you got that information from AlexC ;-)

I don't know a single developer on the team who is younger than 18 years old. Besides that our lead monkey is already over 25, having his final year in university now. But maybe you got that information from an ultra secret source ;-) Do you mind to spoil your whistle-blower?

[mips]

So I would be _very_ interested where you got that information from AlexC ;-)

I don't know a single developer on the team who is younger than 18 years old. Besides that our lead monkey is already over 25, having his final year in university now. But maybe you got that information from an ultra secret source ;-) Do you mind to spoil your whistle-blower?

lol, I'm not interested in the source of the info. Can you guys assist the OP in his quest or point him in the right direction ? Would be great if he can get his project 6ft of the ground.

[dyous87]

Ok just to update this thread a little bit, I have decided to use python with the pygame library for the coding of this game.

The only thing is I still need developers to work on it and I would especially like someone skilled to take the position of head coder.

So far EdThaSlayer and jclmusic has shown interest especially in the testing and graphics design dept. EdThaSlayer has joined my sourceforge page and I urge anyone interested especially someone with python skill to join as well: http://sourceforge.net/search/?type_of_search=soft&words=conquest

I have been looking at the source code for SPQR listed on the pygame's website to get some ideas: http://www.pygame.org/projects/22/257/ hopefully EdThaSlayer and I can figure something out but more so hopefully people who are interested join in on the fun.

I hope to get as many skilled and interested developers, graphics designers etc. as possible

[glotz]

Another cheering on post here. Loved shogun. Nice atmosphere to that game. But far too many bugs to be really enjoyable.

[dyous87]

well I've never played shogun but I love Rome Total Wars and Medieval Total War. They weren't buggy IMO. I hear Medieval Total War 2 is amazing lol.

[Pugwash]

I love RTW and M2TW, if you need another tester I'm on board. Unfortunately I'm no programmer. Great idea btw.

Pugwash

[dyous87]

I love RTW and M2TW, if you need another tester I'm on board. Unfortunately I'm no programmer. Great idea btw.

Pugwash

Great no problem. But as I said before even if you're not a tester if you have a certain amount of skill wit graphics design such as animated sprites and stuff you could also help out a great deal. Also we need sound effects so if someone would be able to go about doing that it would also be awesome.

[mvBarracuda]

lol, I'm not interested in the source of the info. Can you guys assist the OP in his quest or point him in the right direction ? Would be great if he can get his project 6ft of the ground.
If he wants to create an RTS game he should really look into Stratagus :-)

FIFE is definately on a good way in the last months but the engine is more aimed for the creation of RPGs than RTS'. I'm sure you could create an RTS with FIFE too but I think that it would involve way more work compared to using Stratagus or any other RTS specific engine.

[dyous87]

The thing is that this is not entirely RTS. The total war series is both turn based and real time strategy.

[vialick]

Well, I loved shogun (never really played it that much though)...I'm quite interrested in helping out. My programming skills are still in the developing stage so they probably won't be of much use, but I could do sound effects, and probably write doccumentation. I would offer to do music, but unless you're wanting whacked out electro, industrial, noise, or dark ambient I probably wouldn't be much use in that area (unless you fancy making a cyberpunk mod)

[vialick]

I guess this project has pretty much died then? I haven't heard anything about it. If you're still interrested let me know.

[dyous87]

No No the project is most definately not dead. I'm going to better organize everything right now. I have two people working on graphics at the moment and someone has already contributed music for the game. I am in the process of sending an email to everyone who has shown interest in order to organize them and to set up a game plan. Hopefully we will start the coding very very soon.

[dyous87]

Ok I have updates to make to this thread. I now have a team working on coding for the game and an alpha should be out soon enough. I will update you all with a time line soon. We have decided to use ogre3d for the engine. Also we have music that was contributed by jlcmusic and its very good too :). I also have a team working on 2d sprites for the campaign map. If anyone has any 3d modeling experience and would like to join the team that would be great because we need units and terrain modeled in 3d for the battle maps.

Anyway interested in helping out with anything else including 2d sprites, sound, coding are also welcome of course.

Anyway I hope everyone is still interested in this project. It will be a good one :) .

