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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsDungeon Dashers - Fast Paced Turn Based Dungeon Crawling [GREENLIT]
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Author Topic: Dungeon Dashers - Fast Paced Turn Based Dungeon Crawling [GREENLIT]  (Read 146247 times)
JigxorAndy
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« Reply #240 on: September 09, 2012, 07:49:09 AM »

Day 253
* Added new "Ancient Tomb" tileset which Philip has been working on for a long time
* Added healthbars for players
* Added healthbars for enemies
* Added popup textbox feature to display text for levels and storyline

Healthbars display for a brief time whenever an entity takes damage. Optionally you can see the healthbars of all players and enemies on the level by holding down Q at any time. I will add an "always on" and "always off" toggle to the options screen as well.

The Ancient Tomb tileset is something that Philip has been refining lately. This is his first iteration, and so there are some more tile variations and types to come. I'm really excited with this new tileset as it's a different location to the caves and the "castle/dungeon" tiles. To match, I will be designing some new enemies such as mummies, scorpions, etc. to fit the environment.

The popup text is a nice textbox that appears and displays text that is usually related to storyline or objectives. It can be linked into with map triggers. It also has that typewriter effect so that it comes out letter by letter and can be sped up / skipped by pressing another button. It will give a lot more context to the levels rather than the current maps which don't really explain why you're in a dungeon!

Popup textbox with some example text (Whatever came to mind):


New Ancient Tomb Tileset testing:


Health bars displayed for all entities while Q is being pressed. No lighting effects on:
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Bandreus
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« Reply #241 on: September 09, 2012, 07:54:25 AM »

love the new tiles!
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Andrew Brophy
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« Reply #242 on: September 09, 2012, 07:56:38 AM »

It is so weird seeing the characters in a non-cave setting. Looks very nice!
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Uykered
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« Reply #243 on: September 09, 2012, 02:37:38 PM »

Looks cool. Surely they use to have health bars before? (in theory I still think it will be best to have them shown all the time EXCEPT for when they're at full health)
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Forstride
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« Reply #244 on: September 09, 2012, 04:06:42 PM »

Heh, when I first saw the screenshots, I thought "Wow, this looks a lot like Dusty's style!"  Small world.  Tongue

The game looks good, although I'm not a fan of turn-based gameplay.  Tongue
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JigxorAndy
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« Reply #245 on: September 09, 2012, 05:26:42 PM »

love the new tiles!

It is so weird seeing the characters in a non-cave setting. Looks very nice!

Thanks! I'll pass on your comments to Philip.

Looks cool. Surely they use to have health bars before? (in theory I still think it will be best to have them shown all the time EXCEPT for when they're at full health)

Some builds had healthbars, the more recent ones didn't while I tried to work out the best way to display them. You'll be able to toggle them always on and always off in the options in the final game.

Heh, when I first saw the screenshots, I thought "Wow, this looks a lot like Dusty's style!"  Small world.  Tongue

The game looks good, although I'm not a fan of turn-based gameplay.  Tongue
Hopefully I can change your mind! Dungeon Dashers is really quite fast paced. I personally play it quite quickly. I'm doing all that I can to remove unnecessary waiting and streamline the experience so it's mostly action... while leaving you the ability to stop and make strategic choices when you need to (no small task, but that's my vision!)
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Cellusious
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« Reply #246 on: September 09, 2012, 09:39:02 PM »

love the look of this.
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JigxorAndy
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« Reply #247 on: September 10, 2012, 07:41:20 AM »

Day 254
* Added signs
* Designed trigger system for maps
* Added in invisible trigger tiles which can display messages when stood upon

I'm adding in a new "Trigger" system to the map editing which will allow me to make more complex designs. It will be able to handle conditions such as "if all monsters in group have been killed, then open a gate" as well as combinations of buttons being pressed to activate other actions. I put in the beginning work for that.

Chris drew a small spider today which is going to spawn from bigger spider monsters.

Philip drew some signposts in the screenshot below. These are all signs that the player can go and read which can contain any sort of information. I think I will build a tutorial level soon which the player can walk through and read signs at their leisure. A trigger is also made visible for debugging purposes.



love the look of this.
Thanks!
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JigxorAndy
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« Reply #248 on: September 11, 2012, 08:07:09 AM »

Day 255
* Added camera movement action to map triggers
* Added enemy spawn action to map triggers
* Added ability to show portraits with popup text

Chris drew a new spider today which is another oversized monster. I intend for the spider to harass the player quite a bit, stopping them in place with some kind of web shot and also spawning baby spiders.

