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[Zylinski]

Snöken: Inverno

Hi, I'm totally new here, read my introduction: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=45.msg782278#msg782278. I recently started working on a game with some fellow students. It's currently called Snöken: Inverno and it's an adventure-action RPG. Snöken is meant to be a trilogy, but the sequels may be of very different. For example Snöken 2 might end up as an adventure game, strategy game or whatever seems fun to play.



Some art

Let's make this a bit more interesting with a screenshot:




And now some painted images which will be used as cutscenes:





Music

Our fabulous musician has put together a playlist on soundcloud with all his latest demos for the game: http://soundcloud.com/mullenkamp/sets/sn-ken



Here is a video I recorded where I make the newly implemented path finding find a really long path around the forest:





Features

• Turn based action RPG
• Adventure (point-and-clickish) game elements
• Six attributes
• Hand crafted levels
• 640x360 pixel art graphics
• Homebrew fabulous music
• Beautifully painted cutscenes
• Runs on Windows, Linux and Mac
• Four trees of abilities which can be both offensive and defensive, active and passive. One ability could be "dual wield" which enabled you to hold a small weapon in each hand. Another ability might be "crippling shot" which immobilizes the enemy.
• Enemies of different kinds which drop precious loot
• 3-4 different environments
• Snappy interface

Short description and story

The RPG elements are inspired by games like RPG games like Fallout, Diablo and a game jam-game I previously made with some students: Verdammte Strindberg (http://zylinski.se/projects/1). It is also inspired by point-and-click adventure games like full throttle. You play through hand crafted levels in different environments with a story told through beautifully painted cut-scenes. Occasionally you must solve puzzles inspired by point-and-click games in order to proceed.

The game is set in the near future where the greenhouse effect has spiralled out of control. You play as an activist group leader who has heard of a research project that according to your sources have a working solution for saving the climate. The solution is to produce a form of anti greenhouse gas and facilities for this has in secrecy been built, deep in the Amazon rainforest. The facilities are ready to be switched on but for unknown reasons the scientists of the project refused. Convinced that all this is a governmental conspiracy you track down a plane with a scientist who has briefly worked on the project. You hi-jack the plane and land as close to the facilities as possible, thereafter you force the scientist to follow you into the jungle. With his help you are going to turn on the machines that you believe will save the planet.

The game is written in C++ using the multimedia lib SFML 2.



The team

Our team consists of 9 persons. This might sound like a lot, but we all have loads to do at school.

I'm a lead programmer and designer. I also have a producer-ish responsibility since it's my pet project. The idea for the game was originally spawned by a dream my roomie told me about which I found interesting and continued to work on. On top of that I try to push the project forward, giving me a project leader role. My website and blog: http://zylinski.se. My twitter: http://twitter.com/KarlZylinski

We also have two additional programmers, one who focuses on world generation and some engine subsystems and another one who does many random tasks.

We have three graphical artists:

• One HUD/interface artists who also helps out with sprite/world pixel art and some game design. His deviantART: http://johanz.deviantart.com/
• One world/sprite pixel artist who also paints all the cutscenes. His website: http://haftig.se
• One animator who makes all the animations
• One additional world/sprite pixel artist

One sound artist who is responsible for all sound effects in the game.

Lastly we have one music composer who also does game design, writing and probably game balancing.



Implemented features

• Tiled 2D world with collision (walls)
• Animations, both bars in HUD and actors
• Working item slots and inventory
• Configuration files with many tweakable variables
• Sound & music subsystems
• An event system which greatly simplifies movement of icons in HUD and future stuff
• Widget-based GUI/HUD
• Code for displaying cutscenes
• Art for first environment
• Ability-inventory from which abilities can be dragged to hotkey-bound slots
• Path finding using A*

Currently working on / starting soon

• Character sheet where attributes and stats can be displayed
• Screen where abilities can be chosen
• Sprites for more enemy types
• Line of sight detection
• Ability design
• Level editor

