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[absenter]

Dark Labyrinth is an Action RPG



I'm making art.
Nicolai is coding.

It'll be a mobile game.

 

P.S. Goblin punch animations are in progress.

[Jay Tholen]

Heck effin yeah I can't wait for this. Such a good combo of genres. 

[absenter]

Monster Mockups
I'm in the process of making mockups for each monster in the game. At the moment, we have 8 planned, but that number could get bigger depending on the scope of the game. Each monster is going to have it's own strengths and weaknesses and will be stronger/weaker depending on how it's equipped. There is also a chance to find mutated monsters that are combinations of various types (like a slime minotaur, for example).

The Goal
The goal is trying to make a good RPG for a mobile device. I have looked around for fun RPGs to play on my tablet and only found a couple that I really like. But overall, it's been hard to find one with a control scheme that felt satisfying. I'm trying to avoid a touchscreen gamepad at all costs.

So far we've decided there are going to be two main screens in the game. The Strategy Screen is where the player moves himself around the labyrinth and makes decisions on which paths to take, what monster to fight, what items to equip, etc. The Battle Screen is where you face off against various monsters in a fighting system in line with boxing games like Super Punch Out.

The Team
Nicolai have been starting to compile a timeline and asset list to get our workflow a little more structured. We think the game will be finished in 1-3 months. I have worked on a couple games (Dinosword, Mr. Crow Eats Worms) I have yet to finish. Nicolai created an app called Linebound for Android. He has a knack for making things minimal and refined. We have been working on and off for a month and the game is starting to feel pretty good.

Nicolai is in the process of designing the procedurally generated floors to the labyrinth. He'll have a post soon.

[NicolaiGD]

Hello everyone! Programmer/Nicolai here. I have been working on the dungeon generation recently and we want to share how that works for Dark Labyrinth.

STEP 1
We start by filling the grid with wall tiles. Then we find the center of the game area and remove some walls to carve out the starting room. This is where the player will start in the dungeon.

STEP 2
Now we remove a line of walls in a random direction with a random length to make a corridor from the last placed room. At the end of the corridor there is a chance to spawn a new room. This percentage can easily be changed if we want to make dungeons that are more like a maze, for example. This step is repeated however many times we want to get the right size for the dungeon.

STEP 3
Since the results of this generation method can be quite random, I like to do a pathfinding test to make sure the distance from the starting room to the last room is 25 tiles or more. That way we avoid having dungeons where you start right beside the exit.

STEP 4
Clean up! We check for tiles with exactly 3 surrounding walls and turn them back into walls. That removes the dead ends that sometimes occur, which don't really add anything to the game.

STEP 5
Finally we run the grid through an autotiling script that checks the surrounding tiles and finds the right tile image. Now we have a fully working dungeon!!

I hope this was somewhat interesting. It might be useful for everyone who wants to get into procedural generation.

Credit to Wupto for the dungeon generation method. We're pretty much using his method, but I have rewritten it and added some modifications. His generator can be found here: https://marketplace.yoyogames.com/assets/1595/random-dungeon-generator

[Tyro]

I never get tired of looking at random dungeon generators. Coolio.

So when you say the battle system will be like super punch out, I'm guessing it'll be in real time rather than turn based? And the monsters will do stuff like: attack, parry, etc. and you have to react in a rock/paper/scissors kind of way? Sounds neat if so, or I could totally be off base here.

Good luck though. Pretty tiles and all.

[NicolaiGD]

Thanks!

You are spot on. The fights are where all the action happens, and moving around the dungeon will be turn based. So there's an element of strategy in what monster you want to fight first, your equipment, stats, etc. while the game still lets you feel awesome in the combat. Hopefully haha