Here are the videos of my presentation at GEEX. I broke it into smaller parts so you could watch in sections, or just the sections that interest you.


How to Make Your Own Game - Part 1 - Intro from Erik Briggs on Vimeo.


How To Make Your Own Game - Part 2 - My Background from Erik Briggs on Vimeo.


How To Make Your Own Game - Part 3 - Project Wish from Erik Briggs on Vimeo.


How To Make Your Own Game - Part 4 - Set Your Sights from Erik Briggs on Vimeo.


How To Make Your Own Game - Part 5 - Take Action from Erik Briggs on Vimeo.


How To Make Your Own Game - Part 6 - The Process from Erik Briggs on Vimeo.

P.S. Anyone who wants to help clean up the audio, let me know. I know its hideous at the moment.

Last post made by: Jerky on Aug 12 2008, 03:38 PM

Well, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, today was the big day. I will refrain from writing my thoughts here, so expect that as a blog entry. There were quite a few requests to see my presentation, so I will start with a PDF file of it. In the near future, I will release video (most likely edited into segments) that anyone interested can download and watch. Because I spoke for an hour and 45 minutes, I don't think I want to release the whole video as one entire file, since nobody would be willing to bore themselves that much in one sitting .

Here is a link to the file, as promised:
http://www.projectwish.com/How_to_make_your_own_game.pdf

The file itself is very graphic intensive (I put a lot of our best art into it), so I apologize ahead of time. It is around 11MB.

I'd like to thank all those involved in helping me prep. I would also like to say thank you to GEEX for letting me share my experiences and knowledge with them. It was very fun for me.

Stay tuned for the video.

Last post made by: Jerky on Jul 19 2008, 06:31 PM

While PWOgreBox is new, and releasing today, PWToolBox is now also at 1.0 as well.



Description:
PWOgreBox is a cross-platform API providing common functionality for Ogre projects. Currently the project only consists of a wxWidgets control for embedding Ogre into. We will be adding to this library in the future, as our project requires it.

Features:
The current version, PWOgreBox 1.0, has the following features:

• Cross-platform (Windows and Linux) wxWidgets control for embedding Ogre into.
• Supports multiple controls and scenes
• Independent and adjustable update rate per control.
• Pause and unpause rendering independently of other controls
• Listener interface for hooking into key events
• Calculates relative mouse motion and lets you know through the listener interface
• Multiple listeners per control
• Gives you access to the scene manager, camera, and viewport of the control.
• Provides a static getHandleAsString function which takes a pointer to a wxWindow and returns the platform-specific string representation of the handle, which is used as the value of externalWindowHandle. This is used internally but is also great for creating a hidden primary render window.

Documentation:
Doxygen documentation can be found here:
http://www.projectwish.com/pwogrebox/doxygen/html

You can also visit the dedicated forum for PWOgreBox located here:
http://www.projectwish.com/index.php?showforum=586

License:
PWOgreBox is licensed under the LGPL v2.1 license, with an optional unrestrictive license. We do not currently offer the unrestrictive license, but will expedite it if requested. If you are interested in an unrestricted license, contact: contact@projectwish.com.

How can you help?
Besides spreading the word, you can help us out by heading over to our forums and report any bugs you come across. We're also looking for linux package developers to make packages for us. Contact us if you can help.

Download:
Download here.

Who's using PWOgreBox?
We're interested to find out, so let us know.

Other Software:
You may also be interested in our other software products, located at http://www.projectwish.com/index.php?act=d...at&cat_id=4

To accompany this release of PWOgreBox, PWToolBox 1.0 has also been released. It is not required to use PWOgreBox.

Last post made by: Jerky on Jul 13 2008, 09:07 PM

Next month I am going to speak at an upcoming GEEX (Gaming & Electronics Expo) here in Utah. The topic will be about hobbyist game development:



I have a 2-hour time slot to fill, and plan on sharing all my experience from the last 3.5 years working on Project Wish. It should be beneficial to anyone interested in making games and breaking into the industry. I will cover all aspects of development, and try to be informative for people interested in doing things alone, or with a large group, like we are. I hope to convey that the most important parts to "hobbyist" development are dedication, motivation and learning. I also plan on covering Project Management, Art and Artistic Pipeline, Design, and more.

