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[Paul Jeffries]

This looks awesome.  In that last screenshot inside the mine it's a little hard to distinguish between what is wall and what is floor.  Maybe have subtly different textures for top and sides, as with the grass blocks?

[Seiseki]

Hm, mix of Dwarf Fortress and Dungeon Keeper? :D

[BleakProspects]

This looks awesome.  In that last screenshot inside the mine it's a little hard to distinguish between what is wall and what is floor.  Maybe have subtly different textures for top and sides, as with the grass blocks?

Good idea. Like this? (note, color differential at the bottom is because the dwarves made a skylight.)




Edit: Also, made stockpiles look better just now through dynamic re-texturing rather than just drawing lines around them. This is the first step in extending the stockpiling code to designate types of rooms. Essentially, stockpiles will just be a special kind of room where dwarves can put stuff they are carrying, but there will be other kinds of rooms as well.

[BleakProspects]

Just now, kind of sort of got a torch light thing working. Still some bugs with the "smooth lighting" and it doesn't bleed into other chunks properly, but it's getting there!

[Pineapple]

I love you

[SolarLune]

Yeah, looks cool. I like the 2D sprites in the 3D world, for sure. DF isn't really my cup of tea, but I give the developers credit for making such a big and unique game. How deep will this game be? Keep it up!

[BleakProspects]

I love you

I know.

Yeah, looks cool. I like the 2D sprites in the 3D world, for sure. DF isn't really my cup of tea, but I give the developers credit for making such a big and unique game. How deep will this game be? Keep it up!

Thanks. I'm shooting for somewhere inbetween dwarf fortress' complexity and Dungeon Keeper's.

[Laitch]

Like others have said: the 2D sprites in the 3D world looks nice... I might borrow that idea for my own project

I like where this is going, I will be keeping an eye on this

[BleakProspects]

By the way, here's the todo list I've been using:

Always:
* PROFILE AND IMPROVE SPEED! *

Probably Soon:
(DONE!) * Draw a cube
(DONE!) * Draw multiple cubes as a VBO
(DONE!) * Chunk generation
(DONE!) * Infinite chunk management
(DONE!) * Billboards
(DONE!) * Oriented billboards
(DONE!) * Physics
(DONE!) * Dwarfs should be able to kill blocks
(DONE!) * Ambient occlusion
(DONE!) * Sunlight
(DONE!) * Trees
(DONE!) * Need to be able to select entities efficiently
(DONE!) * Dwarfs should be able to chop down trees
(DONE!) * Introduce the concept of a "resource", and allow dwarves to pick them up and move them.
(DONE!) * Introduce the concept of a "stockpile"
(DONE!) * Proper state machines
(DONE!) * Blocks should dispense resources


(ALMOST DONE!)* Allow things to be lit by torches.
      - Fix chunk boundaries

(ALMOST DONE!)* Make it possible to create types of rooms.
      - Have "room objects" (beds, tables, torches)
      - Dwarves must know about rooms.
      - Make it possible to "sell" rooms

Probably in the near future:
* Create NPC animals
* Allow NPCs to fight each other
* Introduce dwarf stats like hunger/thirst
* Create interative set of entities that NPCS can use.
* Introduce combat / weapons
* Particle system

Probably in the far future:
* Create a day-night cycle
* Introduce temperature / moisture spectrum for biomes
* Introduce water
* Introduce weather
* Continents / World generation
* Game states / options
* Saving/Loading
* Title / Logo
* Sell it! $$$ (Alphafund?)
* Advertise! (!@?)

[Quarry]

Dwarves* please

[BleakProspects]

Dwarves* please

It's funny, the autocorrect in chrome recognizes "dwarfs" but not "dwarves."

[Seiseki]

I've toyed with the idea of smoother terrain, and I might take a look at it after I have the basic gameplay mechanics down. Maybe marching cubes, or ramps.

Something like the Dungeon Keepers vertex offset maybe?
I haven't seen any other block based game use it, which is a shame because it gives it a more natural look and breaks up the grid..

[BleakProspects]

I've toyed with the idea of smoother terrain, and I might take a look at it after I have the basic gameplay mechanics down. Maybe marching cubes, or ramps.

Something like the Dungeon Keepers vertex offset maybe?
I haven't seen any other block based game use it, which is a shame because it gives it a more natural look and breaks up the grid..

That's actually a really really excellent idea! I played dungeon keeper 2 for a bit to see how the effect was achieved, and then hacked together an implementation that uses perlin noise to adjust vertex positions. Here's a rather silly, extreme example of the result: 



I think I will apply this subtly everywhere! Thanks!

[Pixelulsar]

That looks hilarious.  I love that look, and am curious to see how it looks when you make it less crazy.  Also does it affect performance?

[BleakProspects]

That looks hilarious.  I love that look, and am curious to see how it looks when you make it less crazy.  Also does it affect performance?

Here it is a little bit more subtle



And its also visible in this shaft



It does affect performance quite severely, because every time I rebuild a chunk I have to generate a noise vector. I could probably do it more efficiently using a vertex shader and a simple repeating 3d noise texture.

[Seiseki]

Wow, that looks completely insane! :D
The subtle version might be a bit too subtle though, but it would be neat if there was different strength for different tiles, like rock/cliff walls being more extreme.

[Pineapple]

I love you

[zalzane]

So how much development experience do you have, OP?

I have to say, what you have right now is extremely impressive for only two weeks of working on full time.

[Eigen]

That's what I had in mind too The subtle one may be too subtle, but it looks good. Damn, it looks good!

I'm not sure how you like it but maybe try aligning trees and characters to the terrain slopes to give it an even wackier look. It should look especially cool in motion when a dwarf is running from one side of the hill to the other while smoothly aligning to the ground. Something like this maybe:

[BleakProspects]

So how much development experience do you have, OP?

I have to say, what you have right now is extremely impressive for only two weeks of working on full time.

It's been about a month now, but thanks! I have never made a 3D game before. I've made a couple of 2D games, but nothing serious. I'm working on this right now on weekends as a hobby. By trade I am a grad student in robotics -- so I guess a lot of what I learned from that field has merged nicely into 3D games.

That's what I had in mind too The subtle one may be too subtle, but it looks good. Damn, it looks good!

I'm not sure how you like it but maybe try aligning trees and characters to the terrain slopes to give it an even wackier look. It should look especially cool in motion when a dwarf is running from one side of the hill to the other while smoothly aligning to the ground. Something like this maybe:

It's an interesting idea for a game aesthetic, but unfortunately I've decided to set aside huge terrain distortions for the time-being, because it would require a rewrite of a lot of code to work. Graphically, it's easy to make these things, but it makes physics and player interaction close to impossible, since I would have to distort everything in the game really severely, and break my assumptions about the world being a grid.

So for now, I'll leave in small (sub 1-block) distortions for graphical effect, and maybe save a weird, distorted world for another game!