SyntaxBomb - Indie Coders

Here's what I'm working on currently. It's a dungeon crawler based on Lovecraftian concepts, called 'Bleak Harbor'


Here's a shot of the wooded area looking out to sea...

Excellent ! I love DC's...  As matter of fact, I can't get enough of them. I think I've played about all the ones on the market since the genre's birth did a game jam on DC last year, best project I ever worked on.

Keep it up! This looks damned interesting.

Superb stuff

That looks really swish and atmospheric. Any in action videos?

currently no videos.. but there will be soonish

 

Ok here's a quick peek at todays work. It's part of an underground maze, but with fireballs!.

The actual visuals are interesting as they combine a number of systems.
- The first is the dynamic lighting system. this is lit with pulsing lights
- The next is a monster (the fireball). This is designated as a 'bullet', so once set will continue going until it hits something. This has a rotating fire graphic.
- attached to the fireball is a particle system. This is a simple flame, which has additive as a drawing mode
- lastly a light is also attached to the fireball, so when it moves the lighting will move with it!

Put at all together and you get a lit maze with fireballs \o/

Are the "maze elements" not culling/blocking the fire emitted light correctly? Asking as the "left element" is bright when the fireball is behind it - but somehow gets shaded/darker once the fireball becomes "visible" to the camera/us.
In the "middle" there is a bright circle growing/shrinking when the fireball comes closer to the middle of the screen. The mixture of these lights (fireball, middlescreen something) and maybe others leads to some "disco effect" (and eg a shade starting earlier on the "right side of the left wall element" as it should) - and it might lead to the odd behaviour of the "left maze wall-block's front face" I described before.

On the "right wall" it looks like there is some "jumping" of the shadows - once when it grows and once when it shrinks - and once it is "smooth" - maybe this is some animation recording / gif loop thing. Just noticed it.


PS: I like this shot/view more than the one with the tentacle. Here the "in game elements" have less contrast in pixel size and thus look more "fitting together". (Exception is the HUD which has "high res"-placeholder(?)-avatar and higher res nav-buttons). I know it is hard to have a consistent "pixel size" across the screen but maybe you are able to have it at least "become smaller" (pixel size) the further away it is placed (3d "depth"). In the "tentacle screenshot" you can easily compare the two plants in the middle with the "grass patches" next to them, the tentacle in the background - and maybe also the ground (I think the ground might become "unobvious" once more lighting/shadows/... manipulate its appearance at the end).

PPS: Engine-wise I would think I am at least not the only one who would like to have a "square-pixel-perfect" setting. What I mean is that the virtual resolution scales to integer multiples and is the same on x and y. Means black bars around the window, yes ... but it will for sure have a good "visual impact" on stuff like "HUD text". Maybe you could even "fade out" the ingame world in some "8-bit pixel art-transparency mode" (so just a mask with black dot patterns you apply on the game's borders for some pixel rows/lines) - would result in a less harsh "cut".
For which "resolution" you are designing the game? Maybe in a classic "Full HD" this is already quad-pixel and many people won't even miss the feature, assume it is more a thing for the "windowed mode" as your games are "freely resizeable" (at least they featured that in the past .


PPPS: I enjoy worklogs like this/yours - and am sure you will also somewhen show some screenies of your "workbench" (new tools, new features ...).


bye
Ron

Yep, there is pulse lighting all over the place, so that is what you are seeing with the fireball. It's interesting you mentioned the shadows, as there aren't any, but it's part of the lightflow systems, so it's good you noticed

Re the tools, it's more a state of mind. Everything is inbuilt, so you can do editing work at pixel level, color stuff, blurs, noise, etc. Work on particles, attach particles to monsters or items, or just place them. if it moves it's a monster, if you can pick it up it's an item. if it talks, its a monster with a chat attached. chats and quests are intertwined. There are switches and there are triggers. doors and be linked to these or anything else. triggers host traps, and a traps can be environmental, or act like switches or be containers for stuff. or breakable objects - there's a whole load of stuff built right into the editor. Floors, ceilings are walls are all definable both with bitmaps and also 3d base hosts.
On top of that is a load of decorative items, nature, rocks, things, furniture, decals, mechanical, western themed, egyptian, war. I have created over 1000 3d objects covering basic shapes and stuff...
There's also inbuilt support for menu's and ui's along with animated ui, etc. plus all the sound support including inbuilt sound editor and sequencing.
And there is the linking systems, where you controls things via wires. so to open a door, you need a switch or trigger, or something and then wire it to the door... And multiple things can be wired to the same objects for complex behaviours.

As it's taken a while to get everything talking and working together, so even I am just finding out about how to do thing and what makes it all work.

But I have taken all the advice and (my own advice), to do this

Here's me designing a monster. It was going to be transparent, but looked better this way. the top is the finished monster. the bottom is the photoshop mockup. the actual monster designed were imported into the editor and all painting and refining done in the editor