Fallout 3: Van Buren (Spoilers!)

[ERYFKRAD]

not RPG.

What features would you suggest would make it an RPG?

He's kinda right though, considering the bits where there's not much of a story or C&C and the fact that all you're gonna do is fight. Hammer & Sickle I'd call an RPG, and a fucking good one.
Silent Storm, not so much.

 

[hexer]

Hey bros/mutants! Dropping by to say hello to everybody.
Hope you're doing great!

I stopped working in RPG maker and switched to Unity.
I'm learning it and it's going really well. I'm astounded by the possibilities of the engine and its support for many platforms.
From mobile to Playstation to master race PC!
For example, with a bit of smart coding you can make destructible environment and have dynamic shadows that move as the source of light moves.
In my personal RPG you will be able to set a fire to the building and watch it burn down to the ground!

Now, just imagine doing that in Van Buren
I'm slowly hatching a plan in my mind to convert all of our work to Unity.
That way we won't depend on a single Belarus programmer who created Fonline,
we'll have the best free engine in the world and it will work on each update!

Just something to think about

 

[shihonage]

Ah, the enthusiasm of youth.

 

[hexer]

Haha, no... my bank job is so dull and boring I have to escape it and create games for a living.
I'm trying to save my soul from the fires of Hell that all bankers will taste eventually.
I'm redeeming myself and dedicating my life to spreading fun and love

 

[Whisky]

Hey bros/mutants! Dropping by to say hello to everybody.
Hope you're doing great!

I stopped working in RPG maker and switched to Unity.
I'm learning it and it's going really well. I'm astounded by the possibilities of the engine and its support for many platforms.
From mobile to Playstation to master race PC!
For example, with a bit of smart coding you can make destructible environment and have dynamic shadows that move as the source of light moves.
In my personal RPG you will be able to set a fire to the building and watch it burn down to the ground!

Now, just imagine doing that in Van Buren
I'm slowly hatching a plan in my mind to convert all of our work to Unity.
That way we won't depend on a single Belarus programmer who created Fonline,
we'll have the best free engine in the world and it will work on each update!

Just something to think about

Pretty ambitious!

Let me know how it goes though. I might be able to work as writer again someday.

 

[DosBuster]

Haha, no... my bank job is so dull and boring I have to escape it and create games for a living.
I'm trying to save my soul from the fires of Hell that all bankers will taste eventually.
I'm redeeming myself and dedicating my life to spreading fun and love

hexer, may I recommend Unreal Engine 4? It's 100% free with no pro version that restricts features and it uses C++ as its main language allowing greater control.

 

[hexer]

Pretty ambitious!

Let me know how it goes though. I might be able to work as writer again someday.

Of course bro! I'm counting on you

hexer, may I recommend Unreal Engine 4? It's 100% free with no pro version that restricts features and it uses C++ as its main language allowing greater control.

I thought Unreal Engine 4 was all about 3D... I'll check it out! My RPG is 2.5D (isometric 2D)

 

[naossano]

I was in love with the concept of pushing the Fonline engine to some limits we never imagined before, but you guys know what suit best your project.

 

[hexer]

Fonline can only be pushed so much.
It's being developed by a single programmer(!), 90% of the documentation is in Russian, tools such as dialog editor and object editor are buggy as hell, most of SPECIAL is hardcoded...

It's not a bad engine but it just Fallout 2 + multiplayer.
There's absolutely nothing in it Unity 5 can't do better.
Unity has many 2D tools and effects I can only dream about in Fonline.

Here are some demos

Dynamic shadow and light


Physics!


3D ragdoll on a 2D sprite


Bullets / laser beams that glow in the dark


Shell casings

 

[hexer]

Light and atmospheric effects


"2D power" marketing video by Unity

 

[ERYFKRAD]

By Crom I hope you can harness Unity's potential and make something that's not a resource hog.

 

[hexer]

That reminds me of this epicness.
Sometimes indie game development feels like this haha

 

[Klarion]

I thought you wanted to recreate Van Buren the way it was suppose to be when Black Isle worked on it. Minus the real-time mode(nobody cares about that anyway). Isn't that what you want? Don't think they had destructable environments, dynamic shadows etc. in plan back then.

