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[Pixel Noise]

Haha yes - those look like deathtraps right now, especially if you end up with more than one enemy in them. But it's a good start! Haven't had a chance to test out the demo yet...but it's sitting on my desktop, waiting to be played! Looking forward to testing it.

[Ian_A]

Hey everyone, Ian here, artist and game designer for Crimson Keep. Sorry for the lack of updates recently, but we've been very busy with big important new features, and other business oriented stuff. Over the last couple weeks we've had some major strides in refining gameplay, and adding the next big sphere of the game, procedural generation.

We can now procedurally generate a dungeon by connecting rooms, or "chunks" to each other. Ben also setup a system for spawning enemies, or whole groups of enemies across various spawn points in a chunk. As well as a basic script that will randomly choose one of its children to be placed in the game. This last one is useful for something like a treasure room, where we can randomly decide which quality treasure chest will be in the room, or if one even appears at all.

If you take a look at the video you can see the test chunks we used to setup the procedural generation. As you can see I made them a little too small, I'm now working on the first batch of chunks that will hopefully make it into the final game. The first biome is The Caves, as it's what I'm most prepared for, after all, the demo level was The Caves tileset as well. I'll be making more rocks, props, and textures as needed, but I'm really looking forward to the whole process. I've been getting very bored with the test level and I'm interested to see how the procedural generation spices it up!

I posted the new ghost enemy a few posts ago, I plan on using this model as a monster you fight, but also as an NPC you have a chance to run into who will provide some background on the story, if you wish to hear it. As I've stated before, I plan on making 95% of the story in the game skippable entirely. The only things that fall into that 5% will most likely be one-liners from bosses before you fight them. Like Diablo 1 and 2, the story will be present if you're interested, but really won't get in the way if you don't care, or it's your 1000th run.

Before when you used melee abilities in game you had to move around with WASD or "Joust" while trying to hit the 1-5 keys to activate an ability. It's really a pain in the ass and basically nobody landed one of these attacks in testing. So now, for melee abilities you hit the corresponding 1-5 ability key to "load" the ability onto your weapon, and then the effect works on the next melee attack. Right now we have it set so that the effect stays loaded on your weapon until you actually *hit* an enemy, but we might change that in the future as it could be a little too forgiving.

As always, thanks for your continued interest in Crimson Keep.

[Ian_A]

added a particle effect trail for the player's melee attacks

[Ian_A]

Doin a couple more props today, a rock, and a statue of one of the deities.

[Ian_A]

Fairly small update today, just wanted to show off some of the shapes I've been making for the rooms/chunks that we're stitching together to make up the dungeons within Crimson Keep. If you take a look at the video you can see the variety that just 20 different rooms or so can create, and I'm leaning towards 50 per unique rooms in each floor of the dungeon. Though some floors might be similar, like The Grotto, which I plan on being a watery version of the caves full of plant life and plant enemies / regular enemies covered in plant material. I could potentially use the same meshes for each room and then just fill them with different props.

After I get a little more variety with dead ends, entry rooms, and exit rooms, I'm going to start placing monsters everywhere and figure out what a good number of enemies is to keep a fun pace. Without enemies, I'll be honest, the dungeon isn't too fun to explore, and not having corpses left on the ground to see where you've been (corpse breadcrumbs) makes it even harder to navigate. I think once these caves are full of enemies, props, and things to interact with it will be quite engaging. Ben, the programmer, is currently working on overhauling the character controller as well to make it a little more smooth and fun to move around in the game.

I'd like the controller to feel something like Quake 1 or Hexen 2 when it's done, but I'd love to here your thoughts on what games had the best (or most fun) controls, in a first person context.

[deab]

Like the verticality of the maps, although the long ramps look tiresome to walk up. Are ladders on the way?

[Ian_A]

Like the verticality of the maps, although the long ramps look tiresome to walk up. Are ladders on the way?

Yeah, one of the things I hate about most 3d games with random room generation is their lack of verticality, I think a good deal of this may have to do with the difficulty in setting up a navmesh or something. We're going to have to do it at runtime. I love the vertical nature of maps in games like Quake.

