Vapourware Codexian Game Development Thread

[The Avatar]

Making an RPG? Might be a good place to start with character creation. I'm going for a victoriana/streampunk look without being too much "cogs everywhere" trite.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Good job, that looks very polished.

 

[Mr. Pink]

For a moment there I thought I didn't have my glasses on.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

What gives? It seems the "Insert Quotes" button isn't working for me.

Well, Mr. Pink I had a chemistry teacher in high school who explained the phenomenon of a teddy bear problem. It's the problem that you carefully explain to your teddy bear and he solves it for you.

The Avatar I remember picking your portrait for at least one of my Ultima VI playthroughs many years ago. And the UI looks good. "Victorian, but not steampunk" is uncommon these days. I might suggest a palette switch though. The black and white is a little drab in my opinion, and anachronistic. A Google search for "Victorian leaflets" quickly shows the range of orange and yellow I think about when I think of Victorian print. And if you switched the UI palette, you might also want to change the character's rim light color. (It looks like you actually have a blue light behind him because of the shadow. You might consider building the rim light into the dude's shader so you don't have to place dramatic lighting manually throughout all your levels.)

But I really do like that UI. What did you set it up in?

 

[vonAchdorf]

Making an RPG? Might be a good place to start with character creation. I'm going for a victoriana/streampunk look without being too much "cogs everywhere" trite.

Decline - Might is not influencing spell damage, that's so 00s.



Looks really good.

 

[The Avatar]

I remember picking your portrait for at least one of my Ultima VI playthroughs many years ago. And the UI looks good. "Victorian, but not steampunk" is uncommon these days. I might suggest a palette switch though. The black and white is a little drab in my opinion, and anachronistic. A Google search for "Victorian leaflets" quickly shows the range of orange and yellow I think about when I think of Victorian print. And if you switched the UI palette, you might also want to change the character's rim light color. (It looks like you actually have a blue light behind him because of the shadow. You might consider building the rim light into the dude's shader so you don't have to place dramatic lighting manually throughout all your levels.)

But I really do like that UI. What did you set it up in?

I looked for victorian leaflets and most of them seemed black and white. Maybe a little bit more color sprinkled in wouldn't hurt though.
I'm using PBR. so no fake rim light is allowed. The light setup here is just to make him look nice in this scene.
This was done in Unity.

 

[ragnor]

It looks great, though there is small details bugs me. It says Sense at left side and Sight at the right side. Is this a typo or are they different things?

 

[The Avatar]

It looks great, though there is small details bugs me. It says Sense at left side and Sight at the right side. Is this a typo or are they different things?

My bad, I changed the stat from sight to sense but forgot to update that part of the UI. The system is still very work-in-progress.

 

[Reinar]

Making an RPG? Might be a good place to start with character creation. I'm going for a victoriana/streampunk look without being too much "cogs everywhere" trite.

I have an idea for "Arcanum 2" game - isometric RPG set in victorian/fantasy world with just few decent steam and clockwork inventions. I want to make it once I am rich to pay someone to do it, or when I become very good at programming and writing to do it all by myself. Neither is very probable though. I have already done some work in the worldbuilding department, got second iteration of RPG mechanics and a story draft. If you're interested, we could share ideas or team up.

 

[Lexx]

In case people didn't know, besides Fallout 2 modding I'm also doing shit for Armed Assault 3... and today I've released my mini-campaign to the Steam Workshop:


(click picture for link)

Took me a while to finish. And now that it is done, I'll need a break...

... then I will return to my Fallout 2 mod.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

long term project which started using gcc 4.5. Currenlty I'm using gcc 6.3. Dev peak was 2012 to 2014, since then I've barely worked on it. Got a bit lazy (and father). Have to move my ass again .

This looks amazing! Got more info on this project?

 

[barker_s]

This will be my last post in this thread for a long while. Firstly, because I have a baby on the way (he'll be joining us in this vale of tears this month) and I'm pretty sure he'll consume most of my spare time for a while. And secondly, because next time I'll post something about my game it will be in a separate thread so I can gather feedback and so on.

