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[Rasher]

Venture Corp
(not final)

Description:
Venture Corp(name not yet final) is a competitive online platformer. There are two modes that have both to be used in order to advance: building and playing dungeons. Depending on your performance, you gain experience, gold and also rating. Experience unlocks new elements and objects for your dungeon and possibly also new player skills. Gold is used for buying objects for your dungeon and rating will be used to advance in the ladder at higher levels.

Building Mode:
When starting a new dungeon, you have to choose 1-2 elements, dependings on your current level. Each element enables the use of unique objects, walls and events to place in the dungeon. In addition, there are neutral objects to be used, regardless of the chosen elements.
After completing a dungeon, you can save it to your list of active dungeons. You can have a maximum of 3 dungeons active, which will be enabled for rated play.

Exploring Dungeons:
There are two possible choices of dungeons: rated and unrated dungeons. Rated dungeons are selected randomly and award rating and gold when completed. Unrated dungeons can be visitted by entering a dungeon id or selecting a random one, but give you no rewards.

Advancing:
In order to advance and gain levels/rating, you have to create a good dungeon that defeats most (not all!) challengers. Your dungeon generates experience for each killed player and only rewards those experience points to the owner, when someone completes the dungeon. Your dungeon will then be ranked into different classes (A-F). Class A dungeons generate the most experience, while allowing ~10% to beat it. Any less or more will reduce it's grade and the rewarded xp.

Ladder:
I'm not quite sure yet how to handle the ratings. It will probably be a mix between completed dungeons at a similar level and your highest rated dungeon. Not sure yet, though.
This should hopefully lead to a different gameplay experience after reaching the highest level and unlocking everything.

[RadiationBLUR]

Looks brilliant.

Name Idea: Deipth(s)

[TobiasW]

I don't know if it's the same for other people, but reading the name am instantly reminded of Beautiful Escape: Dungeoneer - a game I find rather repulsive. If I'm not the only one, you might want to change your name. (The point is not that you might get sued or anything.)

edit: Disregard that, I actually managed to miss that your name is not final.

[leonelc29]

building and explore dungeon, huh? it seems that this stuff being discussed somewhere...

BUT anyway, i only heard idea about this, but never actually play it. so it might be interesting to follow through, though.

[Rasher]

I don't know if it's the same for other people, but reading the name am instantly reminded of Beautiful Escape: Dungeoneer

I've also noticed that there are 2 games inlcuding that name already: the above mentioned and also a TCG. The name will get changed as soon as a I can think of a good alternative.

building and explore dungeon, huh? it seems that this stuff being discussed somewhere..

There is a "Dungeon Builder Open Design Doc" thread here somewhere, although it's not the same. Initially I wanted to create a mmo-platformer similar to drawball, only using platformer elements. After reading that thread, I changed it from an open-world game to an instanced version, since it enables more possibilities later in the game.
The above mentioned thread is more of an exploration/building game with a massive world imo. It sounds similar to Minecraft with additional traps/enemies and hearts that can be stolen.

I'm trying to finish most of the gui before next friday. After that, I'll sadly have to learn a lot for university the following weeks. Haven't been to a single course this term and exams starting in 3 weeks.

[starsrift]

I really like the idea of analytics and online competition to see who can make the most difficult dungeon. It's a cool concept!

The grading system is wierd to me though, it's like scholastic grades in reverse! (Getting an A is bad, an F is good)

[Rasher]

Ohh, my bad. I was already too tired and reversed the rating order. A is supposed to be the best, while nearly unbeatable and too easy (0-5% and 80-100%) dungeons will get a F.

A good dungeon rating (A-F) will determine your reward for killing other players. It's main reason is to make dungeons hard, but not unbeatable. Highest grade is currently achieved with 10 - 15% survivors, while anything below of above it will reduce the rating. I'll probably call it grade/class from now on.

Player rating will be used in the ladder. It combines your own best active dungeon, your latest played dungeons and probably the amount of records during that time. It'll most likely be a ELO-like system.

