Epic of Thalia

Introduction

Epic of Thalia is an RPG of the non-MMO variety that the three of us started in our high school days. First it was just snowballing ideas, but now that we're proficient in the skills needed to make the idea a reality, we have started to actively develop it into a game. It's still very much in the alpha stage, so check back often for updates!

News

July 1st, 2009
After much deliberation, I have decided to change the version control system reponsible for housing the engine's code from Darcs to Git. Darcs has served me well for over 18 months on this project, and I will continue to use it for other projects, but I feel that switching to Git is the right decision. Many thanks to Darcs!
June 2nd, 2009
Work on version 0.04 begins today; I have been looking forward to some more fun coding again! (Actually, the bug reporting system was kind of fun to write). The plan for 0.04 has been threads and AI, so I'm getting started on introducing threads into the engine.
June 1st, 2009
I am extremely pleased to announce that I have finally completed work on Epic of Thalia, version 0.03 (aka "Serenity"). This release includes various enhancements to code quality, updated unit tests, full Windows support, and a highly advanced bug reporting tool for handling crashes, among other improvements. This release is named "Serenity" after the first episode of the short-lived TV series Firefly; future releases will be named after subsequent episodes until we run out of episodes. I'd post a cool screenshot from the episode after which this release is named, but I'm afraid I'll get sued.
March 2nd, 2009

Scratch that; this page will continue to be used for small project news updates.

That being said, I know I said version 0.03 would be all about installability, but I've been working on it for over 5 months, and it's beginning to wear on me. The bug reporter I implemented is really cool, but other than that, I haven't had a good chance to implement some truly challenging or cool stuff. So here's the plan: I'm going to finish up a few items for 0.03, and then release it. Then, I will interleave other 0.03 tasks with cool feature implementation, so as not to drive myself insane. I may even dedicate a release to a few of these items. So here's the new gameplan:

0.03
Finish up the following items:
  • Unicode stuff
  • Windows port
  • Code quality
Then release. The other items will be scattered across other, later releases, and/or in a smaller release later.
0.04
Focus on multithreading, AI, and some design stuff
0.05
Flesh out the Lua API
0.06
If there are any outstanding issues that were to be resolved in 0.03 originally, this release will handle those.

If you want to help with EoT, but what you want to do will be delayed by this new plan, please let me know. I want to optimize everyone's time, and since as of now, everyone is just me, I'm optimizing my own time by giving myself interesting stuff to work on. I will gladly amend the plan if it means I get new helpers!
January 9th, 2009
No more updates will be made to this page. I started a blog!
November 26th, 2008
On the eleven-month anniversary of the start of the engine's coding, I figure it'd be a good day for an update on how version 0.03 is coming along.

