Welcome to the Colonial Marines RPG
This is the working site for a game in creation. I originally planned on creating the whole thing, but felt that other people might also be interested in helping to create it. This game is based on the Colonial Marines from the movie "Aliens". Originally I planned on creating a traditional paper-based RPG, similar to Dungeons & DragonsTM, but as I thought of new things to include, I've decided to evolve it into a computer-based game.
The difference with this computer game is, as is currently planned, it will be more of a hybrid game; it will include elements of traditonal paper RPG's (such as a character sheet and character creation, a Game Master, and imagination) but will implemented for play on a computer. Eventually I would like to have a map generator (to ease the visualization of the play area), a IM-like tool to allow people to communicate during the game, a random number generator to simulate dice rolls, and the like.
Community Participation
This game and site are not only for me, but for everyone interested in helping. So if you have in interest in programming, graphics, or just think it would be fun to help design a brand new RPG, please let me know. The forum is the place for game development participation. If you have any ideas for this game, please sign up and help make this the type of game you really want to play.
Programming
I'm currently planning on writing most of the game in Python, with some development in C/C++. Python will be used because I want to gain more experience in it and it allows for faster creation. Since I'd like this to be a community project, I don't have a problem with people contributing code in other languages, such as C or C++. Python allows integration with other languages so I can just incorporate other people's code as modules.
For those further interested, I'm planning on using wxPython for the GUI development and will be using the SPE Python IDE for coding. I have found several open-source RPG-creation programs that are also written in Python, so these will be used as a base to create this game from.
Python language tutorials
Since I'm learning Python as part of this game design, I thought I'd create a few "mini-tutorials" for other people interested in learing the language. To the end, you'll find the tutorials I've written so far in the Python Tutorials area. For more information, visit the official Python web site at www.python.org.
Sourceforge.net
The Colonial Marines RPG is now a Sourceforge project. This website is still the main location for all information regarding the CMRPG. However, a Subversion server is now available for code storage and management, hence only major versions will be posted directly to this site. For those interested in looking at the CMRPG code, instructions for using the Subversion system are available at Sourceforge. Many of the additional features available from Sourceforge will be implemented as needed, so let me know (via the forums) if there is something you would like.
There is also an alternative Subversion server located at the Google source code repository. Since I don't have to use SSL to access this one, I can update more frequently from work or other locations. Look at this one if you want the latest code; I try to move the code from here to the Sourceforge server on a weekly (or at least monthly) basis.