BTW, isn't there a decent amount of work you and your team had already done in FOnline engine? And now you want to scrap all that? Start all over again?
just my 2c.

 

[hexer]

I thought you wanted to recreate Van Buren the way it was suppose to be when Black Isle worked on it. Minus the real-time mode(nobody cares about that anyway). Isn't that what you want? Don't think they had destructable environments, dynamic shadows etc. in plan back then.

Our main focus is to implement 1000 pages of VB design documents and to create a fun game in the spirit of Fallout 1/2!
But with visual enhancements and gameplay features that today's technology allows us.
It's all about atmosphere + fun gameplay.
That's the holy formula right there.
You achieve that and you win at game making bro!

BTW, isn't there a decent amount of work you and your team had already done in FOnline engine? And now you want to scrap all that? Start all over again?
just my 2c.

Currently VB is 12 GB, majority of that is in-game art, music (11 hours) and videos that can be converted as is.
Dialogs aren't implemented in FOnline format yet so they don't need to be converted and no quests have been scripted.

We would need to convert FOnline maps to Unity format though.
Fonline maps are stored in plaintext format so I will write a converter for that.
Similar to the program Tiled2Unity.

As for SPECIAL, it should be implemented from scratch. But that is not an issue as AngelScript (Fonline) is very similar to C# (Unity).

 

[Baron Dupek]

Just one thing - don't make graphic with cartoonish style. You know, blocky body parts, strange proportions, wacky animations and all that jazz. Plus bright colors.
Hope I make myself clear. There is more of this than real time with pause messy games.

 

[Blackmill]

So, how probable is a next year (or two) release for Van Buren?

 

[hexer]

Just one thing - don't make graphic with cartoonish style. You know, blocky body parts, strange proportions, wacky animations and all that jazz. Plus bright colors.
Hope I make myself clear.

Graphics stay the same (Fallout 1/2 style) except we get dynamic lightning and other effects like those I posted above.
Think about it like pimped Fallout 1/2 2D art.

So, how probable is a next year (or two) release for Van Buren?

Next year is probable if my RPG succeeds commercially and I pay people to work on Van Buren.
In my opinion there's a solid one year of full work time left to do on the game.
The sooner I convert VB to Unity the better. I started on that this weekend.

P.S. And we'll have bigger chances of finding another programmer (besides me) in Unity's community.

 

[shihonage]

FOT had 2D characters. I used to load them into my engine.

 

[hexer]

So somewhere closer to FOT's style? 2D world, 3D characters?

That's a possibility. Remember we have a pixel shader that turns those smoothass 3D characters into gritty 2D Fallout style.
And we have 3D vertibird model, power armor talking heads and other 3D models we should animate and use too.

Also talk to me, man. Get on our Kodex Kool Konvo. Want your word on that SPECIAL system, too.

No problem bro. Let me finish reading some game related materials I'm on right now and then we'll get back to SPECIAL.
There are always things we can improve on, we just need the necessary knowledge

 

[shihonage]

FOT had 2D characters. I used to load them into my engine.

I don't know what the right word, but I'm pretty sure that FOT characters weren't sprites. Sprites are the problem here - editing them is hell. I don't know the correct term for FOT's chars.

FOT characters are sprites. They use some overlay tricks like Diablo 2 sprites, and they have antialiased edges. But they're still 100% 2D bitmap honest-to-goodness sprites.

 

[shihonage]

Then how come they are so easily customized to change colors, etc etc?

Some sort of masking or palette swapping. I didn't get that far, I just used their raw sprites, they looked fine by default.

 

[Sagez]

Hi hexer,

What's new? Is there any progress with Van Buren made with Unity? Or do you just work on your commercial game at the moment?

 

[Klarion]

Hi hexer,

Or do you just work on your commercial game at the moment?

he does, but the rest of the team is still working on Van Buren, check the FB page.

 

[Sagez]

Yeah, I know, but it looks like there are two Van Burens being made - one by hexer with Unity and the second one by the rest of the team with fonline engine. It makes a difference so I was curious how is hexer doing.

 

[supervoid]

Yeah, I know, but it looks like there are two Van Burens being made - one by hexer with Unity and the second one by the rest of the team with fonline engine

No, there's only one (in fonline).