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Indie Underlair - roguelike dungeon crawler with optional co-op

Mortmal

Arcane
Joined
Jun 15, 2009
Messages
9,158
This looks fantastic, but I agree with those who are warning you against co-op. Maze crawlers and co-op don't mix.
Yes, I understand, I'm currently wrapping my head around it. Lets see how it turns out.
Just consider that, dropping the co-op feature won't have any impact on the single player experience. Co-op is an extra feature and not a core designing feature acting as foundation for the game.

I wont ditch that idea, it was possible doing that in bloodwych . If you have a vision stick to it . Not a feature really wanted however, we are playing those kind of games alone in the most autistic ways.
 

Ularis Badler

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Mar 17, 2021
Messages
252
I wont ditch that idea, it was possible doing that in bloodwych . If you have a vision stick to it . Not a feature really wanted however, we are playing those kind of games alone in the most autistic ways.

Yeah, I'm giving it a try. Because, I can fail miserably but at least I have tried, which kills off that "what if?" feeling.
If people don't try or are afraid of failing, there will be no room for innovation. Being afraid is not a bad thing mind you. You just need to measure what you are willing to lose and how you will you cope with the consequences.
 
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Whimper

Educated
Joined
Dec 11, 2019
Messages
75
Imma point out more things:
No one is playing blobbers. Deadest genre ever.

Legend of Grimrock sold about 600k in the first year and Legend of Grimrock 2 was even a greater success. The franchise has been praised a lot since then and holds a considerable fan base.
Granted, this genre is definitely not the most popular, but saying it is dead and that no one is playing it, only shows how unreliable your information is.
Perhaps, instead of you searching other people's nicknames on Goolge for free defamation attempts, you could use that time to expand your knowledge on topics you seem lack information on.

There could be more people playing this genre if there were more games like that. Unfortunately, it seems that lately, only indie developers are willing to innovate and experiment with new concepts. Established studios just stick with the same formulas, over and over.

Who are the 13 players globally gonna co-op with lol?
Can't answer that, but it won't be in Underlair, since it's limited to 3 players only.

Alas, it's perfectly fine you don't enjoy the genre.
Defamation? You seemed to agree that what they said was true, unless something has been edited or deleted, there's no defamatory remarks here. Yet!
 

Bester

⚰️☠️⚱️
Patron
Vatnik
Joined
Sep 28, 2014
Messages
10,992
Location
USSR
Regarding the UI, I wonder how you would like it to look like. I would really appreciate more feedback on this.
I can't save your UI, I'm not a professional designer. I don't want to say it's shit, but it's not not shit.

It has a great many sins in regards to:
1- information placement
2- color palette
3- readability

Re 1: my suggestion is to group up things by their category and remove all repeating text like "click here to add a character"
476b3b27887901b12d9095cc3a7e93a0.png


I also have a particular distaste for this:
bea9e3e610761883288ee651a231e5a0.png

First, because "plus" should be on the right.
Second, the panel cannot be a button.
And third, because it should either be
"- 4 +" (POE-style) - buttons exist in the same panel, and the value is in a "deeper" panel
or
4 (+/-) (NWN-style) - the buttons are grouped together in a dedicated space. They don't live in separate panels from each other.
8dc851be7d35f9eab2fdce577cc85748.png
993f9a83c117437d4b7303e01d23ee29.png


Re color palette: it goes for a dark somber look, but then there's this completely out of place rainbow affair
8b101cde2be476f06a0a2d98cca347b4.png

If you insist on using color codes, play around with brightness/saturation. Although to be fair, we have a perfectly serviceable example of this with no color codes:
8bbfb517b1c2d1d9657ac324fa495f92.png


Also note here that the entire UI can be summed up as: yellow, brown, green, black and some red buttons. All in one style. Nothing blue-related, or any bright happy colors with the exception of lilac.
And going back to the +/- buttons again, the NWN-style, see how they don't take up space in this example:
ed6c25a1c50ec55949f7d561dc33b9aa.png


This is visual vomit (both the corner art and the inappropriate high-saturation blue):
db9856cc2a8a2db860ed9ea6ddcb105a.png


And Re 3: readability. Some stuff is hard to read, other is just unreadable. Talking about this:
2084545be7b8bdffc2cbc324177212c9.png


Ramp up the contrast:
67c5d19f84cfbc04a1e4d0a14da5045e.png


My best advice is that you hire a professional for the UI. It's not expensive and it's a major part of the game. For very little effort, you get 25% of your game to the next level of quality and polish.
 