Anyone who is close to Salt Lake City, Utah and might be interested can go check out the conference at:
http://www.geexshow.com
I am officially scheduled on Saturday, July 19th at 12:00PM

I'd love to meet anyone who is able to come. Wish me luck!

Last post made by: greendots on Jun 29 2008, 09:04 PM

We are pleased to finally announce the official release of PWToolBox to the public. This has been a long time in the making and means a lot to the project as a whole. Despite busy schedules, a lot of effort has gone into this portion of the project. Here is a little bit of information about PWToolBox if you don't already know what it is.

Description:
PWToolBox is a cross-platform API providing common functionality for software. Although PWToolBox is part of the Project Wish software family, it is suitable for all types of software projects.

Flavors:
Both Win32 and Linux SDK's

Features:
The current version, PWToolBox 1.0, has the following features:

• Extendable configuration support that uses streams for reading and writing. Two readers and writers are provided for you, allowing you to use INI or XML formatted configurations.
• Commonly used exceptions deriving from std::exception.
• Some Math functions we've found helpful in other projects
• Memory management functions to help when you can't or don't want to use smart pointers.
• Portable Plugin Manager capable of dynamically loading libraries that derive from the Plugin interface.
• A high-precision timer to measure elapsed time, providing at least microsecond precision.
• UID Generator. A lightweight object that helps when generating unique names.
• Version Information utility using the major.minor.maitenence[.revision] [<build type>] version numbers, with support for comparing versions.
• Singleton base class.
• Python bindings

Documentation
Doxygen documentation can be found here:
http://www.projectwish.com/pwtoolbox/doxygen/html
You can also visit the dedicated forum for PWToolBox located here:
http://www.projectwish.com/index.php?showforum=581

License
PWToolBox is licensed under the LGPL v2.1 license, with an optional unrestrictive license. We do not currently offer the unrestrictive license, but will expedite it if requested. If you are interested in an unrestricted license, contact: contact@projectwish.com.

Roadmap
Version 1.1 Features

• Optional thread-safe support.
• Dataports
• Non-intrusive property layers
• Metadata
• Logging

How can you help?
Besides spreading the word, you can help us out by heading over to our forums and report any bugs you come across. We're also looking for linux package developers to make packages for us. Contact us if you can help.

Download:
Both the Win32 and the Linux files can be found here, at our download page:
http://www.projectwish.com/index.php?act=d...at&cat_id=6

We encourage you to try it out if you are a programmer. We are eager to get some feedback and also find out who is using it.

We would also like to welcome back Ghedipunk to the Development Team. He has made his way back to working on PW after about a year off, and we are very excited to have him back to begin cooking up some tasty code.

Last post made by: Jerky on Jun 15 2008, 02:25 PM

Well, its time for an update, so I figured its time to let some of the stuff out of the bag. We have continuing to make consistent progress on all aspects of the game, and hope to be able to share more in upcoming updates. The PWToolbox library is truly approaching a public release. That will be a part of our game engine that plays an important part, so is important to the game. It's not a glamorous thing, like screenshots would be, but is important nonetheless.

On all other fronts, from story, to world, to music, to art, to design, we are also making good progress. I've mentioned in the past that we have been working on the design more officially now than ever before. I took on the role of "Lead Designer" a little while back so that we could get some official and proper design going. So, to prove that I have actually been working on just that, I am going to do something crazy and release a small part of our design. Our High Concept is a document meant to outline the main ideas of the "design" we have documented thus far. We have never been shy about the fact that we are insanely ambitious, so this completely falls under that same scope.

I will preface it with the disclaimer that none of the features for this game are "locked" in, or permanent. Anything is still subject to change, but at least you should be able to get a sense of what our goals are. I will also say that there might be mistakes, and there definitely will be misunderstandings. The High concept document is meant to be fairly vague, but for those of you who knew about Wish, and other MMO's, you might be able to glean quite a fair amount about the direction of the game PW is to become. So, without further ado, here is PW's High Concept:

The World
Economy
High Concept - Simulation-based money flow based on supply and demand. NPC interaction to meet supply needs.

