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Introducing the Phodex Framework


Phodex Games

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Welcome dear reader to my first Blog entry. In the following you will get a first impression of what I am working on. So lets not lose any more time and get started!:)

What is the Phodex Framework?

The Phodex Framework is created with the intention to provide common systems and mechanics to be able to create cool first person and especially role playing games within the Leadwerks Game Engine.

"Leadwerks Game Engine is the easiest way to make 3D games." and "It's everything you need to make games, all in one place."

With the Phodex Framework it try to also follow the general idea of Leadwerks, accessibility, simplicity and power.

What does the Phodex Framework provide?

Ok now lets get more specific. Here just a few things the Framework consist of:

  • Highly intelligent AI System based on Goal Oriented Action Planning (GOAP)
  • Userfriendly design and focus on accessibility and simplicity
  • High costumization for all systems
  • Questcreation System
  • Different behaviors and designs for nearly every system of the Framework
  • First person player controller with all you need
  • Full-Blown combat system for melee and rangeweapons
  • "Character Set" which lets you costumize every NPC (Combat Style, Behavior, Attributes, Animations, ...)
  • External tools like the Questcreator and Charactercreator to improve accessibility
  • Many common systems, like dialogs, inventories, questlog, levelsystem and more

There is much more planned and this list does, of course, not go into detail, but now you can at least imagine what my plan is.

How far is the development?

I am worked on this since about one year and five months now and I can finally say that the Phodex Framework is finished. I cut off some features and as you may have noticed the direction the framework has changed from beeing a jack of all trades towards a framework for a very specific task, creating FPS and RPG games.

Finished in this manner, does not really mean the work is done, I still will improve many systems and will implement some new ones, but the Framework now generally consists of all it needs to get started.

Ok enough talk, lets show some stuff. Thank you for reading so far :) this is your reward:

City_01.thumb.jpg.b9961e0195b0adf81724585a7234ac4b.jpgHouseInterior_01.thumb.jpg.5fbc38e41173e527fd8f184f2d837f49.jpg

HouseInterior_02.thumb.jpg.d7d23ebe8ff54112b7e9f71165b6f0c6.jpgHouseInterior_03.thumb.jpg.d8618182c5a64971a99208f63e842f0e.jpg

HouseInterior_04.thumb.jpg.055efd588c2e47a35609135058a248ea.jpg

Of course this is not the final product I imagine, its just some stuff I put together in some lazy afternoons :D, but I tought it would be unfair to remain you without any visual impressions :). The models are from an assetpack I recently bought and as well are not final and are just a placeholder. Anyway I think the scene looks pretty atmospheric :).

About me:

My name is Markus and I am the head of Phodex Games. I am very glad to be able to study "Digital Media", which includes many topics relevant for game development. Besides design and art I am also very interested in technical stuff and therefore studied "Electrical Engeneering" for a while, which I am very glad for as it helped me understanding many of the technical aspects of computers, coding and ultimately in games. This is my second gamedev related project and I really love what I am doing and are passionated to create something good.

My aim is to provide the best possible product, I can achieve and to help people by providing games which make them feel good :).

Conclusion:

If you have any ideas, suggestions, or wishes of what you would like to see in the Framework, feel free to tell me in the comments.

If you find any errors, feel free to tell me, as english is not my native language. I wish you a wonderful day and stay cool :cool: .

Markus from Phodex

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Well this may be a good Idea, I have just one or two thoughts that come in my mind by reading this.

The problem I see with creating "ready-to-use" features like inventory or NPC or city etc.. Is that this may be easy for game makers to use but it does not really allowed them to create their own system.

That's what I like with Leadwerks; some people will say it is unfinished where others may see the chance to build their own features.

In my opinion Leadwerks give (just enough of) the structure you need to be able to create your own game mechanics...

That said I understand how cool it sounds to get ready-to-use things. My question is just how should 1000 game makers build an own game with originality with this ?

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Hi @Marcousik,

thank you for commenting. You are very true, this a really interesting question, I haven't answered in this post, but I am aware of it. That is why one of the keywords of the Framework is "accessibility".

I guess I best explain the idea with a specific example. My AI script offers the "user" to chose how the AI behaves in combat. Lets take melee combat for example. You can chose out of 3 block types (No blocking, block only on demand (parry), constant blocking (e.g with a shield)). You can chose if the AI uses one static weapon, or if it is able to pick up weapon items and equip them. You can even decide if the NPC uses combo attacks (instead of single hit attacks), if he uses spells or powerattacks. This is just a small example for one thing inside the framework.

So to sum up, I always try to offer a varitey of designs and functionalities (I take a look at a lot of games and chose the best and most common systems) the user can chose from and at the same time, I try to offer as much settings and costumize options as possible to allow the user altering the style without needing to mess around with heavy coding. I achieve this, by using prefab systems, so you can either use the prefabs provided with the Phodex Framework or easily create your own. Furthermore, you can even adjust some more basic settings within the prefabs themself.

I hope this was not to confusing. What I can say to conclude, is that you best wait until I can show the systems behind the framework and then comment again, it is a little hard to imagine everything I explained here and my ideas at all ^^. The only thing which is important is that I am aware of what you where saying and that is the biggest challenge with the Phodex Framework.

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Hi @HeadClot. In the next blog entry I will provide more information about the progress of the Phodex Framework. In general, I am not sure about the whole publishing stuff. It is not even sure if I will make the project available for public.

What I can say is that I plan to publish some features/mechanics on the workshop and I definetly think about making it available for public, so stay tuned :) .

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