So, what's been done:
- I rebuilt the water shader (I basically recreated Civ4 water shader, even stole the texture from Fall from Heaven 2)
- Refined the procedural shores
- Implemented A* pathfinding
- Added some basic code for handling Armies and Cities
- Implemented a very primitive world generation (LibNoise ftw)
- Integrated army movement with FoW/visibility system
- Squashed some bugs, improved performance, refactored some code
- Did some other things I probably forgot by now

Without further ado, here's the vid:



And last, but not least, I'd like to ask you guys a question. How the hell do I come up with a catchy name for my game? All good names seem to be taken already. The working title of my game is 'Arcane Dominions', but it's got 'Dominions' in it, so it might be considered misleading. I was also thinking about 'Ars Arcanum', but this one got 'Arcanum' in it, and while Troika's dead I'd rather not risk the lawsuit by whoever holds the rights to that.

 

[imajia]

This looks amazing! Got more info on this project?

Thanks. If you want to know anything specific, let me know.

Technical

language: C++
external libraries: Boost
2D OpenGL wrapper: SFML

The main reason for using Boost is the performance of the unordered set and unordered map, which I use a lot. They are way faster than the STDL versions. Might have changed in the meantime, though.
The 2nd reason for using Boost is the OS independent file system support. It's more like the lowest common denominator, but good enough for my needs.

SFML has been proven to be a solid choice. Good performance and continuous development of the very solid code base. And if required, like for clipping, I can fall back to plain OpenGL.

Graphic

Initially I didn't plan to do anything too graphic heavy, more something like plain ASCII. But it was extremely frustrating to show the progress to anyone. I'd say that most people have the imagination of a stone and fail to make the connection between ASCII symbols and the world as they know it.
Which in the end was a (not the only) reason and kind of a welcome excuse to go ISO 3D. Another one was that you don't have to explain every pixel on the screen.
The only real compromise I made was that I don't create or provision sprites for the population. The people are color coded cubes:

The current graphics are a mix of stuff from https://opengameart.org/ and my own Paint.NET "skills".

Map Size

The map generator allows to create maps from 255x255 up to 4080x4080 tiles. Currently there is a hardcoded limit of 5 height levels, which creates more than 80 million tiles or cells for the biggest map. The biggest map consumes around 3 GB of memory and that isn't optimized, bigger maps wouldn't be a problem. The only real challenge with the bigger maps, actually even with the small ones, was the pathfinding. After all, there should be (and there are) hundreds or thousands of units roaming around the map, so it shouldn't take more than some milliseconds to find an efficient enough path. But that's another lengthy story.

(The small white rectangle is what you see on the main screen, large map used)

Game UI

The UI changed over the years and is obviously not finished.

• Left upper corner: working hours (shameless Wiggles rip-off)

• Right upper corner: mini map (in this case of the mini world)

• top bar: toggles through the transparency settings, show/hide trees, game speed

• left side: building menu

• right side: statistics, game info, traffic route config, political decisions, etc

Underlying Concepts

As mentioned in the first post, simulating “live a life” is a key part. What's not so trivial is describing what defines a human being and what his reaction to life would be. Or the behaviour of a group or even the whole society. Some examples of the irrational behaviour which large groups of people suddenly showed:

• tramp stamps

When I was a kid, tattoos were for criminals and sailors. And perhaps hookers. And suddenly under-aged girls got the permission from their parents for a massive tattoo on the back.

• Group behaviour on the road

For instance on a 4 lane road, people were only driving on one side for no reason. No accident, no traffic sign, nothing. And then you drive past them on the free lane and they look at you like you're completely insane.

And many, many more examples.

Reality is so stupid, that you probably can't simulate it. More promising is to simulate what others might think what could happen. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is IMHO a reasonable good approach for now.

• The units have primary needs like food and water, which cannot be ignored.

• Then there are secondary needs like sleep and company of others, which can be delayed and which might even be ignored.

• Then there are needs which are very specific for an individual. Some don't care about sex or religion, others would put it on the list of primary needs.

Ignoring the needs will eventually have consequences.

On the next screenshot you can see a temple with a priest motivating the attendees, a well for water and people chatting. The + shows a positive response, a - a negative response. Currently that's not well balanced. After 2 days everyone hates half of the population and there are brawls everywhere.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

Looks incredibly interesting, but cubic representation of units seems a bit out of place.
Maybe something like battle brothers figurine would look better?
Is there going to be a playable version of this?

 

[Bocian]

"... couldn't stand the lack of Religion anymore and went berserk". - the future of our world.

