Vapourware Codexian Game Development Thread

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Chipping away at DLR Gaiden since I wasn't satisfied with the early version, which felt less like a step forward and more like DLR 1.1 with a few extra bells and whistles.

It slowly transforms from the initial plan to make a standalone expansion into a testbed for a true sequel.

 

[TheDeveloperDude]

My game has a roguelike random generated world. But now I am making the campaign main quest.
Do I need a level editor for my game?
Making levels, it feels like a different job than programming the game engine.
Like Carmack programmed the engine and Romero made the levels of Doom.
I am using now: editing some configuration files, but that is feeling like chore work.
But programming a new level editor from the beginning...that feels too much work.

 

[beardalaxy]

My game has a roguelike random generated world. But now I am making the campaign main quest.
Do I need a level editor for my game?
Making levels, it feels like a different job than programming the game engine.
Like Carmack programmed the engine and Romero made the levels of Doom.
I am using now: editing some configuration files, but that is feeling like chore work.
But programming a new level editor from the beginning...that feels too much work.

I wouldn't say you need a level editor in a roguelike. If the whole point is that it is random, it wouldn't make much sense to let the player make their own map. Just my two cents. It is better to focus on what is most important for your game first and foremost anyway, and that is probably not a level editor.

It's been a while since I've posted any progress here. Long story short I have all the voice acting done now (with a couple exceptions that will be patched up soon) and have begun implementing them in-game! Here is the title screen and intro cutscene to the game, voice acting included!

If you're not a fan of the acting, or just don't like voice acting in something like a 2D RPG, then the option is there to turn it off. It will also only be present in main story cutscenes, which will be noted by bust graphics appearing on the screen alongside the text boxes. While I would have liked to get voice acting for the entire game, it is an open world RPG with lots of side quests and I didn't want to push the help I had received from so many awesome voice talents too far, let alone implementing all of it. That would result somewhere in the realm of 1000+ more lines.

Anyway, check it out and let me know what you think! Particularly about the volume levels, which I'm still trying to get figured out. If you turn on the voice acting, right now the music in cutscenes drops to 50% and the voice lines themselves are played at 150%. The game starts with a master volume of 60% so it doesn't blow out anyone's eardrums right when they open it (which is something I noticed is a major issue with indie games in general but especially RPG Maker games).

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Yo, that hand drawn art looks like it was drawn by hand.

 

[Rean]

Anyway, check it out and let me know what you think! Particularly about the volume levels, which I'm still trying to get figured out.

What's your audio setup? Are you the one doing the voice? I'd look into a pop filter or softening the audio with some post-processing, those 'S' are quite harsh, which is common with gamer mics etc.

 

[beardalaxy]

Yo, that hand drawn art looks like it was drawn by hand.

It most certainly is! There are 15 hand-painted, on-canvas artworks that I commissioned from an old friend. I have the physical versions kept safe, they're pretty cool!

Anyway, check it out and let me know what you think! Particularly about the volume levels, which I'm still trying to get figured out.

What's your audio setup? Are you the one doing the voice? I'd look into a pop filter or softening the audio with some post-processing, those 'S' are quite harsh, which is common with gamer mics etc.

It's not me doing the voice.

I used a dynamic microphone with a pop filter plugged into a mixer and hit it with a 80hz high pass filter in post. I honestly don't think there is toooooo much essing, but if there is then I'm not sure what more I could do for it next to stopping by an official recording booth and re-recording everybody's lines. Unless you have a different solution perhaps?

There are some recordings that were pretty rough due to how long ago I recorded them (this project has been in the making for 8 years and needless to say I've learned quite a lot), but unfortunately I'm not able to re-record them. One of the voice actors is no longer a child, for instance, and some I have lost contact with despite my best efforts, unfortunately. So I did the best with what I have and I think they turned out to be at least passable for an indie project such as this. Luckily, the worst audio I am in the process of re-recording since it was my roommate who did the lines. They were the earliest ones, done in a large room with a wooden floor and a Blue Yeti condenser mic with no pop filter at all... so yeah those ones definitely need to be re-recorded.

 

[megidolaon]

There was a game someone here posted a few years ago, I think it was in this thread(I'm like 75% certain) ... it was a first-person action RPG... I vaguely recall just a few details, like the world it took place in had a lot of magic floating islands in the sky, and the best I can remember about its aesthetics is that its visual style looked like a cross between Kings Field, Hexen, and Daggerfall. It could've also had a trippy 1970s prog-rock album art style... OR that could just be my awful, unreliable memory playing tricks on me. Does anyone know what game this was, or who was working on it?

