Good luck :p
I'm no expert with the editor, but here's my views on your ideas (same bullet structure)
- Camera handling sounds feasible, but I bet having separate cameras for each player would require some core engine modifications. At the moment, in Trine EE, Trine 2 or Trine 3, there is only one common camera for everyone.
- If you don't plan on adding "special powers", the thing with the characters seems ok too, you kinda just have to disable character change. But the initial character selection would be tricky. Or you could just assign a character to everyone randomly, I know that's possible.

1. I'm not sure you could add up to 6 players, nor that you could tweak the multiplayer GUI to look like a moba thing, but that's not the craziest point.
2. Do you have a PhD in computer sciences, a team of engineers, 5 years time and several million dollars ? Procedural generation is already a tough subject, but if we're talking "generating puzzles" or "the trine universe", I mean, wow. Pre-made maps would be ok, I guess, but as you said, memorizing the puzzles who break that down.
3. Again, GUI stuff, but I guess that's possible if you somehow manage to make each match some kind of a finite state machine.
4. (We're talking 6 different camera views, refer to first point). Otherwise, listening on object destruction is easy as it was already done by someone who's not that smart.

Once again, I'm no expert nor Frozenbyte employee, but I'd say this doesn't look feasible with just LUA, and by one guy alone from scratch. I've tinkered with the editor myself and this is no chid's play.

If you still want to design your own levels on a less ambitious project, though, I suggest you checkout the editor's wiki[frozenbyte.com] where JuhannaFB has been quite active lately posting documentation and videos.
And if you have any question or problem, keep posting them on this workshop forum and I'll be glad to help the best I can. Sometimes Exc passes by too, but I haven't seen him on this part of the forums in a while.

Good luck ;)

Thanks for the quick repply and support.

It seems that the editor is really limited in terms of what you can do. But what if the game engine is replaced completely ? Frozenbyte uses in-house tech for their engine and games, but if you make other engines like Unreal 4 to load Trine 3 models and textures, then you technically have unlimited power on what mods you could do. Even the full editor/engine source code is free available.

The players would simply need to place the mod in the Trine 3 install folder and run the exe associated with the mod. Of course, when the mod is distributed, it mustn't contain any copyrighted materials. Instead a metadata file could tell the UE4 mod which resources to load from Trine 3, on end-user machine.




Now, I'm not sure what formats Trine 3 uses for 3D models. I have heard that they use fbx format, which is fine. On they wiki page, they say that they also use S3D format, which is a proprietary one so can't be loaded.

http://frozenbyte.com/wiki/index.php/Resource

Now I'm not sure if Frozenbyte themselves permit this kind of cross-engine mods, but technically, it could work.

Originally posted by mahri726:

It seems that the editor is really limited in terms of what you can do

HAHAHA. Good one. No, the editor is actually an incredibly powerful thing that allows you to do really crazy things. But it's nearly impossible to master alone by yourself.

Originally posted by mahri726:

The players would simply need to place the mod in the Trine 3 install folder and run the exe associated with the mod.

Wait what. That's not how any of this works. You can't "just" swap engines.

As for recreating Trine 3 using an other engine, my guess would be that you'd still need a team of really good programmers that could the same thing as what Frozenbyte team did, and in that case, why waste all these resources when you could actually make something new ?

Originally posted by mahri726:

technically, it could work.

Please explain how it could work, the actually technical part.

The editor being so hard to master for a single person is the reason why I think the best thing to do is to start the project in UE4. In UE4, at least you could build a playable prototype using blueprints, without coding, and let people experiment with it. Also, the documentation is vast and there are a lot of learning resources.

The heroes and a few assets need to be remodelled for an initial standalone version.

Also, it is not a remake. In initial stage, it is a fangame with some different mechanics and goals. After the asset loading system is added, then it could be considered a mod, because it needs to have Trine 3 installed.

http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/34051/how-should-i-structure-an-extensible-asset-loading-system

Now there are a lot of questions regarding Trine 3 assets and I'm not sure if it will work. Are they encrypted somehow ? Could they be loaded on runtime ? Do Frozenbyte agree with this etc...

Anyway...even if this project fails, I still get some experience in gamedev. And...who knows ? Mabie on the way I could find the people needed to help me build the asset loading system, or even translate the prototype to the Frozenbyte engine. You can't convince them just with words, you need to put some work in it, to showcase them your ideas as a playable thing.

It sounds good as you say it. I personally wouldn't try to engage in such a project without any coding or game development skills, even if Unreal Engine is indeed well documented. That said, it's my opinion, and I would be really impressed and glad if you showed me wrong :)
Frozenbyte doesn't say much about copyrights on their website, but you can still write them an email[www.frozenbyte.com] about making a fan-game out of their work.

Good luck ;)