• Custom player made objects
• Player run businesses - NPC's can be hired to run a storefront
• Player built housing (House, Guild Halls, Towns, Cities) - players must buy deeds to land they want to build on
• Market for trading items (Auction)
• Banking and item storage
• Currencies between races
• Taxation in local government.
• Gambling - Arena PvP

Environment
High Concept - A living world that creates danger & adventure, rekindling the lost feeling of exploration and discovery.

• Climate and weather systems that effect your character's performance.
• Visually changing seasons.
• Ingrained world magic system.
• Dynamic quest creation for solo or group play. These areas would be more like custom areas than instances. Which would be open via portals.
• Zoneless and Shardless world up to 100,000 users online.

Monsters
High Concept - AI driven monsters adapt to changes in areas and seek to thrive where best suited.

• Intelligent monster - Smart co-operation.
• Smart spawning - Spawns will take place where players are not, minimizing the feeling of "spawns" taking place
• Monster activities - Need, story and resource driven
• Permadeath - kill off a species. Some species can be killed off from an area. An alternate species might arise elsewhere in the world with a different name.

Movement

• Mounts
• Flight
• Boat - river and oceanic.
• Encumbrance - Weight based
• Rare and controlled Instant travel via portal stones
• Caravan

Social
High Concept - Create cause and effect of a players actions in the world

• Kingdoms - rule over provincial areas
• City Faction - system for roleplaying depth
• Guild System - Profession-based and player made
• Ethical Decisions (Karma, Reputation, Notoriety) - Everything you do has a consequence

Time

• Day and Night cycles
• Seasonal cycles

Logic
The logic behind the game revolves around principles of Reality.

• Logical game play.
• Things should make sense for a fantasy world, not necessarily realism.

Characters
Appearance
High Concept - A unique look chosen by the player.
Players will be able to modify the following features on their avatars for 50,000 plus, different looks.

• Face Map (5 different face maps, per race, per sex = 10)
• Face Mesh (5 different face Mesh, per race, per sex = 10)
• Skin tone (5 different skin tones per race)
• Hair design (5 different hair mesh per race, per sex = 10)
• Race (5 different races = 5)
• Sex (2 different sexes = 2)
• Scale (build: skin fat)
• Any name, even taken ones.

Development
High Concept - Character development that dosen't lock you into a choice of gameplay.

• Race pre-defined Attributes.
• Talents available to each race.
• Skill tree system with branching specialties

Game Play Features
Combat

• Magical
• Melee
• Siege/Warfare
• Move recorder/creator at higher skill levels

Crafting
High Concept - A crafting system that greatly effects the economy

• Working on a particular craft to gain skill
• Make items to sell
• Research new combinations of resources while making items

Customizing
High concept - Give players more opportunity to make things they way they want

• Changing the GUI interface to suit their needs/playstyle
• Building a home or building for their use
• Decorating the inside of a player-owned structure
• Changing your character's appearance
• Customizing the look of accessories (armor, cloaks, hats, etc)
• Creating custom in-game Macros for player actions (combat, defense, spell casting).
• Scripting offline movements, actions, and jobs. You can travel while offline, and more

Death
High Concept - Death should mean something, and not be a minor inconvenience. Players will never "die" in the game, unless they choose it. The only death ever experienced will be permanent. Instead, players will be knocked unconcsious and need to be healed via other means. There will be no resurrection spells, like in other games.

