Autumn's Realm: Development Center

Got ideas and motivation to help make Autumn's Realm better? Or perhaps you want to build a private version of Autumn's Realm that occurs in your office building or neighborhood. You've come to the right place.

Autumn's Realm is developed by a community of programmers and game designers from across the Internet. If you want to contribute to Autumn's Realm, all you need to do is install a little bit of software, and you're all set! This page provides some information on getting started.

Development Process

This is a brief and informal description of how development of Autumn's Realm works. If you've done free software development before, it isn't organized in too awfully different a way from most other free software projects to which you may have contributed.

The basic tasks in development are making changes to the application, and submitting patches. If you make a change and want comments on it, then you should send the patch to the autrealm-devel mailing list. People will likely try it out and let you know what they think. When there is a general consensus that the patch is a good idea (or if you feel it's obvious, such as when fixing a bug), you can submit the patch to the patch management system on the SourceForge project page.

If you consistently submit good patches to the game, you will probably be invited to become a committer for the project. That means you'll have the ability to check in changes to the code yourself instead of submitting patches.

All developers of all kinds are strongly encouraged to subscribe to the autrealm-devel mailing list. This list functions, in part, to ensure that we're all on the same page regarding the style and principles of design. (See also the relevant section in the About page.)

Required Software

In order to help with Autumn's Realm, it is recommended that you install the following software:

  • Eclipse, including the Java development tools.
  • EclipseME, a plugin to Eclipse for Java ME programming.
  • Subclipse, a plugin to Eclipse for Subversion repository browsing.
  • An MIDP-compliant wireless toolkit that is comaptible with EclipseME.

Once you have installed and configured the software listed above, you should be able to just grab the code, modify the appropriate files, and then right-click the project and choose "J2ME -> Create Package" to build the JAD and JAR files to get the modified game to your mobile phone.

Types of Development

You can contribute to Autumn's Realm as a programmer, a graphic artist, a game designer, a documenter, a tester, or by doing anything else you see that needs to be done. All of these are important jobs that make Autumn's Realm better. The following sections try to provide more information on each of these roles and how to do them.

On Being a Programmer

To be a programmer, you should know Java and be at least somewhat familiar with the Micro Edition platform, CLDC 1.1, and MIDP 2.0. Once that's true, you can make your changes and submit patches. Programmers can perform such a wide variety of tasks that it would be pointless to list them.

On Being a Graphic Artist

Graphic artists work with the images that define the appearance of the game. It is estimated that when complete, the game will include about fourty distinct types of monsters, several dozen terrain tiles, four or five character types, and potentially hundreds of non-player characters with whom the player can interact. Each of these entities needs a visual representation in the game, as an image. That's a big job, so we appreciate our graphic designers!

A good way to find graphics that need to be drawn is to search the text files in the 'src' directory for 'battle.png', which is a generic placeholder image that's used when a real image needs to be drawn. It's also helpful to search for 'legiosdn.png' and 'claradn.png', as these are used for all non-player characters until they get real tile images drawn. If you see an image in the game that you believe should be changed, you can hunt it down by referring to the Documentation/format.txt file to see where it's referenced from after you retrieve the code.

There are a few guidelines. Current thinking is that the graphics should not be drawn with a too detailed style. They may be marginally, though not excessively, cartoony. We definitely don't want blood and gore, and only modest and appropriate nudity (pretty much for the fae class of monsters only) is acceptable. This game is rated PG.

Secondly, watch file size! Remember that this game is designed to run on mobile phones, not emulators. Something that looks good in the emulator isn't always best for the game. We'd like to cap the file size for the full game at about 400K, if possible. That means that it won't be possible to have separate icon and tile images for every non-player character in the game, for instance. Seven or eight varieties will probably suffice, and can be mixed about in each of the towns.

On Being a Game Designer

Game design is probably the most immediately interesting and glamorous job in Autumn's Realm. It lets you change the plot and extend the game itself. If you are volunteering your time as a game designer, it is absolutely imperative that you join the devel mailing list, and probably the player mailing list as well, and talk to others about your design ideas. This helps the game to keep a consistent tone and philosophy throughout.

Game design is mainly done by editing various text files that are located in the 'src' directory of the source code. The 'Documentation/format.txt' file (also in the source code) contains details on the format of these files and how to make changes. The existing game also provides a wealth of examples.

There are guidelines here that parallel the graphic design guidelines. If you intend to contribute any changes to the main code base, please avoid any excessively violent or gruesome themes, profanity, sexual content, etc. Also keep the unique character of the game in mind. It's not generally popular to import plot or setting details from other games, books, movies, etc. Please try to keep new contributions in line with the existing world. See the About page (especially the section labeled Principles) for details.

On Being a Documenter

If you wish to help improve this web site or other documentation for the game or the development process, feel free to volunteer. There's no set way to go about this, so we'll have to proceed on a case by case basis.

On Being a Tester

Testing is no doubt the most fun way to contribute to the game! You get to play the game itself. However, as you play, you should carefully note any problems (things that don't seem to work as they should, misspellings or poor grammar, confusing gameplay, etc.) and send your comments to the devel mailing list.

Private Development

Autumn's Realm is distributed under the BSD license. That means that you can do almost anything you like with it. There are exceptions listed in the license, though, which mostly have to do with liability, warranties, and making false claims of ownership. For example, you may not sue any other developers if you wreck your marriage and lose your job because you spent too much time playing the game.

One thing that you definitely can do is make your own changes that you don't contribute back to the main code base. You can just keep your modified version and play it for fun, or you can share it with friends or even sell it! This is perfectly fine. We won't be upset, or think you're a horrible person. In fact, if you make game design changes that do not agree with the tone, content guidelines, or other goals of the main code, we prefer that you don't contribute them back.

Keep in mind, though, that the Autumn's Realm user community will not necessarily provide any help for people who are using your modified version of the game. We do politely request that you not use the name "Autumn's Realm" in a commercial version of the game, should you choose to create one.


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