Either ladders or lifts of some kind, I'll probably save the ramps but for a vertical room that only has 1 floor, so a much shorter ramp. I think combat on ladders can be tricky to program, and play (since it's first person) so I'm not sure about them.

[RujiK]

If you have vertical, you gotta have some waterfalls/streams.

Arx Fatalis would be a great game if you need inspiraiton! It's my favorite Dungeon Crawler and in my top 10 games of all time. Very underrated.

[C.J.Geringer]

Seems very interesting.

Will the player have the ability to block?

Do you guys have an opnion on the First person combat of Dark Messiah of might and magic?

[Ian_A]

If you have vertical, you gotta have some waterfalls/streams.

Arx Fatalis would be a great game if you need inspiraiton! It's my favorite Dungeon Crawler and in my top 10 games of all time. Very underrated.

What I've played of Arx I've really enjoyed. I think the crafting/cooking of that game would fit well into our game as well, I want to take the lite survival elements that were in Diablo 1 (clearing every floor for every precious drop of xp and loot) and expand on them. (I read something this year about Diablo 1 was going to have a hunger system too originally)

I've had some crash issues with playing Arx on win 7 though, might look for a community made patch or something so I'd be able to get through it.

[Ian_A]

Seems very interesting.

Will the player have the ability to block?

Do you guys have an opnion on the First person combat of Dark Messiah of might and magic?

We do plan on adding a block ability. It's going to work a little differently than Oblivion/Skyrim/Dark Messiah blocking though. Basically shields will have an amount of damage they block, and a weight, which determines how long they can be held up in a blocking state. And this will range from .5 seconds to 2 seconds or so. The player won't be able to just hold up the shield all the time. I'm essentially combining Dark Souls's block and parry into 1 action.

I think Dark Messiah has one of the coolest first person rigs ever done in one of these types of games. I'm not super in love with the combat though, the game puts too much emphasis on kicking, and if you don't want to kick enemies into sharp things or off cliffs it feels like you're being punished in regards to how much HP things have.

[C.J.Geringer]

We do plan on adding a block ability. It's going to work a little differently than Oblivion/Skyrim/Dark Messiah blocking though. Basically shields will have an amount of damage they block, and a weight, which determines how long they can be held up in a blocking state. And this will range from .5 seconds to 2 seconds or so. The player won't be able to just hold up the shield all the time. I'm essentially combining Dark Souls's block and parry into 1 action.

Seems like a cool and elegant solution, it gives an interesting trade-off. Do you intend to have the size of the shield affct colision, or merely test if the player is blocking?

you have any plans for allowing diferent weapons in each hand?

I think Dark Messiah has one of the coolest first person rigs ever done in one of these types of games. I'm not super in love with the combat though, the game puts too much emphasis on kicking, and if you don't want to kick enemies into sharp things or off cliffs it feels like you're being punished in regards to how much HP things have.

Dark messiah was very much designed around environmental kills and executions, and I agree the game would have been more fun if killing enemies in direct combat was a more viable option, nevertheless, the actual blocking and sword play is very good, one of the more interesting ones I have seen in first person, along with demonsteele´s Though I believe brutal hexing is going an very interesting direction.
Have you played “Hellgate:London”? It is, in my opinion, a bad game with some very interesting ideas, my personal Project has similarities to it, and to yours, and I think it might give you somem ideas.

What do you think of “Eldritch”, and “Delver”?

I think you can still fidn a use for the narrow passages, they could be rare and offer taticla options, in my Project they can be used to betetr defend na área without being flanked, at the risk of someone els coming from the other side and pinning you, nevertheless, if one plans his retreat and clears the other side, they can be usefull, and soemtimes may offer an option for headlong flight.

[Ian_A]

Seems like a cool and elegant solution, it gives an interesting trade-off. Do you intend to have the size of the shield affct colision, or merely test if the player is blocking?

you have any plans for allowing diferent weapons in each hand?

Dark messiah was very much designed around environmental kills and executions, and I agree the game would have been more fun if killing enemies in direct combat was a more viable option, nevertheless, the actual blocking and sword play is very good, one of the more interesting ones I have seen in first person, along with demonsteele´s Though I believe brutal hexing is going an very interesting direction.
Have you played “Hellgate:London”? It is, in my opinion, a bad game with some very interesting ideas, my personal Project has similarities to it, and to yours, and I think it might give you somem ideas.

What do you think of “Eldritch”, and “Delver”?

I think you can still fidn a use for the narrow passages, they could be rare and offer taticla options, in my Project they can be used to betetr defend na área without being flanked, at the risk of someone els coming from the other side and pinning you, nevertheless, if one plans his retreat and clears the other side, they can be usefull, and soemtimes may offer an option for headlong flight.

Not sure how I feel about different size shields and coverage, the idea of having to actually make sure a projectile hits your shield if you want to block it would be cool though, and doesn't sound too difficult to implement. Will be a lot of tuning to do once we get blocking in.

So left click is always a basic attack, and right click will be the special attack for that weapon, or something else depending on what you have equipped. Like right click will turn from a special attack when you have a sword equipped, to a block ability when you ALSO equip a shield. Adding to the risk v. reward of using a shield. We do plan on allowing dual wielding and I think it will be based on a skill stat how often you hit with both weapons, and how much damage your offhand does, kind of like an MMO.

I didn't play Hellgate for very long, but I'm definitely going to look into it again, as it does seem like the first attempt at translating Diablo into first person, since I believe it was by a bunch of people from Blizzard North.

Haven't played Eldritch more than 45 minutes, so no real opinion of it. Have played a good 10ish hours of Delver, I think it's in part what inspired me to make this game. Delver is a pretty good foundation, but it really lacks depth in my opinion. Hasn't held my interest for too long because of that.

And yeah, I will need some tight passages to mix things up with the bigger rooms for sure.

[C.J.Geringer]

I didn't play Hellgate for very long, but I'm definitely going to look into it again, as it does seem like the first attempt at translating Diablo into first person, since I believe it was by a bunch of people from Blizzard North.

it is a very interestign case study, specially if compared with “Borderlands”, since the basic idea of both was “FPS diablo”, and it mad einteresting mistakes.
Make sure to play it in both first and third person.
Regarding hellgates basic gameplay:

I think it is amazing how much better Hellgate Works in third person than in first person(though I am biased a sI generally prefer third person games). The first person câmera puts enphasis on aimign over situational awreness, while third person sacrifices aiming for situational awarenes, but in Hellhgate ther eis nothing to reward better aiming, instead th eplaye rmerelly choses the targets, there are no headshots or things like that, in borderlands they make the most of first person view, requiring aiming, and using it to show personality  in the weapons.
Hellgate also had some very silly design mistakes regarding melee combat, Ranged combat had different weapons which played different(Hitscan, projectiles, área effects, etc...), and the player could yield  two handed weapons, or dual yeld diferente one handed weapons. In melee there were only sword,, all with the same moveset, and if you wielded two swords you could not use the independently, rather they bwere both used at teh same time, making your alt-fire button useless.

The shield was only passive, unless used in a skill, so if A player was using a sword and shield  he had one button mapped to his offhand that did nothing, same as if he had two sords. Seems like you guys are already avoiding it which is great, because that was really frustrating.

The shield animation however, was well done, even when the right hand was attacking the shield Always stayed in a defensive position.

At the same time it had some clever things, like the fact the player had 3 wepaon configuration and he could equip the ame weapon in all three for diferente conbinations(e.g.: Pistol and shield, Sword and Shield sword and pistol). This si brilliant, soemthing I am using in my own game, and the firt time i saw it wa son hellgate London. Buta t teh same time they undermined it by severely restricting the number of viable weapon conbinations.

The game is all like that: clever ideas hampered by dumb design, no Wander it was acommercial flop and yet still retains a faifth full comunity (I still play it ocasionaly).

[Ian_A]

Interesting insights. I just watched the David Brevik post mortem on Diablo 1, would be interesting to hear him do one on Hellgate.