Economy
High Concept - In depth and complicated economy to give the players enough to stay busy and never monopolize anything

• Selling
• Buying
• Money changing
• Setting up vendors - To sell or acquire items for you
• Managing shipments -using caravans
• Running a business -vendors, protection for hire, etc
• Managing your NPC group of players who can be harvesting, crafting or training

Exploration

• Treasure hunting, geocaching
• Map making - charting territory unknown to you
• Golden goblin idea
• Charting the sea for new areas, new discoveries

Managing

• Guild and town leaders
• Your hired help (vendors, gatherers, etc)
• Caravans
• Trade guild
• Harbor master

Player vs Environment
High Concept - Exploration and adventure solo, grouped or raided

• Exploration and cartography
• Languages between races

Player vs Player
High Concept - A system in which PvP is encouraged using story and world events

• Gladiator system - co-operative or solo competition winning the player fame, recognition and money
• Sieging system - guild v guild or town v town battles
• Warfare system - kingdom v kingdom and faction-based battles envolving the story
• Contested areas allowing open PvP regardless of other factors
• 1 v 1 arenas for settling small disputes
• Mercenary for hire - Selling your services to other kingdoms or factions who are at war
• Battle commander - Sieges or warfare
• Thieving skills - Actually being able to steal, lockpick, backstab, and more.

Questing

• Random Quests - made by NPC/quest generator based on the answers you give to the NPC's questions
• Group Quests - for towns/guilds/groups - story or world based
• Solo Quests - Local quests from NPC's
• Epic Quests - Multi-layered quest system
• Story Quests - Live story events that guide players, kingdoms, factions, etc into a certain direction
• Player-made Quests - Bounties, Gathering items, finding needed items, Protection quests (with or without caravans)

Researching
High concept - Crafters can learn new ways of making/modifying goods, towns can improve their power/defenses

• Learning new, unknown or rare patterns for new items/looks for craftable items
• Technological researching - Learning how to make newer, better boats, to travel farther out into sea to explore
• Town researching for new technologies - town defenses, weapons, powers

Skills & Training Sandbox

• Working on your skills to get them higher
• Training with trainers
• Creating custom moves, combinations via the move editor interface

Storyline

• Town, region, world storylines directing events
• Local effects, Kingdom-level effects, Global effects

Others
Out of game character records and achievements.

Last post made by: Jerky on Apr 14 2008, 02:11 AM

So far this year we've been lean, but have been more productive than ever. What we mean by lean is that we technically have less on the team than we have in the past, but those numbers are meaningless when compared to the actual output. We picked up a few new writers over the past few months who have been working miracles on the new world. The three latest are Areena, Brotoi and Miguel. You can see the new world map below in the Anniversary update, which has now been divided up into chunks, and our writers are each working on set areas. Hopefully in the upcoming months, we will be able to start releasing more detailed story and race information, along with a more detailed version of the world map. You can see their blogs on the left, which they have been writing to share little tidbits and insights about what they are working on.

At the same time, our programmers are still putting in strong work. On the server side, we have an initial prototype up and running that is simulating thousands of connections for testing. While we are still a ways from having a working client / server, this is promising progress. Along with that, our engine design has added a component-based approach that should allow for easy refactoring and simple addition of entities into the world. This is the base that will work behind the scenes to categorize all the assets that will be dropped into the world. With this in place, work on Dwarf has finally been resumed, which will be our roadmap toward Dwarf 2.0. Dwarf 2 will be the tool we want for the future of the project, a tool that can do all the work to edit the world, from tweaking items, to editing the terrrain and the textures on it.

The PWToolbox has also received some new features as well. We were approaching a public release when we found something new that needed adding. We will release more information in the future about PWToolbox, but we anticipate it being very helpful to anyone programming a video game usine C++. It will be a library of useful items that most game engines need.

Now, as far as art goes, things have slowed down, but that is not a bad thing. Over the years we have had a high turnover in all areas, but especially in the Art department. One of the main contributing factors has been the lack of story and design. Artists can't work on art when there is nothing to draw from. There has always been a lack of things to do, so artists have had to be creative and keep themselves busy working on mundane props, etc. This is all changing. With the writers detailing areas of the world, they are coming up with lists and lists of people, places, props, and so on that are becoming the assignments for future artists. Moreover, we have learned that even when there were assignments to do, its best to have plenty of them, as artists get burned out on one item, and like to jump between tasks to keep themselves fresh and motivated. Having been around for three years, we have noticed the patterns and what can make a more efficient team. What this means is, at this point, we are holding off on recruiting new artists until the world descriptions and design areas are more complete.

