Vapourware Codexian Game Development Thread

[Viata]

Something really good can come from this, however, that will require some great execution.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Something really good can come from this, however, that will require some great execution.

Just add three-dimensional spinners.

 

[V_K]

I'm getting a panic attack just by looking at the video!

 

[Alchemist]

That looks great! Could be a cyberspace dungeon crawler.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

That looks great! Could be a cyberspace dungeon crawler.

I've been thinking of something like that or something closer to how Descent RPG would look around the time I was wrapping up DG1. Cyberspace stuff and small spaceships don't require much animation to pull off, which is a big plus for me and my budget.
The only problem I see right now is pathfinding (unless we do Wizardry-style combat), but I'd like to do some research while doing DG2 to see if it can be done in an efficient manner.

In any case, it's an idea worth pursuing.

 

[V_K]

The only problem I see right now is pathfinding

Yes, and not just for the enemies.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Playing around with horizontal music sequencing. Should be useful if I decide to use dynamic music in any future projects.
Just need to add subsongs/variable pattern size and variations of music patterns to make repetitive music sound not too repetitive.

 

[Bad Sector]

Looks (well, sounds) good. I had experimented at the past with a node-based sequencing system where each node represented a function with a single left-side connector and several right-side connectors and a single node as the currently "active" one. A "play waveform" function would play a sound and the function would always evaluate to true, a "random" function would pick random right-side nodes (functions) until one evaluates to true at which point it becomes the active one, a "flagcheck" function would check a flag if it was set (flags were set globally to the graph, the idea was that a graph would be a system by itself to be sent messages from the game) and if it is set evaluate the first right-side node (if any) or evaluate to false and a "setflag" would change the value of a flag and evaluate the first right-side node (if any, otherwise evaluate to true), essentially a pass-through node.

It was fun to set it up, actually i used a generic node editor i had written (originally made when i wanted to try out decision graphs, hence the whole "function that evaluates to true to indicate the next active node", but i abandoned that idea since it was easier to just write out the scripts manually).

Sadly it didn't help me much since it turns out "smart" tools cannot hide the fact i have no idea about music composition :-P. It is one of those things i'd like to find the interest in learning at some point...

EDIT: It looked like this:

This is a "remake" though as i didn't keep the original script and code around (or i did but it is in one of the many archives with helpful names such as "code-backup-laptop-3.7z" in my external hard drive :-P). It was a prototype though and should be fairly easy to replicate (writing about it makes me want to make a new and better one, but i'm certain the moment i try to "test" it, i'll lose all hope :-P).

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Nearly 20 years ago I saw a node-based music generator. I had never seen anything like it and I really wanted to try it out later. I tried Googling it later (or maybe I was still using Yahoo or Jeeves or whatever at the time), but I didn't even know enough of the terminology to ever find it again. Now if I Google "node based music generator" I find a bunch of stuff. I'd love to try some of them out some time, but I've got too much other stuff to do, including finishing this game that has taken years longer than I thought it would.

zwanzig_zwoelf that looks great. I would get hopeless lost within 10 seconds. And now I'm thinking of playing Descent on my old 486. That was a great game. Spaceships flying through a 3D dungeon. Totally unrelated to the "Descent RPG" that showed up when I Googled it.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Good breakdown of main character movement mechanics in platformers

 

[Nathaniel3W]

There is no such thing as a small change.

Yeah, it looks like it's just opening and closing a gate, but you would not believe how complicated this is: Who controls the gate? And do you want to attack the gate or move through it? Should you be allowed to attack from inside the gate? I had to retool all of my attack code to allow attacking a gate instead of an enemy unit. And then I had to redo pathfinding: If you control the gate, you can go through it, but if you don't control the gate, you can't go through it. And what if you don't have enough move to go past the gate? Should you sit there with the gate open? And the AI, when it's choosing where to go and what to do, it can pathfind around the gate, and it can also choose to break through the gate. And I had to rework some meshes to fit the hex size. And I had to rework materials for dynamic lighting. I literally spent about a week on this system.

 

[Mastermind]

There is no such thing as a small change.

Yeah, it looks like it's just opening and closing a gate, but you would not believe how complicated this is: Who controls the gate? And do you want to attack the gate or move through it? Should you be allowed to attack from inside the gate? I had to retool all of my attack code to allow attacking a gate instead of an enemy unit. And then I had to redo pathfinding: If you control the gate, you can go through it, but if you don't control the gate, you can't go through it. And what if you don't have enough move to go past the gate? Should you sit there with the gate open? And the AI, when it's choosing where to go and what to do, it can pathfind around the gate, and it can also choose to break through the gate. And I had to rework some meshes to fit the hex size. And I had to rework materials for dynamic lighting. I literally spent about a week on this system.

