Incline Das Geisterschiff - turn-based cyberpunk dungeon crawler

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

How are you constructing the elements themselves? At this low level of polygons I think I'd work with coordinates rather than visual drawing, feels like it'd probably be faster and more streamline-able: Once you get the hang to the ratios needed to create or approach X shape you can start doing blind input and then doing minor tweaking, whereas visual modelling requires your attention full-time.

Earlier I was inputting coordinates manually to create 'vector textures', but now I can do it in both visually and manually. Visual allows me to just hit space a few times while pointing the mouse at specific area, so certain shapes are faster to create while I can do some tweaking manually. Manual input gives you a lot of control, but it's a pain in the ass to tweak when the amount of lines gets yuge.

Enemies, on the other hand, are created by generating lines from mesh created in Blender. Meshes aren't animated -- I just create the base mesh and then create 3 poses (idle, attacking and dying), which are used to show what the enemy is doing. Transition is done by showing a wireframe cube with similar proportions to the mesh -- while a lot of people love their animations, it would take a lot more time to create a mesh and animate it for every planned enemy type instead of a few hours.

What program are you working with? Last time I dabbed into cyber sculpture was over ten years ago, but if I don't recall wrong, even back then 3DSMAX (obviously not what you'd use to create game levels, but I'll assume that the tools used for that matter can't be that far away in essence) had a function to add a value and colour to the contour and edges of an element, not unlike the function in PS layers.

Where that unavailable, I think I'd solve it by making a flat extrusion of X+2% —or whatever value depending on the desired thickness of the faux border— and filling the new plane with a solid colour like red, while retaining the "inner" mass of the object flat black. Problem is, this would at least double the amount of polygons, which is completely inverse to the idea of making this as lightweight as possible, and would probably add lots of graphical issues in the final render.

Having no textures per se (I would forego them absolutely in any case), but needing to make drawings on walls such as that wolf, I'd create an object with a value of 0 on the z axis and hang it up there to avoid the use of rasterized images which is bound to look fucked unless you make it ultra hd which completely ruins the idea of optimizing resources.

Ones last thought: is it possible to create a fake 3d space by having 2d lines graphed on based on coordinates that fake perspective in the same way the scumm engine did? Just throwing it to the air, I don't think this would actually be applicable in any way.

None of what I wrote is worth shit probably because I'm stuck in time and have no idea of the resources you're counting on, but it's a nice mental exercise anyways, so sorry for making you read a bunch of crap.

Just Unity and custom editors I wrote to work with lines. I'm avoiding Z-fighting by placing the floor and ceiling roughly 5 cm below/above the lines and shrinking walls by ~5 cm on X and Z axis. Still causes some Z-fighting in the distance due to floating point cals, but it's not that noticeable anymore. Every cube has a few line tiles attached, and they're batched into a single list to reduce draw calls. Then the cube is also taken into account for culling since lines won't automatically work with frustrum culling. It's very lightweight as long as you don't go overboard with lines.

Doubt anyone will mind this. Just make sure is not an area one jumps back and forth to repeatedly.

Been skipping a bit through your sc. Nice music, this will fit great with the game! I find the sound a bit heavy on the high end of the spectrum though, too many instruments/samples are crashing frequencies up there.

Thanks. I'm using more ambient tunes for the game, my soundcloud and bandcamp accounts are filled with all kinds of stuff, including personal tracks and stuff I've done on contract jobs. And the majority of sketches from 2016 have been discarded for now unless I really need them, unless you're talking about the tutorial demo. The tutorial demo had 2 tracks in the dungeon, but the first track (MONO:CHROME) is actually the main menu track, just used as a plug for now, and DEMO# is only reserved for the IPL.

A better example of ingame music would be this track. The main challenge was keeping the music suitable for combat and exploration, so a good compromise was using slower BPM and make it sound oppressive rather than banging all the time.

 

[AdolfSatan]

Great track, definitely nailed the vibe.

Just Unity and custom editors I wrote to work with lines. I'm avoiding Z-fighting by placing the floor and ceiling roughly 5 cm below/above the lines and shrinking walls by ~5 cm on X and Z axis. Still causes some Z-fighting in the distance due to floating point cals, but it's not that noticeable anymore. Every cube has a few line tiles attached, and they're batched into a single list to reduce draw calls. Then the cube is also taken into account for culling since lines won't automatically work with frustrum culling. It's very lightweight as long as you don't go overboard with lines.

Nice one mane, it's cool to see some devs still care about doing shit efficiently.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Thanks.
Being stuck with an old laptop definitely has its benefits.

Unity is hard to predict in this regard since it adds some overhead, but it runs at near-constant 60 fps in 720p on an IGPU with some hiccups here and there, but it doesn't fall below 30 fps as far as I can tell. I regularly do profiling and try to optimize stuff because I'm p. sure there will be someone with a crappy config like mine, but those who played it on more powerful rigs had no issues at all.

 

[Mustawd]

When is this coming out?

