NetGore

Maybe some more optimization and bug handling for Top Down mode.

I jitter all around even on localhost and I can't seem to figure out why.

Those kinda have to come with time, though. Not usually something I can work on directly and aimlessly.

Also, that falls into the category of stuff that can be fixed/added later, since improving latency compensation doesn't really affect anything higher-level.

Maybe working on organizing the file system? It's either just me or there is a lot of folders in folder in folders with tons of files in each.

I know they are all for a purpose but I'm sure there is a cleaner looking way.

Edit: Actually never mind I kinda like the layout since I'm getting used to it.

There are a ton of code files, no doubt about that. That is a pretty easy fix and really not too important. The content files are scattered around a bit, but when you realize what is going on, its not very much. I think people just mostly get confused by how there is two copies of content - ContentPaths.Build and ContentPaths.Dev.

Maybe write some tutorials on stuff, populate the wiki?

I know you said no editor stuff, but what about the skeleton editor? I think it has some amazing potential, but in just looking at it, I really had no clue as to what the various tabs and buttons were for.

Even if you worked on a tutorial/manual for it as-is, that'd be great. Pweeze?

Only thing I think needs to be changed on the editors that I've noticed is the icons because at first look I have no idea what they are for.

I'll work on making the icons more representative. =D

I have thought about fixing up the skeleton editor and even looked into it yesterday, I just don't really know what all to change. If someone is willing to make all the alterations to the skeleton editor to make it all pretty and usable, then I'll gladly answer their questions on what things are and how they work.

I'm more interested in how it works at this point. Things like:
- What is the purpose of each tab and button?
- How do I create/draw a new skeleton, nodes, etc.?
- How do I animate a skeleton?
- How do I skin the skeleton parts with grhs?
- Where do I assign animations to actions in the solution?

If you could help by providing quick answers on those types of things, we can help with testing the skeleton editor’s functionality for now. Maybe we can also coax aphro into including a sprucing up of the editor UI with his DevKit?

I think Skye's idea on documentation is great, too, if you're looking for a break from coding. Even just spouting off a bunch of instructions in bullet points would be awesome. We can pretty up the documentation.

If you need ideas on what tasks to document, I have plenty. I'd love it if we had a knowledge base similar to VBGore's, where there were a bunch of "how to's" on adding common features to the base engine (renaming/creating stats, adding skills/spells with animations and icons, etc.).

Yes wiki documentation would be awesome.

Even if you are adding stuff you know that should seem obvious. It will help a lot of potential users quite a bit.

Wiki content would be the most help to myself right now since im still in a learning phase.

Sounds like everyone is leaning towards documentation. I'm cool with that since it gives me a chance to review how everything works to make sure it makes sense and isn't overly difficult, and gives me a chance to bug-test many things. I might do a few small things before then, but I think that is a good game plan. I'll start working out a way to organize this all so I can get started.

Awesome! Would you mind putting out a new release before you start the documentation flow? You've made quite a few changes since the last one. Would be good to have a fresh, up-to-date install to begin with.

Yeppers

yeah i myself have managed to create totally new skill types, but at some points i was confused if it was really the correct, clean way of handling things.

Same goes for stats.

If we had simple "how-tos" for simple tasks (mainly adding/modifying the most important demogame parts)
such as:
stats
skills
AI (i believe aphro is still on this one?)
how is a mapfile structured? (maybe a little specific question, but if you like some help on the editors some small doc on this would be great)

In General:
Let more people "understand Netgore" in a clean way, so that we can work with it more.
we work more with netgore => you get better bugreports/todos

Well you just said you were messing with both skills and stats, why not take some notes and write a few tutorials yourself or pass the notes onto somebody who could write a tutorial?

Like here!

Probably because he doesn't want to teach people the wrong way of doing it?

exactly what bake said.

I was very unsecure in many parts.
I just experimented and found "a way"
However, "a way" is not "the proper way"

If I had been secure, I would have made a tutorial for my fireball and my custom stats.

I most likely will add a tutorial for extended Item features (I integrated variable item stats and upgrading mechanisms in vbgore, so I should be able to handle upgrading etc in netgore aswell)

Also I will probably add something for the inventory type I prefer
(in vbgore that tut was very unclean as it seems, I seemed to have lost the overview)

If it were me, I think I'd work a little harder on the demo content. Spawning the player on a rather empty map, with a couple of immortal NPCs who go "on top of you" and kill you repeatedly, and a few hard-to-reach vendors for company gives a rather poor impression of the engine and its capabilities, IMHO. To be honest, it kind of.. scared me away, at first.

