Incline WORLD'S GREATEST GENERIC RPG BLOBBER ENGINE : "VAULT OF TERROR"

[Darth Canoli]

It looks like a school picture...

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Got rid of the placeholder for the title screen. Striving for old skool D&D Supplement feel with comic book graphics.

Nice artwork, but surely the two fighters shouldn't be lurking behind the other three party members.

It's the Party of 1989 photo, obviously the big dudes gonna be at the back.

 

[Martyr]

at least one of them should have a moustache.

 

[Narushima]

Striving for old skool D&D Supplement feel with comic book graphics.

Well, that's certainly easier to do than actual quality illustrations.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

Striving for old skool D&D Supplement feel with comic book graphics.

Well, that's certainly easier to do than actual quality illustrations.

Everything is easy with guys like you. What couldn't you do if you tried? This is a good time for you to start on your own RPG and we'll see who has the best product by Christmas 2021. As easy as it all is I know you are going to find it almost boring to put out a better game than this one will be.

 

[unseeingeye]

I tend not to like comic book or anime aesthetics for video games in general, but the presentation of Vault of Terror actually looks very nice, and I am curious to discover the pets.

Are the pets barred from entry at any particular locations, like perhaps in temple environments? Or can they go everywhere with the rest of the party? This and Post-Atomic are currently my most anticipated games on the horizon.

 

[Narushima]

Everything is easy with guys like you.

Jealous?

But in all seriousness, you're bound to be criticised whenever you create something and display it publicly. And with all the sycophantic praise you get here, I think you can take a jab or two.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

Everything is easy with guys like you.

Jealous?

Frontal lobes -> absent.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

I tend not to like comic book or anime aesthetics for video games in general, but the presentation of Vault of Terror actually looks very nice, and I am curious to discover the pets.

Are the pets barred from entry at any particular locations, like perhaps in temple environments? Or can they go everywhere with the rest of the party? This and Post-Atomic are currently my most anticipated games on the horizon.

No. At present they can go anywhere your party goes.

My stack of assets for POST-ATOMIC gets bigger by the hour, I've been piling them up for years. Always thinking of an old skool Wizardry style of play.

 

[Atomboy]

This recent explosion in screenshots and posts is just wonderful. I can't wait to get this and play. The addition of the pig which I just discovered while lurking the latest pages gave me an immense mood boost. Kind of sad they are pets and not a playable character race, but still good. The narrator, the prose style, the turtle varieties, it all sounds whimsical and cool at the same time. The shop screenshots look awesome. Never saw anyone use unity for a project like this, but then again there aren't many projects like this, if at all. I hope it will serve you well!

 

[GandGolf]

What price range do you plan to place on this engine? Do you have the courage to make it free for non commercial use? If you did would usher in a plethora of dungeon crawlers.

 

[Atomboy]

What price range do you plan to place on this engine? Do you have the courage to make it free for non commercial use? If you did would usher in a plethora of dungeon crawlers.

I second the question but flexible commercial use under licence in return for a revenue cut is what I would absolutely love.

---

Imagine if you will, Mr. Blakemore,

Spoiler

a galaxy-spanning space empire that enjoyed peace and prosperity for millenia. It is all thanks to a mysterious artifact, which transfers the knowledge, skills and wisdom of all past Galaxy Emperors into the mind of each new Galaxy Emperor on the day of their coronation on a sacred asteroid far from the colonized planets. This mystical artifact, once granted to the first emperor by the gods, they call the Infant Regalia.
You are but four Galactic Army cadets, made up of diverse races such as men with dog heads (Gersheps), men with fish heads (Ychtonians), humans, fae, space dwarves, swine folk and the snail males (Ullygoosi). It is your duty to serve in the holds of the mighty Enterprise, a nuclear space cruiser deep in uncharted space, tasked with delivering the Infant Regalia for the coronation of Hexogen IX, a mere baby, who's predecessor and father Hexogen VIII was tragically lost in space months ago.
But hark! There is treachery afoot! Lights go out across the vessel, and Snake Men unafraid to use their laser scimitars and i-shield projectors teleport into the bridge, slaying all they see! Moments later, the Enterprise crashes into an unknown world of magycke and mystery, with your party as the sole survivors.
Whether by bardiche or bec de corbin, blaster or magycke incantation, do you have what it takes to conquer the savage lands of the Wyrm Prognosticator and take back the...
Infant Regalia: Destiny of the Space Sovereign? We could make 5000 bucks at least

 

[Neo_viral]

What price range do you plan to place on this engine? Do you have the courage to make it free for non commercial use? If you did would usher in a plethora of dungeon crawlers.