I think tomorrow I'll do some more level development, starting with building a proper introduction level that will guide the player through how to play.
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Adamski
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« Reply #249 on: September 11, 2012, 03:25:28 PM »

I find it pretty tricky to read that text.
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JigxorAndy
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« Reply #250 on: September 11, 2012, 06:16:33 PM »

I find it pretty tricky to read that text.

The monospaced font on the popup textbox?
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JigxorAndy
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« Reply #251 on: September 12, 2012, 07:31:40 AM »

Day 256
* Did some mockups and discussion with Philip on in game UI
* Map design for early levels

Chris worked on a Fire Elemental enemy.

Tomorrow I'm doing another Productivity Jam so I hope I'll be able to get a lot done.
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AmazingJas
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« Reply #252 on: September 12, 2012, 06:44:31 PM »

Hopefully I can change your mind! Dungeon Dashers is really quite fast paced. I personally play it quite quickly. I'm doing all that I can to remove unnecessary waiting and streamline the experience so it's mostly action... while leaving you the ability to stop and make strategic choices when you need to (no small task, but that's my vision!)

Its real appeal to me is that it is turn based though, so please don't deviate too far from the formula and make it too arcadey...there are enough very polished diablo-alikes around already imho.

Keep up the good work Smiley
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JigxorAndy
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« Reply #253 on: September 13, 2012, 09:00:30 AM »

Day 257
* Created introduction level which guides the player through different elements of the game
* Experimented with UI elements that Philip is currently working on

I did another "productivity jam" today with a couple of game developer friends. I managed to get a bit done on level development which I'm happy with, but I ran into a bunch of minor bugs which took time to fix. I think that this first level is pretty close to how it will play in the final game. I'm hoping to add more levels tomorrow which I consider "finished" or very close to their final versions so that I can keep building this into a real game and not just something fun to play with.

Chris did more work on the fire elemental, including attack frames. It's a slightly larger than normal enemy which looks quite fearsome. It will suit nicely in the levels with a bit of lava and Dragons.

Philip started doing some of the UI elements in awesome pixels that will hold the skills, the healthbars, etc. Soon, nobody will have to look at my terrible programmer art! In the screenshot below I've taken some of the metal corners he did and hacked them together into the popup textbox. Philip is experimenting and working on the HUD. I really like the metallic corners so far.



Its real appeal to me is that it is turn based though, so please don't deviate too far from the formula and make it too arcadey...there are enough very polished diablo-alikes around already imho.

Keep up the good work Smiley

There will be a lot of strategic depth in the choices available to the player at any given stage. At the same time I want experienced players to be able to execute their moves quickly without unnecessary slowdowns. It definitely won't be arcadey. As you mentioned, there are already a lot of dungeon crawlers that do that fast paced action well. Dungeon Dashers isn't competing with those games, but I still hope that those same players will find the turn-based mechanics of Dungeon Dashers engaging.

Thanks for the encouragement Smiley
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Bandreus
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« Reply #254 on: September 13, 2012, 10:06:02 AM »

I definitely think DD being "fast paced" is among the most appealing things in the game.

Turn based strategy games can be extremely time consuming (carefully planning every turn), things tend to be even worse when talking multyplayer. So yeah, DD bein a swift game is definitely a plus. The fast paced action helps the game feeling much more dynamic and franctic, possibly leading into much more tension (something most turn based games easily lack).

So yeah, I'm all for it.

Also, any progress on the "all players moving at the same time" while in free-move mode?
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JigxorAndy
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« Reply #255 on: September 14, 2012, 09:27:42 AM »

I definitely think DD being "fast paced" is among the most appealing things in the game.

Turn based strategy games can be extremely time consuming (carefully planning every turn), things tend to be even worse when talking multyplayer. So yeah, DD bein a swift game is definitely a plus. The fast paced action helps the game feeling much more dynamic and franctic, possibly leading into much more tension (something most turn based games easily lack).

So yeah, I'm all for it.

Also, any progress on the "all players moving at the same time" while in free-move mode?

