Nevera
From Gamedev.org wiki
Nevera, or Project Nevera, is an experimental, open-source game development project initiated by Juho 'Sylph' Hartikainen. Nevera is also the name of the fictional world the playing will take place in. To ensure that contributing new ideas, concept art, technical solutions etc. would be easy enough, the project's design document exists as a wiki database.
If you have any ideas concerning the game, don't hesitate to add them (http://www.gamedev.org/wiki/index.php?title=Nevera&action=edit) to the document. Any help is greatly appreciated.
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Project Nevera - Design document
Project overview
Project Nevera is an experimental game development project. The primary objective is to create an online role playing game that is focused on actual, realistic role playing, such as interacting with other characters, having a reasonable income from some sort of a job, being able to interact with almost every single object in the game etc.
Economy
The game aims to be as free as possible. Thus, the developers should not seek commercial profit from the project - they are rather encouraged to support open-source movement and contributing.
Target group
Due to possible violence and mature situations, the people who play the game should be at least 12 years old. The game is meant equally for both sexes.
Current project status
The game is in it's designing stage and thus doesn't yet exist in any playable form. After the design document's technical side seems to be complete, the actual programming may begin.
Gameplay
There is virtually no point in the game, to be blunt. The gaming experience lies mainly on social relations and living in the gaming world through the character â that is, role playing is the main catch. There are numerous skills to develop, though, but they practically play no important role in the game (unless one wants them to, as everyone can play the game how they like, of course). Thus, the game's primary strength is freedom; The objective is to give the player a chance to make the character live exactly the way s/he wants it to live. Thus, one is not destined to become a battling hero, but s/he can alternatively become a salesman, a woodcutter, a builder â basically anything one likes.
Controls
The user can alter the controls is s/he wishes so. The controls can be changed quite freely, and there are a number of options that the user can change. The different controlling types are as follows:
- Click: activated and deactivated when the button is pressed down
- Press: activated when the button is pressed down, deactivated when the button is released
- Toggle: activated when the button is pressed once, deactivated when the button is pressed again
- Chain: activated when the button is pressed repeatedly, deactivated when the repeated pressing ends
Control configurations can be saved to a file and loaded as control profiles. The default controls are as follows:
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Experience
Experience is divided into groups. When the character uses some of his/her skills, the experience s/he gains from the act affects all the groups that the act belongs to (for example, if the character walks and gains, say, 100 experience points from that, he gets 100 walking experience points, 100 leg experience points, 100 moving experience points and so on). Moreover, when the character walks, an average is calculated from the experience of the groups used, and the average defines the actual experience of the current activity.
The groups form a directed acyclic graph (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_acyclic_graph), a sort of a tree structure with no absolute hierarchy (a similar architecture to Wikipedia categories (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories)). The tree only contains activities that are dependent on the character's experience; the social skills, for example, are completely left for the player to maintain.
Magic
Nevera is a magical place, and magic is widely used across the lands of it. In general, magic is any activity that has something to do with spirits or psychic powers - phenomena which would in our world be considered paranormal. Yet almost everyone in Nevera has at some point seen or used magic, so it's not considered very unnatural in the gaming world, even though the explanations for the phenomena vary. Some consider it a work of spirits, others of gods; some think it's somehow related to telepathic powers, and there are even those who deny the existence of 'magic' alltogether.
'Psi' is a psychic material that is used to form thoughts and concentrate them on something. For example, when one is under stress and can't properly concentrate on anything because of loads of things to do, that is because psi, the power of the mind, is divided into many different processes. Meditation can be utilised to control one's psi and to gather it. The state of the mind when there is only one thought in one's head (i.e. the psi is in one piece) is called 'nirvana'. However, this is very difficult, if not even impossible to achieve. Yet meditating makes nevertheless one feel relieved because the mind is becoming tighter.
Features
The game tries to 'guess' the default object that the player wants to interact with, and what s/he wants to do with it. If the guess is wrong, the player can alternatively choose another object that is in his view. For example, if the character is standing in front of a table that has a pint of rum (yarr!) on top of it, the default object would probably be the pint. If the player pushes the action button, the character takes the pint in his/her hand, that is, does the most likely option. When the player then pushes the button again, the character drinks the rum, following the code again. But what if the player wanted to lift the table and start a racket? The player pushes and holds the action button down for a moment, and s/he is given control of the mouse cursor, which the player can then use to select the object s/he wants to interact with. If the default mouse button (probably the left one) is used, the character takes the default action to the object that had been selected; if the secondary mouse button (probably the right one, respectively) is used, the player is given a menu from which s/he can pick the desired action. This feature should both make normal gameplay actions possible (such as opening doors, talking to people etc.), and still allow more complex and creative actions (such as kicking doors, kissing people etc.) without making the action system too difficult to use.
Technical side
- If you know anything about programming languages, 3D engines or anything that fits here, please contribute anything from raw ideas to polished plans!