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Ularis Badler

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Mar 17, 2021
Messages
252
Regarding the UI, I wonder how you would like it to look like. I would really appreciate more feedback on this.
I can't save your UI, I'm not a professional designer. I don't want to say it's shit, but it's not not shit.

It has a great many sins in regards to:
1- information placement
2- color palette
3- readability

Re 1: my suggestion is to group up things by their category and remove all repeating text like "click here to add a character"
476b3b27887901b12d9095cc3a7e93a0.png


I also have a particular distaste for this:
bea9e3e610761883288ee651a231e5a0.png

First, because "plus" should be on the right.
Second, the panel cannot be a button.
And third, because it should either be
"- 4 +" (POE-style) - buttons exist in the same panel, and the value is in a "deeper" panel
or
4 (+/-) (NWN-style) - the buttons are grouped together in a dedicated space. They don't live in separate panels from each other.
8dc851be7d35f9eab2fdce577cc85748.png
993f9a83c117437d4b7303e01d23ee29.png


Re color palette: it goes for a dark somber look, but then there's this completely out of place rainbow affair
8b101cde2be476f06a0a2d98cca347b4.png

If you insist on using color codes, play around with brightness/saturation. Although to be fair, we have a perfectly serviceable example of this with no color codes:
8bbfb517b1c2d1d9657ac324fa495f92.png


Also note here that the entire UI can be summed up as: yellow, brown, green, black and some red buttons. All in one style. Nothing blue-related, or any bright happy colors with the exception of lilac.
And going back to the +/- buttons again, the NWN-style, see how they don't take up space in this example:
ed6c25a1c50ec55949f7d561dc33b9aa.png


This is visual vomit (both the corner art and the inappropriate high-saturation blue):
db9856cc2a8a2db860ed9ea6ddcb105a.png


And Re 3: readability. Some stuff is hard to read, other is just unreadable. Talking about this:
2084545be7b8bdffc2cbc324177212c9.png


Ramp up the contrast:
67c5d19f84cfbc04a1e4d0a14da5045e.png


My best advice is that you hire a professional for the UI. It's not expensive and it's a major part of the game. For very little effort, you get 25% of your game to the next level of quality and polish.

Thanks a bunch for the time and effort you took to respond such extensive reply.
You pretty much hit most aspects that have been bugging me for while, but since no one had complained so far, I never actually felt motivated to change them. I'm talking about color codes, attribute buttons and the 'visual vomit'.

As far as point 3 goes, where you mention the text being hard to read, that's because, you are looking at text from skills that are disabled. It's making sure you cannot add skill points on them, on the currently selected character, with the currently selected class. And every secondary attribute on the bottom panel, is highlighted when you hover the mouse on their its governing attribute, that is why they don't have that much contrast. I'll see if more people complain about that.

Regardless, thanks again for your feedback.
 
Last edited:

Ularis Badler

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Mar 17, 2021
Messages
252
Are you planning any party joinable companions?

That's an interesting question. I'm not considering them for now, but some ideas could be, having a setting that would limit your party creation limit size to, lets say 2 or 4 characters, where the remaining slots could be filled in with companions found throughout the world. This is something that requires more thought, which I will leave for later stages of development.
 

urmom

Learned
Joined
May 28, 2020
Messages
308
Another game struggling for that coveted "Under" slot in the alphabet I guess.
 
Last edited:

Ularis Badler

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Mar 17, 2021
Messages
252
A lot of games struggling for the coveted "U" slot in the alphabet I guess.
I'm glad you refined your post for a more direct approach and replaced the "U" with "Under". Now your post is totally useful.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
Ularis Badler
you seem to be good at taking criticism so I hope this project doesn't die

what is your opinion on Wizardry 8? Have you played Grimoire : Heralds of the Winged Exemplar?
 

