Game: Awakened (using Panda RPG Engine)

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Would you buy a copy of Awakened?

  • Yes, once it is finished (~7$)
  • Yes, during crowdfund (~3.5$)
  • No, I won’t

0 voters

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Hi guys! At last I’m here officially announcing I’m working on an RPG engine built on top of Panda3D, and of course on a videogame called Awakened.

GitHub:
github.com/snizzo/lucrezia

Youtube editor and first minutes of gameplay (up to date):
youtu.be/4Y8kbEgoSsE

Very old teaser trailer:
youtube.com/watch?v=t93F8URsFA0

Steam greenlight:
steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f … =347902011

The engine works on map defined in xml and small python scripts that lets the game developer control characters, sounds, change maps, lights, dialogues, movements of NPCs etc… Since I’m planning to do quite a big game (in term of contents and explorables) I really couldn’t stand writing all the xml by hand. I created a map editor that directly runs on the rpg engine itself and allows loading, modifying and saving of the maps. It is “what you see is what you get”.

What can do the engine?
I’m writing it in order to let you (and me) create a storytelling adventure with pixel-art graphics with 2D/3D world blending together. All resources works with 2D images loaded on quads that lives in the 3D world. Objects for example are solid objects with an automatic collision system and 2 different types of collisions: 2D (all tile is colliding) and 3D (just the base of the tile will collide). This allows the character to go behind objects with no coding / artist effort. The light system is panda3d standard point light with rgb color and attenuation.
Every object and tile has 2 different events that can be triggered onPicked() and onWalked(), already handled automatically by the editor that will open your text editor of choice for python script.
I want to add more 3D oriented features in the future like pixel art particle systems for rain or snow, automatic footsteps engine, object with different possible animations. I’d love to implement some physically based leafs moving with the wind. Everything will be doable by editor by the way.

What’s this game Awakened?
This game is based on the real story of my life, narrated through pixel art and an amazing soundtrack kindly provided by Lucas King. I’ve decided to narrate this story through the eyes of a girl called Ellen, who starts out her (your) adventure in a difficult and cryptic situation between her and her friend Kate. This will be the starting point of an amazing journey of discovering herself, her feelings, her fears and her vision of the whole life.

She will go near death, in deep sleep, and have the opportunity to see her life again through the eyes of an insane rejection and an impossible hug. This will led her to see herself differently by living again and changing her perception of reality.

I’m going to create the whole first chapter of the story with my own funds and then I’ll ask for some fundraise.

Since I’m presenting both the engine and the videogame I’ve created a poll asking you if in the future you could be willing to buy a copy of my videogame. Both the engine and the game will be opensource.

Thank you for your attention and please look at the video! :smiley:

1 Like
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The editor and functionality of the game looks cool so far (and thanks for open-source it all).

The game itself (based on your description) would be probably not for me, but I guess there might be a (small) audience for it if you release it on Steam.

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Good luck with these projects, both the game and the engine! :slight_smile:

Based on your description and a quick look at the “first minutes of gameplay” trailer, I don’t think that the game is likely one that I, myself, would seek out. I’ll confess that I don’t have a very firm grasp of the plot, however; from your description, I do I gather correctly that it’s a realistic character drama?

I have a question regarding the RPG engine, if I may: how does it compare to RPG Maker? The latter is, I gather, one of the more widely-used tools for the creation of this sort of game, so how does your engine stand against it? Is it primarily that it’s open-source? Will it be free? You’ve mentioned that your engine uses 3D geometry to circumvent the usual pixel-RPG issue of occlusion; are there any other features that stand out over those of RPG Maker?

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Thank you! :slight_smile:

Yes, that’s the idea. I admit it’s very difficult to be excited by the first unpolished 2 minutes of nothing :slight_smile: I just wanted to give an idea of the game.

Well, I didn’t use RPG Maker much, but I didn’t like the scripting language and the low flexibilily of the engine, from what I inspected. Using panda I’m using python for scripting part and the engine can be extended depending on the game’s needs.

Other 2D-3D features I’d like to implement is something that makes the world more “vivid”. For example in the old trailer there’s the grass which is done with multiple quads in 3d space like in older 3d games. And I have this long time goal of making no more use of quads: use only simple 3d objects intelligently textured in order to appear 2D pixel art, also with a pixel art shader and giving also some movement to the whole scene (like wind moving grass for example). But that’s more difficult. As for now it lacks several features like a combat system, a choice system (gui part), inventory etc… yes it’s pretty basic for storytelling/exploration adventures.

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Honestly, as I recall the main reason that I didn’t do more than skip around a bit in the trailer is that it didn’t seem to be in English (or Afrikaans, which I might have been able to follow; I might have given Flemish a shot, given its similarity to Afrikaans), and thus I didn’t know what the characters were saying. ^^;

This seems to me to be a feature worth mentioning prominently when promoting your engine!

That’s an interesting idea; I think that I’ve seen a “pixel-art” shader somewhere on the forum–perhaps it would be worth your while searching for it?

I may be mistaken, but I gather that this is a point on which RPG Maker is somewhat limited; perhaps it’s something that your engine could expand upon, or make more flexible, thus giving you another edge over RPG Maker?

(If I may suggest, the thought that occurs to me is to build combat up out of more basic interactions, and then provide a few pre-built combat mechanics that people can simply “plug in to” their games. For example, you might allow code to be run on a key-press. This might then be used by a “basic combat module” to spawn a special effect and a simple, non-physical collision object that detects enemies and, if any are found, subtracts a value from their health.)

Overall, this looks like an interesting project! :slight_smile:

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It’s italian and yes, in a game which the story plays a big part having it in english is crucial :slight_smile:

Yes, I contacted a Japanese guy that was having great results in that way. But it’s something long long term.

Yeah, definitely! I’m very open to suggestions and improvements :slight_smile: I’m currently doing it for my game Awakened, so I basically implemented what I needed to do the game but I’m constantly adding features to it so this can be interesting. I think also python gives great flexibility to the developer in general. However my goal isn’t to compete with RPG Maker :slight_smile:

Thank you a lot! :smiley:

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Is possible make this for android,thanks