I second the question but flexible commercial use under licence in return for a revenue cut is what I would absolutely love.

---

Imagine if you will, Mr. Blakemore,

Spoiler

a galaxy-spanning space empire that enjoyed peace and prosperity for millenia. It is all thanks to a mysterious artifact, which transfers the knowledge, skills and wisdom of all past Galaxy Emperors into the mind of each new Galaxy Emperor on the day of their coronation on a sacred asteroid far from the colonized planets. This mystical artifact, once granted to the first emperor by the gods, they call the Infant Regalia.
You are but four Galactic Army cadets, made up of diverse races such as men with dog heads (Gersheps), men with fish heads (Ychtonians), humans, fae, space dwarves, swine folk and the snail males (Ullygoosi). It is your duty to serve in the holds of the mighty Enterprise, a nuclear space cruiser deep in uncharted space, tasked with delivering the Infant Regalia for the coronation of Hexogen IX, a mere baby, who's predecessor and father Hexogen VIII was tragically lost in space months ago.
But hark! There is treachery afoot! Lights go out across the vessel, and Snake Men unafraid to use their laser scimitars and i-shield projectors teleport into the bridge, slaying all they see! Moments later, the Enterprise crashes into an unknown world of magycke and mystery, with your party as the sole survivors.
Whether by bardiche or bec de corbin, blaster or magycke incantation, do you have what it takes to conquer the savage lands of the Wyrm Prognosticator and take back the...
Infant Regalia: Destiny of the Space Sovereign? We could make 5000 bucks at least

Oh no dont tempt him please ,id like to see the Lovecraftian Blobber first before your idea and at 40 plus years old i cant wait 20 years for every one to release....
Kidding,Cleve this looks great and im really looking forward to this.Stupid question,but as you are a solo dev,where do you get your art is it public licence or paid ? I like the visual style of vault of terror and the Post Atomic teasers so far.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

What price range do you plan to place on this engine? Do you have the courage to make it free for non commercial use? If you did would usher in a plethora of dungeon crawlers.

I second the question but flexible commercial use under licence in return for a revenue cut is what I would absolutely love.

---

Imagine if you will, Mr. Blakemore,

Spoiler

a galaxy-spanning space empire that enjoyed peace and prosperity for millenia. It is all thanks to a mysterious artifact, which transfers the knowledge, skills and wisdom of all past Galaxy Emperors into the mind of each new Galaxy Emperor on the day of their coronation on a sacred asteroid far from the colonized planets. This mystical artifact, once granted to the first emperor by the gods, they call the Infant Regalia.
You are but four Galactic Army cadets, made up of diverse races such as men with dog heads (Gersheps), men with fish heads (Ychtonians), humans, fae, space dwarves, swine folk and the snail males (Ullygoosi). It is your duty to serve in the holds of the mighty Enterprise, a nuclear space cruiser deep in uncharted space, tasked with delivering the Infant Regalia for the coronation of Hexogen IX, a mere baby, who's predecessor and father Hexogen VIII was tragically lost in space months ago.
But hark! There is treachery afoot! Lights go out across the vessel, and Snake Men unafraid to use their laser scimitars and i-shield projectors teleport into the bridge, slaying all they see! Moments later, the Enterprise crashes into an unknown world of magycke and mystery, with your party as the sole survivors.
Whether by bardiche or bec de corbin, blaster or magycke incantation, do you have what it takes to conquer the savage lands of the Wyrm Prognosticator and take back the...
Infant Regalia: Destiny of the Space Sovereign? We could make 5000 bucks at least

Oh no dont tempt him please ,id like to see the Lovecraftian Blobber first before your idea and at 40 plus years old i cant wait 20 years for every one to release....
Kidding,Cleve this looks great and im really looking forward to this.Stupid question,but as you are a solo dev,where do you get your art is it public licence or paid ? I like the visual style of vault of terror and the Post Atomic teasers so far.