Bester

⚰️☠️⚱️
Patron
Vatnik
Joined
Sep 28, 2014
Messages
10,992
Location
USSR
As far as point 3 goes, where you mention the text being hard to read, that's because, you are looking at text from skills that are disabled.
Obviously. But I meant all of them. I don't think the active ones are very readable either, or the category names. They all blend-in with the background to varying degrees. The ones I made more contrasty are the active ones and this way they look readable enough.
 

Ularis Badler

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Mar 17, 2021
Messages
252
Ularis Badler
you seem to be good at taking criticism so I hope this project doesn't die.
If I understand that someone is providing me useful feedback, I will appreciate it, regardless of how harsh it may be, for as long insulting stays at bay, in which case I'll just see if the 'Ignore' button works.
I've also studied this forum for a while before joining. The toxicity here is probably the highest I have ever seen, like a mega grand park for trolls to linger about. But it also has excellent and knowledge people, which is the reason I joined, even knowing that the 'bad bones' attitude prevails in pretty much everyone. But this is something I can easily dismiss, the same way I dismiss retarded posts. Well, sometimes.

I would say that, the project it's really taking off with a dungeon crawler community I just recently joined, a fairly large community for the genre, you know, with people that "don't exist" ;).
Consider subscribing to my youtube channel, if you haven't yet, it will sure help.

what is your opinion on Wizardry 8? Have you played Grimoire : Heralds of the Winged Exemplar?
From those 3 games, I only played Wizardry 8, which I love but never actually finished.
If you check my blogger, you will see me mentioning it as one of the games for my source of inspiration in the RPG elements section. I nearly had Underlair having 8 characters instead of 6, because of it.
 
Last edited:

Ularis Badler

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Mar 17, 2021
Messages
252
As far as point 3 goes, where you mention the text being hard to read, that's because, you are looking at text from skills that are disabled.
Obviously. But I meant all of them. I don't think the active ones are very readable either, or the category names. They all blend-in with the background to varying degrees. The ones I made more contrasty are the active ones and this way they look readable enough.
The main reason as they stand, is for you to perceive them when you hover their governing attributes, otherwise you will have a hard time spotting them. I could however, highlight them with a different color, this would allow me to increase their overall contrast.
 
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Whisper

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Feb 29, 2012
Messages
4,357
How much of game is already one?

When you plan to put on Steam?


p.s.

If this is Legend of Grirmock 3 like game, i am it. Only thing that really needs to get fixed is "side-step dance" LoG (and EotB) had.
 
Unwanted

Sweeper

Unwanted
Zionist Agent
Joined
Jul 28, 2018
Messages
2,394
Drop the co-op. You're wasting recourses and manhours developing something that no one really gives a shit about.
 

Alpan

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 4, 2018
Messages
1,340
Grab the Codex by the pussy Pathfinder: Wrath
All you say is correct but unfortunately, your list is far from being complete. Looking into to my project folder, it actually goes back to the year 2005, with a total of nearly 20 projects, none of them finished, naturally. Regardless, it has been a great learning process and all I can say is that I should have started using Unity long ago. In 6 months using Unity, I managed to develop more than all those past years combined and the funny thing about all this, is that I've come to know other game developers sharing similar experiences, which is a sort of a mental relief to me.

I make the following comment in the belief that it is important to be honest with oneself.

While Unity may or may not have brought relief to your development efforts (I haven't used it myself, so can't comment) I would be wary of attributing your past failures to complete projects to the lack of having a ready-made engine. Put more bluntly, it sounds like an excuse. Whatever made you not finish your projects, stretching all the way back to 2005, will likely surface once again, this time in the context of greatly relieved development pains. It will be feature creep, or scope creep, or production values, or performance, or something else, I don't know. The point is that you should be ready for it to show up and put in the effort to understand and address whatever the root cause may be.
 

Tavernking

Don't believe his lies
Developer
Joined
Sep 1, 2017
Messages
1,216
Location
Australia
Watching the gameplay videos I'm having a hard time seeing how representing over players won't look clumsy when they start moving around. They will jolt forwards in an instant like the camera does? How will co-op combat work?

