Okay, kicking it off with what's basically a double-post. I'm a rebel like that:
Ancient Akkadians: (http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-36/?action=preview&uid=21983)
Made in 72 hours, by Hitchhiker (https://twitter.com/HitchH1k3r), Solifuge (https://twitter.com/Dahold), and Naali (https://twitter.com/AlopexL)
Based on the Theme: Ancient Technology
Play it here! http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-36/?action=preview&uid=21983
Tools Used (Free): Unity (https://unity3d.com/), Sublime Text (https://www.sublimetext.com/), Blender (https://www.blender.org/), Audacity (http://www.audacityteam.org/)
Source Files: GitHub (https://github.com/hitchh1k3r/LudumDare36)
Build Timeline: via GitHub (https://github.com/hitchh1k3r/LudumDare36/commits/master)
(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/80372290/LD36%20Splash.png)
Overview / Post-Mortem:
This is a short, finished game project I worked on for a 72-Hour Game Jam called Ludum Dare 36 (http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-36/?action=preview). The idea behind the Ludum Dare is to take a theme or idea, build a playable game based on it in less than 3 days, and then submit it to the public for feedback and critique. The theme was Ancient Technology. Our team went with a hybrid of sorts between Tower Defense and City Builder games. You gather basic resources, plant crops, and build production and defensive structures, all the while keeping your crops safe from deer, and your workers safe from wolves. It's definitely an idea I'd like to iterate on in the future!
The game is playable right on the Ludum Dare project page (http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-36/?action=preview&uid=21983). You can opt to play the 72-hour Competition Version, but I'd suggest playing the improved downloadable version we just finished this afternoon, which includes descriptive tooltips, game balance fixes, music, and sound effects that were locally-sourced inside My and Naali's faces. :D
The project was developed in Unity, and coded in C# using Sublime Text, primarily by Hitchhiker with some help from me and Naali. The sprites were all modelled by me using Blender, and animated in code. Sound effects were created by Naali and I, using vocal / foley techniques and the doodads on my desk, and editied in Audacity. Music loops were written by me in FruityLoops. The Unity project, all the source files, and the messy and hastily written code are available to download and look at via Github (https://github.com/hitchh1k3r/LudumDare36).
(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/80372290/LD36%20Concept%20Day.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/YvedU5L.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/ZW0pLR3.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/uWHLreX.png)
Sample Music Loops on Soundcloud (https://soundcloud.com/dale-holdampf/ancient-akkadians)
Pretty simple stuff, but I was having trouble finding inspiration and a group of instruments to use. I went with Vaguely Persian, which was my best guess at something that would feel Mesopotamian. The different loops play based on the current phase of the game; I was thinking of old Rareware games, and how the original Banjo-Kazooie played different versions of the same motiff as you wandered around to different parts of the level.
Side shooter game I made to sharpen my Game Maker skills (I teach it to kids). (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/59463020/SideShooter.exe)
There are 1.5 levels, the first level is complete and has a boss at the end, along with powerups, but needs more variation. The second is only half complete and probably has too many new types of enemies (I should move some into level 1).
(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/59463020/Anim2.gif)
@Solifuge: I tried giving it a go, but alas, my laptop ran it with approximately 3 seconds of input lag. That's probably just it being silly though, so i'll give it another go later.
Also, i sadly do not have much to show for my game design study yet, though that's mostly because we're still in the intro phase. I'm doing the same assignments as everyone else, but given that i have about a 6 year head start when it comes to GameMaker (... being more experienced than the teacher is a very odd feeling indeed), well... :v
Best i can show is this thing that i also posted in the random things thread (https://www.dropbox.com/s/i1udmaq8xw3qbvn/CHANCEOFANGER.exe?dl=0). We only really needed to make our guy able to move sideways and shoot at one type of enemy that also moved sideways and could shoot back (collisions included for both parties), and which would give points on death. I went a bit further than that. :v
(http://puu.sh/r6dwL.png)
(http://puu.sh/rgTfa.png)
I kind of want to call it Cloudy with a Chance of Anger, but there's not quite enough clouds for that. :P
It's been a while since I tried my hand at game development, but I've had an idea for a magic-based roguelike.
