Roleplaying Club hopes to finish a point-and-click computer game by the end of the school year
Started around six years ago by a group of girls who originally called the Roleplaying Club “The Prancing Pony,” the club’s purpose was to augment the creative energy of MVHS students. That creative energy has transferred to game design.
Roleplaying Club put an ad on School Loop on Oct. 18 searching for digital artists to design images for a computer game. However, the details of the project are shrouded in mystery—mainly because the club members are still at the beginning of a long work-in-progress. Roleplaying Club had attempted to design a game before, but each time their efforts fell apart. This time, the club members want to do it right.
Two years ago, the club aimed to create a console game. Members were split into five groups, each with different tasks. This strategy of attack led to miscommunication between the groups and general disorganization.
“No one knew what the other groups where doing. I was working on a plot and then the people from the [console] hut designing group told me that it was going to be a fable sort of game, and I was working on a more strategic game, [so] I had to change my idea,” president senior Dennis Su said.
The seniors in charge of the the club were about to graduate as well, so the project was abandoned near the end of the year. The club then focused on playing a table top roleplaying game called Dungeons and Dragons, putting game design on the shelf to collect dust for yet another year. It wasn’t until treasurer Emerald Ip unearthed the idea of game design that Roleplaying Club decided to devote itself to a year of time-consuming plot planning, graphic designing, and programming.
“I just decided that to let [Ip] operate the game design and see who would show up,” Su said.
The club members have high hopes that this year the project will be more successful, since almost everyone is involved in the production of the game. Members are split into two groups based on their character’s affiliation in Dungeons and Dragons, either “good” or “evil.” The members sit down at two tables pushed together, chairs on all sides. Half the group concentrates on cards and characters, while the other half fleshes out the details of the computer game in progress.
“So far it’s been turning out that Good is working on plotting stuff, character development and art and Evil focuses on the technicalities—programming, structure of the game,” Ip said.
At the moment though Roleplaying Club is putting all their efforts into plot design. Nothing is definite yet other than that the game is going to be a murder mystery.
“We don’t to be too ambitious and do anything 3D where you just jump around and stuff—like Maplestory would be too ambitious for us right now, so we’re focusing on a really simple point-and-click adventure,” Ip said.
Even after Roleplaying Club finalizes the plot, they cannot begin putting the game together until they know what sort of images the graphic artists need to draw. A point-and-click game relies on a dominant image that has clickable parts. Without a blueprint of what each image must look like, the game cannot be programmed.
“By the end of the semester at the latest, we need to have plot design finished so that the artists and the programmers can draw and program,” Su said.
The estimated time frame for the project is the entire school year or longer. Most of the work happens at school in art teacher Mr. Barcellos’ room. Sophomore Vishnu Narayana, club secretary and main programmer for the game, thinks that the programming process depends on the number of other people working with him. Roleplaying Club will turn to Java Club for programmers, and Narayana estimates he will have at least two other people working alongside him.
“There’s a chance that we won’t be able to finish programming this year, but I’m sure we’ll be able to get really far,” Narayana said. “And if not we can finish it over the summer or the next school year.”