Programming languages
- This section is short. Please add to it (http://www.gamedev.org/wiki/index.php?title=Nevera&action=edit).
C++, Python.
Graphics engine
The engine should be able to support simultaneous cel-shading and realistic 3D rendering. Engines that just might do the trick:
- OGRE 3D (http://www.ogre3d.org/) - An open source real time 3D rendering engine
Features
The game will be cross-platform, working at least on Windows, Mac and Linux.
The game should be built so that contributing would be as easy as possible â that is, if one wants to alter a language pack, for example, s/he doesn't have to access the whole source code of the game, but is treated with a user-friendier solution, such as an independent text file or so.
Graphics
The overall look of the game is cartoonish. The engine supports both cel-shading and realistic rendering, character dialogues appear in comic-like balloons, and the screen is by default clean from any health bars, experience meters, message boxes, equipment menus and alike. The thing is to minimise any things that might interfere with the game's world, so that the playing experience would be deeper.
Engine
The game features both a cel-shading graphics engine and a normal 3D graphics engine. Basically, all the interactive objects are rendered using cel-shading, while the static environment is made to look realistic with regular 3D graphics. The thing would be to have the game look like a hand-drawn animation (or, in some cases, comic) as much as possible. Therefore the cel-shading engine also has to support edges, i.e. the black ink lines.
There are exceptions to how objects should be rendered in practice, though. For example, doors normally look realistic, but when the player interacts with them (say, tries to open one), the moving door handle first transforms into a cel-shaded one, and if the player gets the door open, the door transforms into a cel-shaded one, too. When the door stops moving, it transforms back to normal. If the player somehow manages to break a corner from a stone wall, the stones that chip off are cel-shaded, while the corner remains normally rendered; and when the loose stones stop moving and set into place to the ground, they gradually transform into normal again. There are numerous little things like these. Usually, if a cel-shaded model transforms into a normal one, they fade out gradually, so the transformation is smooth â yet the transformation from normal to cel-shaded doesn't last long.
Procedural building
The world is built using reference material. This means, for example, that the original 3D models can use NURBS curves, textures can be exported from originally 3D modeled surfaces or objects, 3D models can be exported to sprites, and so on. This increases the possibilities of the game being played in both older and future machines, without making the overall look greatly different. This doesn't mean models need to use curves, or that regular textures couldn't be used, this is just a glimpse to the future. There's also a limit on, for example, how much the vertices of a specific model can be reduced, of course.
Perspective
The player can choose between three different perspectives:
- First person perspective is the perspective that the character sees.
- Third person perspective is the perspective that is viewed from behind the character. It is explained in-game as a 'soul view'.
- Second person perspective is a combination of first and third person perspectives. While third person perspective enables the player to see the whole character, second person is limited to viewing the character's head and shoulders.
Spiriters can learn to produce an out-of-body experience, which has a fisheye-like perspective and where the character can temporarily leave it's body and observe the surroundings as an invisible soul. However, souls can see each other. They look like glass balls (size of a human head) with flame coronas to each other. The flames' colors and visibility may vary.
Features
The object that the character is currently interacting with has a thicker outer border than other objects.
There's also a directing option (similar to Driver's Film Director feature), which makes it possible for the player to capture game states, modify cameras and export the finished clips into some commonly known video file types (.avi or .mpeg, perhaps). These 'demos' can of course be saved in a format that the game understands.
Audio
Music
The game features looping environment music encoded in .ogg format. The player can turn the music off if s/he wishes so. The musical genres can vary between New Age, symphonic, folk, ethnic, and other similar authentic styles.
Sound effects
If you are interested in recording or donating free sound effects for the game, tell us.
Features
See Voice messages.
Communication
Text messages
Text messages appear in comic-like balloons above the currently speaking person. The messages are encoded in UTF-8 in order to make sure all letters appear as they should.
Voice messages
Besides text messaging, players can also utilise the game's voice communication feature. When using it, a sound effect sawline (think of a half sun halo) is drawn around the speaking character to represent the one who is talking. Depending on the loudness of the speech, the sawline may shrink or grow during speaking. Also, the distance between the speaker and the player who is receiving the message, the angle from which the sound comes from, any interfering obstacles etc. all affect the volume and the sawline's size, therefore making it theoretically more realistic to communicate between other players. There of course would be lots of people using an independent voice communicating software in background, but... well, it can be considered telepathy in-game. ;) But really, what are you anyway going to do about it.
Emotions
The player can also affect on how the character makes different faces and gestures in order for the communication to be richer. They can choose the desired emotion from a list, or type the emotion's name to a text field.
The gaming world
Time
In Nevera, time goes six times faster than in our world â that is, an hour in Nevera lasts ten minutes in the real world, one day and night in Nevera last four hours, and so on. The calendar also differs from an ordinary one. In Nevera, a week consists of five days, of which three are working days and the rest is a weekend. A year in Nevera lasts two months in reality, no matter what the months are, which means years can have a varied number of days in them.
