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[newobj]

LATEST BUILD // 2013-09-15
DOWNLOAD // MAC // WIN // (OLD)
TWT // https://twitter.com/0xnightdistrict
WWW //  http://nightdistrict.net
VIDEO //



* Cyberpunk/retro-futurenoire
* System Shock, Deus Ex influence
* Procedural gameplay
* Open world, ambient life
* Style will be low-res 90's 2.5d
* Network integration/mingleplayer

[newobj]

Reserved.

[Giovanni]

Have you decided yet on a story or on gameplay mechanics? I'm sure the game will be great once it's finished. Hopefully it doesn't take ten years.

[newobj]

No, not yet, though there will be shooter mechanics, inventory, useable items / environment. Gonna get the engine + content up and running and then start to get a feel for what's fun.

[newobj]

Chunking along with progress on my engine. I stopped to write a level "painting" system. It's kind of cool, uses node --harmony generators / yield, so basically you can define a path, and an operation that happens over that path. So to get the screenshot below, is one line of code:

Code:

Brushes.rampUp(0, 25).paint(canvas, Paths.composite(Paths.line(0, 0, 9, 0), Paths.line(9, 1, 9, 9)));

Basically says, "paint with a brush that ticks upwards 25 units every step, and walks a path along the top of the canvas and down the right side".

I'm going to create lots of path types and lots of brushes (ramp, stairs, flatten, wall generator, etc), and then think about how to build rooms out of brushes/paths rather than pre-canned set pieces or "dungeon generator" type algorithms.



(Yes there are no textures yet so the level looks heinous)

[Joshua]

Put together a few tiles and a mockup. Hopefully these can do until you find a collaborator. 

[JLJac]

This seems cool! Will it only be the graphical style that will be 90's inspired, or will the world itself be a 90's sci-fi type of setting? It's always interesting with outdated sci-fi, as it tends to tell more about the time when it was created rather than the time it's set in. If you, in 2013, make a 90's sci-fi world set in, say, 2060, that would be a very interesting mess 

[newobj]

Whoa who whoa whoa whoa Joshua thank you!!   

Give this man a tip jar. Holy cow! You rock!!

[newobj]

This seems cool! Will it only be the graphical style that will be 90's inspired, or will the world itself be a 90's sci-fi type of setting? It's always interesting with outdated sci-fi, as it tends to tell more about the time when it was created rather than the time it's set in. If you, in 2013, make a 90's sci-fi world set in, say, 2060, that would be a very interesting mess 

JLJac - I also really love "the future of the past", specifically 80's/90's near-futurism (not so much 50's/60's futurism) I'm bummed the internet is so little like the cyberpunk vision of "the 'net". I think I will try to put my own spin on things rather than shamelessly replicating Cyberpunk/Shadowrun, but that remains to be seen. Right now I'm plugging on the engine. I don't have any content/art, other than those tiles that Joshua ( ) just donated. Thanks for watching!

[newobj]

#ScreenshotSaturday!

Well, I switched over to Unity thinking that it might accelerate development and... yeah... it did!





Can you embed Youtube videos on these boards somehow?

[newobj]

First build is up!

DOWNLOAD // MAC // WIN // (OLD)

I'm updating the first post now with the latest info, go back up and check it out. Set up a twitter account got a domain (not in use yet.)

Release Notes:
* First build!
* AI pathfinding (Roombro wanders around)
* Viewing interactive objects (Go look at computer, NIC, Roombro)
* Background music!
* Joshua's tileset!

It's not much, but I wanted to get some of the important stuff out of the way first (basic pathfinding). Next up, items and inventory! And a proper CREDITS.TXT file

I've only tested the Mac build. Let me know if there are any issues!

[Joshua]

I noticed you are getting some texture artifacts. Make sure that in the Texture Inspector to set:

• Filter Mode: Point
• Format: Truecolor

Looking good so far. Besides the tooltips, are there any other interactions?

[eigenbom]

Looking very retro and sweet.

[newobj]

@eigenbom - thanks!

@joshua - what kinds of artifacts? i'm getting some sparklies right now, but am not seeing stuff besides that. (and I'm not sure how to fix the sparklies...) Everything's already on nearest/point filter. I switch from compressed to truecolor and it didn't help the sparklies.

Anyway, I'm at a juncture right now where I can go one of three ways:

1) Weapons
2) Interactions
3) Random world generation

I was thinking of doing 3 first, just because it seems like a pretty hard problem.

[newobj]

Slow progress today in between kiddo's soccer practice, swimming, etc... but I am making headway against level generation. Rooms are built as unity prefabs with "joiner" brushes. At runtime they get wired together randomly.

Right now I'm in the process of "rendering" rooms into a simple grid, which will be used to determine allowable placement of rooms.

(Sharp-eyed readers will observer that the map on the left is for a different prefab that's 6x4 whereas the model on the left is 5x3 That's okay, it was rendering a different prefab than the one in the viewport.

[BomberTREE]

Looks like you're having fun with this, keep it up!

[Boopable]

This is just a quibble, but wouldn't "2.5D" (from your description) more accurately describe a game like Eye of the Beholder? What you've got here looks like a pretty pro recreation of early 3d games I remember playing, like CyberMage.

[Greg Game Man]

Wow, those textures look amazing!

[newobj]

Things are grinding along slowly. I'm diving deeper and deeper into Unity crash course as I work on random level generation. I've actually got rooms wiring up now in valid configurations. Yay! I'm having a hell of time getting Unity to combine the resulting meshes though and I'm not happy with the performance as it stands. But I'll probably press ahead without solving the problem for now and starting making some content. The nice part is, I wrote the navmesh code in such a way that it just automatically works now that I have procedural levels up and running. The Roombro instantly started exploring the level after it was built

[newobj]

First ever procedurally generated level! Sorry for the video quality, I obviously need some lessons in screen capture technique.





Might seem a little repetitious, but keep in mind it's built out of only 5 distinct set pieces.

Right now the system is pretty simple: start with a 'start' piece and continually tack on anything that will fit. Each set has a 'joiner' brush in it that has to line up with something. The joiner brush contains geometry that's erased if it's joined. If it can't find a matching join, the geometry is left intact to "seal it off". That's why you see some dead ends in the video.

Upcoming work:
* Weighted room prefabs so certain room types are rare/common/etc.
* Fix lighting issues - not sure where the overbrightening is coming from.
* More room and joiner traits - want the system to have more of a semantic sense of what it's building to get increasingly sensical layouts.
* Random bits inside set pieces - instead of having lots of variations of a set piece, I will have content inside each set piece which is enable conditionally.