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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsThistlewood: Top down adventure-sandbox (procedural, wrap-around)
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Author Topic: Thistlewood: Top down adventure-sandbox (procedural, wrap-around)  (Read 2867 times)
cascaid
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« on: July 27, 2014, 02:59:52 PM »

About the Game

Thistlewood is a top down, multiplayer, exploration/sandbox game.

I've been working on the game for about six months now, and finally built up the courage to start showing it to people.
With Thistlewood, I'm aiming to combine the fast-paced combat and vast range of spells such as you'd find in the Diablo series, with the creativity and freedom of sandbox games such as Terraria and Minecraft.

The game world is designed to evolve and change, based on decisions made by your character, giving multiple possible progression paths.
(You find a relic, do you throw it in the lake to raise the temple of the sea monkeys, or place it on an altar, calling down meteors and other nasty things)

The game will feature cross-platform multiplayer, and LAN support, with cooperative play encouraged due to the ability to combine spells to produce more powerful results, akin to Magicka or Guild Wars2

Twitter: https://twitter.com/cascaid_studios


Animated Screenshots
   

**old screenshots**
   



Game Engine: Unity3D
« Last Edit: August 20, 2014, 02:24:19 PM by cascaid » Logged
cascaid
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« Reply #1 on: July 29, 2014, 12:38:08 PM »

A first look at spell combos:



When cast normally, the stomp simply damages nearby monsters; however when cast within the healing spell cast by the other player it adds an additional healing blast to nearby friendly players.

Still a WIP, but gives an idea of the concept. Have yet to decide if a player should be able to combine their own spells, or it should be a feature of multiplayer only.
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ndke
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« Reply #2 on: July 29, 2014, 01:48:07 PM »

Looking great!
Will there be a story or do people fully decide what they want to do on their own?
Could you give us some more detail on the gameplay? Smiley
It's really looking great, I'm going to follow this, this looks interesting.
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cascaid
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« Reply #3 on: July 30, 2014, 12:14:21 PM »

Looking great!
Will there be a story or do people fully decide what they want to do on their own?
Could you give us some more detail on the gameplay? Smiley
It's really looking great, I'm going to follow this, this looks interesting.
Thanks!!
The plan so far is certainly to avoid a core story.  Script writing is not one of my strengths, and I'd prefer to aim for replayability through creativity (if that makes sense...)
However, for those who like to have a purpose or a goal, there will be a mixture of random events and world progression, so that there is always something available to aim for.

Random events: These will be small scripted events that can pop up anywhere on the map when you get close, normally rewarding a small monetary prize, or a cosmetic item.
e.g. Crazy cat lady is being attacked by pandas. Protect her from the pandas, and she rewards you 10silver and a 10% chance of a pet cat

World progression: is a set defined tree of events that you can progress a world through, with each one introducing a new biome or set of NPCs, that further affect your choice of how to progress, meaning several people could reach the end of the tree, but all with completely different materials/technologies/end bosses available to them, giving a reason to jump onto friends servers, or to start over for a different experience.

As for gameplay controls, movement is WASD, with an action bar for bindable spells to mouse buttons and  number keys. This part normally gets cropped out of the gifs to save space, but should be viewable in the full screenshots.
Controller support is always a possibility, but will probably wait until there's some demand for it.
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cascaid
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« Reply #4 on: August 01, 2014, 03:55:05 PM »

         
Spent the last couple of days importing/refactoring the mage class from my original prototype into the current game.
I also made the decision to have several defined classes, rather than a free for all spellbook.
This gives me much more control over which spells I can allow to be combined with other spells, and also stops people, for example, just stacking burst damage spells on their bar.

The classes so far are:
Warrior specialises in physical upfront damage, and protecting allies
Fire Mage Typical glass cannon class, high damage, even greater liability.
Ninja Fast evasive combat, uses grenades for blast combos.
Nature/Druid/Something Mixture of nature and decay spells, majority of healing/damage dealt over time. High party utility.
Frost ElementalistCounterpart to the fire mage. Still gets the fun spells, but with more focus on control and survivability

If anyone has any suggestions for some slightly less cliche classes, I'd love to hear them.
While I think it's good to have the standard builds that people will recognise, I'd like to have some more obscure setups with a higher skill/performance ceiling if possible.
         


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cascaid
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« Reply #5 on: August 07, 2014, 02:58:00 PM »

This last week has been mostly spent ironing out bugs in the network code, however I did have a chance to prototype a few spells for the Ninja class (now named Blademaster)

Since splitting the spells into separate classes, I've tried to make the effects much more cohesive. Primarily this is done through colour, but also to an extent through the theme of the spells:

Warrior: Yellow: Holy/Light spells
Mage: Orange: Fire/Rounded spells
Blademaster: Purple: Lightning/Jagged spells.




Hopefully the next post will be looking at some slightly more interesting scenery, there's only so long you want to spend in green fields surrounded by brown mud mountains!
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AegarPyke
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« Reply #6 on: August 09, 2014, 02:07:54 PM »

Love the graphics, love the name. Thistlewood is fantastic. Are you using the built-in GUI and 2D systems for Unity?
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ndke
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« Reply #7 on: August 09, 2014, 02:19:02 PM »

The spells are looking very good!
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cascaid
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« Reply #8 on: August 13, 2014, 12:42:41 PM »

The spells are looking very good!
Love the graphics, love the name. Thistlewood is fantastic. Are you using the built-in GUI and 2D systems for Unity?

Thanks guys.
The game originally started as Unity 2D, however gradually everything's been replaced to the point that only the player character is still a sprite (for now).
The foilage is textures mapped to quads, the terrain is a procedurally generated mesh, the spells are all particle systems, and I'm in the process of adding low poly furniture objects.

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been working on a few new biomes/environments. However since then I've also had a bit of an overhaul on the graphics, going for a more detailed/less cartoony look.

Still a bit undecided myself on new vs. old, so I'd love to hear some opinions.

Inside a dungeon:

Meteor (After a bit of vandalism):

Frozen polar region:

Castle:
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cascaid
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« Reply #9 on: August 20, 2014, 02:19:36 PM »

Continuing with the graphics overhaul this week.

Got furnishing in a number of the buildings/bases that spawn over the map.

Also taken a shot at implementing a few weather systems. Got some work left to get them playing nicely with the "seamless world" context, but so far I'm pretty happy with the atmosphere they add.

RainSandstorm
StormSnow
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SolarLune
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« Reply #10 on: August 20, 2014, 04:58:59 PM »

This sounds interesting; procedural games are always cool to hear about, since different people have different approaches.
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