I have a nervous condition where I shop for assets day and night with an eagle eye. You have to go through thousands of pages of junk artwork before you find the real gems AAA quality stuff here and there. I look on the Unity store, GameDevMarket, GameDevelopersStudio, Scirra, SuperGameArt, Itch.io, Craftpix and a bunch of other sites, some of them so obscure I almost end up with an exclusive license to the artwork because nobody else knows that site even exists (some in Japan). I have that addict's thrill when I spot some good stuff like women who buy shoes. When I saw those dinosaurs go up on the Unity Store I burnt a hole in my pocket paying for them with my credit card, I could see they were perfect for a Wizardry style "Lost World" game.

Those new RPG figures in the Vault of Terror title screen I only found last week but some of that artwork I was saving back in 2014 thinking ... "Must finish Grimoire first but afterwards when doing similar Wiz-style blobbers ... this will be perfect ..."

A few of the sites have gone out of business, you can't even get some weird artwork any more. It is not even on the Wayback archive.

The Post-Atomic figures have come from several different sources including extended licenses on characters from DriveThruRPG.com which I thought looked really good.

 

[SevenSidedDice]

I have a nervous condition where I shop for assets day and night with an eagle eye. You have to go through thousands of pages of junk artwork before you find the real gems AAA quality stuff here and there. I look on the Unity store, GameDevMarket, GameDevelopersStudio, Scirra, SuperGameArt, Itch.io, Craftpix and a bunch of other sites, some of them so obscure I almost end up with an exclusive license to the artwork because nobody else knows that site even exists (some in Japan). I have that addict's thrill when I spot some good stuff like women who buy shoes. When I saw those dinosaurs go up on the Unity Store I burnt a hole in my pocket paying for them with my credit card, I could see they were perfect for a Wizardry style "Lost World" game.

A bit off-topic, I hope you don't mind.

How do you organize all your assets? Do you dump them in folders immediately or tag them with a program or just crank your memory and zero down to the date and somehow find it then?

I ask because information management has really become popular in the last two years with Notion, Roam and others (Org-mode, Obsidian) implementing Zettelkasten and basic digital hierarchal note-taking. You obviously go through a lot of information, and I'm wondering if you might have a rule of thumb or some sort of maxim that you follow to keep everything manageable.

The way I'd organize assets is to keep them in named folders (just the genre of the assets) and then put it in hierarchal folders (Maybe something like "gameAssets/spaceBlobber/goodAssets/characters/by-occupation/astronaut"). I'd also preserve the modification / creation time.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

I have a nervous condition where I shop for assets day and night with an eagle eye. You have to go through thousands of pages of junk artwork before you find the real gems AAA quality stuff here and there. I look on the Unity store, GameDevMarket, GameDevelopersStudio, Scirra, SuperGameArt, Itch.io, Craftpix and a bunch of other sites, some of them so obscure I almost end up with an exclusive license to the artwork because nobody else knows that site even exists (some in Japan). I have that addict's thrill when I spot some good stuff like women who buy shoes. When I saw those dinosaurs go up on the Unity Store I burnt a hole in my pocket paying for them with my credit card, I could see they were perfect for a Wizardry style "Lost World" game.

A bit off-topic, I hope you don't mind.

How do you organize all your assets? Do you dump them in folders immediately or tag them with a program or just crank your memory and zero down to the date and somehow find it then?

I ask because information management has really become popular in the last two years with Notion, Roam and others (Org-mode, Obsidian) implementing Zettelkasten and basic digital hierarchal note-taking. You obviously go through a lot of information, and I'm wondering if you might have a rule of thumb or some sort of maxim that you follow to keep everything manageable.

The way I'd organize assets is to keep them in named folders (just the genre of the assets) and then put it in hierarchal folders (Maybe something like "gameAssets/spaceBlobber/goodAssets/characters/by-occupation/astronaut"). I'd also preserve the modification / creation time.

