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[Scifa]

Unearthed is a dungeon crawler, rouge-like inspired by Teleglitch

Avoid traps, solve puzzles and fight your way out of the dungeon where you were imprisoned.

The game is not in a playable state yet, but i was told i should create a dev blog on here, and keep it updated with my progress.

New Graphics


Old Graphics

[whtrbt]

The door closing creates some really awesome atmosphere - can't wait to see more.

[Scifa]

The door closing creates some really awesome atmosphere - can't wait to see more.

It gets pretty creepy when a door opens seemingly by itself, and you don't know what coming through until you see it.

Been playing around with some combat actions today, still needs some adjustments on the hit boxes and the attack animation needs adjusting.

[Canned Turkey]

The hitboxs look fine to me, but you definitely need a couple of wind up frames before the attack.

[Noffle]

I really like the claustrophobic vibe the extremely limited line of sight gives. I agree with Canned about the attack animation needing some more love to feel like it has more heft (think Teleglitch's vicersal-feeling gun recoil and camera pullback), but given this is an early prototype I susect it'll come in time.

Oh, and the excessive gore is always great. How are you building levels?

[Scifa]

The hitboxs look fine to me, but you definitely need a couple of wind up frames before the attack.

I was thinking of adding a swoosh style effect in front of the sword this might help, I'll do an update later today.

I really like the claustrophobic vibe the extremely limited line of sight gives. I agree with Canned about the attack animation needing some more love to feel like it has more heft (think Teleglitch's vicersal-feeling gun recoil and camera pullback), but given this is an early prototype I susect it'll come in time.

Oh, and the excessive gore is always great. How are you building levels?

This is exactly what i wanted to get across, there will be some larger open areas to explore to break up the tight confines but they will be few and far between.

I really need to spend a bit more time on the attack effect, because after you both mentioned it, it's really bugging me now.

I might need to tone down the gorn, it can get quite hard to see some of the enemies because There's so much blood.

The levels at the moment are hand built and it takes a-lot of time to set them up. I would love to create a procedural level system, but this is my first game dev so i think it's best to shelve it and concentrate on other areas.

[Scifa]

So I spent along time "researching" to find some references to what I was trying to accomplish, and I ended up playing Hotline Miami for far to longer when I should of been working But I came away with an idea and tried to emulate what they had done.

[Scifa]

So today's efforts have been focused on implementing traps, these will be lethal to the player which will make them be a little more cautious about their movements. The traps themselves are quiet varied, there will be visual cues to the player so they know where they are but this will be a trail and error process.

There are a few ways to get around these traps, either have an enemy trigger it (Like you see below), throw an object, or disarm them. Its possible to block them, for instance you can pull / push an object in-between a crushing wall, but you'll need to make sure that object can withstand the force or you'll be crushed along with it.

I had a hard time trying to implement the psychics sensors in game maker and in the end I had an object that would create and place the trap, which also become the trigger (pressure plate). Originally I was trying to trigger it by using the fixture alone which didn't work to well and I was finding it hard to place it in the level.

It's not 100% right and it's a bit annoying as I wanted to be-able to ramp up the force as the collision happens with an object until it creates enough force to crush it, but I've had to do a work around and settled for checking the phy_linear_velocity_x, phy_linear_velocity_Y It'll do for now and I'll revisit it at a later stage.

[Scifa]

It's been a busy weekend and doesn't feel like I've made much progress as i went back and re-coded a-lot of what i had done previously. This will allow me to expand on areas easily in the future, I did toy with the idea of just "getting it done" but it would have been a mess!

[Bombini]

Following

[Scifa]

I've been pretty busy with work, so haven't had much time to do alot of work on the game.

I have moved the offset of the shadows out a little more after some players complained about not being able to see the walls clearly, its worked out pretty well and I'm pleased with the results (So thanks for the feedback) . I'm not going to update the demo though, as there are other things I've been working on that need to be completed first.

While travelling I did spend a bit of time getting some ideas down traps, hazards, puzzles and fleshed out a bit of story line

The problem I have when looking back at them is they are a little samey, or I'm having troubling thinking "Outside the box" Feel free to throw some ideas this way

[Scifa]

So today I've had time to sit in front of the computer and bash out the inventory system, i had previously done this but to add any new item into the game was a real pain. So I've implemented a better way using ds_maps, I have to say thanks to Benjamin Anderson for pointing me in the right direction.

So all the basics are done, drag drop items to and from the inventory, as well as being able to equip them. The next step is to swap the player image when the item is placed in the equipment slot should be relatively easy with the new system.

I have thought about creating a crafting system, but I'll leave that for another day as it'll take a little more thought to implement, but at least things are going in the right direction.

[Scifa]

After creating the inventory system I found it was pretty basic and I needed to come up with a solution to be able to stack items, I managed to come up with a fix using the current system with out changing to much of the code base (phew)

Double clicking on items will use them when in the inventory screen, the player can also collect the items from the ground by double clicking on them if they are close enough and it'll automatically place them in an empty slot. So the fundamentals are there at least.

I also implemented the player sprite swap out for equipping weapons, I was also thinking of allow the player to place items in either the left or right hand. This isn't to much work to implement with the current code base, but it would just mean duplicating a-lot of the art work, something to think about later down the line.

Inventory items are all place holders at the moment, also the art style will be changing so will post an update soon, I'm very excited

[Scifa]

No pictures today, just some ramblings from me about player controls.

Before making this post the current player controls allowed you to strafe, rotate much like any other TDS you see, but because the game play involves close combat this has it's draw backs, let me explain.

The player walks into room and sees a large mob, the mob charges at him, he then starts back pedalling while franticly hitting the attack button. Now because the player is walking backwards and attacking, whenever the enemies are hit they are pushed back slightly. This means they're always pushed out of range to attack the player and never really get in range to causes damage.

I noticed that I was doing this tactic of walking backwards and mashing the mouse button while playing around with some new enemies I had created and thought this just isn't "fun!" So I thought about coming up with some complex AI, but there had to be a simpler solution? Time to do some research... That's right play and watch games!

Most of them opted for the player facing in the direction they're walking and attacking (8 degrees of movement Zelda style). This means you have to stand toe to toe with the enemy to inflict damage on them, none of this walking backwards swinging wildly nonsense. This does mean you are more vulnerable to other enemies, which makes it slightly harder, but a lot more engaging.

Ramble over...

[SleepyRhino]

Have you thought of applying weight to the mobs so a larger mob either gets knocked back less or not at all.

[Scifa]

@SleepyRhino - That's not a bad idea Also increasing the movement / attack speed of some of the enemies, would certainly give it a better feel than it currently does.

[Scifa]

A peak at the new player character, what do you think?

[Scifa]

Let there be light... and shadows!

[Wlad]

Following 

[Scifa]

Here is the latests from this weekend, I feel things are progressing in the right direction.