Recruiting UI Designer for original Pokémon game engine

[Marin]

Looking to recruit: A UI Designer who is capable of making original UI that will be used for a Pokémon game engine.
Project Title: Pokémon MK -- subject to change
Team Name/Team Members: It's pretty much a community, come-and-go project, but other UI Designers include: Gav and NutBusta.
Progress/Screenshots: We're still figuring out a general style that we want to go with, but NutBusta made the following mockups that I think are pretty solid:
https://*/386985221255593986/412812027086503936/PokemonMK_BootUp.png
https://*/386985221255593986/412803164262105099/PokemonMK_ONE.png
https://*/386985221255593986/412309373151477776/MK_New_Event_Page3.png
Method of Contact: Discord
Additional Information: You don't need to create absolutely everything from scratch. If we have a style or general-use "element" already (say, something for tabs or a list of items), you can reuse those. The elements and interfaces you see in NutBusta's mockups you don't all have to think up on your own either. We'd have a list of things we want for an interface or window, and you'd try to create something based on that information.

 

[andarms]

This pokémon game engine is built upon RPG Maker XP and pokémon essentials?
which programming language are using?

I been the whole last year, working and researching how to make my own pokémon game engine. I think that rom hacking is a waste of time and rpg maker xp and RGSS is a old technology and one of it's major problems is the limitation of deploy platforms (only works for windows), so, firts i want to build all from scratch even a RPG engine so i tried Phaser a Javascript library to make games for the web but they can be exported for all platforms with tools like Electron or NW. here a little example of what i make https://pkmnjs.herokuapp.com/.

After i realized that make all from scratch was a bad idea, i found several alternatives one of them RPG Maker MV which use Javascript instead of RGSS and now have a lot new useful features. The new RPG Maker engine is cool and extensible, thought to make and use plugins, but is big issue is the map editor and the tileset limitation. even so i found a way make this thing works and i been working hard the last weeks in this project https://github.com/pokemon-essentials/pokemon-essentials.

the reason i reply your post with all this story, is that one the things that i need, is a custom event editor because after a lot of trial and error I came to the conclusion that i will not use the RGP Maker Mv Editor, i willuse just it's javascript engine whic is open source. So i need build this custom game engine upon the rpg maker mv and i a good programmer but a not so good desingner.

casually we are looking for the same, may be we can join forces and make something bigger and better and faster or even if we dont works thogether i can use some inspiration of what you do.

 

[Marin]

This pokémon game engine is built upon RPG Maker XP and pokémon essentials?
which programming language are using?

I been the whole last year, working and researching how to make my own pokémon game engine. I think that rom hacking is a waste of time and rpg maker xp and RGSS is a old technology and one of it's major problems is the limitation of deploy platforms (only works for windows), so, firts i want to build all from scratch even a RPG engine so i tried Phaser a Javascript library to make games for the web but they can be exported for all platforms with tools like Electron or NW. here a little example of what i make https://pkmnjs.herokuapp.com/.

After i realized that make all from scratch was a bad idea, i found several alternatives one of them RPG Maker MV which use Javascript instead of RGSS and now have a lot new useful features. The new RPG Maker engine is cool and extensible, thought to make and use plugins, but is big issue is the map editor and the tileset limitation. even so i found a way make this thing works and i been working hard the last weeks in this project https://github.com/pokemon-essentials/pokemon-essentials.

the reason i reply your post with all this story, is that one the things that i need, is a custom event editor because after a lot of trial and error I came to the conclusion that i will not use the RGP Maker Mv Editor, i willuse just it's javascript engine whic is open source. So i need build this custom game engine upon the rpg maker mv and i a good programmer but a not so good desingner.

casually we are looking for the same, may be we can join forces and make something bigger and better and faster or even if we dont works thogether i can use some inspiration of what you do.

Hey there!

This game engine and the game kit itself are completely stand-alone from RPG Maker or Enterbrain. They don't use a single assembly, graphic, executable, library, or what-have-you of RPG Maker XP.

I think before I continue it'd be good to distinguish the game engine (or as I like to say, back-end) from the kit (or front-end).

[tabs][tab=Engine]The engine is what you use to make the game. It's just a set of tools, interfaces and executables that you will use to create your game. It's written entirely in C#.
Thusfar we've used Windows Forms for making the interfaces, but having realised that that is a pretty bad idea (because it's very slow, bloated, and not as modifiable as I'd like), I've started working with SDL2-CS, which is pretty just a C# wrapper for SDL2. It's much faster and gives us many more options with windows, surfaces, and everything that comes with those. You can see recent progress on GitHub (or, since you already joined the Discord, in #general-engine)

I plan on taking a similar approach as Windows Forms, with Forms and Controls to make everything easier. I'm not sure I'm going to make my own designer-like thing, but I do like the simplicity it offers.[/tab]
[tab=Kit]This is the actual game itself. It's pure Ruby (it doesn't use any other languages) + a framework for displaying graphics. RPG Maker uses RGSS, the Ruby Game Scripting System. Although all the iterations of RPG Maker's RGSS are pretty slow and outdated, our framework uses a C++ implementation of RGSS called MKXP. It's much newer and faster. Every method and class RPG Maker's RGSS has is available in MKXP, which means you can port code if you might need to. Despite that, I plan on and have been writing each and every one of our scripts from scratch.
[/tab][/tabs]

This leaves room for you to choose to specialise in one of the two areas. If Ruby is your forte, you could work on the Kit, if C# and software development is more what you're feeling like, you could work on the Engine.


I also wrote down this piece of text a while ago which may provide more insight into what this project actually is, and the goals of it:

You’ve most likely heard of RPG Maker by Enterbrain before. It’s a series of game engines that makes it real easy to make a Role-Playing Game. Pokémon can also be considered an RPG, and there is actually a starter kit for making Pokémon games in RPG Maker XP — Pokémon Essentials. Although RMXP (short for RPG Maker XP) is one of the better of the series… it’s very old (2004), outdated, and is not very well suited for Pokémon. Essentials (short for Pokémon Essentials) does suffer from this. There are a load of tools and features and tricks Essentials just can’t make use of, and a lot of things you’d normally expect to see in an engine are done via convoluted text files (PBS) or programs. Since RMXP is closed-source, Essentials can’t do anything about that.

That is where Pokémon MK comes in. Based on a different and better framework, MK offers an engine similar to RMXP, but fully customised for Pokémon and open-source. MK’s User Interfaces are intuitive, helpful, and will make your life a whole load easier. No longer do you need to edit text files by hand to make changes, but now you just have to press a button.

MK is pretty much a community project; anyone can come in and contribute at any time. No matter how big or small your contributions, each and every one is appreciated. Although we do keep things in check to make sure we go foreard, you are free to come and go and to do what you wish, when you wish.

 

[silentgamer64]

Hey, this project looks really cool! Are you aware of Mej's project? He's doing something similar but with Unity.

Would you consider collaborating with his team? Or are your goals too different for that?

 

[Marin]

Hey, this project looks really cool! Are you aware of Mej's project? He's doing something similar but with Unity.

Would you consider collaborating with his team? Or are your goals too different for that?

I’m aware of his work, but he’s using Unity and the game itself is in C#. That’s both drastically different from what I want, so that’s a nogo.


Also, we could still use some more UI Designers!
To further clarify your position, I’d make a mockup similar to this one down below, and you’d polish that up and turn it into one cohesive whole.
https://*/414946483394183169/415235818861625385/main_mockup.png

As you can see, we’re going for a kind of Flat/Material theme with our UI. If you have experience with this style and are interested in helping out, please get in touch!