[Rasher]

Recent changes (18.07.2011 + 19.07.2011):

- Changed the borders and shadows of the wall from sprites to shaders to increase performance
- Reworked objects placement (5th time?) again. Seems to work fine now
- Reworked Inventory twice. Making it draw around the cursor took too much screen space
- Animated background. Although it's hard to see atm

[Rasher]

Today I've started working on some element-based mechanics. I'll probably limit every level to 2 elements. Both elements grand you unique objects and walls for your dungeon, while also having an influence on the graphics/background. The main element also enables an optional level event.

Ice for example has frozen walls that make you slide and the event makes you freeze (reduced speed) more as the time goes on. Earth walls will break 1 second after touching them and the event will let rocks fall from the ceiling.

This should hopefully add some variation to the dungeons and increase the pace. Players shouldn't always stand at the beginning and think of the best way for several minutes.

[Rasher]

Latest Changes:

- Cleaned up a lot of code
- Fixed loading/saving in regard to recent changes
- Improved player movement
- Added loading screen
- Some improved visuals (see screenshot below)

[sonicblastoise]

Looks interesting. Infusing the dungeon maker genre with some multiplayer could make for some very cool creations. Are you focusing on making the creation tool as accessible as possible, or prioritizing the gameplay?

I only ask because despite the fact that Dungeon Maker and DM II were great concepts, the dungeon-traversing part of the game was pretty cumbersome because the combat became extremely repetitive and was bland in general. I would hate to see people get turned off to your game because of that reason.

As of now though, it looks like a great concept and has a very easy-on-the-eyes style.

[Rasher]

Creating dungeons will be a big part of this game, so I'll try to make it as easy as possible, while maintaining a certain degree of complexity. There will be no combat or monsters for now.

The current standard for good platforming is obviously Super Meat Boy. Both gameplay and created dungeons should be on a similar level, if you spend some time with the provided tools. Gameplay wise, the main difference is probably the level events. I want each element to have it's unique factor when designing a level. Fire levels for example should include a lot of climbing, as the rising lava will force you to it, unless you disable it.

On a side note, what do you think of the name "Venture Corp"?

[Rasher]

Couldn't do much during the last 2 days:

- Some tweaks with the ui and shadow shaders
- Editor is almost feature-complete. Only a few things are missing, apart from additional objects, which will be one of the last things to work on

[sonicblastoise]

looking pretty good so far. The editor looks pretty intuitive and not too overwhelming. Wish there was a demo!

"Venture Corp." sounds interesting. It makes me think of Venture Bros. (adult swim). Maybe you should name it "Daedalus". You know, the Mythological Greek guy who built the maze for the minotaur. I consider him to be one of the first dungeon builders.

Maybe that's overused, though.

[Nugsy]

Isn't this the game Droqen had a design thread about?

[Rasher]

Isn't this the game Droqen had a design thread about?

No, it's not.
The game Droqen had a thread about sounds more like an action adventure/minecraft with dungeons that can also be destroyed. There are a lot of differences, but I'll leave it at that.

I haven't had much time to work on the game during the last week and this probably wont change until exams are over. I've added some pre- and postgame screens, some new objects (ice walls, spawn point, goal) and a lot of minor stuff. You can now completely create/play a dungeon from scratch until finish within the game.

Next thing to do is adding some new objects (about 3 for each element), dungeon finder and completing the level events. When this is finished and working, I might release a test build to get some feedback.

[Rasher]

Just a small update to show that this project is still alive:



Last exam will be on the 31th and until then I'd like to not work on this.

[Deraj]

One thing I don't quite follow: it seems like having players attempt unrated dungeons is important (since there need to be quite a few attempts before a rating can be assigned), but it sounds like there is no incentive (gold/experience) for players to attempt unrated dungeons.

On the whole, though, I like this idea a lot. I've been brainstorming ideas on how to come up with the "right" amount of difficulty. Usually, I just subjectively assign difficulties and let the player select from some fixed set of choices. Using objective statistics sounds like a great alternative!

Sorry if I misunderstood your description