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Author Topic: I’m working on a game, finally.  (Read 20451 times)

xenoargh

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I’m working on a game, finally.
« on: October 31, 2017, 10:23:55 AM »

So... without spoilering, basically it’ll be a bit like Teleglitch- top-down twin-stick shooter with crafting and RPG elements.  Not just an arena game like Smash TV but with a lot more depth and replayability (at least, that’s the goal).  Will probably have some modding support out of the box.

If anybody’s interested in testing it, I’ll probably have early builds available in a month or so; I’ve been making progress pretty quickly.
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xenoargh

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Re: I’m working on a game, finally.
« Reply #1 on: November 01, 2017, 09:20:40 AM »

Oh, I know, lol. 

Nothing worth throwing money at yet.  I want at least the skeleton done before I get too crazy about saying things.  But I've got the game design set, I know what setting / look / etc. are going to be like, and it's something I've really wanted to see get done; I think people who are fans of that kind of game will be happy.

I'll talk more about it when it's not just vaporware and a vague announcement, lol.
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xenoargh

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Re: I’m working on a game, finally.
« Reply #2 on: November 06, 2017, 08:45:33 PM »

I got the "critter" pathfinding and basic state-machine done this weekend. 

It handles a randomly-generated world (not that I have anything interesting there, yet, other than a basic maze generator to make sure they actually work), steers the critters, allows for orders to be given to critters from outside the critter (to generate "intelligent" behaviors, reactive stuff), etc.  The critters aren't "smart" and are a the "programmer-art" stage graphically, but they can all independently pathfind and do motion planning in a fairly large world and all that important stuff.

Next up is probably building the world; I'm looking at various methods of generation.  Thus far, the most-attractive system I've seen is to build a simplistic level-editor where I (or others) can hand-build some content, export it to a text-file, then have the game read it and plug it into other areas via <some method>.  So, first off, I need to build the <some method>, then build the level-editor, then <fingers crossed> combine them.

I think that was one of the most ingenious things about Teleglitch; it combined hand-built content with randomization, for the best of both worlds.
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Bastion.Systems

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Re: I’m working on a game, finally.
« Reply #3 on: November 13, 2017, 03:27:09 AM »

If it's even a little like Teleglitch then I will buy it.
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xenoargh

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Re: I’m working on a game, finally.
« Reply #4 on: November 13, 2017, 09:01:29 PM »

Well, I've got a very basic setup on LOS that's a bit like Teleglitch now; I've successfully implemented a Monaco style of LOS (I feel pretty strongly that this is one of the things that made the game very compelling compared to most of the games of that genre I've ever looked at).  This is extremely early, of course; later on, I'll be adding light sources and all that; this is just testing out LOS.


Still working out some details, but I'll probably be able to build a very simplistic run-and-gun first playable in another week or two.  Nothing like the full game, of course, but at least something that people can play a little bit and hopefully give some very early feedback on.  I don't know whether it'll include a randomly-generated dungeon yet or not; that's something where I finally figured out the best method to do it, and it's in my head, but it's not built yet.
« Last Edit: November 15, 2017, 12:43:17 PM by xenoargh »
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xenoargh

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Re: I’m working on a game, finally.
« Reply #5 on: November 15, 2017, 12:51:34 PM »

A bit cleaner and a whole lot faster.  Now the Monaco/Teleglitch style LOS includes "wall memories"; players will be able to see faint outlines of walls they've already seen, walls gracefullly fade in / out of existence, etc.  I think that's a big improvement over how Teleglitch brute-forced this, and only wrote "seen walls" to the Minimap, which made for fairly ugly navigation sometimes.

A bunch of speedups to the first iteration, too.  This scene is dealing with 70 shadowcasters / wall objects that have to do LOS checks to the player, etc., etc., there are multiple "critters" pathfinding through the maze, and the whole thing's running at 500+ FPS. 

Which is promising, because my critters aren't exactly doing anything interesting yet, I don't have sounds and light sources doing stuff, projectiles to check, etc., etc.  I think it's safe to say that this isn't terrible, though, for all the complicated stuff that's running.  My goal is to keep FPS well above 60 at all times, for a lag-free action experience.  We'll see if I can get there and achieve the complexity I want.

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xenoargh

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Re: I’m working on a game, finally.
« Reply #6 on: November 15, 2017, 11:19:11 PM »

I think I've figured out how to do the Rouge-like part, Teleglitch-style.  I have written the beginnings of a room editor and copying system that should <fingers crossed> allow me to copy-paste new rooms, hallways, etc., etc.  into the gameworld without major implementation problems.  It's not working quite yet, but I think I'm on-track.

After I get that working... I guess it's time to make some decisions regarding scales of things (namely, main-character size, hall sizes, etc.)- once set, it'll be hard to change without major problems.  One of the many limitations of building a system like this is that enemy sizes are, of necessity, limited; huge things can't traverse small hallways.  But huge hallways and huge doorways will feel wrong.  One solution is to limit huge things to big rooms; if this system works as intended, then that should be possible.
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Sproginator

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Re: I’m working on a game, finally.
« Reply #7 on: November 16, 2017, 09:07:29 AM »

I think I've figured out how to do the Rouge-like part, Teleglitch-style.  I have written the beginnings of a room editor and copying system that should <fingers crossed> allow me to copy-paste new rooms, hallways, etc., etc.  into the gameworld without major implementation problems.  It's not working quite yet, but I think I'm on-track.