On the horizon

• Bullets getting reduced hit chance when line of fire is partially occluded
• Painting additional cutscenes
• Making art for additional environments and enemy-types
• Icons, descriptions and balancing of weapontypes

Download and feedback

While waiting for a playable build, check out the spiritual predecessor of this game: Verdammte Strindberg! It was created during a 48 hour game jam, the fabulous intro is in Swedish though: http://zylinski.se/projects/1

[Houndninja]

Gotta say, this looks fucking sweet! RPG's that are already planned to be trilogy are generally good things *cough*masseffect*cough*, anyway, just commenting to keep track of this.
Good luck 
--Houndninja

[Zylinski]

Gotta say, this looks fucking sweet! RPG's that are already planned to be trilogy are generally good things *cough*masseffect*cough*, anyway, just commenting to keep track of this.
Good luck  
--Houndninja

Thanks! The games in the trilogy aren't planned to be very hard coupled, they'll be far apart both in time and space but will share the same universe and back story. I'm thinking of the trilogy as a learning experience where each game will be more advanced than the previous one, always raising the bar.

[Houndninja]

Sounds very interesting 

[Craig Stern]

What platforms are you making this for? When are you planning on releasing it?

[Zylinski]

Supported platforms are Windows and Mac. I guess a Linux-build is doable as well, just gotta get around compiling it/release the source code.

We'll release it sometime this fall, hopefully late October / early November.

[Zylinski]

We have a level generator working now, here's an in-game image:



There will be much more non-wall foliage placed at random free squares. The wall-like trees will tile nicer and have nice borders, making them less boxy.

The percentage-text is to-hit-percentage and the red text is damage dealt.


Here's another screenshot, with a working item-tooltip:




We'll do some more work on the level generator before releasing a playable build. We'll also try to add some basic AI and code for placing enemies at interesting locations in the world.

[JackMenhorn]

Looking cool

[Zylinski]

Things are progressing slower than I wanted due to school etc.

Here is a picture of our new forest, I'm currently trying to improve the shaders for the shadows, making them a bit more smooth and wobbly:



The new forest was inspired by Chrono Trigger.

[Danmark]

RPG with a modern setting, nice.

I'm a philistine as far as RPGs are concerned. What control options are there? Can you move with the keyboard and do all other interface things with the mouse?

[Zylinski]

It is currently possible to move with the keyboard and the mouse. You control the interface with the mouse. The keyboard movement might be redone or scrapped though, it depends on how the gameplay evolves.

[Zylinski]

New screenshot



Shadows in the screenshot are calculated using the collision data of the walls and rendered in a pixel shader.



Music

Our fabulous musician has put together a playlist on soundcloud with all his latest demos for the game: http://soundcloud.com/mullenkamp/sets/sn-ken



Design

Did some designwork today, came up with version 1 of trees for abilities for small and large weapons!


Small arms




Large arms

[Zylinski]

A* path finding

A* path finding implemented! Here's a video of my character finding a very long path around the forest:



This is the first time I've coded path finding and I must say that I found the A*-algorithm very easy to understand and implement. We'll limit the search area later on somehow, it's the whole level right now. We also probably need to split the path finding over several frames to avoid FPS drops.



Random generation scrapped

We recently decided to scrap randomly generated levels and instead craft the levels manually. We felt that randomly generated levels are too hard to make feel "alive" and natural. I personally feel that most randomly generated games are not the ones that I like to make nor play. I want the world to feel well thought through.


That brings me to the last big change:



Point-and-clickish adventure game elements

With the possibility to craft the levels ourselves and thus put more specific stuff into them I came up with the idea to include point-and-clickish adventure game elements. This means that you'll sometimes face puzzles where the player interacts with an object in the world which makes a fullscreen puzzle involving the object you clicked pop up. This might be a simple puzzle where you must drag something from your inventory to the puzzle or it might mean that you must input a code you found on a dead persons phone.