I haven't looked much into making all the players moving at the same time for multiplayer. My work on the multiplayer engine has taken a back seat lately as I work out some of the levels and progression. The main reason for this is because if I try to keep the multiplayer features up to date with the singleplayer, then whenever I change something in singleplayer I have to write the appropriate network code for whatever I just implemented. Since the game is going through constant iteration, it would not be an effective use of time to implement multiplayer elements to mirrow the singleplayer features as they may be changed significantly and the multiplayer code is much more complex than singleplayer. It's better to test out the ideas in the singleplayer build, and iterate on what doesn't work to make it better than to implement a singleplayer feature and its multiplayer counterpart only to remove or significantly modify both later. Basically I'm trying to get the singleplayer experience right and then add the correct multiplayer elements when I know that they're final. Otherwise I'll be wasting time trying to keep both singleplayer and multiplayer in check, whereas the iteration process means that things can change quite rapidbly. It's about trying to keep the development agile and flexible.

My current development plan for the next "decent" build is:
* Build 2-3 levels which are close to their final versions. Make them quality, fun and replayable. Have exciting and unique elements in them. (This is why I've been adding lots of code for map triggers, to allow interesting things to happen)
* Add progression elements (global quests + unlocks) to accommodate these new levels
* Add better HUD. (Philip is currently working on the artwork for this)

At the same time as I work on these things, Philip and Chris are developing new assets which I generally implement as I receive them.

Day 258
I was quite busy today and didn't get as much done as I would have liked to. No real features implemented today, mostly research and some design work.

I had some friends playtest the game at my house and I picked up on some interesting things that I didn't really notice or that I'd forgotten were important (since I'm so used to playing the game myself). Here's what I found:

Some of the rocks are quite difficult to see on the ground and look like they are walkable, Philip will have a go at adding some darker outlines to them.

There still isn't a line of sight display for using ranged attacks and it would be much better if a skill told you where it was going to cast it. That should be pretty easy to add in and it's a very common element in turn based games.

I'm thinking not being able to end your turn on heroes is not intuitive enough and might not be the best way to explain why you can't do it. Perhaps I should change it so that when you walk on a tile with another player you swap places instead. That's a common solution to this problem.

Even though the game doesn't have any of the nice polished explanation or help stuff that would normally accommodate it, it seems that there was too much thinking required for doing certain tasks. Perhaps it's because there were also no explanations on the skills and they had many to begin with. There are really only a couple of buttons (Space to use skill, Control to change it, and Enter to end turn [used infrequently]), and so I was surprised that it took a bit of thinking for a couple of my friends to work out which button needed to be pressed. I can't really see how I can reduce it, but perhaps more onscreen indicators would help, as well as the proper mouse controls later. Mouse may be the dominant control method.
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JigxorAndy
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« Reply #256 on: September 16, 2012, 09:44:34 AM »

Day 260
* Worked on integrating Philip's new HUD.
* Added smooth transitions for turn ordering.

The right hand side of the new HUD that Philip has been working on. This will contain the portraits of the characters to display their turn order, as well as their health (red bar) and action points (blue bar).

I'm really happy with this design that Philip has come up with. I think it has some really beautiful metal and wood textures in it. Still WIP.

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Bandreus
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« Reply #257 on: September 16, 2012, 09:50:41 AM »



I love it! Looks very clean and slick indeed.
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Uykered
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« Reply #258 on: September 16, 2012, 04:14:09 PM »

Wow, that looks fantastic!
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JigxorAndy
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« Reply #259 on: September 17, 2012, 07:09:43 AM »

Day 261
* Implemented turn order (portraits) and smooth transitions into the new HUD
* Implemented health and action points into the new HUD

I basically spent today adding in a lot more visuals for the HUD (where as yesterday was a lot of behind the scenes code). The bottom right of the following image is now how the HUD looks in game. The red icons are where the skeletons' portraits are supposed to be for their turns. I hope to have every character/enemy with a unique portrait. I also think I might see if the current portraits can be reworked a little as I don't think their poses are exciting enough.

The current turn is displayed on the very right with the largest portrait, and the other characters are displayed sequentially in turn order to the left of this. When the current player's turn is over, all of the portraits slide right. The sizes of the AP/HP bars adapt to the maximum values of the current player.

Philip suggested that the icon in the top-left is unnecessary, and instead whenever you have freemove it could simply change your AP bar to an infinity symbol. I think that makes a lot of sense.

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