Basically I was thinking there are 'X' number of elements, for now, let's say we have these three:
Heat, Life, and Time.
There would be various methods of directing these elements--such as your standard projectile, directional, and AoE (and combinations thereof)--there would also be "ambient" casting and the stacking of effects on summonable objects to create emergent spell casting and schools of magic. The goal being to distill your stock spells that you encounter in every RPG into their smallest parts for the purpose of creating and entirely customizable magic user experience.
Let's say each of those elements can manipulate a variable contained by an object. Heat->Temperature. Life->Hit Points. Time->Turn Counter. And let's also say that all objects, whether inanimate furniture, deceased monsters, or living creatures all contain the same variables. Their behavior is determined by a tagging system which automatically updates an instance of an object's tags upon checking that instance's variables. Manipulating elements essentially allows you to--on a code level--increase, decrease, set, or hold one or more variable's value(s)--depending on the element being used to cast spells.
Example 1: Necromancy and Resurrection and unintended side effects.
In a normal RPG you may know how to resurrect someone or how to raise their corpse as a shambling undead. In this game, they're two sides of the same coin.
Simplified, when an object's health is a negative value it is undead, if it's zero it's just dead, and if it's positive it's alive.
So, you kill a goblin. You want to fight it again. You've got several options. You could manipulate it's HP with a life spell and resurrect it--it'll be confused and angry and probably start hitting you--or you could bring back as a Zomblin--devoid of emotion, but it'll probably start hitting you anyways so it can consume your flesh. A third option would be to rewind it's turn counter with a directed time spell, bring it back to whichever state of living it was in X number of turns ago, and then regardless of whether you kill it or not, Y turns later it reverts back to the shape it was in before you used a time spell to bring it back to life (or not, it's your time spell you continuum-shattering disaster).
Now you may recall that ALL objects have HP--because they're objects. Inanimate ones just start with 0. If you want to create living armor or a hat that talks well... (https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-K6Lqc8X/2/O/i-K6Lqc8X.jpg)
Example 2: Combining elements to kill stuff in new and interesting ways.
Due to the way I've sorted things, you're not really in the market of casting fireballs in this game. Let's add a fourth element: Matter. This doesn't effect variables like the other three--most elements will, some will not--instead you can generate and degenerate matter.
Now lets say that in addition to being able to cast single-element spells, you can save multi-part incantations and invoke them all at once to achieve the desired effects.
You meet another gobline--you've just killed, then re-killed his brother--whoops. Guess you'll have to kill this guy now too. There's a lot of ways to do that luckily. If you're strong enough, you can simply heat him up until he melts or cool him down until he freezes or degenerate him entirely--but that'll take a lot of raw magical power (not sure how spell cost will be measured yet, but probably just a mana pool of some sort). Instead, let's make a quick incantation.
Matter: Generate 1lb stone ball.
Time: Freeze stone ball's time for X turns.
Heat: Increase stone ball's temperature to 3000°F
Great. You invoke your spell. Now you have a stone ball that's gonna turn into lava in X number of turns. You throw it at the Goblin, and because you're so fuckin' fly, you dumb wizard, you time it perfectly and he catches a heaping pile of molten stone to the face--instantly killing him. Nice job.
But you're a sick fuck so you resurrect him. Let's make another multi=part incantation for a more powerful wizard.
Time: You freeze the goblin for X turns.
Life: You decrease goblin's health by Y for X turns.
If you're powerful enough to sustain it, you'll kill him, and by the time he's unfrozen he'll just collapse into a heap. If you really want to engage in some overkill you can up the life element and either turn him into a zombie instantly--useful for distracting groups of other concerned goblins--or take his health down past -100, turning him into a pile of dust. Well done, Hero.
Example 3: Blinging yourself out.
Now that you've killed a few goblins you're feeling' pretty good about yourself. You know what you need now? A flaming sword. Don't worry there's a multi-part incantation for that. First though, we need to have a sword so we can apply the effects.
Matter: generate oil on sword for X turns. (applied probably as a tag to the sword, magic can cause material to generate from objects in several amounts going from insubstantial [like oil dripping off the sword, but not creating puddle or anything] to torrential [like flooding a room moments after someone touches an enchanted pebble]).
