LINGUAR'S PROFILE

Greetings,

I'm posting to be sure there is still interest. RPGCK was a project I started in 1998 to make Role-Playing games. It was continued through the original version of the website RPGMaker.net, and later adapted the name C G C K, for complete game construction kit. The name was changed to EGCK, Etoc: Game Construction Kit, because the font I used for CGCK made people read something related to the phallus; so I figured that name was counter-productive to promoting it.

The question I have for people, should I bother trying to revive this old project? By revive I mean start anew, because the old project no longer exists in a format that I can use (I no longer use the language it was coded in: VB6).

Here are a few of the sub-projects that I'm actively working on that would help in the design of the project:


Abstraction - A comprehensive Integrated Development Environment (IDE) geared at making IDEs easy, using the features of the .NET foundation to make bringing the ideas that make up an IDE easier to handle. An IDE to the user would be the user-interface you use to make your game. It handles bringing up the proper editor, based upon which part of the game your modifying (called 'Elements'). If you're working on a script element, it would bring up a script editor, a map element, the map editor, and so on. Basically Abstraction means nothing to the end user (most of the people here), but to a developer wishing to expand whatever uses the IDE, it's gold because it greatly simplifies adding new types of projects, and the elements that make up those projects. As well as the designers that create the elements/projects.

OIL - OIL is another Developer-specific project aimed at abstracting the concepts of code used in the .NET foundation. It provides access to creating, on the fly, Assemblies, Types (Enums, Interfaces, Classes, and Structures), and the members that make up each of them, including the code that defines what the types do. The point of this project is to allow you to generate code on the fly, but it also uses another project called 'OILexer' to understand what a script does, in programmatic sense. It also allows the translation of OIL objects into the Common Intermediate Language, or CIL, which is the core language of all .NET languages (C#, Visual Basic, et al. respectively).

OILexer - A project aimed at helping make a programming language. It takes your language description-language code and builds your language, and compiler respectively. Due to the abstract nature of this project, I won't go into the specifics, because it's beyond most coders that I talk to, and I'm terrible at explaining it in general terms.

This project is one of the most necessary but one of the most complicated as well. The project is in a boot-strapper stage where I'm building a program, parser, interpreter, linker, compiler, that builds simpler parsers, but parsers that would be difficult to do by hand. I will then use it to make another project that uses the same concepts to build the final version of the project, which will, in final form, be able to build itself.


The projects mentioned above are not completed, but they are making good progress. These projects are the types of projects I think would be necessary to make a readily adaptable IDE for Game Creation Program developers, and game developers alike. There are more projects that would be necessary, so it's the tip of the iceberg, but the "OILexer" project is the most key, since it basically would allow them to build their own scripting systems (for example, allowing their system to use Ruby, or another programming language). There's a lot of potential for this project, but I figure before going to the effort of bringing everything together, I need to see if there's interest.

You could say I haven't exactly been idle over the past seven years after RPGMaker.net died the first time. Much of my time has been devoted to research at abstracting the processes used in making makers. You might even call the result Comprehensive Development System Construction Kit (CDSCK) instead of EGCK, but that's just because I find automation fascinating.

By now you might be wondering, "But what about making games?" You'd be right to assume that what's planned, so far, has nothing to do with games. But the largest issue with most makers is good tools. So my first goal is to solve the problem of the irritation of making tools and integrating them into an IDE. This includes tools that handle scripting, and any other type of editor (including image editors).

To the end of making good tools, a good foundation for them to sit on top of is necessary. Without a good foundation, any flaw in the foundation will be reflected in every designer made from the foundation. If you don't use a foundation to base things off of, you have a higher level of inconsistency, which is generally a bad thing. The foundation, in the case of Abstraction, is also a good means of information and control. It uses the information to control the interactions of the primary IDE. It uses the information contained within the meta-data associated to projects, elements, and designers of each to determine which designers to expose to the user and when.

If you have no clue about certain parts of this post, please inform me and I'll clarify to the best of my ability. This post is aimed at game developers as much as it is game kit developers.

I don't mean to sound like a retard; however, what must one do to alter their profile, namely their avatar, interests, et al. How do you send a personal message when the templates don't load properly?

pm_above doesn't load, kick_guest I think also doesn't load (when trying to view the members list while not logged in).

It's been nearly seven or eight years since I've been here, good to see some things are still broken. ;] Though it's a might better than the website being down like it was back then.

If these are covered elsewhere, apologies.