Hi! (Newbie With Questions :)

[Breezi]

Howdy, I'm Breezi. I've been lurking the forums for a while and just decided to register and post. I've been tossing the idea of building a game around for a long time. My idea has evolved from a MUD to a Browser game. I just love text adventures :)

Anyway, I am just starting out with PHP and other web dev type things, but I have a notebook full of things that are waiting to be put into a game. I would like to buy NWE, but I have a few questions.

 

1. How much programming knowledge to you need to customize a game, using this engine.
   
2. If I buy the Developer plus a few modules that I will use to make the game. If I do this, does any of that count toward the purchase of a full licence? (SOrry, I'm a low budget!)
   
3. How complex of a game could I create? Torn City is an inspiration that I have.
   

 

Actually, I thought I had more, but that's it :)

Thanks in advance!

[a_bertrand]

1) To fill content (quests, story, items, npc and much more) you need initially no programming knowledge as all of that can be done via the admin interface, but if you want to modify some of the logic, or add new features, either you need to pay somebody to do it for you or you will need to do it yourself. On the other side, if you have features requests which could fit for a generic engine, I mean something which is not only for your own game but could be used by a wide number of games, then I'm willing to invest time to make another module which will be delivered in the full package.

2) The developer version is not meant to be used in production like a public game. The developer version is meant to be used by people which just want to develop modules and sell them. Also, if you check the price of the individual modules you will soon discover that the full version is much cheaper than the dev + the modules.

3) Torn City is not by itself a complex game. It has a lot of players (for text web game that's it), and quiet a good number of features, yet they are not overall really complex.

I would suggest you to set down as much as possible the game content, rules and story on paper or in digital form (like google docs or word / excel). That will take you anyhow time to really clean up your mind and see what you want to have. In the mean time you still put aside money, as beside for the engine, you will have other expenses, like hosting maybe a template and / or advertisement. Sure you can start without spending one cent: free hosting, self written code and self made template. Yet just for the hosting you will soon discover it's not enough unless you have no players.

Also, once you have the game content / story done, you can start to extract the features you need at first, and the features you wish to have later on. Having all in one shot is hardly doable, plus you could start earlier if you restrict yourself with the wishes.

After the feature list, you can either contact me (via PM) or post again on the site, or go ahead and pick the engine you think fit the better your needs or on the other side discover that none of the existing engines can do what you want. Yet, with engines like ezRPG or NWE you can basically do more or less what you want, however maybe the features already embedded are useless to you, therefore you may end up better served by doing it yourself.

[Breezi]

I've played around with the demo of NWE and it seems very good. Most of my ideas were based off of MCCodes engine, but I think using NWE maybe be better and what could set me apart from the other games out there. I'm going to go ahead and save up for the engine.

I have a BUNCH of features, quests outline. A few that could benefit the engine could be an alignment system and housing. I would love for my game to have housing at each of the cities, each with different features and addons. As for the more, I'm selfishly keeping those to my game. My husband is a programmer and is charging me for his time, so I'm taking it up to learn myself. :) It's good motivation or me anyway!

For development, I'm going to be hosting it on my computer with XXAMP, I believe that's the name. But, I do have hosting, that may need to be upgraded when I finally launch the game.

Anyway, thanks for your response!

Edited September 1, 2012 by Breezi

[Djkanna]

A few that could benefit the engine could be an alignment system and housing.

As in good or evil?

If so, taking the ideas that are documented here could make for a interesting addition to the pre-existing character customization (at the moment I think this is just classes of characters: solider, builder etc).

Providing the means for other modules to change the alignment value, and also restrict certain actions based on this value, could make for some interesting modules/game play.

Not to sure if this would count as a mod that would be useful to multiple game types and make it into the base pack, but it's certainly a good idea for a module (3rd party or otherwise.)

If that's not what you mean, forget the above. :rolleyes:

[a_bertrand]

Housing was something planned for NWE. If somebody has a requirement for it, and maybe have a feature list for the module he/she wish, I may do it. Maybe not all the features requested will be in, but at least you should get a good start point.