Heat: increase temperature of sword to 350°F for X turns.
There you go. I hope you brought some insulated gloves, otherwise you just lost your hands. Wooo!
I think I've made my point here. The goal would be to be able to have ~50-100 elements that could combine in interesting ways. Variables would just be dependent on the physics necessary to make stuff happen and track character skills. (casting spells to increase your concentration to increase your ability to cast spells? Aw yis.)
I hope that in many cases what you can accomplish is ridiculously OP as long as you have the mana reserves. Thoughts, concerns, good idea, bad idea? I'm not sure how quickly the game could run tracking potentially dozens of variables for hundreds or thousands of objects at a time. The hardest part would definitely be the non-standard elements like Time and Matter that don't just apply to one variable of an object or tile and keeping track stuff like every object's last 10 turns and etc.
On one hand, that's a slammin' bunch of good material for a very small price. On the other, i know myself well enough to say that it's unlikely that i'll ever actually look in them. :v
Also on an entirely different note, allow me to introduce you lot to MURDER OF CROWS (https://www.dropbox.com/s/lptgcqbvp6b5d7p/Murder%20of%20Crows.exe?dl=0). You can thank GUNIN for that title. :P (also if it isn't obvious, dash to avoid crossbow shots)
I can't be arsed to get a good new screenshot so here's an old one:
(http://puu.sh/sTVyV.png)
It's been developed to that point over three weeks, chiefly during the game design classes in that week. Once i've finished it up, i intend to port it to Android, if GameMaker will let me. Who knows, maybe it'll earn me a few dorrers?? It's a rare case of me having done everything with tools that don't choke up your potential sales, so for once, there's no risk of legal issues. Well, not from that part, at least. :U
Edit: also old gameplay video for the lazy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrh2wH-GVlw)
I'm making an internet-themed tower defense game. It's a lot easier to come up with enemies than the psychological horror idea I had originally.
(http://i.imgur.com/X30MOrf.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/aBGhuvd.png)
Today I'd like to see your opinions about the idea I have. The game would be called Dreamtaker. Allright, here we go:
Story
The game begins with Dana, a little girl, waking up in a forest at night. After some aimless wandering she stumbles upon a tall, excentric man, which informs her that she's dreaming, and that he'd like to become the owner of the dream once she's gone. All she needs to do is signing a contract. She doesn't fully trust him and tells him to guide her to someone else she could talk to. They go to a nearby lighthouse or a temple, in which there's intense partying going on. At the party she speaks with village elder/higher monk to figure out what's going on. He confirms, that giving the ownership of the dream to the tall stranger is a good idea. Before they're done talking, a terrified villager bursts into the chamber and screams "<insert villains name here> is unshackled! The corruption is spreading!"
As they soon see, animals and plants are disfigured in a twisted way, altering them to become bloodlusty monsters. The girl decides, that she will give up her dream after the corruption is gone. The tall Dreamtaker becomes her sidekick, frequently complaining how insane her wish is. They go to the Witchdoctor, which gives her a bizarre totemic amulet, letting her reversing the curse, one being at a time.
Having that, she embarks on an epic journey, full of excentric characters and mighty bosses, not knowing that the corruption is a dreamy manifestation of the feverish sickness which kills her real body.
Mid game she fights a main villain near an ancient device, but fails, letting him use it. The device tears the dream, making it more delliric, the chunks of landscape begin to float or shape in impossible ways.
By the end of the game she finds out that she's dying, as she begins to cough and her head spins sometimes. After defeating the last boss, the villain, she recovers the device and cleanses the world of the curse.
The deadly sickness is beaten.
Mechanics
The game will be a 3D platformer, with a Dark Soulsy combat system. There will be no stats or weapon differentiation, just the Totemic Amulet, providing two kinds of attack:
A weak ranged one
A strong melee one
The enemies would have a HP bar which would represent the Curse Meter, after it's deplenished, the animal turns into it's harmless, pre-corruption version. There would also be an energy dash, having a plenty of I-Frames.
As you can see, the game dumbs down many aspects of Dark Souls, but that's a purposeful decission, as I'd like this to be the game for kids.