[mips]

I´m not a big gamer 7 don´t play those style games but it is nice to hear how you guys are making progress. Keep us up dated ;)

[G Morgan]

You've said your using Python. Perhaps you should tell people what libraries are you using. Is it 3D based or 2D. Do you have any design models or is it as it comes.

I'm intending on having a look at gaming this summer but I'm focusing on Java (essentially there are officially supported libraries for OGL, OAL and an input library which are exactly what you need). I'd be happy to do some testing though.

[jclmusic]

how's it coming along david? sorry i haven't been able to contribute much more. i'm glad u liked the music tho. i may be able to do some sound effects.

[beke]

Is the project still alive? Neither this post nor the scratchpad counterpart seems active. Needless to say it sounds like a great idea. Since I'm not a coder of any kind I can't help wondering if it's possible to combine say FreeCiv's turn based / developing part with some RTS-engine (Globulation 2 comes to mind) to switch to for actual battle. Is this kind of idea plausible at all? Any news on the project would be great, too. Hope this project will come back to life!

[A_B]

I would be pleased to help.
I can make art for your game, make 3D models (not that good though but if I take some time to do it...) and I have basic knowledge of python, starting to learn pyopengl.

please send me an e-mail if I can do something (or else I'll forget I ever showed interest), I'd love to help making this game.

Thanks
Alex

[dyous87]

Well it seems there may be interest in this once again. The project kinda of died. Everyone got busy as did I. But perhaps it can get started again. Is anyone else interested.

[Robotoer]

This sounds like an awesome idea and I'd definitely be interested in helping code this project. I can't guarantee that I won't also become too busy to help in the future, but I will do what I can for now.

I have had significant programming experience with C, C++, C#, and a little bit of assembly. Recently I finished coding a raytracer and am working on a real-time version. I've also had some experience with using both the DirectX and SDL graphics engines. I can code for both linux and windows environments. I also have a subversion server that we can use for code version control.

Don't let this die just yet!

[menace82]

Count me in! I have no programming experience, but i can help with music, artwork and i have a friend that he is a historian.
Btw, why don't you name the game engine "Open War"? It's a military phrase (like Total War) and it goes well with the philosophy of GPL. You could also name the game "Dark Ages: Open War"

I just hope that this project didn't died.

[eragon100]

This project sounds like a very cool idea!

I am no programmer (yet), but I was going to learn python anyway, so ... :popcorn:

[curtis]

I would be more than happy to contribute hosting to the project. You can have a similar setup to what is on modulargaming.com if you want. It is a modified Trac so it has wiki, subversion, bug tracking, downloads, forum etc

[glotz]

So now there's coders, artists and groupies (well, me) so the last thing we need is a leader. Or at least someone who will actually kick start this thing. Then get settled on the big questions like licensing and what the game it all about. And then just start shoveling! :D

[eragon100]

So now there's coders, artists and groupies (well, me) so the last thing we need is a leader. Or at least someone who will actually kick start this thing. Then get settled on the big questions like licensing and what the game it all about. And then just start shoveling! :D

Licensing: GPL v 2 (I hate v 3 :wink:) ?

[polymath]

Hey, i'd be glad to help. As far as coding goes, i can do some logic programming but my weakness is i don't know ANY openGL. PLus i don't have time on my hands. Perhaps once this gets going i can test and submit patches. Oh, that's assuming that the game is written in a C-Style language (C, C++, ObjC, Java, D, etc.). I can test, and i can do some very basic artwork in blender... I don't now, if you want help please tell. I love the total war games :D

[Javierhermosa]

I would like to collaborate. I know Spanish, English and German. I don't know programming but I'm a music producer and sound engineer... so I can design the music for the game or whatever you think.

[aelgoa]

hey i'd love to help out, i stumbled on this thrad while looking for alternatives to MTW
im somewhat of a (wx)python coder, though not really in the domain of graphics or gaming
right now im coding some libraries to make app development in wx much faster and easier + some internet usability tools
if you'd tell what you already have, i could figure how i'd help out or tackle the challenges
i'm also a musician and sound-designer and i know how to work with graphics to some extent
just give me a shout

greets