I can see why Todd Howard couldn't get climbing ladders to work in any of the TES games.

 

[Lexx]

This screenshot of Fallout 1 is actually Fallout 2.
We did a fuckton of code cleanup, added all the missing bits, made it all work and fixed bugs to no end (Fixt is more buggy than Fo1 vanilla, and we fixed most of that). Alpha release happening within the next days.

 

[pat]

One of the things that RPG's and especially roguelikes seem to do badly is traps. It seems pretty boring to just inflict a certain amount of damage by way of dart trap, arrow trap, spear trap, etc. There's a few deviations from the boring path with rolling boulder traps in nethack, gas traps in brogue and things like that, but I wanted to go in a completely different direction.

So I implemented more of an environmental trap system where when the player steps on a pressure plate, certain doors shut and other doors open changing the shape of the dungeon. The hope is that this will create some tactically interesting situations where the player needs to reassess the path they need to take in an unfamiliar situation and perhaps with allies being unexpectedly stranded outside of the room. I don't want to make these things automatically lethal so they're all fairly benign at this stage but I'm going to add in some dangerous ones next I think. The plan is that they'll be clearly signposted though, ie. the player will see an artifact on a pedestal in a really obvious vault with warning runes on the door. In that scenario the player shouldn't be surprised that when they pick the artifact up, walls open to reveal a group of skeleton warriors or something like that.

Anyway, by doing all this, I created a heap of edge cases where the player might end up trapped forever in a part of the dungeon and I'm trying to avoid this by reworking the situations where these traps can take effect. And the way I'm testing it is by turning off monster generation and running my autoplay feature for as long as possible to hopefully identify any weird situations like that. So the above gif is what my work screensaver for the day looks like.

 

[Lexx]

This screenshot of Fallout 1 is actually Fallout 2.
We did a fuckton of code cleanup, added all the missing bits, made it all work and fixed bugs to no end (Fixt is more buggy than Fo1 vanilla, and we fixed most of that). Alpha release happening within the next days.

The alpha is out.
Apart from a few issues it worked pretty well for us (we played through the game a billion times in the past few weeks). Still calling it an alpha, because only god knows if there isn't any other critical issue hiding in its belly.

 

[vdweller]

Looking for English > Japanese translators. If you're up to it, sent me a PM.

 

[The Avatar]

Today I implemented an important and often overlooked aspect of an RPG- beard physics.

 

[Mastermind]

been going through some old design documents I made and... damn i wish i could play some of these games

 

[Üstad]

Today I implemented an important and often overlooked aspect of an RPG- beard physics.

You have watched too much ThuleanPerspective.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Today I implemented an important and often overlooked aspect of an RPG- beard physics.

Clips a bit at the end there.

 

[baturinsky]

Making this for js13kgames jam. SHMUP meets Breakout meets Snake.
https://snake-vs-invaders.netlify.com/
9k so far, 4k left for plot and campaign

 

[Lexx]

Fallout 1 in 2 engine conversion alpha 2 is out now. Changelog is huge. Lots of issues were fixed, stats tweaked and so on and so on.

Spoiler

• Added: FoA good ending can be achieved with keeping Nicole and Laura alive.
• Added: offset parameter to define PipBoy water timer post-it position from .ini file. Used to fix its position when running odd / unsupported resolutions.
• Added: When joining traveling NPCs on the worldmap, the game time will now advance correctly based on distance to the target location (via Harry from Necropolis to Mariposa takes ~22 days, as example).
• Added: Fo2 styled merchant interface restocking (optional!).
• Added: Resting timer now behaves like in Fo1 (06:00 instead 08:00)
• Added: If wearing power armor, radscorpions won't poison the player anymore.
• Added: Quick Pockets perk now acts like in Fo1 (3 ranks, -1 AP / rank).
• Added: Using binocular on owned bike now returns the battery power in %.
• Added: Custom ai packages for Mr. Handy robot.
• Added: Converted Ian, Katja, and Tycho party dialog to Fo2 style.
• Added: Door sfx to Glow doors (correct key / incorrect key).
• Added: power on / off sfx to Glow power management.
• Added: Animated power generator.
• Added: Glow robots now play getup/falldown animation depending on current power status.
• Added: Junktown casino now uses loaded dices.
• Added: "dice girl tamper timeout" - if the player tampers with the dices and the house noticed, the table will not not be locked forever.
• Added: More location related dialog to Ian (Junktown, Hub, Raiders, Necropolis).
• Added: Scrapheap / Fo1 demo map and location data (not available ingame yet).
• Added: Boneyard quest log entries.
• Added: V15 questlog entries are back, but only appear when entering the V15 location.
• Added: Destroying the rats tunnel in V15 now has visible feedback. As a bonus, rats on this level will respawn over time, unless the tunnel gets closed by the player. This will have barely any influence on any player, but still nice to know it exists.
• Added: Custom item proto for Boneyard farm quest.
• Added: Custom script and graphic for Gizmo's casino sign, to swap it out once Gizmo is no more.
• Added: Critter proto templates for small radscorpion, gecko, golden gecko, fire gecko, spore plant, and sentry bot (This is primarily for modders right now).
• Added: Geckos and small scorpions to encounter tables (rare chance only).
• Added: Geckos are only lootable with gecko skinning perk (currently not available).
  