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

When it's done, naturally. Right now I'm aiming to complete the remaining content by April.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Threw a few simple spinners into the tunnels area, already see myself swimming in BlackGoat's hard-earned $$$.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Finally got around to uploading the video of the updated tutorial demo, since the one that was up represented the initial version from Nov 24 and I released a small update on Nov 27th with some improvements, but never bothered to record the video to show the changes. Anyway, it's up, should record the progress and upload videos more often just for shits and giggles.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

After doing some stat tweaks to make sure the demo doesn't feel too easy I've noticed another design flaw. It's pretty hard to run away from the enemies unless you manage to lock them somewhere and apparently I've placed the encounters in places where doors are too far away and running away vs fighting decision would be a no-brainer, since fighting would get rid of the enemy while running away would only lead to more time and HP lost.

Tweaking enemy AI now to make certain enemy types slower (make them perform fewer actions per turn) while keeping the fast ones intact, also adding tiny changes here and there. Keeping track of everything is a bitch sometimes.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

So I tweaked one of the enemy types to make it slower and ended up finding several cheesy ways to run away. Had to make the enemy faster by throwing in extra actions when it's about to leave the player alone, so cheesy methods like dancing around pillars and avoiding line of sight will inevitably allow the enemy to take a few shots at the player.

Oh yeah, and I boosted the stats again a little bit. Should work nicely for the demo.


Now I need to add a skip turn button...

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Slowly working on getting the demo ready, almost finished the second segment for the demo and will need to go over this once again to make sure everything works as expected nothing is missing. Just a few more days to do this, then testing until I'm sure it's ready, then submission to the IC and release online within the IC and personal deadlines. To make matters easier I've asked a friend of a friend of mine to help out with the trailer for the game, since it's one of the subjects I've never done and due to time limitations it's going into the 'I'll get someone to do it for me' type of tasks and hopefully I'll have time to get into it sooner rather than later while working on something else. Actually, I wanted to learn a lot of things while working on this project (including some 3D animation), but had to focus on programming instead and simplify the gfx to make the task more bearable while keeping things consistent.

The demo will include 2 segments (think connected levels in DX:IW or rooms in Biohazard) and will be rather short and linear (I'd say 20 minutes or so, will give more precise numbers later). That's the most realistic option I can pick for the demo in terms of dev time and without giving away a significant part of the game for free and without risking to miss the deadlines (both IC and my own).

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Added tiny details here and there to give more information about every area in the game. It's not much, but at least it gives an idea of what purpose each room or area has, along with some short flavor text here and there.

 

[AdolfSatan]

Now I need to add a skip turn button...

What about an overwatch one?

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Now I need to add a skip turn button...

What about an overwatch one?

Hum, I never thought about that. I'll bounce that idea for a while and see where it leads me. Adding that kind of functionality to the 'wait' button (if the enemy crosses your line of sight while you're skipping the turn) would be an interesting idea, although it could be very exploitable (player waits > enemy turn > enemy crosses the player's line of sight > player blasts the enemy on auto > player turn > player retreats behind the corner > rinse and repeat), so for now I'll just bounce it in my head and see how it works out.

I guess the closest approach to the 'overwatch' using already implemented functionality would be waiting behind the corner until the enemy comes closer then jumping out to blast them at the point blank range, which would increase the chances of taking out a weaker enemy before they get a chance to attack, but suffer a massive loss of DC if the player fails. Another 'similar' mechanic would the ram response, which is triggered when the enemy tries to hit the player, but misses, and in that case the player can respond in 4 ways (wait/retreat/retaliate/attack) before their turn starts.
Right now I'm just keeping the buttblasting enemies slower and focusing more on the importance of memorizing the level layout, e.g. where the landmines are located to avoid wasting ammo on sissies and which doors are still operable to buy yourself some time until the enemy stops pursuing you.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Did another content revision, cut off several segments that were still 'in planning' after realizing they didn't have enough content to be worth the time & resources to design them, moved this content (encounters, side quests, etc) to other areas instead.

 

[DavidBVal]

Keep figthing the good fight, man. Looking forward to test it more.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

It's coming along nicely, I'm going to take a wild guess and suggest it's going to be done within the next 2-3 days. Then I need to test it a bit to make sure everything works as planned.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Wew lads. It's almost done. Finishing the remaining enemy types and content for the second segment, had to cut a few corners here and there (basically remove some fancy scripted events I had in mind because implementing them could take an extra week and I don't have that extra week). Tomorrow it's finalizing/testing/polishing time as well as finishing the work on the trailer. Hopefully this will take off nicely and cause some delicious butthurt across the board.

Meanwhile...

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Had to whip the trailer together for the Indie Cup, actually asked a friend to help me out on this one since I was too busy with the demo itself.
It took longer than I expected, so the audio part is far from perfect -- just a quick cut of the main theme.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

2 micro-issues left.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

ITZ OUT
DOWNLOADING NOW

You can grab the demo here:
https://surt-r.itch.io/das-geisterschiff/
http://www.indiedb.com/games/das-geisterschiff/downloads/das-geisterschiff-demo-v044
https://gamejolt.com/games/das-geisterschiff/299106

Should take roughly 20 minutes to beat (less if you know the level structure, more if you keep fucking around). Feedback is appreciated. Enjoy!