Also, while jumping, there will be a slow fall move (think Rayman).
Notable Characters
Dreamtaker - a tall weirdo, which notoriously calls Dana "darling" in rather ironic way. A slick chap, which avoids conflict until it directly influences his interests.
Caroline, The Dream Painter - a beautiful maiden, which spends days on creating worlds. A love interest of Dreamtaker, his custom of collecting dreams can be seen as an obsession about her and her works. Really nice and supportive person, encouraging kindness and exploration.
The Witchdoctor - a short gentleman, quite a trickster, of which you never truly know if he's with or against you (think Jack Sparrow). He likes speaking in riddles just to spice the life up.
Benedictus and Maledictus - twin brothers, a mid game boss. Benedictus is a confident swordsman, which is really zealous with his sense of justice, while Maledictus is a master of deception, vanishing in smoke, appearing from shadows, clawing and throwing explosive potions. He's lazy, but always willing to help those dearest to him.
Prince of the Land of Stench - a malformed skunk, hungry with power and violence. A mid game boss. After the curse is lifted, he turns out to be a really kind elder person, and an owner of an impressive library (which will be needed at that point of the plot).
A Lunatic Dancer - a late game boss, very deceptive. She will constantly dance while fighting. The fight will take place in a moonlit garden full of blossoming flowers. After being defeated, she'll thank Dana, and just dance away, without any more speaking.
The Bone Collector - a young girl, extremely weird. She has the power to turn into a butterfly, and spends most of the time playing with bones she finds. Shrouded with mystery, she's believed to have no teeth in her collection, as she eats them, and also some say she's a daughter of the Dreamtaker.
Summary/TLDR
As you may have noticed, this game merges Soulslikes with the good old 3D Raymans, adding some Alice in the Wonderland to the mix.
What do you think of it?
Time to reveal a bit more about my current project. Revenant: Darkborn (http://www.moddb.com/games/revenant-darkborn) (the page wasn't updated in a month or so, I'm working on it). A story driven third person perspective slasher with story and setting written exclusively by me.
The story is rather deep, taking into account both mundane and darker plots and goes back to the creation of the world. Using italic to separate the story from some of my comments.
When the Gods brought Sparkle of Life to barren wastelands of Tenath, they forged the world anew as a true utopia. Snehk, lord of Fate, Aerkhin, the defender and Otvuz, god of life and rebirth united into one being and sacrificed their whole powers to bring boundless beauty and endless life to the world. Then, they fell dormant for ages untold. The surge of power attracted beings from the realms beyond to Tenath as soon as it echoed within realities. Each of these beings brought with them aspects unknown to the perfect world. First came Chaos, with humanity and imbalance as it's offspring. Then Torment, Sorrow and Death forced their way, each deepening their link to Tenath and drastically changing the world and tainting the Sparkle of Life. Once the Gods have awakened from their long sleep, they noticed spreading corruption and with time, gathered enough energy to cleanse the Sparkle of Life, forging Tenath anew and falling dormant once again. This wasn't enough to remove Aspects however, but merely knock them unconscious until the world rebuilt. For many centuries the Cleansing Cycle repeated, but each time the Gods weakened while Aspects grown stronger, until it was necessary for humanity to intervene into the Cycle.
Throughout ages Unified Tribunal seeked help from humanity, always finding their champion within it. As it seemed, humans were better vessels for energy native to Tenath than dieties from the realms beyond. The champion's goal was to gather energy and sacrifice himself so that Unified Tribunal could use freed energy to conduct Cleansing. During the sacrifice, the champion became a part of the Tribunal, adding to it's powers as well.
Both Gods creating Unified Tribunal and dreaded Aspects are beings from the realms beyond, with their origin unknown. It is also unknown what they were looking for at wasted Tenath and why they decided to unify and reforge it anew. Why the place was important for Aspects remains secret as well. The Unified Tribunal was created when Snehk, lord of Fate, Aerkhin the Defender and Otvuz lord of life and rebirth united their beings and powers to bring Sparkle of Life to wasted Tenath. Upon uniting, their strenghts, powers and weaknesses grouped together into one being. It is important to note that while humanity knows about existence of gods creating Unified Tribunal, they see them as separate beings, and are unaware of their unity.