Did I mention design? I sure did. One of the number one items of feedback we have received over the years is that new people (that have never heard of Wish) have no idea what PW is. For them it is not enough to just be a project trying to recreate the feeling of a game they have never heard of. Their feedback, along with the obvious needs for direction for artists and writers, have led us officially work on completing the design for the game. Eventually, this will also lead to an official game name, and a change from Project Wish, but until that happens, we will continue to remain Project Wish. With this in mind, the page "About PW" in the menu has changed from under contruction to actually holding some real information. At this point, its still vague, but it is a step in the right direction. In the next couple of months, we will be slowly "finalizing" most of the design goals of this project. That will lead to much better direction and goals for the project as a whole, and should also help visitors to know exactly what PW is and what we are about without having to dig through three years worth of forum posts.

All this new information is going to need a cleaner and more intuitive website. It just so happens that we are working on new website, which we have been calling "PW2.0" internally. This should be a better site in all regards, and should also show off some of the concept art which we have been working on.

So, to sum up what you can expect in the upcoming months:

• An official gameplay feature list and a page devoted to some of the items therein.
• Some areas of the map being announced with details on what one could expect.
• A large and beautiful map of the new world we designed.
• PWToolbox should be released to the public for all the programmers looking for quality libraries for their game engines.
• A new website, including a totally new look and feel that will better represent the vision we have for PW.

Hope you keep checking in on us!

-PW Development Team

Last post made by: Maxwell on Mar 8 2008, 08:55 AM

If anyone cares, or noticed, the PW server was just upgraded and was down for a number of hours today/last night. It is now back up and should provide us with a more stable platform.

An update post will follow soon with news of our recent progress.

Thanks!

Last post made by: Jerky on Feb 29 2008, 02:15 PM

So its been a little while since the last update, but once again, that doesn't mean we haven't been working. Despite the team ever shrinking (and growing) with the ebb and flow of real life, progress continues, as always.

I realize we have been pretty closed in regards to sharing some things, and that is because we want to keep our standards of quality as high as possible. Many of the following files are not okayed for final work, but deserve to be shared nonetheless so fans and newcomers alike can see some of the work the PW Team has been working on this past year.

With pipeline designs, design documents, and programming work, which can't be shown at this time, we have a lot of miscelaneous pieces of art that make up the progress that the team has made, and is making.

The following are listed by category:
Animations




Modeling


Concepts





Techdemo Screenshots




And, not to be outdone, the Programming team does have quite a bit to show for. Our SVN just hit 491 commits, which to anyone using SVN knows that is not a small number. Our Server team has some prototyping going with some spatial partitioning, and our client team has made some serious progress with the tech demo and the engine-core as well. We will release more information later this year, but the PW Toolbox library is close to being releasable to C++ programmers who may be interested in a toolbox library for game engines.

Along with that, our story team has been hard at work creating some race ideas that will eventually be crafted into an official playable races list. We have also redone our map, as you can see above, and more details will follow outlining what you are seeing there.

We have been working hard and hope to continue that trend. We hope you continue to visit us and give us support. We have not given up on the dream and are very excited about our prospects for 2008. Expect to see MUCH MORE from us this year.

Last post made by: effigydrums on Jan 16 2008, 01:54 PM

Check the Annoucements forum for information on the new irc server. Essentially, you now should try to connect to projectwish.com on port 8067. The old server (irc.projectwish.com) will remain up and linked to the new one for as long as possible, but its connection has been flakey lately.

Also, you can use the IRC client built in to the site (http://www.projectwish.com/index.php?automodule=javairc) if you are having troubles so you can connect. It has been modified to connect to the new server.
[update]
Looks like our VPS (server we rent) doesn't allow irc, even on non-standard ports. IRC is back on irc.projectwish.com until further notice. Sorry for the inconvenience.

As far as progress goes, we have a lot of little things that are making substantial progress. I don't have the time to outline them right now, but we have some Christmas and/or Anniversary (Jan. 11, 2008) updates planned that should be exciting.

Stay tuned!

Last post made by: Jerky on Dec 21 2007, 10:36 PM