 

[gaussgunner]

Currently that's not well balanced. After 2 days everyone hates half of the population and there are brawls everywhere.

Ultra realistic!

 

[Janise]

So I just spammed my own game in Galdred 's thread. Whoops. I meant to put this here:

I'm working on making better battle maps. Here's my first attempt at a cave level, shown with and without the hex overlay.

Blackguards 2 flashbacks...

 

[imajia]

Looks incredibly interesting, but cubic representation of units seems a bit out of place.
Maybe something like battle brothers figurine would look better?
Is there going to be a playable version of this?

At first the cubes seem to be out of place, but you'll get used to them. And at least the landscape is more realistic than in the ISO-beginning

On a side note: Improving graphics is a vicious circle. The moment a noticable aspect looks very different and good, the rest needs some improvment too. An endless time sink.
For the moment, I'm happy enough with the graphic as it is. Creating sprites for all the people, jobs, actions and death animations would take...months? Thats's not an option for now.

Is there going to be a playable version of this?

Sure, if there is some interest, I can wip up a short manual and send it by request (PM). Eventually it'll be downloadable from the domain I've registered some years ago .

"... couldn't stand the lack of Religion anymore and went berserk". - the future of our world.

Hm. Or "... couldn't stand Religion anymore and went berserk". Haven't considered that yet. Thanks for the thought.

Currently that's not well balanced. After 2 days everyone hates half of the population and there are brawls everywhere.

Ultra realistic!

True I guess, but there are currently no appropriate counter measurements to bring back order. Or to cause an uprise on purpose. And in general, the "justice system" is very basic at the moment:

 

[imajia]

This will be my last post in this thread for a long while. Firstly, because I have a baby on the way

How the hell do I come up with a catchy name for my game?

Do it like Manfred Trenz with the side scroller Katakis. Flip through a telephone book until you see a Greek name you like.

 

[Mr. Pink]

This will be my last post in this thread for a long while. Firstly, because I have a baby on the way

How the hell do I come up with a catchy name for my game?

Do it like Manfred Trenz with the side scroller Katakis. Flip through a telephone book until you see a Greek name you like.

Vangelis is my favorite side scrolling shootemup

 

[c2007]

"... couldn't stand the lack of Religion anymore and went berserk". - the future of our world.

 

[imajia]

First public alpha of "socen":

Quick guide

Game Download (14 MB)
MD5: 710c06b4efdc0bba4259c9a2431d688f

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Do it like Manfred Trenz with the side scroller Katakis. Flip through a telephone book until you see a Greek name you like.

Or just swap two letters or change one if you're making a fan remake of something.
That's how Joerg Winterstein came up with Takatis and Hurrican.

 

[LESS T_T]

May be interest people here; design and other docs of the original Sims: http://donhopkins.com/home/TheSimsDesignDocuments/

Spotted via HackerNews. I think these were posted on Scribd or something, and DCMA'd by EA in 2012, but somehow still available on its programmer's personal site, heh.

samples

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Making an entire level in World Machine takes a long time. Then it takes a lot of tweaking after you put it into the game engine. UE3/UDK's built-in landscape tool is great, but it doesn't give you the kind of detailed control that World Machine gives you. I needed the kind of detailed terrain features that World Machine can create combined with the quick hand-drawn updates you can make in the game editor. To help out with that I bought a popular background mountains pack from the Unity Asset Store, but it isn't going to give me exactly what I need. So I created my own meshes exactly how I want them:

Those are four meshes ranging from about 1500-1800 triangles, with 1024x1024 normal maps that give sufficient detail. (And you'll never know how low-poly they are in my game, which will have kind of a faraway tactical camera.) The shader blends three textures together according to a splat map for each mesh. And with a little bit of shader magic, I made the scale of the textures independent of the scale of the mountains, so I can scale them up or down and the textures stay the same size. (The big green valley is actually just the foot of a mountain offscreen that I blew up really big.) Any time I want a new landscape palette or textures, I keep the same splat maps and just change the textures they use. And I can load those textures into the UE3 landscape tool and hand-draw any details I want, and it all looks perfectly blended. If I want a new mountain shape, I already have a template saved in World Machine, and I can crank out more with very little effort.

It feels good to get something done that I know will help me to do stuff better and faster.