[Ian_A]

This week Ben made some big strides in getting some "game feel" stuff into the game. I also finished up the remaining "chunks" for the cave tileset. We now have 50 different pieces that the game will stitch together at run-time, some of these are hallways, others are big rooms, and some are a combination of both. It's a little bit of a hassle especially the more doorways a chunk has, as it's kind of repetitive snapping vertices to a doorway template, but now I can move onto the more fun part; filling the rooms with props, monsters, and content. This is going to be my big task for the next 2 weeks, but I'll mix in prop-creation as always, and maybe a new monster, as well as the ever-present playtesting.

Let's take a look at some of the game feel stuff Ben got implemented. These are easiest to see in the video, and the gif's I made just weren't turning out great, so I'll be lazy and refer you to the video.

Accel / Decel: Small amount of time to get up to normal walk/run speed and decelerate to stopped. This gives the player's movement a bit of momentum that feels a little more natural and fun.

Springy arm: The first person arm and sword lag behind the camera when looking around with the mouse. This is something that seems to be in most modern FPS games and it really does add a nice little bit of feedback that does feel good, not having this makes the game feel a little more fake like the weapon or first person models are just bolted to the camera unnaturally.

Strafe camera tilt: When strafing left or right the camera tilts slightly in the corresponding direction. Taking a note from Quake 1 (I don't think this is present in Quake 2, and many other FPS's since) we implemented this, I enjoy the little extra bit of feedback it gives the player upon pressing a strafe button. Really every single button press should provide some kind of visual, auditory, and ideally gameplay feedback, and this factors into that.

Flash on damage: Enemies flash when they take damage. This is just one more nice way of conveying information to the player, the blood effects when they get better in our game will also do a decent job of this, but making it a little more "in your face" never hurts. I'll probably be tweaking the color of the effect, and we have plans to change the brightness/color depending on how much damage was done with an attack, to convey if you're attack was weak or powerful.

As always thanks for your continued interest in our game Crimson Keep. And stay tuned for more articles in the coming weeks. Please feel free to offer up any questions or comments you might have about the game, we're always looking for more feedback.

[Ian_A]

all the chunks made for the cave tileset

[Ian_A]

[Ian_A]

Currently working on making all the rooms pretty and encounter design!

[Ian_A]

Hey everyone, Ian here, game designer and artist for Crimson Keep. It's been quite awhile since our last update. We've had a lot going on between applying to conventions to show off the game, working to get another demo out for y'all to play, and just general busy-ness in our lives.

Our game is heavily focused on combat at the moment. In the end there will ideally be a nice mix between combat, upgrading/leveling, and exploring. Right now combat is a priority though, and as such we need enemies spawning in each room, so I completed a first pass on enemy compositions and spawn points. Ben created a group spawner script that allows me to plug in spawn points, and groups to spawn at those points randomly, I can even set a weight on how likely it is that each group will spawn.




Knockback is kind of an interesting game mechanic, as I think it serves a game feel purpose as well as adding some depth and decision making for the player. Once Ben coded it in I added a small knockback to the player's basic attack, and it definitely feels great. I also put a strong knockback on one of the Skeletal Swordman's attacks, which can catch you off guard and launch you into a lava pit if you're not careful. I also added it to the berserk buff ability which needed something a little more awesome, and now knockback can be used as a sort of crowd control!

You can see a little bit of the knockback vs. this rock golem, but there's a better example in the youtube video. I've been messing with the rock golem a bit too, and decided to change it's weakpoint from a small area on it's back to it's legs, like it's a magical golem that wasn't quite ready for combat. This makes it easier to kill, but still introduces the player to the idea of locational damage.

Continuing the game feel trend, we've finally got some giblets! It's nice to have some evidence of your battles to be left behind besides just corpses. In the end we'll likely have blood splatters on the ground, an alternate beaten up texture for corpses, and if you're good, maybe even some kind of dismemberment!

Last but not least, to make our next demo feel a little more complete, Ben's gotten character persistence working, so that you can cross into other scenes and retain your level, abilities, xp, etc. So as of right now Crimson Keep can be played forever! When you get to an exit (the ladder thing) it will put you into another cave.

Thank you everyone for your continued interest in our project. We're starting to get really excited about the future of Crimson Keep, and can't wait to get more people playing it. Stay tuned for more updates!