Also, maybe it could be a good idea to offer some precompiled binaries for testing purposes. The whole setup thing could be simplified a bit (at least the mySQL part which screwed up for me based on "missing privileges" when I tried to set it up on a "real" server, and nobody knew what those privileges were needed for in the first place.)

The graphical interface (shops, inventory, login screens, etc.) could possibly be revised a little, to look a bit better.. if possible, maybe we could focus on getting some "basic" graphics somewhere. I know from experience that free-to-use graphics for games is a bitch to find, but it might be worth looking into because the whole program will look much more attractive and promising with it.

These are just my two cents on the matter and please don't take anything the wrong way. The project does look promising, but I think it's a little.. intimidating at first glance, and the demo probably doesn't do it justice.

I know the demo content sucks and needs to be improved, but that is one of the things I am leaving up to the users. If I spend my time making the engine look pretty, then there are less places that others can help out, and less work gets done on the core engine.

As for the setup, I tried to make it pretty simple and fool-proof. That is why the InstallationValidator is there. Only thing I can think of even a bit challenging is setting up MySQL, but even that is pretty simple and linear in many cases (unless you run into an issue during installing it, which I can't do anything about) and is required to even run most things.

The GUI falls under the same thing as paragraph one.

Intimidating? Hell yes. I am not denying that in the slightest bit. Just waiting for others to chip in and help out with that aspect. Until then, NetGore's community will not expand very much since most people will be scared off or confused then just shrug the engine off. But I think that all will start to change a lot when people start making their own games with it. As people use the engine, they'll quickly become better at and more comfortable with changing stuff. Hopefully, this will lead to people doing more minor commits to the engine and tasks like improving the demo game will be less daunting since they know how to do all the content-related changes.

I see the point. Now, I wasn't really directing my post towards you in particular, it was more a kind of.. answer to the topic itself - what needs to be done.

The GUI is something I can't help with unless you'd like an even worse-looking one. Graphics hunting is also out, apparently I suck at that too. To be honest, I don't even know where to look.

As for the rest... well, I would like nothing more than to help, both because I'm kinda bored these days and because I could use any coding experience I can, AND because these "online RPG systems" have fascinated me for a long time. (Anybody remember "Konfuze"?)

The problem is that I get the feeling that some of the code is.. a little over my head at the moment. In addition, there are simpler things to get acquainted with than a code base spanning almost 5 500 files.

By the way; does this project have an IRC channel?

Nope, no IRC channel. Maybe when there is more users.

"Understanding vbGore" no doubts about that. I started to understand vbGore following simple tutorials on the wiki, and after some time I could do some things for my game... well, the game wasn't released because we (me and the other dev) had (and we are going to keep having when vacation is over) some free time problems.
But we don't feel like advancing on the engine anyway, because we don't even have the idea on how to do anything, and there was some bad problems with vbgore (lag) so we don't want to start to use it again.

I agree with the demogame thing too. It's not really the demogame, but the very first impression that netgore had wasn't really good. On top-down mode the NPCs get over you (someone already reported this AI problem on another topic) and the editors feels unfinished.

NetGore looks like it's great, but it's "unfinished" I think, there are many minor problems that need fixing or tweaking before it's really useable. But the base seems really solid, I would not expect less from Spodi anyway.

Sorry for the bad english. Oh, I will put it on my signature xD.

Hi everyone,i'm kinda new here ^^

how about
making the chat service separate from the game server, since you will often need chat to span across the entire world (PMs from one user to another, for example).
it will make a significant gain of the server resources .
it would be perfect if you code it so it can be hosted in a web server.

That'd be unnecessary as you could just use a IRC channel then, no use in making a separate ChatServer. As for the PMs I don't see why you can't have that in the GameServer as vbGore did that. Also, what do you mean by entire worlds? Unless you have shell access to your web server forget about running applications on there

i think he is referring to cross-server actions (such as PMs)

Again, not like anyone will even need 2 servers anytime soon

Yeah, clustered server support is something I am going to hold off on until people actually need it. Most indy developers have a hard time committing to paying for a VPS, while a clustered server would require you having at least two dedicated servers which would run into hundreds per month. You'd be better off creating different world instances (many games just call them "servers") around the world so people can choose a closer location.