What's been done:
  • The engine now compiles and runs on OS X.
  • The Windows port is lagging behind at the moment, but I know what needs to be done and how to do it; it's simply a matter of getting it done.
  • A GUI bug reporting tool is now launched on engine failure.
  • Numerous fixes and improvements have been made.
What needs doing:
  • The bug reporter works (for the most part), but EoT does not provide the data in the right format yet. That's the next item on my agenda.
  • The bug reporter has a few quirks and is missing a few features, so I'll be working on those.
  • The OS X port requires certain frameworks that I've constructed on my development machine, so I need to upload them for all to use.
  • The engine API still need improvement.
  • Installation and packaging targets still need implementation.
  • Unit tests need to be written and updated.
As you can see, even summarized, the todo list is longer than that done list. I'm fine with doing the work by myself, but I definitely could use a hand, especially with the Windows port, so we can get 0.03 out as soon as possible!
October 5th, 2008
So for all of you out there who are hoping to play Epic of Thalia on Mac OSX, I have good news for you. I needed a laptop, and I wanted a development/testing environment for Mac OSX, so I bought a MacBook today. For you Windows fans out there, I bought a copy of Windows XP a week or two ago, so now I have a testing environment for that as well. This means that future releases will be better tested on both operating systems!
Septemeber 26th, 2008
After months of work, 9 months after I started coding the engine, version 0.02 is finally ready! Version 0.02 includes the following features:
  • No more interference with keyboard repeat and regular input. Keyboard repeat is now simulated in CEGUI widgets.
  • Console history now persists between runs of the game.
  • Added support for profiles.
  • HUD changes specific to a profile are savable and loadable at future game runs.
  • Implemented special features for the Lua console.
  • Changed the project name to Epic of Thalia, as you can see in a previous post.
  • Added internationalization support.
  • Added sound support.
  • Added basic physics support.
  • Added a watch library for Lua, which can be used for both debugging and triggering events.
  • Overhauled the C++ <-> Lua event bridging system. Writing events for Lua in C++ is now a snap.
  • Implemented utility libraries for both C++ and Lua.
  • Added a credits screen.
  • The engine now automatically loads fonts in its Media paths.
  • Enabled custom, profile-based skins.
  • Added a flexible event error handler, which will allow the engine to continue to run the game if the error is non-fatal.
  • Added test suites for both Lua and C++.
  • Added signal handling for unclean exits, and a handler for segmentation faults that allows players to submit bug reports. The bug reporting tool is still under construction.
  • Made the Lua engine more secure by restricting its I/O to certain methods.
  • Numerous small changes.

You can download the source at the downloads page. Like 0.01, this doesn't do much yet; but you *can* play music and run physics tests with it. =P

Because version 0.02 includes so many new features, and because I really wanted to hit the 9 month mark, not a lot of attention was paid to code quality and portability. I can guarantee it won't build on Win32, and it probably only builds on Linux. However, the plan for 0.03 has always been to slow down on features, and focus on user installation and other things like that. So, after making improvements to the website, I'll be making sure that the code is of high quality and making sure it runs on all target systems. Then I'll be moving on to installation and distribution enhancements.

I'm sorry it took so long; work has been busy for all of us, and it took a good deal of effort and research to put a lid on the final features. The good news is that I implemented some things for release 0.04, which will focus on AI and multithreading. These implementations exist as demonstrations and examples; they still need refinement before they're ready for the main repository. They were also outside the scope of this release.

July 20th, 2008
I started a site-wide overhaul of the site's look and feel. You may also have noticed that we have our own domain, epicofthalia.net.
June 3rd, 2008
Like everyone else, I have to eat and pay bills, so I got a job. This doesn't mean that I'm going to stop developing Epic of Thalia, but it does mean that most of my development will be on the weekends and that not much progress will be made for the remainder of this month, since I'll be busy these weekends and going on vacation to Florida.
May 28th, 2008
Added an issue tracker.
April 23rd, 2008
Changed the project name to Epic of Thalia to avoid possible future legal issues. The 0.01 source distributions will remain as ShadowChildren, considering that's how the project used to be labeled.
April 12th, 2008
Version 0.01 has been released. Here's a summary of what was done:
  • Started coding.
  • Added the Lua engine.
  • Added graphics support.
  • Added GUI support.
  • Added resource loading.
  • Added the XML scene loader.
This is a "Rob" release; all of the work that went into this one was mine. That's not to say that Erik and Brian haven't been doing their fair share; Erik has been modeling and drawing up a storm, and Brian has been working on story the whole time. In the future, when the game engine starts to make use of our own models and story scripts, you'll see more contribution from them in the change log. NOTE: This is still a very pre-pre-alpha release; in order to build and run the engine, you're going to have to tweak the build file a bit. Also, once you do get it started, don't expect it to do much; this release's flash is entirely from the programmer's perspective.
April 6th, 2008
The release of version 0.01 is nigh! All that's needed is OS-compatability testing (which is taking longer than expected). Check back in a week or two to see how it's going!

Contribution

Interested in helping out? We need developers, artists, testers, etc. If you want to help out, please e-mail me at hoelz@epicofthalia.net and we'll get you set up! While we'll take any help we can get, we really need help with the following: