Unreal Engine 3 is now also free. I guess you can’t get much better than that if you know/can learn its programming language. Now you can make an Unreal Tournament 3 mod that doesn’t actually require people to own that game, it can be freely distributed as a stand alone free game (more or less, I doubt they actually include UT3 assets for free use, you’d have to make all textures etc from the ground up) 
Very cool.
I’m not sure how difficult it is to create even simple games, but how about a turn based rpg based on any of the fan stories here?
I’ve been having a look at The Games Factory 2, it looks considerably improved over the first two iterations although I doubt it’s up to making panzer dragoon quite yet :anjou_embarassed:
The thing I love about products like the games factory is I can actually work them :anjou_embarassed:
Code wise I struggle even with actionscript. 
Not sure what POV SEGA would have on a PD fan-game, but I’d happy to help / answer any question related to modeling ( Softimage ) or programming.
K
Hileo, I’ll do anything I can to help with a PD fan game. We’ve already got a few artists so I guess you don’t need one more, however I’m doing a games design degree at the moment which has a 3d modelling module that starts this September. In the meantime I have Maya (rock hard to learn lol) and there’s always Blender…
If we’re talking about open source software, there’s a flash alternative called Synfig (can’t get my head around it just yet so I’m using a free animator called Pencil instead).
Maybe we should assign roles, like a project manager, storyboarder etc, and if the project is actually getting momentum, that way more people will be interested and more people will join?
Well if you blokes want me, you got me, just lemmie know.
He Who Is The Sky - what are you up for?
Btw I looked up Unity and that’s looking like the best bet (for a 3d thing anyway) since it only requires a minimal amount of programming knowledge. We wouldn’t get hyperrealistic stuff like UDK but it’d be a start!
If you need a professional texture/backround artist let me now.
Just look at the genos fake trailer (after all thouse years), i guess that’s enough reference 
Seriously, I’d love to join a project, but it has to make sense and not be a waste of time. If everbody is just throwing their 2 cents in (and not 99% of their fleisure time), nothing will come out of it. Then there is the time difference, I live in Japan and it is really hard to keep track of what other people are doing, have chat conferences etc.
We first need to have some kind of concept and design document (mainly about the scope and technology were going for), that alone will be probably hard to hammer down so that everyone is equally satisfied.
For the game engine it really doesn’t matter which to chose, but I guess since UDK is free now it’s good to stick with a technology that’s professionally accepted and used. who knows, for some of us this might turn into a valuable asset in their portfolio, it sucks if you are stuck with technology that noone uses or is not easily scalable if you actually do want to polish it (it’s much easier to let an engine run with effects turned off and particle count turned low than have an engine build for low spec games pull of high spec looking graphics. been there, got the screenshots to prove it =)
Hey Nevey, welcome back.
I’m not sure if there’s anything that I could contribute. If you need web hosting for the project, I’d be happy to help out there.
I’ve been using Unreal 3 engine professionally for a while ( a couple of years before UT3 was even released)
My freetime is super tight (averging about 5 hours of sleep, which is why I haven’t been able to upload the art site! 
) I could help with a levels and whatnot if people made some traction on it- I’m not a good character guy though I’m afraid.
They have the source tech for:
- Getting on off/ flying vehicle (you could reskin this as a dragon)
- 3rd person
- It is pretty simple to make dialog scenes where you walk up to somebody and they say something, and will change what they say based on actions you do. You couldn’t do a store, but you could fake somebody giving you a weapon by triggering it.
You could make a small town, take a mission, then battle some creatures in the wilderness, and hop on a dragon w/ no programming.
One thing nice is UDK has a bunch of sample levels where you could use the assets- like you could change the diffuse textures (or examples, on walls) on their meshes to speed up the process. Hardest things are:
- creating creatures (esp w/ new animations + states) . If it was a simple crab enemy or floating thing that just shoots, it might not be too bad. If there was very clear concept art at diferent angles it would be helpful.
- creating and animating a human (although you could use their animations if you had to, although you will be limited by what they do- probably an “edge” type character would move like a space marine!)
freetime super tight? I guess that goes for pretty much everyone in the game business =)
it would be awsome to hammer down a small demo level or techdemo or something. personally it doesn’t have to be something wit a dragon. something like the very first part of saga where edge tries to get back to the top ight before he gets’s his dragon. imagine his gun actually worked but the dragon didn’t show up 
I wonderif it’s possible to havethe “stiletto crabs” (dunno what they are actually called, do they have a name?
or the scene shortly before he finds azel and has to fight that big stiletto crab. might be even beeter, that place is pretty dark, and not that vast, almost perfect for an FPS map =)
Creating something simple makes a lot of sense, otherwise it will probably never happen. I like LC’s idea of creating an on foot shooter game. It doesn’t even have to be about Edge. There’s lots of background information in the games that could be used as inspiration for a simple side story. You could play as a seeker searching some ruins for ancient treasures, digging up secrets from the Ancient Age along the way.
