Justice Pageant - Dungeon Game

[Jasper]

I'm trying to build a simple game which presents a Dungeon Master / Doom style perspective, using some art from Lone Survivor (there's a lot of corridor graphics which I suddenly realised would work well as walls in such a view.)

Not yest sure what the gameplay is going to be, just have an idea of how I want it to look.

Considered Unity for this, but decided I'll probably be more comfortable doing it in BlitzMax (with MiniB3D, which I've never used, but my friend Charlie Knight uses them together to great effect.)

So far I have a raycaster engine working, but am thinking of going to straight 3D for simplicity's sake.

[nyarla]

Excellent, I love those 1st person grid based games (do you mean grid-based, and not free movement?).. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

Could be interesting using 3D mode... have you seen the Etrian Odyssey games on the DS? First person grid based dungeon crawlin' JRPG.. They use 3D, in an interesting way, like the "walls" are made of multiple layers - more visual depth than other games like this I've played, because the walls to either side of (and above) you look "deep" as well as what's in front.. this is the best video example I can find: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAq6D1abnXA pretty zoomed out and hard to see though.. when playing, it looks like all trees and such are flat textures on quads - not models. it's like there's parallax movement all around you...

(maybe more complex than you're looking to do? but it's something I really want to learn how to make so it got me excited ;P)

[Jasper]

Dunno until I get it running about step-movement. I love it, but I'm kinda in the mood for more of an action game, so maybe I'll go for a Doom-like with some kind of RPG elements.

I've played Etrian Odyssey, and love the look of that game. I'm trying to see how they've done the trees (is it several slices of quads arranged in blocks?) I saw Notch do something similar with an unfinished LD game, and really like the look of it.

[nyarla]

Ah cool. :)

I'm trying to see how they've done the trees (is it several slices of quads arranged in blocks?)

I don't know what it's actually doing but yeah, that's what it looks like to me, at least in EO1 - haven't played the sequels.

[mikewest]

Makes me wish my DS didn't break, since that visual style in Etrian looks deep. It seems like it'd fit exceedingly well in an action game too.

[Jasper]

Progress report:

- I downloaded and got my head around MiniB3D, a 3D extension for BlitzMax (the language I wrote most of my games in before moving to Flash. Still use it for tools too.) It's based on Blitz3D, which I used about 8 years ago, and it's slowly coming back...
- Setup a random dungeon generator.
- Got player collision working.
- Added monster class, got them to animate and collide too.
- Started to tweak lighting / fog settings, did some hacks to MiniB3D back-end so I could get Nearest Neighbour filtering (was surprised to find only Linear available.)
- Added a scanline texture, naturally!

So far it looks like this:



Next:

- Bullets...
- Enemy / player damage etc.
- Weapons? Powerups?
- Think more about procedural aspect...

[moonmagic]

This looks fantastic. I loved Soundless Mountain; it's exciting to see you working in the creepo palette again. What kind of RPG elements are you thinking of adding?

[Jasper]

Thanks man!

Hmmm, as always I tend to approach these things from an atmosphere / visual sense in the first instance, rather than thinking about the mechanics. I wonder if it leads to shallower gameplay, but I dunno...

I am thinking of an endlessly deep dungeon with tougher enemies being gradually introduced, and the simple goal of finding the exit. It's starting to very much be Lone Survivor 3D now, if you take a look at this new shot...



... which makes me think I should concentrate on some of those ideas - survival perhaps? Perhaps you can level up your various resistances and so on, more defensive levelling up? Not sure yet.

But there is a problem I'm having. What I really want it to look like in windowed mode is (roughly) like this:



The glitching tears are not intentional, I used a timed screengrab in fullscreen mode, they don't actually appear. This is running in 16 bit mode, and looks awesome in my opinion, but the problem is it will only work in fullscreen (and maybe the glitchiness will be different on different machines?) Not sure what to do about it! Maybem just make it fullscreen only? It's not meant to be a commercial game or even particularly accessible.

[Jonathan Whiting]

You really do make the most gorgeous looking games.

I agree that the 16bit mode version looks neater, but perhaps it would be best as an optional thing (even if that means two downloads). I for one sometimes have problems with fullscreen games on one of my screens, and I'm sure I'm not completely unique in that regard. It's not a major deal though.

[Terry]

It's just the colours that are different in the 16bit mode, right? Maybe you could write a filter for it?

[FuzzYspo0N]

I love the look. Why not try some kind of passage with doors one the sides.

1) you won't know when a door will be cos its dark.
2) some doors may or may not spawn enemies.
3) sounds can be used to make it suspense based.

I think it is what I love most about dead space is the wondering just when the enemies will come. You know they are, you know they will try surprise you, but often the waiting is the 'fear' part when the surprise is more startling than scary.

[Jasper]

Thanks for the encouragement guys, I've been working (probably too) hard on it... Spent all night and all morning trying to get it to match the 16 bit feel. I actually matched it more closely, but rolled it back a bit, because I do kinda like the fogginess of the 32 bit version too. So here's what I came up with:



Now to get onto the gameplay!

[BitPuffin]

Ohmy this looks freaking sweet!

I kind of was hoping for something like Orcs and Elves when i read dungeon game but this looks amazing!

Keep up the fantastic work!

[Digitalistic]

This is looking really cool. I'm really liking the kind of spooky/darkness vibe. Reminds me of Wolfenstein.

[ThreeOhFour]

Those scanlines make it extra stylish, looking forward to trying this out!