• Added: The player now also receives a small dose of radiation while traveling on the worldmap around the Glow. So be sure to throw in rad-x a bit earlier than 2px in front of the green circle!
• Added: Alternative path for obtaining the motorcycle fuel cell controller.
• Added: Fo2 toe mutation code for lolz. :>
• Fixed: Cathedral tower staircase (teleport)
• Fixed: Unlimited XP exploit in Master's Vault computer terminal script.
• Fixed: Flip in Vats map won't bring the player to Lou if he attacks with the Brotherhood. Same for the gate and door mutants.
  
• Fixed: About a trillion bugs related to the vehicle. It should now be far more stable than it ever was in Fo2 vanilla.
• Fixed: Night Person trait now works correctly. Player receives the correct amount of skill points on levelup, and the trait can be removed via the Mutate!-perk.
• Fixed: "Destroy Armor Mod" wasn't removing armors in special cases.
• Fixed: Duplicated critters (cook, etc) in Shady Sands.
• Fixed: Party members can't run through the 2nd V13 door anymore.
• Fixed: Garl shouldn't drop his metal armor anymore if Armor Destroy Mod is active (untested).
• Fixed: Powered Armor and Hardened Power Armor weight adjusted to Fo1 values (had to double the weight, because Fo2 sets / 2).
• Fixed: Party member combat control settings are working now.
• Fixed: Junktown guards will now appear correctly when ambushing the Skullz.
• Fixed: Skills description changed from Fo2 to Fo1 version.
• Fixed: Marcelle won't leave the map anymore if NumPathNodes is > 6.
• Fixed: Neal in the Skum Pitt killing the Skulz ganger will now play the correct death animation.
• Fixed: Potential money stealing exploit (primarily in the Boneyard).
• Fixed: ai package for deathclaw eggs.
• Fixed: MacRae will not call female dude "lad" anymore.
• Fixed: Loxley now has the same team ID as everyone else in the thieves circle.
• Fixed: The BOS high elder is male now, as the dialog suggests (very likely protos swapped back in the days).
• Fixed: "Gain access to the Glow"-quest now appears correctly when entering the location.
• Fixed: "Restore power"-quest in the Glow now starting and ticking off correctly.
• Fixed: Video titles in PipBoy archive.
• Fixed: Can't steal from floating eye bots anymore. They also won't drop items.
• Fixed: Boneyard gangwar (Kill Razor) questlog entry and NPC reactions.
• Fixed: Rats would stop moving around after returning to a map.
• Fixed: Cutscene subtitles / color .pal files.
• Tweaked: If the player kills Garl in the fighting ring, Garl's items should be added to the beginning of the inventory now, and not the end.
• Tweaked: Added the V13 medial locker back into the game, but changed it's position and adjusted NPC dialog accordingly. The "original" position was shit and won't return under no circumstances.
• Tweaked: Increased big bike size by 1. Doesn't make much sense, but is better for gameplay I guess.
• Tweaked: The Deathclaw from the missing caravan quest can now be encountered on the worldmap again (only if missing caravans quest has been started, though).
• Tweaked: Armor stats to Fo1 vanilla.

 

[Bad Sector]

I wrote a small tool, Texture Paste Preview (the window at the right), that allows me to paste any image from the clipboard and see it tiled in 2D or 3D with an angle for wall/floor with toggleable filtering, etc. It can be useful for previewing tiling textures without loading them in the world editor, just with a couple of keypresses.

If this sounds interesting to anyone, you can grab it from here.

 

[Tyranicon]

Hey codex, i want to post a huge postmortem/breakdown analysis here. Is that something that’s done or will i get chewed out?

 

[Infinitron]

Hey codex, i want to post a huge postmortem/breakdown analysis here. Is that something that’s done or will i get chewed out?

Feel free. You can also create a new thread. Postmortem for what game?