As the battle between Unified Tribunal and Aspects continued, another force joined in with devastating power. Out-Realm Raiders are powerful warriors that learned secrets of Sigil Stones and Dark Sigils to freely move between realms and realities and conquer them one by one, mostly through their brutal strenght. However, they knew that claiming Tenath in battle would be too risky seeing that 7 different, god-like beings already fight for it, so just like Unified Tribunal, they decided to meddle with humans. Revealing themselves as true gods to some influential people brought worship of Ashen Moon - an Out-Realm Fortress orbitting around Tenath, hidden behind an illusion as charred rock. Worshippers of Moonlight quicly formed a knightly order of Wayward Blades, and now serve as elite forces of emperor of Gretanar Empire - a faction that has claimed all kingdoms of Tenath except Iseth, Larramsir and Vott.
Unexpectedly, not all of humanity was tricked by Out-Realmers. Order of the Rising Sun (also called Warriors of Hope, rising sun being a symbol of incoming new day and hope), previously a knightly order serving Church of Three Gods and sworn witch hunters were against Moonlight Worshipper from the beginning, and with time - sunrise knights discovered the dark secret behind them.
Each world exists at the same time within different realities and other realms as well. Dark Sigil is a point where energies of realities meet together and accumulate, allowing for limited transportation between realities, or even bringing someone alive in different reality back to life in realm where the person is dead. Powers of Dark Sigils are strong enough that scarcely they might spawn a Sigil Stone, which allows summoning entities from realms far away – however, effects of such a stone can be unexpected. Dark Sigil can be recognised by a symbol of a triangle and two greatswords with their blades disappearing within the triangle. They often carry useful information about the world, as well as gift the one connecting to it with different powers. However, only few are able to connect to a Dark Sigil, and even fewer are gifted with ability to even see their cryptic notes.
That's the most important stuff in darker plot. Now for some more mundane story:
By the mid-spring of 998 Gretanar Empire ruled by emperor Nygalair conquered almost whole Tenath. Only dangerous and unknown jungles of Vott are safe from empire's incoming forces however. Iseth - the only kingdom west of Inner sea (and an union of three smaller kingdoms) defends itself well. It is unknown how long will it hold on, with Larramsir - the second unconquered kingdom - signed a pact with emperor and economically backstabs Iseth. Chaos engulfs said kingdom - spies, conspirators, pagan covens, attacks from the side of empire. Only with help from Sunrise Knights and Mercenaries Guild it is able to hold on for just a little bit longer.
The game starts many years later, in 1021. Player is one of soldiers that died during previous great battle at Anxreah-Iseth borderland and was fighting for the empire. After death, player awakened in Deadlands (land of the dead), where he/she took on a journey without any goal or end. Close to losing senses and becoming one of maddened corpses wandering those barren wastelands, a dark sigil awakens and all undead rush towards it, driven by some unknown force. After attuning to the sigil, player is reborn through darkness and from rotten corpse receives a more humane appearance. However, player is still undead,
being revenant reborn through darkness.
When touching the sigil and getting "resurrected", player is able to see a cryptic message: "The path is laid out with dark sigils", and decides to find answers how could it even happen, will he/she be able to recover lost life and if undeath is reversible. With each attuned dark sigils, more dark secrets are revealed, eventually showing that player's journey is vain. However, there would be chance to change it all - defeat all the Aspects, prevent cleansing and return to previous life. There's be several endings, as well as an option to give up on your journey and await cleansing that would remove you from existence.
Any backstory about player character won't be revealed and no name will be given - it's up to the player.
The plot would advance with every discovered dark sigil, so there'd be hard pressure on exploration. Attuning to a sigil would give a hint, experience and unlockable skills, since magic would be highly limited and used only by powerful beings. Dark sigils would also allow player to teleport between hubs - since it won't be fully open world game, rater non-linear but hub based, meaning that player would eventually run out of things to do on some paths.
Combat will be quite advanced, with directional and combo attacks, as well as combat styles, ability to block, parry or riposte. There's be wide variety of weapons to choose from, as well as early firearms as an added bonus - used only for quick starting advantage, but not practical during whole battle.
