What engine could work for a CoC style game?

[LagiaDOS]

Hi, well, during the past weeks I have been thinking on a concept for a CoC style game. Some may say that I should just do a mod, but I want to do things that aren't possible with the current game (like a worldmap or party members).

I have been thinking on using Unity or Unreal Engine, any other recomendation?

 

[Ezzy]

Flash (cause why not), HTML5 (which Kitteh was working on, but it hasn't been updated for quite some time),
Unity is a good one and Unreal Engine...? Why Unreal Engine? Isn't it a 3D only one?
And there's Rags, MUSHclient (you'd have to do magic to make a good one) and many others that I don't remember the name right now.

In my opinion I'd go with HTML5, since it's a really light and powerful "engine", but that's MY opinion you can go with what feels better to work on.

 

[HemiRobo]

The problem with using a 3D engine like Unity or Unreal is that without having art skills and a ton of time, or a lot of money and multiple artists, you would need a ton of art assets to make a CoC style game worth it. And if you're doing a text game there'd be no point to not make it in flash like CoC or TiTS. Twine would also work pretty well, probably, for making a text game, though you'd probably have to do some kludging or use a variant as thats mostly meant for interactive fiction rather than an open ended game. There are Twine sandboxes, though, with Free Cities being one of the more notable ones in the smut realms, so its certainly possible.

 

[Ezzy]

Flash is considered the most suitable engine to make a text styled game. I don't see why use something like Unity or Unreal Engine to make a text game, since those engines are more focused on the 2D and 3D Realms (Sidescrolling games for example)

 

[Ravie]

I'll.... probably have to comment against that, though, conditionally so. Text games would make most immedeately think of Twine, although that's more for simpler, linear text games. It is possible to make some quite complex stuff though, but equally easy to screw up as well. Or Ren'py. Both have the issue of lacking hotkeys I think though.

Unity could probably be tweaked for text games, but would possibly require more effort than it's worth (don't hold me to that, cold be fairly simple if you got the know-how), while I'll second that my impression of UE is that it's far too graphical to make useful for a coc-style game without a huge amount of effort into making a full blown graphical version.

Either way, with Flash being phased out it's important to look at alternatives until it's successor is released.

Another alternative could be Java, but that would probably require you to set up the entire engine for the game yourself. Highly flexible if you'd manage to do it though.

 

[Magic Ted]

Apparently Renpy can work, but HTML5 is certainly the "cleanest" approach.

 

[Ezzy]

...Or Ren'py. Both have the issue of lacking hotkeys I think though.

Either way, with Flash being phased out it's important to look at alternatives until it's successor is released.

Another alternative could be Java...

Ren'py does have support for keybinding if I'm remembering correctly. Though you can't deny that flash is a really powerful engine to make this type of game, if you know what you're doing.

A game running on Java would be a mess in my opinion.

 

[HegemonKhan]

(unashamed promoting)

quest text adventure (UK based):

it's free/public (including commercially too!, and can host your games where-ever you want too), great for text games, and can add images too, very very powerful engine (if good programmer, you can create your own engine! Also, very powerful coding capability for your game making) with a lot of built-in useful features already and more being added too, including having a GUI/Editor for non-coders, and its coding is very easy to learn, and while the community is small, we're very helpful (active forum and posts for our small community), and along with there being lots of resources/guides too. We already got some people using it to make adult (and fenoxo/coc/tits-like/inspired) games, especially our user 'anonynn' and his/her 'apocamorphosis' game. I've not played it yet, but she/he pumps out a lot of writing/coding, with a very high word count, and he/she is learning to code in more and more fancy stuff, starting from not knowing too much about coding. Quest games can be played offline (have to download the quest.exe engine/software to play them) or online (has maintained servers, that you can upload/publish your games to and/or play games without needing to download the quest.exe engine/software)

 

[Lidia Vantridis]

Hi, well, during the past weeks I have been thinking on a concept for a CoC style game. Some may say that I should just do a mod, but I want to do things that aren't possible with the current game (like a worldmap or party members).

I have been thinking on using Unity or Unreal Engine, any other recomendation?

Unity 3D is a great platform, lightweight but you have to know how to render. 3D rendering isn't hard, especially if you have a good 2D artist to work with and good program for 2D-3D conversion. My avatar is a picture taken from Rhino 3D galleries page. Rhino is a pricey rendering software, but if you get to know it, and I soo wish I had the funds to do an in depth study of it, then you will be able to do almost anything with it.

 

[Ch0w]

Ren'py does have support for keybinding if I'm remembering correctly. Though you can't deny that flash is a really powerful engine to make this type of game, if you know what you're doing.

A game running on Java would be a mess in my opinion.

Flash is a no go, unless you already started it on flash, there's no reason to do anything on flash now anymore as it's been killed.
Already stated you should go either full HTML5 or try hard in some other engines like UNITY.
Ren'Py is okay but is pretty basic, not that there aren't awesome works on it.
Java would be a really try hard mode, so that you could focus on mobile app for playstore afterward in the future, also is always good to train java coding, is the kind of coders people are always looking for.

 

[Enzey]

Another consideration is how you want your users to load the game. If you go with something like Unity it has the ability to create Andriod / iOS installs. Going with HTML5 the user could access it from a browser but the saves would probably be specific to that browser (localStorage). Although you would need to host the app somewhere.

IMHO I believe HTML would be just fine and you would also be learning about web standards and gaining a useful still. Although I would not leverage HTML Canvas for a text game. Canvas does not natively support things like text wrapping or text scrolling. Basically think of Canvas as a dynamically rendered bitmap.

The other wuestion to ask yourself is if you seek to monetize on making this game. If you do then HTML is a poor choice due to the ease of access to the source code and the ability to copy to reproduce a program.

 

[Lidia Vantridis]

Flash is a no go, unless you already started it on flash, there's no reason to do anything on flash now anymore as it's been killed.
Already stated you should go either full HTML5 or try hard in some other engines like UNITY.
Ren'Py is okay but is pretty basic, not that there aren't awesome works on it.
Java would be a really try hard mode, so that you could focus on mobile app for playstore afterward in the future, also is always good to train java coding, is the kind of coders people are always looking for.

Another 3D platform that one could consider "ready made" is SL or another avatar comunity. Could actually develop the game as a sim area and place the shops and everything.

 

[Ch0w]

the power of good real-time animation done in Unity by fucking OATS

 

[Dahak]

I'll.... probably have to comment against that, though, conditionally so. Text games would make most immedeately think of Twine, although that's more for simpler, linear text games. It is possible to make some quite complex stuff though, but equally easy to screw up as well. Or Ren'py. Both have the issue of lacking hotkeys I think though.

IIRC Free Cities is Twine and has hotkeys.

While I suspect one could build a good replica of CoC in Twine, I can't think how to implement a clickable world map.

IIRC Twine is a GUI to produce customised Tiddlywikis and I haven't seen a TW Imagemap module.

 

[kingofbrocoli]

Game maker.


Coding in unity is a pain and flash is already dead.