Created The Story of the Evolution of the eRPG Project Ilmatar by Hawke Robinson (markdown)

RPG Research 2020-07-12 13:40:56 -07:00
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The Story Of How The Ideas for Proeject Ilmatar Idea Evolved
By Hawke Robinson
The goal is to have a VERY accessible turn-based RPG that will work with just about any disability to provide the benefits of RPGs electronically.
It has to work with someone that is tetratpalegic and/or only has a Brain-Computer Interface (EEG) to play the game in a multi-player online setting successfully.
Multiplayer, cooperative, online, cross-platform, turn-based, cross-genre/genre-agnostic, and social with all the elements of the TRPG experience, but using the advantanges of the electronic format, while trying to mitigate the problems and shortcomings of electronic games (compared to the benefits of tabletop RPG).
Regarding Cross-genre requirement.
Many (most?) people (some of my clients included) can't stand fantasy, and/or science fiction, and/or superhero stuff.
They _do_ love modern or period procedurals, or mystery pieces..
So the game is also designed to allow the exact same story to be played with the player's genre of choice.
Initially just targeting three genres:
1. Medieval Swords & Sorcery style Fantasy
2. Science Fiction / Futuristic
3. Modern-day non-fantasy non-scifi
We script it like Mad Libs, with variables for objects rather than hardcoded, so that based on the player's Genre Preference decision it uses the words, creatures, devices, scenes, appropriate to that genre.
For example:
1. The __Babarian__ fired his __crossbow__ at the __Orc__ above the swirling __planar vortext portal__...
2. The __Space Marine__ fires his __plasma rifle__ at the __Lubrechtian Alien__ above the __Stargate's event horizon__...
3. The __detective__ fires his --.38 revolver__ at the __Kidnapper__ above the __dam's spillway__... etc.
All open source.
All 100% volunteer developers.
This project is results focused, not timeline focused. There are no set deadlines for delivery. Instead delivery is all about meeting scope.
Two major phases:
Phase One: Prototyping concepts and training using NWN:EE
Phase Two: Develop tools and game from scratch using what was learned from Phase One.
Phase one to work out the first scope, and idea of the tools we want to develop, we used Never Winter NIghts Enhanced Edition Aurora Toolset to train all the developers.
We started with around 14 developers. We have held on to 10 for the year!
We created a practice story based on William Shakespeare's "The Tempest", using Twinery's Twine.
We trained everyone on how to use the NWN: EE Autora toolset.
I created a grid map of the Bahamas (Shakespeare based the Tempest loosely on real-world shipwreck events in that region around early 1600), and then each developer was assigned one or sectors to fill.
Last week (July 2020) was the second time Valerie (our fabulous developer team lead who has done a great job keeping this going while I've been so busy) merged all the different contributions into one module and put up on our public servers. And they were debug play-testing it (we broadcast this whole year's process live on our youtube channel each week https://youtube.com/rpgresearch ).
We meet every week Thursdays 6-8 pm to keep it moving along.
Out Github is here: https://github.com/rpgresearch/erpg/wiki (needs some updating).
Current Status as of 20200712:
Phase 1, the NWN prototype is nearing completion and should wrap up in the next few weeks or so. We hope to have general RPG Research players debug it further soon. Then we'll let the general public have access.
Then we move on to phase 2, developing the toolset we need from scratch.
When that is finished, we use that toolset (there