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[lithander]

Hey, that's awesome! Nice progress.
How will big ogres(from concept art) interact with regular orcs? Will they trample them in the heat of battle sometimes?

I'm happy you like it!

Besides killing orcs directly with your weapons you can use the environment to your advantage.
The current plan is to make the Ogres and dangerous for both parties, too. They hit slowly, a bit like a boss in games where you can avoid the blow if you're quick about it. And if hit's orcs instead of your heroes.. well... they crush friend and foe alike.

I get a bit of an "Orcs on Ice" feeling from it But it's still really good!

Yeah, I know what you mean. The push-back animation does not move the feet... so it's sometimes intentional. But in some cases it's not looking like you're flying backward but indeed like sliding on ice. I guess I'm not yet done with tweeking the knobs!

[lithander]

Just as I started to feel comfortable about how things are going new requirements are trickling in. I decided very early to do the simulation in 2D and just "project" it on 3D terrain. Then the concept art comes in with orcs falling from a bridge. "Can we do that?" they ask. "Well, I guess we could..." I say worrying about how to fit that into the 2D approach. And before that's even working: "We'll have falling orcs, right? How about they not always die when they fall down but can stand up again but now they've got a long way to walk to reach the heros again. We could make some very interesting levels that way"

The line between desperation and confidence is thin sometimes.

[JobLeonard]

I think the sliding back could be more convincing if it looks like they are bracing themselves but are still being overpowered.

EDIT: Oh, I somehow read over your last post. I guess I'll just add some more feature creep for you

[ayamflow]

Dude. Everything is freaking awesome!! Can't wait to have a demo - and some sound!

[Wilson Saunders]

The latest gif looks awesome. I see now how the mechanics of your 2d prototype fits in. I really like the staggering back animation of the pushed orc. The attack animation looks a little iffy since he is unnecessarily opening his guard for the swing but I recognize it is an animation style thing. Will shield checking be part of this game?

[lithander]

Sorry it took me so long to reply... the reason is we tried your suggestions regarding the push back animations!



<-- Orcs that get pushed from the front now raise their shields and try to block the attack to mitigate the "Orcs on Ice" impression.

How do you like it? Is this what you meant?

Also, the big progress this week for me was that Orcs can now be pushed over ledges and fall. They try to avoid it so you need to actively push them which is pretty fun. When they hit the ground they stay fallen for a couple of seconds and stand up again. If there are other Orcs in the way they get pushed back to make room. Sounds so easy when I describe it like that but I'm pretty happy it worked out okay.

Next task on my list is to give them some smarts. There's no pathfinding or anything like that at the moment.

Will shield checking be part of this game?

Not sure yet. But I guess it will make a difference if you hit an enemy from the front or back. Animation-wise and damage-wise.

[Miziziziz]

Hey, been following this for a bit; looks really cool!
I find the way the 3d orcs all evenly turn to face the player continuously to be a little awkward looking; maybe have a little variation in how accurately they are 'aimed' at the player?

[lithander]

I find the way the 3d orcs all evenly turn to face the player continuously to be a little awkward looking; maybe have a little variation in how accurately they are 'aimed' at the player?

A fully agree! They turn their head to constantly focus the current target and the only choice for a target right now is the player. This is an improvement over not focusing anything ever but it's not what "real" orcs would be doing. I want to put all the systems in first (like path finding and effects from AoE abilities) and see how that plays together. Then it's a good time to add some noise and randomness here and there. But for debuging systems (where you rely on your visual perception to evaluate if things work as planned or wether there are bugs and glitches to resolve) this would only make things harder.

Another thing that's disabled in the last video is that the orcs do anything besides walking (and the orcs on the ground don't do even that)... later in the game they will have idle and attack animations and there will be different body types (light, medium, heavy) with a variety of weapons. This alone will make the horde look less homogenous.

[lithander]

Exciting news! The chances that the prototype will become a full game has increased by a multitude. We were hoping to make a game in cooperation with and based on the works of a fantasy book author and now that's a go! And the HORDE system will be the backbone of the combat portion of the game.

All the details have to wait a couple of weeks for an official announcement. But what I can say now is that this devlog will be continued for many months and likely yield a full fledged game. Yay!

[JobLeonard]

Congratulations!

Oh, and regarding the staggering animation: it helps! I think the next thing to make it more "believable" is to add a little (unrealistic) transfer of momentum. So basically if the orcs bounce off the player character, and the player character slows down for a fraction of a second on impact (and similarly transfer of momentum between orcs being launched into other orcs).

