next »

[dek]

Hellir

(Working title)

Project Description
Hellir is a RPG in early stages. The environment is based on a real-time terrain engine with fake lighting and physics.
The game is aimed to play in a medieval setting. Hellir originates in old norse language, meaning 'cave'. I am driving the game towards a RPG / Action hybrid gameplay, while still keeping the sandbox / experimental feeling alive.

Technical Information
Java / LWJGL (OpenGL) based

This is my personal DevLog for the current project I am working on in my free time. Feel free to hop in and comment or give suggestions. I made this thread to recieve constructive feedback, which I do enjoy alot. I am fairly new to programming, everything beyond the very basics of Java is self-taught.
The development of the engine started on 9th of May 2011. I was inspired by www.noelberry.ca to start the random cave generation, which has now ignited an explosion of inspiration and motivation in me. Cheers!

Note: Development is on hold. Switching to C++ at the moment.

Code:

0.0.1c: 21 / 05 / 2011
	- implemented a max rendering distance with light falloff to increase performance

0.0.1b: 14 / 05 / 2011
	- implemented bitmap based fonts
	- extreme optimization to lighting (example: from 11000 checked blocks per frame down to 800)
	- changed lighting from single value light to color lights
	- implemented fixed timestep engine (http://gafferongames.com/game-physics/fix-your-timestep/)
	- implemented red, green, blue, random color light spawing with Q-R keys
	- implemented fps display
	- implemented basic real-time carve test: hold left mouse to erase terrain
		
0.0.1a: 13 / 05 / 2011
	- canceled vector based lighting
	- optimized volumetric lighting
	- implemented basic water (it sucks.)

0.0.0b: 10 / 05 / 2011
	- implemented random colors on terrain
	- optimized vector based lighting (8000 to 400 drawn quads per light)
	- introduced volumetric lighting

0.0.0a: 09 / 05 / 2011 
	- gridbased real time editable terrain engine
	- mouse movements
	- random generated dungeon
	- vector based lighting

Screenshots:
Note that the grid may be looking to small to actually play a game in. This is because the Terrain is untextured. Every "Pixel" in the screenshot will recieve an actual texture and be scaled up - the colors right now are only basic placeholders for the terrain later.
By the way, If you want to join me and my project by helping me out with some texturing, let me know!

Basic Water + Lighting


Colored Lights / Blending

[Nugsy]

I saw this in another thread and it looks great.

The water and coloured lighting are new to me though, i especially like the way the light fades off in water. Beautiful!

I hope this is some kind of rpg/exploration game.

[BomberTREE]

I can just sit here and stare at the gif forever.. 

[dek]

Wow guys, such positive feedback already, thanks!  

What's the gameplay gonna be like?

Edit: I'd love to do some texturing for ya. I'm working on pixel art and tiling skills so it would be a good opportunity for practice.

Well, I definitely plan it to be a side-view gameplay (the water sceenshot should give a basic Idea of the perspective - platformer, basically, but with dynamic terrain.
Thanks for your offer by the way. I would enjoy working with you very much! The stuff you have on "The Archer" is absolutely beautiful, and I love the atmosphere.  

I saw this in another thread and it looks great.

The water and coloured lighting are new to me though, i especially like the way the light fades off in water. Beautiful!

I hope this is some kind of rpg/exploration game.

Thank you too Right now its only the engine. Gameplay plans are pretty open. RPG elements definitely. I love northern mythology - An Idea would be that you start on the surface, in a nordic landscape. You then would control the character sideways with WASD, and aim with the mouse to shoot fire-like spells or swing weapons into the environment. When you reeach actual terrain, use other kind of physics or minions to dig, and eventually find a cave. (Yes, this sounds like Minecraft. However, In minecraft, you are only two "blocks" big as a player. I plan to make my player the size of 12 or more blocks -  that way the environment would feel more organic and less static. The screenshots right now are not showing huge dungeons - they are small caves 5-6 times the players size.)
The size of the player will be a fundamental difference to minecraft or platformers. Instead of just digging one "block" away, you should be able to swing a huge mace or cast a spell to take out big chunks of blocks (That more eyecandy too, because these will be able to not just disappear, but instead react physically correct to interaction (explosion, hits, etc.) and eventually fade out.

Im a fan of exploration aswell. This will depend on how much the engine can handle. I think it would be an exiting feeling to enter a pitch black cave and send out some kind of minions/spells that light out the cave for you. Right now, with caves the sizes on the screenshots, the engine is running at 300-800 fps on my average PC, so theres alot of room.

[dek]

Done last night:
- Texturing of blocks at any size with a texture of any size
- Optional "Smooth Shadows", smoothes the shadow map so it looks not so sharp.

[JasonPKaplan]

I can just sit here and stare at the gif forever.. 

Agreed.  Wow.

[oahda]

I thought it was Icelandic when I saw it, haha (I know you intended it to be Old Norse, and it is indeed, but it's called hellir in Icelandic too). I like!

[BomberTREE]

If that new game Terraria used shading like this.. I would pay WAY more than 10$, this really looks amazing and will surely make any project shine, still loving it 

[dek]

I thought it was Icelandic when I saw it, haha (I know you intended it to be Old Norse, and it is indeed, but it's called hellir in Icelandic too). I like!

Oh! I didn't know that. But I think that will be just fine. Thanks for the input anyways are you from iceland? Because then I'll abuse you for further things like that  Cheers.

If that new game Terraria used shading like this.. I would pay WAY more than 10$, this really looks amazing and will surely make any project shine, still loving it 

I must say I just recently (after starting this project) found out about Terraria... It's abit sad that Terraria really has some of the base principles I planned to implement nailed down already. This way, alot of what I want to implement might just look like a rip-off...
A few updates: I did extensive testing and changed around all kind of parameters in the engine. Turns out that with increasing the amount of blocks, my engine really reaches a maximum at a certain level, causing it to be too slow for the fluid gameplay that I plan. This is simply due to the raycast lighting.
What it does, is calculate PROPER light values for every block that is hit by a lightsource. That works fine for small dungeons, but as soon as it turns to gigantic open spaces, where light is being cast away from a lightsource almost endlessly, it gets pretty heavy.. So, at the moment I am really still working on basic gameplay principles. I guess I will have to shrink down the light-cone sizes by a drastic amount, causing a visible circle of light, like this:
Not sure about that yet.
Anyways, thanks kitheif for your great support, Ill make sure to keep stuff updated! Right now im busy with work, but that will be gone by monday.

[XRA]

hmm maybe there are some ways to optimize or fake some of that? I'm not sure.. is it when the raycasting is sent out over long distances?  Maybe it can be limited to a radius around the player, and if it is going to go beyond that, you fade in some some additive blending light-cone-pie-wedges.. and the wider the openings of space hit near the player, the wider the arc on the light-cone-pie-wedges + more stretched they are..?

[BomberTREE]

You could limit the lighting to only things on the screen, sort of like how games would only show objects that are visible to the player, or something like XRA said.
And no worry's about being a "ripoff", there's alot more to a game than procedural generation and building blocks 

[dek]

I worked on what I thought about and what XRA, aswell as kitheif suggested.
This is what it looks like.



The blue stuff on the bottom are some rays of a lightsource.
Rendering a World of 1,000,000 blocks at 200 fps, up from 50-90 fps. How does it look to you? I think its a good trade. Makes you feel more surrounded by darkness. Fuck, this is going to be dark. 

[BomberTREE]

It looks the same but with a truly dark, natural cave feel
You should put it in motion like the gif above