Lana (the smaller moon, see the Space section below for details) also changes it's color regularly, which is yet to explain. Some of the months' names originate from the color of Lana's. The names of the months are:
- Sapphira, named after the bluish color of Lana;
- Dreamember, named after a ceremony of sleeping celebrated by humans;
- Rougest, named after the reddish color of Lana;
- Elfien, named after a festival of vitality celebrated by elves;
- Lumember, named after the warm and bright shine of the sun, Fahr;
- Amber, named after the yellowish color of Lana;
- Leafary, named after a leaf festival celebrated by dwarves;
- Emera, named after the greenish color of Lana; and
- Gnomember, named after a christmas festival celebrated by gnomes.
The different gaming servers of Nevera are explained in-game as different timelines.
Space
The universe of the game differs from a normal one. In the center of the universe there is a huge black hole, which mainly controls the gravity of everything. Every planet and planetoid rotates around the black hole, while suns, moons etc. rotate around the planets and planetoids.
The game itself is set in a peaceful, magical fantasy world called Nevera. It is a stalagmite-shaped planetoid (imagine a mountain upside down) which rotates around the black hole its tip pointing to the black hole. So, the world really has its edges. Yet all planetoids are definitely not like Nevera; there also exist pancake shaped planetoids, actual round planets (without an individually functioning gravity, though), formless asteroid chunks and so on. Nevera is also not the only planetoid to carry life forms, but let's leave this subject for the time being as the Neverans are completely unaware of any extraterrestial beings and space invaders will most likely not act an important role in the game, for now at least.
Nevera has two moons of which the bigger one is named Omni while the smaller is called Lana. The sun is called Fahr, and it's size and distance from Nevera is quite the same as Lana's. The moons and the sun are all round and orbit Nevera regularly. Lana looks the same size as our own Moon, and Omni is about 5 times bigger than Lana. Omni is only seen at night, while Lana circles around Nevera every seven Neveran hours.
Existence
Anyone can temporarily disappear from the world of Nevera (which is the in-game explanation for the logging in and out -phenomenon). When a person disappears like this, his/her body starts to glow, all the way to being completely white, and then transforming into a star that shoots up in the sky. While some spiriters suggest that it is in one way of another related to the spiritual world, scientists has yet to explain the phenomenon. By concentrating, a person is able to erase his/her material body from the world of Nevera, and come back when s/he wants. This requires some time and concentration, however, so it's not possible for a person to disappear during an intense battle which requires great focusing (though this ability, among many others, is improvable to a certain extent).
Religion
Spirits are known to exist. They represent the players, because thanks to them, the characters can make decisions and have free will. So basically, the real world we currently live in is a spiritual world to those living in Nevera. Some think that every living thing possesses one, while others think only humans have a spirit. There are numerous other religious views to the topic, though.
Psychic or spiritual powers (depending on the point of view) is commonly known as 'psi'. Spiriters are people who use psi to boost their movements, create various materia and so on. They are the same as magicians, but they are taken far more seriously, because magic's existence is common knowledge, and it's powers are known to be great.
Lands
Nevera is divided into continents that differ from each other. In general, they could be considered different stereotypes of high fantasy, but not in a humorous sense. So, there could for example be a dark, gothic land with vampires and stuff; far somewhere else a tropical island with beautiful sceneries, crystal-clear water and exotic vegetation; a land of castles at war, and so on.
Gryphia
Gryphia is a continent of great castles and kingdoms. It is also the most technologically advanced area in Nevera â coal engines, airships and such were developed there, and it's the most popular place for scientists to live in mainly because of the great libraries found throughout the country. Gryphia's capital is Palidia, which is a gigantic castle city surrounded by a stone wall. The actual castle where a king lives is in the center, and it's surrounded by the castle garden that is open for all. The people live in the inner ring of the city. Basically, the nearer you go to the castle, the more you see vegetation. The middle ring is mostly industrial, and the king's royal military trains in the outer ring surrounded by the city's stone wall. There are of course guards in the castle too, but most of the military force is located on the outskirts of the city in order to protect it from harm.
Science
In general, there isn't controllable electricity in Nevera. Though some scientists are working on it, none of them has really accomplished anything useful so far. Industrialism is rising in some parts of the world, and airships are starting to make their appearance to the public. Some castles feature factories and such things, but the technology isn't yet available for normal people.
Mathematics
People in Nevera have only four fingers in one hand. This has resulted in widespread usage of the octal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octal) (8-base) numeral system.
Version History
The old version history that covers up the stages before the document was converted to wiki can be accessed here (http://sylph.neonaspect.com/projects/nevera/vhistory.html). If you'd like to see the editing history of the wiki document, click the History button below.
