Hello,
I am 24-year-old computer science student from Czech Republic. My focus of study is computer graphics because I've always loved PC games, especially The Elder Scrolls series, Pokémon etc. My dream has always been to make, or participate on making a similar game.
My goal here is to find similar people who would like to create a text RPG engine that would be inspired by TES games. I'm no fool and I know we're not making a new TES game, I would just like to take inspiration as there are no such games out there. We should first discuss things, make some concepts, get ideas together (already have some). Then we would move on to making an engine for world simulation, combat etc., and finally we would get to making the content. The engine would also allow other creators to make their own content, mods etc. I know it's tons and tons of work but I'd like to start the project and maybe get some more people involved if it goes well.
I already have some ideas, also started writing some code - it's harder than I thought but we might be able to do that. By dropping graphics, sounds, physics and precise motion we would get rid of a LOOOOT of technical problems so that we could focus on game mechanics and content. The basic thoughts are:
- Command line interface, one executable file, minimum ASCII graphics, no colored text, the game should play like an interactive book, but should provide extreme freedom and large number of things to do - you could go anywhere, attack anyone, read books, inspect objects etc.
- Large World consisting of locations connected by paths, basically a mathematical graph. Player moves between them with 'go' command, no more moving within the location.
- There would be objects in locations such as NPCs, items, interactive objects etc.
- Unique NPCs, like in Skyrim, each one having it's own place in the world, daily routines, AI, dialog etc.
- Quests, simple scripting.
- Turn-based combat, in combat mode you would see all NPCs in given location, each one marked as "ally", "enemy", or "neutral", you could attack any of them, they could also attack anyone else.
- Philosophy: KISS, C++ (or Python) => multiplatform, open-source, free, no money, no resource files, no fancy sounds and graphics, just code
I guess we might give it a try at least. If we succeed, it might be the best command-line game in the world I guess 
Contact me if you wanna join.
tastyfish@seznam.cz
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