FAQ

Frequently asked questions about the development.

Why not creating a game engine?

Game engines are usually too generic, too complex and do too much things. Lots of them also use scripting language which require another learning curve to be used.

Molko's Adventure is a solo tactical 2D RPG and its core is especially designed for that gameplay. Thus the code stay simple to understand and to follow. Coupling a general purpose game engine with a game design is sometimes more complicated than writing small code.

However, game engines are still interesting for people who already know how to use them and feel confident with them.

Why no prefix like "ma_" or "MA_"?

See also question above.

The purpose of Molko's Adventure is not to provide a drop-in reusable library to create RPG games. It is highly coupled with the gameplay of the original game. Thus we wanted to keep the codebase extremely simple and minimalist without adding bunch of generics.

The core API isn't meant to be installed system wide (possible, but not recommended), instead users are encouraged to copy the core code and to adapt to their gameplay.

A simple example: if someone wants to create a game and would like to allow only three playable entities at a time, it should simply edit appropriates structures and everything is adapted. Then, structures and array can stay static without dynamic allocations.

Also, having a large amount of different data types, this would generate very large function and type names.

But if there is a high demand of having a proper independant library, it may change in the future.

Why C?

C is an awesome language. It still has its place in the industry especially in low-level, kernel and game design.

Games are usually designed without OO in mind using simple procedural codes and lots of data. In C, writing code makes easier to understand what's happening under the hood without having to check if functions will generate dynamic allocations or not.

However, we also love modernity and as such, C11 is the minimal requirement to build and run Molko's Adventure.

Can I make a MMORPG with that?

Not easily.

This core API is really tied to a unique solo RPG adventure and therefore it does not separate logic from rendering.

Also, note that creating a server-client game is really different in terms of architecture than a local solo game. Most of the logic part is done server side and requires much more code to analyze to avoid cheats, lag, synchronisation and many other stuff than a local game does not require.

There are no plans to create a network oriented core API anytime soon.

What are these strange symbols (+-*&?) in member fields?

It's a custom notation to indicate ownership and user access.

See ownership file for more information.

Why not using RPG Maker instead?

RPG Maker is an indeed great piece of software, in fact it's even the original source of inspiration for writing Molko's Adventure.

However RPG Maker (in every versions) suffer from:

• Not opensource. RPG Maker is proprietary while Molko's Adventure is licensed under the very liberal ISC license.
• Per cell movements while Molko's Adventure provides per pixel granularity. This provides more interesting gameplay especially in dungeons.
• Flexibility. Even though some RPG Maker variants provide Ruby programming, it's still based on GUI to design the game making less possibilities. Molko's Adventure API is a pure C library where you can do mostly what you want.