next »

[deab]

Really like the lighting in that last gif.

[Rotondo]

Tied some boss behavior into the animation system,



Should be able to do some cool attacks with this behavior.

Also finished implementing the fire traps into the dungeon,



In the end I made them a bit smaller to fit into the dungeon rooms, and added a glow effect to the fireballs.

[Rotondo]

Just released an update to the kickstarter / early adopter beta with the new ice world content, I was looking forward to a break but now I want to work on things more :|



Hi res: http://i.imgur.com/O2c7mbm.gifv



High res gifv: http://i.imgur.com/hx0mcKi.gifv

I also put together this video for the kickstarter update showing some of the new content progress, as well as some funny stuff.

https://vid.me/x3c7

[Rotondo]

Ended up making a test mode for a third person ocarina of time style z targeting system.



Hi res: http://i.imgur.com/AiPJm0A.gifv

Also started messing around with moving to a more standard lighting model.




I'm still rather fond of the custom lighting system I made up since it preserves more of the blocky simple look, but I figure now's a good time to experiment.

I'd also have to tesselate the ground if I end up going with the new lighting model

[Rotondo]

Got the new lighting system mostly working, still need to tweak a lot but things render correctly for the most part.

Added reflections:



Added shadows:



More subtle lighting shot:




All this on an ancient version of openGL with fixed function rendering, someday I'll add shaders to this engine...

[oahda]

Oooh, well done. I can't imagine how I'd do that without shaders, tho I know the fixed function pipeline had built-in stuff for lights and so on... But then again I never learned OpenGL that way but went straight for 3.1+ so.

Looks nice!

[Rotondo]

Thanks!

More progress on lighting



Note: this pic was before I fixed the culling on certain walls, but it looks really nice.

I also batched the dungeon rendering, and the pixel debris rendering. This was a huge bump in performance, should allow the game to run on even more systems.

Debating on if I should put the individual sprite objects all into one batch, or release this update first.

Everything has nice planar shadows now as well, which work really well for this type of game.

Here's a gif of the improved debris, click the gifv link for the full gif and 60fps.



Full gif: http://i.imgur.com/qT5bcPD.gifv

The pixels are scaled up for testing purposes, and also because it's more fun to break things.

[Rotondo]

Finished the lighting update for the beta, pushed that out to the backers.

I put together a little video showing the progress of everything,





There's also an update on the kickstarter with a bit more info.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rotondo/forgettabledungeon/posts/1505207

I added a new enemy fire flower that shoots fireballs out, I also added a mechanic where you can reflect projectiles with a charged attack.



Then I added a little animation for when you chat using text in the game, always fun to add stuff like this.

[Rotondo]

Finally got split screen working well enough to put out to the beta.



Also finally implemented Plug and Play for the controllers, so now people can plug in controllers after the game starts and it'll detect them.

I do the split screen in an interesting way, I'm actually running four different copies of the game at once.

Which are all managed from the first window, it works really well but I'm still worried there's going to be some edge cases where someone will just have a window stuck on their screen.

Another thing I implemented is controlling the mouse cursor with the controller, while it's not great it works well enough for people to navigate things. Going to do a more conventional implementation in the future as I'm not a huge fan of this method.


I also got interviewed on this show RechargedTV about the game, http://www.mobcrush.com/RechargedTV/v/56f08ac7f8a31d9bff9adef0

Pretty happy with how the interview went, probably going to be doing a lot of those in the future so it's good to get used to it.

[Xonatron]

Love how this game is turning out graphically / artistically! Very well done!

[Rotondo]

Love how this game is turning out graphically / artistically! Very well done!

Thanks! I'm happy you dig it.


Been making a lot of progress on the game, been expanding the size of the dungeons and revamping the camera.

Here's a quick vid showing off the new camera,

http://i.imgur.com/kLwBoXW.gifv

It's still not 100% but this is miles above how it used to be, it makes it much easier for players to see where enemies are and track their player.

This pic isn't really relevant to any new changes, I just thought it looked really pretty.




I actually just exhibited the game at a small boston indie expo and the response was really great.

Also going to be showing the game at PAX this year, should be really exciting.

[Mark Mayers]

Also going to be showing the game at PAX this year, should be really exciting.

 

[Rotondo]

Should be a good time, hopefully we have everything ready by then lol.


Added more flavor to the dungeon paths, they're now much more interesting to navigate:





Also redid and hid most of the gui, the gold counter is even smart now and gets out of the way when not needed:

[Rotondo]

A lot has happened since the last post!

Did PAX East, it went really well, even god interviewed by Guude from Mindcrack





Here's a pic from when the show was live:



Also put up a new teaser trailer showing the new graphics, and a few new items.





We also launched the coming soon Steam page for the game,



Steam url: http://store.steampowered.com/app/375810/

In more recent news I've been experimenting with a new style for the particle effects, with swirls like from Wind Waker.

[Rotondo]

I've been so busy working on the game, I forgot to update this dev log.

A lot has happened but just a few quick highlights.

Made a cube particle system to fit with the voxel look of the game:



New snake behavior for bosses and creatures:



hyperunknown, who's working on the music for the game made a great video detailing how he does things:





Made a new woods themed dungeon:



( Going to have to change that slime a bit... )

Re-structured the gameplay to allow players to choose which dungeon they head to first:



Finally recently I've been working on a procedural overworld to tie the game together:





Biomes and stuff are random for now.

Still a long way to go on the overworld, but I'm hoping to evoke a zelda 1 feel to it.


A lot more stuff has happened in that time frame, but these are basically my favorites.

[io3 creations]

Made a cube particle system to fit with the voxel look of the game:

Those definitely match and look good with the voxel style of the game.




I know it's mentioned in the video, but might be useful to add it to the image that you can customize your character (and also have a few more images for "customize everything").  May or may not make much difference but if someone checks out the images first before deciding to watch the videos, then seeing that option might make a difference.

[Rotondo]

Just wanted to give a very late update to the status of the game.

I released it on early access this week:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/375810/The_Forgettable_Dungeon/



It felt really good to get the game out there finally, after the health issues I encountered when working on the game.

Here's some gifs from the new version:





Some release notes for people doing early access and in general:

- There's going to be more crashes and glitches than you expect, just because of how many more people are going to be playing it, be prepared
- Do discord, especially for an early access game, being able to immediately talk to players about issues is important
- Early access for "average" indies can be a lot slower starting than normal releases due to many reasons including early access stigma, as well as valve no longer showing early access games to many people upon release.