RPG Engine Jam
February 19th, 2012 (edited November 3rd, 2022)Yesterday I got roped into an awesome programming jam session with fellow game programmers Stephen Herlihy, Alex Naraghi, and Brenden Booth, aided and abetted by production Justin Britch and Bryan Ploof. Our goal: create an engine for a top-down role-playing game in the style of Diablo and Torchlight. Oh yeah, and users have to be able to build and play their own games in it with zero programming and scripting. Oh yeah, and we only had 12 hours.
It doesn't look like much (I'm a programmer, Jim, not an artist), but this demo features enemies, melee combat, player death, an attack spell, and jumping. What's more, it is paired with a well-featured editor, and both are built on an extremely flexible component system that defines functionality for generic "game objects" by assigning them components like Combatable, Impassable, and Mobile. Users can add generic objects to the game, alter their appearance, and change their behaviors simply by adding and removing components. You'll be hearing more about this one in the future.