After I get that working... I guess it's time to make some decisions regarding scales of things (namely, main-character size, hall sizes, etc.)- once set, it'll be hard to change without major problems.  One of the many limitations of building a system like this is that enemy sizes are, of necessity, limited; huge things can't traverse small hallways.  But huge hallways and huge doorways will feel wrong.  One solution is to limit huge things to big rooms; if this system works as intended, then that should be possible.

Sounds like a fun game! Might be worth looking into Multiplayer capabilities for this too :) I'd love to play this kind of game with a friend :D
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xenoargh

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Re: I’m working on a game, finally.
« Reply #8 on: November 17, 2017, 01:09:59 PM »

I doubt if it'll have MP; the story's mainly designed around SP.

I got the main puzzle of how to build the Rogue-like dungeons solved; I can now generate copies of hand-built rooms at arbitrary angles.  Still working on room generation itself, though :)
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xenoargh

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Re: I’m working on a game, finally.
« Reply #9 on: November 19, 2017, 04:39:57 PM »

Ok, I got the core of room generation in a Rogue-like way, using hand-built rooms like Teleglitch, with completely arbitrary room creation angles (wow, that's a mouthful) solved.  Don't let the square-y nature of the test rooms fool you; this system doesn't care what the rooms are like and all of the objects (including walls and interactive doors) can be placed anywhere in the bounds of the rooms, allowing for a great deal of flexibility in terms of design.

There's still work to do, to make the system less of a "random spam-a-level"; right now there isn't any real logic to room choices, there aren't "required" rooms, etc., etc.... but it's promising; it means I might actually keep on track and have something that's basically playable before the end of the month, maybe.


Next up is probably some intermediate work to make a less-naive system, so that I can give this sucker some meaningful goals, like, "don't build the exit until you've built at least X rooms", etc.
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TaLaR

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Re: I’m working on a game, finally.
« Reply #10 on: November 19, 2017, 08:32:35 PM »

How about borrowing some ideas from Unexplored? It's Dev seems to have pretty solid ideas on dungeon generation.

(short intro video)
http://ctrl500.com/tech/handcrafted-feel-dungeon-generation-unexplored-explores-cyclic-dungeon-generation/ (more detailed article)
« Last Edit: November 19, 2017, 08:35:23 PM by TaLaR »
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xenoargh

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Re: I’m working on a game, finally.
« Reply #11 on: November 20, 2017, 02:31:12 PM »

Hmm.  What he's doing there is basically building a very fancy cellular-automata / binary space partition approach, which I evaluated and rejected about a month ago, whereas I basically re-created how this was done in Teleglitch, albeit in a way that I think is a little more reliable.

Both approaches have strengths and weaknesses; the primary strength of the way I'm doing this is that you can have arbitrary geometry in a room, up to the performance-crunch point, whatever that bottleneck turns out to be (remember, I only have the most-simplistic of AIs running right now, doing some simple path-finding and path-following; they'll eat more CPU as they get "smarter").  For example, if I want to build a huge arena room with sub-rooms that have procedural elements, I can totally do that. 

I think this will make more sense when I have built out some bigger rooms; right now, they're just the simplest concept pieces I could build to test things out with.
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TaLaR

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Re: I’m working on a game, finally.
« Reply #12 on: November 20, 2017, 09:25:28 PM »

Ok, your choice. Having played Unexplored, I'd say it's dungeons do actually feel unlike typical random generation. So while it's approach may have it's share of problems, there are definite merits too.
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xenoargh

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Re: I’m working on a game, finally.
« Reply #13 on: November 21, 2017, 05:36:06 PM »

Oh, don't get me wrong, that's a perfectly-good way to build dungeons, I just like this approach better because I think that it'll be easier to make visually-appealing stuff, and as this is my first full game in ages, I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible :)

I might (might) be able to build a playable, basic demo of the concepts tomorrow.  Nothing fancy; just roam around the level, kill zombies, get to the end, keep going until you die (or maybe I'll add a Win Condition, just for giggles).

The room-generator, while still imperfect, is now capable of constructing rooms pretty reliably and can build start-rooms and end-rooms (i.e., an escape to the next dungeon level).  There are a lot of things that are kind of "loose ends" at present, but now that the room-generator appears to be pretty bullet-proof (fingers crossed there) it might work out.
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xenoargh

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Re: I’m working on a game, finally.
« Reply #14 on: November 24, 2017, 05:40:39 PM »

Well, that didn't work out.  I badly broke my lighting system on the Wednesday, unfortunately.  I got a little over-ambitious and put in the other part of the lighting system (essentially, point lights with soft shadows and other elements, with my LOS system on top) and broke it.

Good news, though; I got it fixed tonight and working properly, so I can get back to integration of all of the elements and (hopefully) get all of it assembled into a basic game soon.  Unfortunately, this being a holiday weekend here, my time is relatively short.
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