If co-op is too hard, I hope the project continues as a solo adventure.
 
Joined
Oct 19, 2010
Messages
3,524
Nobody plays them because
>gives 'disagree' rating to post about none playing blobbers
>posts 'nobody plays them because!'
hehe

I dont like blobbers, but my guess would be that their defining characteristics - gridbased, 3d fps tb combat in a blob - were real technological limitations once and are now dead. None but nostalgics accept them.
If you remove both - grid and tb in a blob - than the game is not really a blobber anymore.

With the removal of 1 - still a blobber. Eg Might and Magic, free movement, blob phase combat.
Or Grimlock with grid but rt hacking.
If you drop both, its a walking sim like Oblivion.

Wrong
 

Mortmal

Arcane
Joined
Jun 15, 2009
Messages
9,158
I wont ditch that idea, it was possible doing that in bloodwych . If you have a vision stick to it . Not a feature really wanted however, we are playing those kind of games alone in the most autistic ways.

Yeah, I'm giving it a try. Because, I can fail miserably but at least I have tried, which kills off that "what if?" feeling.
If people don't try or are afraid of failing, there will be no room for innovation. Being afraid is not a bad thing mind you. You just need to measure what you are willing to lose and how you will you cope with the consequences.

Indeed you have to innovate , codexers are saying no one playing blobbers , it's true and thats why. No one wants to play those games like 30 years ago ,but they want to feel the same way they were when playing them . So it's an extremely difficult task, brewing a potion of youth , you need to find what we liked in those games but add more.
Now i can see at least graphically it will, be sure to include an in depth and complex character creation , lot of new tings .
 

Whisper

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Feb 29, 2012
Messages
4,357
Hello everyone, I would like to share with you a project I've been working on since last August: Underlair.

The game aims to be a co-op, dungeon crawler, roguelike party based RPG, with mixed realtime and turn based mechanics.
It's still in a very early state of development with most of its 2D art being placeholder.

Some key features include:
  • Single player & Co-op up to 3 players (party split).
  • Permadeath.
  • Procedural map generation.
  • Procedural quests.
  • Grid based movement in a 3D world.
  • Tactical formations.
  • Item crafting.
  • Survival (supply management)
  • Exploration.
You can find a more detailed description of its features here.



Thanks for watching.


Enjoyed 2nd video.

Why no such games at the moment?

Grimrock is very close though (but not such atmospheric)
 

Generic-Giant-Spider

Guest
HOLY SHIT A ROGUELIKE DUNGEON CRAWLER WITH LOOOOOT AND PROCEDURALLY GENERATED QUETSTSFGHGFDK

AAAAH FUCK GIVE IT TO ME NOW I WANT IT I NEED IT ROGUELIIIIIIKEEEEEEEEEE

ROGUELIKIIIIKEKEEEEE
 

Ularis Badler

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Mar 17, 2021
Messages
252
Hello everyone, I would like to share with you a project I've been working on since last August: Underlair.

The game aims to be a co-op, dungeon crawler, roguelike party based RPG, with mixed realtime and turn based mechanics.
It's still in a very early state of development with most of its 2D art being placeholder.

Some key features include:
  • Single player & Co-op up to 3 players (party split).
  • Permadeath.
  • Procedural map generation.
  • Procedural quests.
  • Grid based movement in a 3D world.
  • Tactical formations.
  • Item crafting.
  • Survival (supply management)
  • Exploration.
You can find a more detailed description of its features here.



Thanks for watching.


Enjoyed 2nd video.

Why no such games at the moment?

Grimrock is very close though (but not such atmospheric)

It's probably connected with the fact that, this type of games belong to an older generation of gamers. The younger generation of devs and players, didn't have that much contact with this genre, that's why they don't receive that much attention. At least, this is my humble view on the subject. Regardless, Legend of Grimrock is proof that, there is a market for this type of games.
 

Rafidur

Learned
Joined
Sep 12, 2019
Messages
411
If you consider weeb shit like SMT4, SMT4A, Strange Journey, Sword City, Covenant of the Dusk, Etrian Odyssey, etc etc... there is a lot more demand for blobbers than also include anime blobs, if you know what I mean.
 

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