Vapourware Codexian Game Development Thread

[Nathaniel3W]

I highly recommend https://www.textures.com/. You can keep your cube primitives and retexture them with stuff from there, and you'll have a lot more variety. I use a bunch of their stuff in my own game.

One of the tricks I use on a lot of my materials is overlaying another texture at a different scale to break up the repetition. It gives great results for minimal effort.

 

[Zep Zepo]

I highly recommend https://www.textures.com/. You can keep your cube primitives and retexture them with stuff from there, and you'll have a lot more variety. I use a bunch of their stuff in my own game.

One of the tricks I use on a lot of my materials is overlaying another texture at a different scale to break up the repetition. It gives great results for minimal effort.

Yeah, I had that one bookmarked already.

I'm trying to get rid of the "square" & "flat-top" look of the primitives.

But that gives me an idea, I could probably weld some decorations onto the tops and corners and save those as objects and load them.

Zep--

 

[Duckard]

Implemented some primitive flocking behaviour for the AI as a stopgap until I had obstacles/complex maps. Turns out it works pretty well even with obstacles so I don't need to create influence maps yet, like I thought I would.

It uses 3 sets of points: 1) Points based on the enemy locations and the unit's preferred engagement distance with enemies, 2) Points based on the location of strong allies, and the unit's preferred distance to strong allies, 3) the intersect of 1 and 2. Ideally, a unit moves to the nearest point in 3. Otherwise, if it's a weak unit it moves to the nearest point in 2, or if it's a strong unit it moves to the nearest point in 1. I feel like this might fall apart as battles get more complicated but it works really well for something so simple. Also results in more organic looking positioning than if I were to rigidly adhere to a frontline/backline.

 

[Zep Zepo]

So, I've been working on a tool for the game (a model viewer+ model texture changer).

Everything was going well, coded all day then saved the project to continue the next day. Everything was working PERFECTLY.

Sleep... ...

Wake up, get coffee, fire up the last night's build to do a quick test...only HALF the shit is working.

WTF!

Turns out...I mostly use an external keyboard, as hunching over a laptop sucks. My quick test was on the laptop keyboard.

Seems it has some goofy feature where certain Keys in some cases will emulate the NUMPAD (which the laptop doesn't have).

I was pressing my laptop keys and only SOME things were happening.

After about 30 minutes...I figured it out.

Zep--

 

[Zep Zepo]

So...Feature Creep.

I had planned to spend 2 days on the model viewer/changer. I just needed something really simple

1. Convert models to a format I can display (.X)
2. Compress (if nesc.) and apply the textures.
3. Save the model with the texture information (so I can avoid the steps of loading the model and the texture later)

The above were done in my 2 day time allotment for the task

So The Feature Creep...

3. Oh hey..this model I downloaded has more than one limb. (add separate limb texturing)
4. Oh...after I convert and save and retexture a model, maybe I should have the option to display it (even tho I know it works)
5. Oh this other model I downloaded has an alpha texture and the other real texture (wtf is that, research alpha textures)
6. Oh...this other model I downloaded has several limbs and several alpha textures....research adding textures & alpha textures to limbs.
7. Hmm, maybe I should package this and add some documentation and a simple "What keyboard keys are used" and release it to the community.
8. Oh wait...this "treasure chest" model has 2 limbs (top, bottom)...but no animation to open it. (figure out how to rotate and/or move limbs)
9. Toggle keys to show/hide individual limbs.
10. ???

Now on day 5 of a 2 day project.

Zep--

 

[Rhuantavan]

Let me spam my progress in this thread. Some WIP spellcasting right here.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Started the shiz for the Atari Remakes Jam, decided to go with Dragonstomper but do it in a cyberpunk setting because fuck fantasy in the ass, leave that shit to Bioware.
Had a week or so to slowly figure out what I want to do and how to cram that into this deadline. For now I just wrote some of the basics (movement w/ collision stuff), next stop -- character system/combat.

Meanwhile, I've added proper EXPLOSHUNS to the bazooka in my game so now it's a guaranteed 10/10 from IGN.

 

[ProphetSword]

Plugging away at my own fantasy game. Just started early development on the turn-based combat engine. Combat icons can move around and recognize each other, but not much else at the moment...

 

[DavidBVal]

PC version of Exiled Kingdoms almost ready after many weeks of reworking the UI to work with a mouse, and adapting correctly to new resolutions. I had to change game fonts too.

I'm pretty happy at how I managed to keep all the different versions into a single branch that I can build for five platforms... almost makes it worth the pain of using Java all these years.