 

[Grauken]

There was a game someone here posted a few years ago, I think it was in this thread(I'm like 75% certain) ... it was a first-person action RPG... I vaguely recall just a few details, like the world it took place in had a lot of magic floating islands in the sky, and the best I can remember about its aesthetics is that its visual style looked like a cross between Kings Field, Hexen, and Daggerfall. It could've also had a trippy 1970s prog-rock album art style... OR that could just be my awful, unreliable memory playing tricks on me. Does anyone know what game this was, or who was working on it?

This maybe?



Or

 

[megidolaon]

There was a game someone here posted a few years ago, I think it was in this thread(I'm like 75% certain) ... it was a first-person action RPG... I vaguely recall just a few details, like the world it took place in had a lot of magic floating islands in the sky, and the best I can remember about its aesthetics is that its visual style looked like a cross between Kings Field, Hexen, and Daggerfall. It could've also had a trippy 1970s prog-rock album art style... OR that could just be my awful, unreliable memory playing tricks on me. Does anyone know what game this was, or who was working on it?

This maybe?



Or

It doesn't look like it was either of these. What I remember is the vast majority of the videos and screenshots were entirely in outdoors environments, except the occasional house or castle interior. Pretty much almost everywhere the player looked, there were floating islands (like way up in the stratosphere, not oceanic) which had castles or jungles or whatever, and he'd go from one island to the other to do quests. I don't remember anything specific about the monsters or NPCs unfortunately. I'm clicking through all the old pages trying to find this, now at around page 165. It may not even have been in this thread but I'll keep looking.

 

[Grauken]

There was a game someone here posted a few years ago, I think it was in this thread(I'm like 75% certain) ... it was a first-person action RPG... I vaguely recall just a few details, like the world it took place in had a lot of magic floating islands in the sky, and the best I can remember about its aesthetics is that its visual style looked like a cross between Kings Field, Hexen, and Daggerfall. It could've also had a trippy 1970s prog-rock album art style... OR that could just be my awful, unreliable memory playing tricks on me. Does anyone know what game this was, or who was working on it?

This maybe?



Or

It doesn't look like it was either of these. What I remember is the vast majority of the videos and screenshots were entirely in outdoors environments, except the occasional house or castle interior. Pretty much almost everywhere the player looked, there were floating islands (like way up in the stratosphere, not oceanic) which had castles or jungles or whatever, and he'd go from one island to the other to do quests. I don't remember anything specific about the monsters or NPCs unfortunately. I'm clicking through all the old pages trying to find this, now at around page 165. It may not even have been in this thread but I'll keep looking.

How about this

 

[megidolaon]

There was a game someone here posted a few years ago, I think it was in this thread(I'm like 75% certain) ... it was a first-person action RPG... I vaguely recall just a few details, like the world it took place in had a lot of magic floating islands in the sky, and the best I can remember about its aesthetics is that its visual style looked like a cross between Kings Field, Hexen, and Daggerfall. It could've also had a trippy 1970s prog-rock album art style... OR that could just be my awful, unreliable memory playing tricks on me. Does anyone know what game this was, or who was working on it?

This maybe?



Or

It doesn't look like it was either of these. What I remember is the vast majority of the videos and screenshots were entirely in outdoors environments, except the occasional house or castle interior. Pretty much almost everywhere the player looked, there were floating islands (like way up in the stratosphere, not oceanic) which had castles or jungles or whatever, and he'd go from one island to the other to do quests. I don't remember anything specific about the monsters or NPCs unfortunately. I'm clicking through all the old pages trying to find this, now at around page 165. It may not even have been in this thread but I'll keep looking.

How about this

Yep, that was it! Not as many floating islands as I thought it had, but that's definitely the game. Thanks

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Reworked some particle effects for Septaroad Voyager.





I spend almost all of my time doing stuff that doesn't look flashy and attention-grabbing on Twitter, so it's nice when I can work on something people might actually look at.

 

[CryptRat]

New Dungeon Crawler Jam has started yesterday for people who wanted to participate but missed the date.

The themes are :

1. Infinity/The Endless
2. Ancient Ruins
3. Solitude
4. Cosmic Horror

You can choose but obviously I'm implementing them all.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

I've decided to go for the Ancient Ruins theme and make a streamlined successor to Mordor: Depths of Dejenol.

 

[JoacoN]

Been working on the second boss of my game and a friend helped me by doing a music piece for it, here's the intro as a teaser for the final version and a screenshot of me testing out the arena!

