Spirit Age

by Chris Gayle
Spirit Age
An amazing action adventure game in a fantasy world on mystical islands

SA tech demo #1

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ID:1280907
 
Jun 1 2013, 11:44 am
Hello Byonder's. Bare with me because Ive had to rewrite this post 3 times each resulting in the post being deleted some how.

So we've pretty much went underground for the past few months. during this time we worked on on the spirit Age engine.

Spirit Age Engine is a game development kit made specifically for spirit age. Its main objective was the remove the boundaries between conception,design and implementation. what this means is that we removed the 'Need' for programmers to code in content.

The Engine consists of several key components which are:

1. AI and behavioral editor: AI editor basically allows us to take an NPC AI template and alter it. With This we can create Unique NPCs with Smarter AI without have to write any code.

http://puu.sh/366mp.jpg

2. 'Live' Map editor: This was the first feature that made its way into the engine and what encouraged us to go through with making a full range of development tools. The map editor allows us to create the world at run time, without the need for programming. This way is a lot more useful than the DMM editor as it fully emphasizes collaboration of multiple users. This even has future 'Live' modding capabilities! more on that at a later date. No one but the programmer ever comes in interaction with the source so we never have to worry about someone turning around and ruin everything we've worked for. we can even define custom bounding boxes and terrain elevations which is crucial for the platforming aspect of spirit age.

http://puu.sh/366Pw.png
http://puu.sh/366Q9.png

3. Event scripting- The event editor allows us to script and create events at run time, no code required. With this editor we're able to design events, script actions and write dialogue.

IFRAME: http://www.youtube.com/embed/a4nsrTnhIos

Heres a video demonstration made by Ishuri.
Disclaimer its long and boring for anyone who doesn't understand whats going on. video quality is bad and Ishuri apologies for doing such a poor job explaining.

4. Item editor- With this editor we can Add, items directly to the game, and change every aspect of that weapon from attacking ability to its knock back ability or alternate effects.

http://puu.sh/3678U.jpg

alot of place holders are used

5. NPC editor: Create new, or edit existing NPCS at run time change everything from custom bonding boxes to all available attributes.
http://puu.sh/367jQ.png


Just to give you guys how powerful the engine is heres a shot of me spawning 1000 mobs in a small area with no major performance loss.



Now ive been seeing alot of people jumping on the bandwagon that spirit age is all about graphics with no actual substance. we're not professional developers, and its sad that we get such little feedback but rather rude insults. Hopefully this post informs the misguided. Spirit Age is not just all about graphics, we care equally if not more about game play.


EDIT: ill edit the post later as I have to head out for work, cheers!
Jun 1 2013, 12:06 pm
Would you be mad if you had to edit it one more time because you misspelled "Bear" at the beginning? And "apologizes"?...

All over, the idea is cool...
Jun 1 2013, 12:07 pm
That's amazing. Can't wait to play spirit age when it's finished.
Jun 1 2013, 12:12 pm
No longer using byond?
Jun 1 2013, 12:20 pm
In response to Kihatomay
They are definitely still using Dream Maker. They just made an intuitive interface to customize the game outside of the source files.
Jun 1 2013, 12:30 pm
Groovy
Jun 1 2013, 12:30 pm
I remember Spirit Age when it was nothing, now look at it. Great job SA Team.
Jun 1 2013, 12:54 pm
not true yut put remember a couple weeks back when we annoucned a release date? that version was made using this engine and after the tools came it took us a week to catch up. the tool jus makes it soo much more acessible to collaborators. with this we can focus on whats important; making the game fun
Jun 1 2013, 1:04 pm
what's happens if we end up losing both our programmers to inactivity this route seemed like the best to way to ensure SA doesn't go the way of some many games.
Jun 1 2013, 1:53 pm
this game is pretty big so they also give us the option to open the. game up to collaborators disregarding ability completly
Jun 1 2013, 2:26 pm
That looks really cool. I hope you don't mind me taking a few notes on your mob editor!

Also, you might want to get this addon for Firefox. It allows you to recover lost text.
Jun 1 2013, 2:41 pm
This looks really awesome, good job.
Jun 1 2013, 3:44 pm
Honestly this is the only impressive thing I've seen in the game since you guys began blogging about it. The "make your own content" stuff is popular nowadays, I believe that new Neverwinter MMO had it ( although I haven't been following how successful that's been ).
Jun 1 2013, 6:34 pm
This is pretty impressive. Like SA said, I hope you don't mind I take some notes myself.

Can't wait to see more from this.
Jun 1 2013, 6:49 pm
All looks pretty sweet. Things turn out well when you follow your vision for a project.
Jun 1 2013, 8:00 pm
i don't know ET, I thought pixel movement was pretty cool to have in an online game. but what do i know, Im no programmer. Not yet at least :)

Our possibilities for modding are great with these tools which is quite exciting given SA's sandbox gameplay
Jun 1 2013, 8:52 pm
:D
Jun 1 2013, 8:52 pm
:D
Jun 2 2013, 12:25 am
Very impressive! That's what I call a strong foundation. Your game can now grow into a tree of limitless potential. I like that style of development. The way most programmers do things, it gets harder the further into development you get, but in this case, it starts out tough, then it just keeps getting easier.

I had no idea Spirit Age's runtime development engine had become so advanced. I'm glad there are others in BYOND who have realized the potential of runtime development. It surprises me how strikingly similar your development path is to my own concepts. Of course your engine is much further along than my project, but I'm attempting to make something more general, that can encompass all of DM, for use in any game.

I believe that this development path is vastly superior to how anyone currently makes games in BYOND, and I would hope that the success of your game becomes proof of that. Once the engine has been made, there is no turning back, and much less focus will be needed on the actual code. If I have my way, development in DM will never be the same again.

Unfortunately, I suspect many of the older generations of DM programmers will run scared from this new way of doing things. I just don't think programmers take the time to understand how powerful a runtime object interpreting engine can become. They tend to just automatically assume that if it doesn't involve writing code, then it's not for them. I guess they will have to find out the hard way, when they realize that bigger and better games can be made with this kind of foundation.

Anyway, I hope we will get to see how much more awesome Spirit Age can become in the future!
Jun 2 2013, 6:26 am
This is interesting,It's nice to see something more about the game other than your impressive art Zane,

Because frankly that's all i felt from it before, it may have had some unique features as well, but there's no personal flare, no great love of labour or feeling throughout this game, Nothing that could keep me on it, i just don't feel a pull towards it (for lack of a better word), there's no charm.

Though i feel the need to say, Pixel movement is built into Byond now and Forum accounts library for it is also still usable, So most games within the last year or more use pixel movement as it naturally gives the player more freedom, So Yes, it's nice to see nearly every new MMO on Byond using pixel movement.

Good luck with the game.
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