Yes, I have a two terabyte drive and I try to move them to a relevant subdirectory as soon as they are downloaded ... "2D/Pixel/Shootemup" etc.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

crank your memory and zero down to the date and somehow find it then?

This is usually how I find my stuff at work.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

Scroll map didn't look good, decided to make it something more natural looking. Still working on dungeons, not quite the right look yet to take screen shots.

 

[unseeingeye]

The map imagery is gorgeous, especially the Vault of Terror itself but all of it is great. I agree that this looks so much better than the scroll map version, the presentation is so much more pleasant to look at.

 

[Hag]

Not a big fan of the interface but the map is looking great.

 

[Neo_viral]

Re: Map - awesome ,looking forward to exploring those dungeons.Looking forward to seeing some combat screens also.

@ Cleve - thanks for the info about how and where you get your assets it was really informative (sorry cant rate posts yet).A Lost World Blobber sounds like something else...i too would like to see more games using not regularly used settings.
I think my biggest dream at the moment would be yourself or someone if you release the engine using it to do a new Ravenloft game but eh,Licence and WotC......

By when do you think Vault of Terror would be ready for release,are we looking early in the new year or later ?

ERYFKRAD and @SevenSidedDice - Datacrow is a really nice program to catalog stuff i use it for games and roms and books you can also use it for images etc....but if you already have a giant collection it might be too much of a hassle to load it in ..bit of a project.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

Re: Map - awesome ,looking forward to exploring those dungeons.Looking forward to seeing some combat screens also.

@ Cleve - thanks for the info about how and where you get your assets it was really informative (sorry cant rate posts yet).A Lost World Blobber sounds like something else...i too would like to see more games using not regularly used settings.
I think my biggest dream at the moment would be yourself or someone if you release the engine using it to do a new Ravenloft game but eh,Licence and WotC......

By when do you think Vault of Terror would be ready for release,are we looking early in the new year or later ?

ERYFKRAD and @SevenSidedDice - Datacrow is a really nice program to catalog stuff i use it for games and roms and books you can also use it for images etc....but if you already have a giant collection it might be too much of a hassle to load it in ..bit of a project.

Trying to get demo version to Steam end of this month, release at end of December/New Year.

One thing I have been daydreaming about for years is a blobber with a Jack Kirby art style ... monsters, NPCs, player party characters ... everything kind of Kirby/Ditkoish ... problem is that putting this style together is very difficult and hard to source.

... check out these Yakuza portraits I purchased today from Itch.IO and thought I may use at some point on this kind of blobber if I can put enough useful artwork in the right style together for it.

https://lordofazrael.itch.io/criminalsyndicatecharacter

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

Working on the dungeons visuals, the particle and hit effects in combat, highlighting of party members during various actions, lockpick interface and some crafting. Getting better and better each day, it's playable round trip game at present.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

The almost finished map. May put a translucent chevron over map areas once they are completed.

8 Maps, have all graphics sorted for each style ... palace, mines, crypts, tomb, vault and sewers. Only thing I am still gathering together is the look for the two wilderness areas GREEN GLEN and WHISTLER WELL.

I am only guesstimating but I say maybe 10 hours for a speed run, 40 hours for a normal playthrough.

Each book when revealed tells the basic story of this map region through the "Narrator." This is so you can read about the area in advance and perhaps equip yourself appropriately in the town for what you might expect to encounter in this dungeon. There are level limits on each dungeon as well to make certain you have attained a certain level before you can enter this map, just like in original Wizardry.

Norm and Rob, look ye upon my works and weep. This is the omni-RPG engine with ultimate flexibility that your company dreamed of throughout its entire existence but never found anybody who could make it for them. I will be cranking out blobbers like sausages on this thing in the coming year until I have done nearly every genre of RPG in existence.

P.S. I almost forgot to mention, designed in advance to be portable to nearly any platform in computerdom from Nintendo Switch to the IPad with a single compile. Robert please stop crying, you must comport yourself as a man. No use at this point crying over the spilt crackerjack. Just another person your company could not retain.

 

[Warlod]

The art is very nice? Curious did you hire a team of artists?