 

[baboogy]

Working on rewriting the renderer from scratch, based on the recommendations + readings suggested in this thread and others I found elsewhere after a lot of searching online. Already much more satisfied with the visual "style" this has over my previous attempts to just map 2D textures to 3D models in opengl.

Next up: need to add support for rendering sprite entities. After that it's back to working on the game.

 

[CryptRat]

Love the dithering, your game looks pretty good (already better than any of my games, not that it's a feat ).

In window mode in this small window and with this art style it makes me think on some cool DOS sharewares I would be super happy to find among a list. Things like Maze Quest are the first kind of things which came to my mind when seeing it, although your game looks better than this one for sure.

 

[Baron Tahn]

Speaking of v/o a few posts ago - I work in that field if anyone needs such a skill for their game. Just thought I'd drop past and mention it. Game characters/narration are way more awesome than most TV roles I audition for anyways!

 

[baboogy]

Love the dithering, your game looks pretty good (already better than any of my games, not that it's a feat ).

In window mode in this small window and with this art style it makes me think on some cool DOS sharewares I would be super happy to find among a list. Things like Maze Quest are the first kind of things which came to my mind when seeing it, although your game looks better than this one for sure.

Thank you, I'm definitely trying to recreate that feeling older games captured with their art. Though I'm taking a fair few liberties on the implementation side, I think I would want to jump off a bridge trying to implement something similar with the limitations people in the late 80s / early 90s had

 

[baboogy]

Prototype for animated sprite entities for the 2D renderer is more or less done. Thankfully again because the engine logic was decoupled from the 3D opengl rendering, I did not have to change much other than the calls to drawing the sprites (previously) as a billboard and now instead being copied to the screen buffer off the depth buffer.

Tentative checklist of what's left for rendering before I move back to game logic-

• Textured floor/wall tiles would be a nice thing to have
• Likewise, some kind of skybox support for large caverns or outdoor areas, but in a way that still allows me to have areas with ceilings in the same zone
• Smooth step / smooth turn options? I will have to give some thought about how to implement these. I have some ideas but nothing concrete.
  • In the 3D renderer, I had a smooth turn to face enemy parties if they happened to attack you from the side or rear. It looked nice but with snap to directions it feels (in my opinion) a bit jarring. If the player is drawing their own maps I can see that being very irritating.
• Screen effects for things like teleportation, spinner tiles, dark zones, full party status effects, etc.

I'm unsure of what to do about the shading/fog effects (thematically, not programmatically.) I've been trying to restrict myself to a 64 color palette so far for everything. Maybe it'd not be unreasonable to assume that enemy parties would have their own light sources (ie a torch), so having them full bright amidst the gloom of far dark corridors wouldn't be strange. Something I'll have to experiment with and see. Distant walls could definitely be darker.

 

[Hag]

New Dungeon Crawler Jam has started yesterday for people who wanted to participate but missed the date.

Damn, if only I had more time that look like something I'd love to do and

Your game must not contain nudity,

oh, no regrets then.

Have fun all. Looks like a great theme.

 

[Baron Tahn]

Prototype for animated sprite

Is looking preddy gud! Giving me those M&M vibes in a good way.

 

[Justinian]

Anyone enter the Dungeon Crawler Jam on itch.io? I was gonna but I misremembered the end date as the start date so there are only ~3 days left.

https://itch.io/jam/dcjam2024

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Anyone enter the Dungeon Crawler Jam on itch.io? I was gonna but I misremembered the end date as the start date so there are only ~3 days left.

https://itch.io/jam/dcjam2024

Entered and submitted mine today. Went for a very streamlined, arcade-like approach inspired by Mordor: Depths of Dejenol -- something one would play for 20 minutes when they are tired as fuck but still want a dungeon crawling fix.

https://surt-r.itch.io/dragon-ruins

 

[baboogy]

Testing textured ceilings/floors. Had a fair bit of trouble implementing this, and it's not very efficient, math was never my strong suit. I should probably find some good geo/trig textbooks and brush up on the material, see if I can rewrite it later down the line to be more accurate and efficient. But overall I'm satisfied with the progress being made- the editor let's me place a unique texture per floor, ceil, or wall tile, I can already imagine that I should be able to make floors and rooms look visually distinct if I can put in the effort to make good sprite textures for everything.

I suppose for dungeon crawlers it really doesn't matter all that much. I can't remember ever playing a drpg and thinking, man I wish the graphics were better, Wizardry 1/2/3 were interesting on a first playthrough regardless of the fact that everything is rendered purely with lines and you have to use your imagination. The graphics definitely take a backseat to the gameplay mechanics and actual level design. But it's pleasant to look at nonetheless.