Crystal Toolset - 2D MMORPG Development Suite

[Robin]

Decided to teach myself C#, .NET, MDI and SFML (After first wrestling with XNA's MSBuild.exe resource... thing *shudder*).

Somewhere along the way I went a bit crazy and actually wrote a fairly large chunk of a game development application.

(Large image, click thumbnail or link: http://i.imgur.com/MbWOsxF.png)



So far I've managed to work around just about every problem I've come across with getting SFML to play nice with such an interface style. (Control handles being lost was the bane of my existence for a good few days.)

No doubt I'll be coming along with my tail between my legs asking how to fix/optimise things as the core application hits the gym and starts to bulk up.

Thought it might be polite to come along and show what I've accomplished so far before asking people to do my job for me.

Everything you see enabled in that screenshot is fully working in the application itself. There are still a few dozen inconsistencies in the way processes are carried out, but user experience is one of my few strengths, so those will be ironed out as I near completion of this portion of the application.

In terms of SFML related features, things are pretty slim. I have a resource manager... of sorts. Map renderer, tileset renderer, some fancy caching and image exporting stuff. The usual.

As time goes on I'll probably have to be a bit more concious about performance, but everything works at the very least.

Haven't fully decided on whether this will actually be released or not. It was actually supposed to be a simple in-house editor for my personal projects.

I'm sure the draw of free testing will cause me to release it eventually.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to the library and wrote all those wiki articles. Really made things easy to get started with.

[cpolymeris]

Whoa. That's cool. Nice UI.
How flexible is the code? Can, for instance, new providers be defined to import/export in your game's file format?

So far I've managed to work around just about every problem I've come across with getting SFML to play nice with such an interface style. (Control handles being lost was the bane of my existence for a good few days.)

I know your troubles. Been trying to use SFML/C#/Gtk#, myself.

[Robin]

Whoa. That's cool. Nice UI.
How flexible is the code? Can, for instance, new providers be defined to import/export in your game's file format?

So far I've managed to work around just about every problem I've come across with getting SFML to play nice with such an interface style. (Control handles being lost was the bane of my existence for a good few days.)

I know your troubles. Been trying to use SFML/C#/Gtk#, myself.

Not something I've really looked in to. My experience with C# is concentrated in UI and DB. Right now I'm just trying to get a working map editor. From there the code will be refactored to meet some higher programming standards.

It's hard enough for me to get some of the more intricate systems working at all, so overcomplicating things might be a bit much for me.

[Jungletoe]

...Robin?

I swear, you pop up in the most random places.

[Robin]

...Robin?

I swear, you pop up in the most random places.

I'd hardly call a graphics library forum a random place considering our hobbies. ;]

I saw your game man, looking good.

[Jungletoe]

...Robin?

I swear, you pop up in the most random places.

I'd hardly call a graphics library forum a random place considering our hobbies. ;]

I saw your game man, looking good.

True, true.

And thanks :3

[Mario]

Lol, to be honest, I clicked this thread just for the caption alone.

So is this supposed to become some editor of sorts or a complete engine? Also where's Unity involved?

Anyway, looks really nice and reminds me a lot of the RPG Maker series.

[Robin]

Lol, to be honest, I clicked this thread just for the caption alone.

So is this supposed to become some editor of sorts or a complete engine? Also where's Unity involved?

Anyway, looks really nice and reminds me a lot of the RPG Maker series.

Current plans are for a fully integrated development environment specifically for 2D Multiplayer RPGs.

The caption comes from the Visual Studio style project management and UI, the Photoshop style design area and, although not currently implemented, the Unity style game development aspects. Those will come more in to play once I refactor and clean up the existing stuff.

It certainly takes a lot of inspiration from the RPG Maker series. This is actually a spiritual successor to a line of open-source game development projects I've been involved in which were developed parallel to the RPG Maker series from the late '90s onwards.

[Nexus]

Really clean user interface! I like the way how it is inspired by Windows 8 style, but doesn't suffer from its fanatic simplicity (like VS 2012 does). I guess these are the default C# widgets meanwhile?

Do you build the editor/development tool with a game you eventually want to realize in mind?

[Robin]

Really clean user interface! I like the way how it is inspired by Windows 8 style, but doesn't suffer from its fanatic simplicity (like VS 2012 does). I guess these are the default C# widgets meanwhile?