Lagi, maybe that Panzer Dragoon Uri game that you were working on could be expanded? Could the models etc be used with the Unreal 3 Engine?
well as a big goal the idea of a seeker exploring ruins is good, but i think it’s best to stick with something that is smple and pretty striaght forward.
the excavation site setting if more like a mod actually… I think it’s better to make a panzer mod stage first that’s kinda open for a lot of unreal players and maybe this will attract people who have moddng expereince ad unite them to work on a full conversion (workng with UDK is pretty much creating a fullconversion mod imho)
Solo Wing: Hileo, happy new year! In fact a few happy new years. Lol! Actually, for the project, yeah web hosting would be needed right? In fact it could be another way to promote TWotA, the only site that has a PD fan game.
Lc: yeah your texturing is amazing. I’m serious about the project at the very least. I actually have a concept document/process of design format from my group’s project if anyone’s interested? The stiletto crab things are awesome but I can imagine them being difficult to rig/animate.
Lagi: I agree, great idea for that demo stage thing. Anyone know what we would do for actual dialogue, I assume we’d make it scrolling text like FF games?
And I get what everyone’s saying about there being no time in the games industry. I mean, oh my god. In my course we were killing ourselves over our first project.
We could set up a Dropbox account for all the stuff we’re doing?
I guess we need to figure out what’s a small-scale goal. Everything in PD leads on to something larger… could we do Orta raising the baby dragon or something? In the meantime she’d be on foot… = on foot shooter demo level. She could be defending the dragon from greedy people seeking it out. (unless I’m forgettign a bit in Orta where there was a mini-game where you went inside the Memory Cell and tried to make baby dragon grow?)
haha if you read my sig you probably unerstand hat this is probably the least thing i’d lie to do. for me the Iva quets were the mostpanzerish in Orta although you didn’t even get t ride a dragon. I’d say it’d be perfectly fine to make an FPS kinda demo level / mod, without a dragon.
Lol fair enough. Personally I’d like to see a dragon (in the actual game that is), even if it’s only swooping across the sky. Anyone heard ‘chasing the dragon’ by epica? That could be our theme song! Lol.
Actually I like the idea of a PD with first-person elements. The way modern FPSs go, you don’t necessarily sacrifice story for mindless action. AND, we could design our own weapons, or have things like the weird rocket launcher thing that Edge had at the start of Saga. Or, what about the domesticated Baldor idea that Orta had? I miss freaks like the Pludger and the flying Lazara things that have Lazara Skimmers on the back, too.
I guess we could start with a village randomly being attacked. Like, you’re a random person inside a hut, you open a door and there’s a huge monster destroying buildings and gutting people outside. Someone throws you a weapon and you have to lay into them! Baptism by fire!
Yeah, the Lazara are awsome, that’s why I chose one as a logo for www.panzerdragoon.de back then. hearing “pure blood seed” for the first time I fell in love with Saga all over again =D
however, creatures need animation and modeling, it’s an extremely high goal. a creature that looks crap (not crab, lol) is better left out of a game.
I think one of the reasons the first opening sequence of saga is inside the excavation site because they didn’t need walls lol. just a few gritty metal pathways hanging in a black something. that’s quite easy to reproduce in an FPS engine. a whole TOWN is a much bigger scale if you don’t want to have each hut look exactly like each other…
[quote=“lordcraymen”]well as a big goal the idea of a seeker exploring ruins is good, but i think it’s best to stick with something that is smple and pretty striaght forward.
the excavation site setting if more like a mod actually… I think it’s better to make a panzer mod stage first that’s kinda open for a lot of unreal players and maybe this will attract people who have moddng expereince ad unite them to work on a full conversion (workng with UDK is pretty much creating a fullconversion mod mho)[/quote]
Yeah. I wasn’t so much suggesting a complicated seeker game, but offering an alternative idea for a starting demo. I think taking a scene from PDS and implementing it as an FPS could work great for a demo as well, as everyone would have a good idea of what to aim for. I agree, it would be best to avoid creating anything too complicated regardless of the setting.
Absolutely. Either a separate site for the project, or I can host the game on this site. But either way, lets wait until there’s something to share.
Ok, so LC and Solo are agreed on an excavation-site-esque remake demo level thing. Is everyone else ok with that? If no one else has any input we may as well start planning, I can start storyboarding and stuff.
Also LC agreed on Pure Blood Seed. I think the forbidden zone is one of the most incredible places in Saga, the reflection of the water on the dragon in the battles, just wow.
Solo, this is a long way off, but if this project really gained momentum and a lot of followers do you think we could have a separate forum for it? We could have separate threads for art and programming and stuff.