 

[Mastermind]

java games routinely crash on my computer. i bought Plexus a few days ago and had to run it several times before i could even play without crashing. at least it ran, unlike other java games

 

[DavidBVal]

java games routinely crash on my computer. i bought Plexus a few days ago and had to run it several times before i could even play without crashing. at least it ran, unlike other java games

Even executables that have been packed with its own JRE? In theory it must be perfectly self-contained and require nothing else installed on your end, not even Java, nor be affected by a defective Java installation. Running a regular jar directly tho... can be an adventure in itself.

 

[CryptRat]

Added descriptions recently, gifs are about the different avatars and base attributes with skill connections :

Some random stuff, ending with death :

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Can't wait to play this thing

Spoiler

in 25 years.

 

[CryptRat]

50 years in the case you'd prefer waiting for the enhanced edition with grid-based combat.

 

[DavidBVal]

We're all young and pretty, and now we've something to look forward to.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

A quick mockup of the combat for the Atari Remakes Jam. Again, I've decided to make a more PC-oriented Dragonstomper remake in a cyberpunk setting.
This is going to be fun. While normies enjoy their remakes w/ fun gameplay I'm finding ways to insert Wayward Son into the game.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Mr. Pink and some others have mentioned that Himeko Sutori might do better with a change of portraits. I'm not sure I'm going to scrap all of my portrait assets, but I figured in my free time I might try working on my Photoshop painting skills.

This is my first time seriously trying to paint something. I think I can pat myself on the back for not being a total Prosper at this, but I'm nowhere near the quality of DeviantArt darlings like Sakimichan. I also get lazy when I'm tired of working on something. You can see how sketchy the hair is compared to the shading on the face.

For now I think I'll keep working on the mandatory game functionality and content during the day. I'll keep practicing painting in my free time and maybe I'll keep a portrait update as an option in the future.

 

[Zep Zepo]

Looks cool, but needs more boobies.

Zep--

 

[DavidBVal]

Looks cool, but needs more boobies.

Zep--

I think the lower part of the portrait is a separate DLC.



Looks cool!

 

[Nathaniel3W]

So I just upgraded my enemy's AI, and now I'm seeing a HUGE increase in difficulty, which is good. It took me all day, but really it's pretty simple. Before the upgrade, the enemy squads would attack the closest player squad, no questions asked. Those battles were pretty simple and boring, without a lot of movement. Today I put in a very simple ranking algorithm for where the computer wants to move and which target the computer wants to attack. I didn't even try building a neural network or anything, and this simple AI upgrade has made a HUGE difference.

Computer melee units now gang up to finish off your wounded guys. Computer ranged units now kite you instead of sitting there taking bonus damage from your melee units.

I am amazed at how effective such a simple system is. I think next I can make wounded enemy squads fall back (if hp is low, find node within movement range, farthest from closest player squad) and heal up for a round. I'll bet that could really annoy the player, but in this case, that's a good thing.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Guess this is the right place for 'techie' stuff.

I saw another thread about constant increasing of game size due to textures and shit and I've wrote a quick tool to dump the vector stuff for my game into txt files and loading them to avoid using the prefab system within Unity.
The structure is pretty simple considering the needs of the current game:

ID (mostly unused, good to keep notes on what kind of object is this)
Type (lines/triangles/quads)
Color
shitload of coords which represent the object

As a plus, the size directly depends on the complexity of the object/texture/whatever. I've put together roughly 78 'textures' for the demo alone and the size barely exceeds 59 kbs. If I zip that shit, it'll take even less space.

There are still ways to improve and extend this thing (the editor is still far from perfect, and the limitations can be lifted to create more varied stuff), but the fact remains that it's very small in terms of size, far from the magic done by Farbrausch guys, but still good. One could start wondering how much stuff can me crammed onto a single CD if I keep this up.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

I am gonna make a game this summer. Probably using ogre3d or some shitty unity game. Maybe godot.

 

[Wayward Son]

Making a post for my brother. Which engine would be good for making a "ghetto Total War"?

 

[DavidBVal]

Making a post for my brother. Which engine would be good for making a "ghetto Total War"?

It largely depends on what are his skills. If he can't code much, and want to stay motivated and see some quick visual progress in what he does, Unity is a good choice.

Spoiler alert: in the end you need to program anyways or there's no way you'll make a gaem.

IMPORTANT EDIT: the Wizardry 5 link in your signature does not work. I demand you fix it.

 

[Wayward Son]

It largely depends on what are his skills.

He's umm... motivated I guess? He's never coded even a Hello World, so he'd be learning from scratch.

IMPORTANT EDIT: the Wizardry 5 link in your signature does not work. I demand you fix it.

Should be fixed.