Some aspects of Windows 8 are fantastic, some are just... confusing.

I love the simplicity of the Visual Studio 2012 docking system, and was lucky to find the same functionality in the Dock Panel Suite library.

Other aspects, like the 2-tone vector icons, I find a huge step backwards in terms of usability for the end-user. This and the restrictions imposed by using the WinForms library lead to a very... eclectic interface. Most of the widgets are default .NET with the occasional inherited replacement to fix some annoying rendering eccentricities.

I'm hoping the MDI style and modularity of the tools will allow the program to scale without losing the simplicity which is needed when bringing complex development tools to inexperienced users.

Do you build the editor/development tool with a game you eventually want to realize in mind?

Actually yes. I have a modest little project called Crystalshire. It's a project I've been building on and off under several different names since ~2003/2004. I've actually released a good 3 or 4 game engines in the past which were built specifically for developing this game.

I've been pretty lucky with the amount of exposure these projects have encountered, and what I'm developing with SFML is an answer to the problems and restrictions I came across after trying to develop similar things in the past.

The game itself was released in 2011 and has retained a respectable user-base. There are a few videos and screenshots flying around if you Google the name of the project.

Here's the official media page on the website: http://www.crystalshire.com/screenshots.php



Previous versions were all built on very dated technology, with a kind of meta-game developing where PvP combat was decided by who could predict where their opponent was actually placed on the server due to the lack of lag compensation.

Luckily I've managed to build up a very talented pool of friends who are going to be helping out with both the game and the engine itself, so I believe any future releases will be a much higher quality.

With libraries like SFML to replace my rather disappointing and rather buggy DirectX8 implementation from years gone by I'm hoping that things go a hell of a lot more smoothly this time around.

[Jungletoe]

Luckily I've managed to build up a very talented pool of friends who are going to be helping out with both the game and the engine itself, so I believe any future releases will be a much higher quality.

Who are you working with now, besides Rory?

[Robin]

Who are you working with now, besides Rory?

Same as always. Jacob is going to be writing the core components of the business logic. He's concentrating on the networking engine at the moment.

Rory is on graphics design duty and will be giving input as a game developer.

Eventually we'll be releasing a new website and that's when everyone else will be getting involved properly. I've kept in touch with the pool of original content creators we had before and it seems everyone is excited to share their experience with the public as well as being able to resurrect dead projects on a new medium.

I'll be writing some resource sharing systems in to the community site which allows people to post resource packs, articles, tutorials and the like. Considering the amount of people who went on to work in the industry, it'll be a pretty valuable commodity for people just starting out. Coupled with a new engine which concentrates on usability and simplicity it should make for some interesting times ahead.

[Jungletoe]

I'll be writing some resource sharing systems in to the community site which allows people to post resource packs, articles, tutorials and the like. Considering the amount of people who went on to work in the industry, it'll be a pretty valuable commodity for people just starting out. Coupled with a new engine which concentrates on usability and simplicity it should make for some interesting times ahead.

Sweet. I told Evan (ICT, IceCreamTuesday) about the engine and he's considering using it for a game he's been trying to get off the ground since the early days of Eclipse. I was going to write a whole engine for him, but you obviously have a lot more engine experience and work under your belt.

[Robin]

Sweet. I told Evan (ICT, IceCreamTuesday) about the engine and he's considering using it for a game he's been trying to get off the ground since the early days of Eclipse. I was going to write a whole engine for him, but you obviously have a lot more engine experience and work under your belt.

That doesn't really go as far as you'd think. My experience is very niche and is based around a very specific code base.

My experience with user interfaces will make things much smoother for the end-user, but it'll be Jacob's work on the core systems which will make up the game engine proper. Both of us have improved immensely since we effectively retired from our game projects and concentrated on our real-life stuff.

As always all our work will be released open-source, so if anything I'd say to pick up our bare-bones release and build off of that. I'll be releasing a tonne of video tutorials, articles and the like so it should be fairly easy to expand on.

Would be nice having people like you and Evan around making our stuff break in weird and wonderful ways. Wouldn't have it any other way.

[ICT]

Awesome! Can't wait to give it a whirl. Very excited to see what you all have planned.
Haven't seen you in so long figured you let real life take you away from the hobby, thankfully you're still at it.
Miss you. Sign into skype so we can catch up. I miss hearing that sexy accent of yours.