Having said that, maybe an "orcs on ice" easter egg at some point would be nice . Maybe there's a very narrow ledge on a high mountain that is frozen over, and you have to slide off the incoming horde into a deep, deep chasm?

[Miziziziz]

nice! Who's the author?

[lithander]

Sorry, can't reveal who the author is just yet. I'm allready walking a thin line with this devlog about an unnanounced project that's not hobby but day-job related.

I think the next thing to make it more "believable" is to add a little (unrealistic) transfer of momentum. So basically if the orcs bounce off the player character, and the player character slows down for a fraction of a second on impact (and similarly transfer of momentum between orcs being launched into other orcs).

Hm, I'm not sure if I undestand what you suggest. Each hard collision involves some kind of transfer of momentum allready? Of course when you just walk around there's contact-less avoidance in play mostly (just as you won't bump into people all the time when you go through a crowd) but those penalty forces always affect both parties equally so they do slow the hero down just as collisions do. The only difference between orcs and the hero is that he recuperates from lost energy pretty fast because he's controlled by the player or executing a dash ability. Orcs are much more passive.
Do you mean the hero should act less responsive after a collision?

Personally, I think what's needed most to make everything more believable is noise and randomness and just generally less homogenous behavious. Currently it all looks very smooth, regular, algorithmic. Not too bad for debuggin purposes, though.

[mk]

Congratulations!

And the HORDE system will be the backbone of the combat portion of the game.

Does this mean that the final game will not be called HORDE? I think it's actually a pretty cool title.

[JobLeonard]

The only difference between orcs and the hero is that he recuperates from lost energy pretty fast because he's controlled by the player or executing a dash ability

I guess this is what I meant: it looks as if the hero is moving at a constant speed, which makes it look as if there is no real impact. That, or the orcs have no weight, or the player character is so heavy by comparison it should leave small craters every step

(I'm being extra nitpicky on purpose here, btw - I love the work you're doing)

The problem might also be the camera being static. This recent shot from the Lithium City devlog shows nicely how much it can help sell the feeling of melee-impact:


http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=46894.msg1140769#msg1140769

[lithander]

I too think Horde would make a nice name for a game but the one in development will be named after the book title.

(I'm being extra nitpicky on purpose here, btw - I love the work you're doing)

No worries! I love feedback and brutally honest feedback is the best. (not that your's was brutal, yet.^^)


Lithium City looks awesome, indeed!

What this gif has and our prototype misses is basically what is sometimes referred to as "juice" a hard to define term that Jan Willem Nijman demonstrates perfectly in this talk: https://youtu.be/AJdEqssNZ-U?t=6m55s
Highly recommended! Best gamedev related video on youtube, I'd wager!

But to be honest I don't consider the lack of proper effects a flaw at this point of development. Instead it's reassuring to know that I've still got a couple of Asses up my sleeve with all their hitherto untapped potential. =)

[Wilson Saunders]

The new video looks great, but I was referring to the slight torso crunched the orcs took in the June 01, 2015, 04:39:14 pm gif. I guess it was their back peddle animation if that demo didn't have a push back animation. In a way I like the "orcs on ice" look better. With their feet stationary and their bodies gliding back under the pleasure of the hero's assault it made the hero's blows look more powerful. Perhaps the animation could start with the orcs flailing and moving his feet as he tries to maintain balance and ends with the orc's feet planted while there is still some backward momentum so he slides to a halt.

[lithander]

@Wilson Saunders: In theory we could just make the two variants of getting pushed back (to block and to bend around the impact) to be blendable... then it could be based on the strength of the impact which to play...

But before I can justify to improve on the visualization any further I gotta get done with some of the fundamental stuff thats still missing. I've started to work on creating (lot's of raycasts) and using heightmaps so that orcs are no longer limitted to walk on a plane. Maybe the last video gave the impression they weren't as orcs were falling down allready but that was code along the lines of "If you cross *that* barrier fall for 4m and then there is the new ground..." Heightmaps will be much more flexible and a good foundation for other lookup-map related stuff like movement planning etc.

[lithander]

I've been working a lot on behind the scenes stuff. The above image shows a heightmap that was automatically generated from the underlying scene using raycasts. To help debugging I can create a mesh from the heightmap by sampling it continiously and rendering that as part of the scene.




That kind of stuff doesn't really show in gameplay yet (I had falling orcs 2 weeks ago) but generation and sampling of lookup maps will be the foundation of making the orcs act and react in synchronization with each other instead of as individuals.

[Kyle O]

Hello. Please include a Helm's Deep level. Thank you.

[RujiK]

Ah yes, you can play on bathroom tiles!

Is your collision engine still going to be 2d based? Seems like that little lump and desk will need some tweaking for it to work.