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

0.4.4p1 is out. Changelog:

Spoiler

Changes:
-- Spinners generate more lines on screen to inform the player that something has happened.
-- Movement speed has been adjusted to speed things up.
Fixes:
-- Temporary fix to random freezes upon picking up certain upgrades.

Download here:
https://surt-r.itch.io/das-geisterschiff
http://www.indiedb.com/games/das-geisterschiff/downloads/das-geisterschiff-demo-v044p1
https://gamejolt.com/games/das-geisterschiff/299106

I've just had a private 3 hrs long stream with an old friend of mine who really loves dungeon crawlers and we sifted through every mechanic, how intuitive it felt and I've received a lot of good feedback. Exploration (and challenges it had), graphics and music were praised while the combat, AI and related mechanics still need some fine-tuning as well as a good sandbox-like playground to try them out and learn how they work without too much trial and error. Men, these 3 hours literally made the 2 years of challenges and false starts really worth it.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

v0.4.4p2 is out. Changelog:

Spoiler

Changes:
-- Tweaked the amount of ammo available to the enemies. Now enemies reload after firing a set number of shots, giving the player an extra turn to take them down or run away.
-- Expanded the weapon descriptions to give extra information about them.
-- Slightly increased the radius of landmine detection to give the player more time to release the movement key and avoid accidental contact.
Tweaks:
-- Slight tweaks to weapon stats.
-- Ruma's evasion has been reduced. A robot of this size should be way easier to hit than Schess, but the old value was still too high for this enemy type.
-- Herzog's DC, damage and weight have been toned down to give player more time to figure out the best tactic against him.
Fixes:
-- Fixed a few incorrect strings in the weapon descriptions.
-- Fixed several missing entity names. One could encounter this issue while analyzing certain terminals.
-- Fixed incorrect saving of certain triggers while moving between areas. Final fix for upgrade-related freezes.

If you've downloaded the previous version, download this one asap since it finally fixes the only detected critical bug since the release.

Download here:
https://surt-r.itch.io/das-geisterschiff
http://www.indiedb.com/games/das-geisterschiff/downloads/rsgeist-public-demo
https://gamejolt.com/games/das-geisterschiff/299106

Now if you'll excuse me, I'll go get some sleep.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Apparently the new update fucked up the balance towards the easy side. Next time I shouldn't rush the whole thing due to critical bugfixes and spend more time on testing. Regardless, I'm going to take a wild guess based on feedback I've got so far and suggest only half the players managed to reach the second segment without getting lost and dropping the game.

I've made a few notes again based on feedback, but going to take longer to pull this off so I can test and adjust things properly. So far my TODO list is:

• Add extra details to the Tunnels level to make navigation less of a chore;
• Fine-tune the AI, clean up the code;
• Fixing the delays related to animation;
• Fix the BALLINSE (for the last time);
• Slight improvement of controls (yes, S button);
• Add doors to the minimap;
• Add Skip button to the intro and such sequences in general;
• Add notes about upgrades (whatcha picked up but haven't applied yet).

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

ITZ OUT
DOWNLOADING NAO

Changelog:

Spoiler

Additions:
-- Added "move back" function to the S and Numpad 5 key. The functionality of X/Numpad 2 remains, though.
-- Doors are shown on the minimap now to make escape routes easier to plan.
-- Added a menu to the death screen which allows you to load a savegame, restart the current map/chapter or quit the game.
-- Savepoints are now used while loading the game or restarting a chapter.
-- Added more details to the Tunnels level.
Changes:
-- Notification about unapplied armor upgrades has been added to the status report.
-- Hitting the wall by accident no longer ends the turn.
-- Reloading with a full mag no longer wastes the mag and results in an end of the turn.
-- UI tweak: UNIT SETUP > WEAPON MENU > RELOAD now reloads the currently equipped weapon.
-- ESC key can be used to skip the text faster.
-- Certain strings have been slightly modified.
-- Certain upgrades are applied upon pickup now to reduce backtracking.
-- The color of doors has been changed to make them easier to see on the minimap.
-- Balance has been revised.
Fixes:
-- Fixed an oversight where bazooka attack sound would play twice.
-- Fixed a crash which would occur if the player saved at certain spots and loaded the game from another level.
-- Fixed improper loading of player save data if the player was located in a different level.
-- Fixed feedback effect from ramming appearing at wrong times.
-- Fixed the UI not refreshing upon applying soft upgrades.
-- Fix to a minor issue where the enemy would turn towards the next waypoint from their expected new position even if their current position hasn't changed due to obstacles/other reasons.
-- Enemy AI has been refactored.
-- Minor code optimizations.

Links:
https://surt-r.itch.io/das-geisterschiff
http://www.indiedb.com/games/das-geisterschiff/downloads/das-geisterschiff-demo-v044p3
https://gamejolt.com/games/das-geisterschiff/299106

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]