There'd be a few stats that would have some influence on gameplay, but it would be possible to beat the game without spending any points on them. You won't be able to fully use character's potential though.
Enemies would have the same amount of life and general toughness on every difficulty level - what would change would be their attack patterns and AI. There would be a high variety of enemies too, and bosses will actually be tough.
Player would be able to join numerous factions: Other undead in the same situation, Surnise Knights, Wayward Blades, forces of the empire, forces of Iseth, Mercenaries Guild, Outlaws, Moonlight Worshippers. And many more, each with their questlines. There'd be some good faction interaction too - some will be neutral, some cooperating but some factions would be on constant war against each other.
With several endings and many faction there'd be quite good replayability.
The game will also feature multiplayer with different game modes - from good old deathmatch and capture the flag, to cooperation or war of gods (players would be able to choose from all possible weapons, skills and allocate stat points, then rush into a high-level battle of madness).
It's only a matter of working on assets and gamecode, as the engine is stable and all tools, editors and model exporters I have already configured.
So I'm coding an RTS in Unity with some buddies. Right now we're just doing the basics and figuring out terrain and movement and stuff.
Using a navmesh and colliders, we got the player (the cube) to move to the mouse coordinates. But for some reason the cube is doing what we called "ghosting".
(http://i.imgur.com/6zoO9TE.png)
(https://dl.dropbox.com/s/7nlil844olkkj0d/progress12.png)
I wanted to get a slightly better screenshot, but if I stood still for long enough for the bot to get closer, it would toast me. 3-4 hits is all it takes, and it has 2 guns. I guess now I can at least start to do a little balance work. The bot probably needs to be slower and do less damage. The player also probably needs more stamina, since I was tiring out after running from it in pretty short order.
The AI also needs lots of work still. The detection right now is a simple distance check followed by line of sight check in any direction. It really needs to be a lot more intricate, with hearing the player, only performing line of sight checks in front of the bot, remembering the last place the player was seen, forgetting the player after a while, and so on. Working with AI in Unreal Engine 4 is probably the most complicated thing I've done yet, surprisingly. The behavior trees and blackboards used for AI are a little complicated and interact in even more complicated ways. At least the blueprint debugger is nice for visualizing what is happening.
And, hey, I also figured out how to do ragdolling on death and how to add particle effects as the robot takes damage.
(https://dl.dropbox.com/s/5mtb5ak3vjkt7d4/progress13.png)
That said, in the process I learned of yet more problems with Blender's exported FBXs and the way Unreal handles them. Unreal can automatically generate physics bodies for imported skeletal meshes, and that's great. However, you can't manually edit them if they're exported from Blender, or else terrible things happen. I tried splitting the robot's tail up into multiple smaller bodies so it would ragdoll properly, and the model just started exploding every time the physics simulation ran.
Apparently it's caused by the bone scale being off by a factor of 100 when exported from Blender and is a known issue that nobody knows how to fix because the FBX standard and import libraries are proprietary to Autodesk. Pretty strange that Unreal can automatically generate the bodies fine, but only freaks out when you edit them. Oh well, at least the automatic generation feature worked surprisingly well once I tweaked the minimum bone size used to generate the physics bodies. And editing the joint constraints works without hosing the entire ragdoll, so that's something too.
I'm scared that trying to set up the player's ragdoll is going to cause issues though. Unreal complained that it couldn't automatically create the physics bodies when I first imported the mesh, and I really don't want to have to throw away the animations so I can rescale the skeleton in Blender, which is the only known workaround to the above issue.
Working on a simple Renpy-based Visual Novel for YuriJam 2017!
-snip-
For anyone struggling to read all the lines:
(https://i.imgur.com/nxxDn30.png)
Also, nobody is tapping into my favorite game type: Ultimate Spreadsheet Simulators. Boxes of Numbers, Hopefully Increasing with Player Help!
Does this catch your interest, EuchreJack?
I'm doing my best to make it as user-friendly as possible but I expect that finding an audience will be difficult.
(https://i.imgur.com/uh0TFUd.png)