next »

[gamesthatcouldbeworse]

Near future: The richest 0.1 percent own 99.9 percent of the worldwide wealth. Their influence has corrupted every government. Private armies hunt and torture everyone that tries to decentralize the power. But there is one man they should have killed when they had the chance...



Download it on: http://www.indiedb.com/games/kill-commando/downloads





With (...) KILL COMMANDO I want to combine the gameplay and action of first person shooters from the 90's with the elementary but intensive aesthetics of the Commodore 64.

In the mid of 2010 I was looking for a little project to practice clean code and contemporary patterns and I decided to write a simple game engine for 2D games with C#. The growing independent scene motivated and inspired me to write a funny game with cartoon graphics, funsplatter and some puzzles. I wanted to finish the project in six months .

After a brainstorming period of 14 months   I had enough concept drawings and pseudocode algorithms on paper. I stopped killing trees and started to write code. Every evening I spent 40 to 60 minutes for the project. I started with WPF3D, changed to XNA and later to OpenTK. When the first development year was over I only had a boring "push some boxes around" game that didn't satisfy me. So I added a third dimension and a first person view and realized that the engine already has a set of features, located somewhere between Wolfenstein, Outlaws and Duke Nukem 3D. A level editor mode could be added in less than a month. The next thing I had to find was a texture style that can be drawn very fast.
The usage of 8-bit textures is a good start but still needs a lot of effort. I compared the colours and their charm of older video game systems and the C 64 was the definitive winner. Especially with it's hypnotic music.



October 2014 I had a clear concept:

- small levels
- around-the-world settings (city, dessert, jungle, train, airport...)
- all textures are drawn with the 16 colours of the C 64
- individual synthesizer music for every level
- very simple weapon sounds that are similar to the music
- all animated objects are 2D
- cute enemies
- enemies are drawn from 8 perspectives
- a lot of gore (up to 4 damage sectors)
- easy to kill standard soldiers and genetically optimized super soldiers
- strong C 64 influence but rather an interpretation in 3D than a 1:1 adaption



The progress is OK so far:
- 7 weapons
- 9 enemies
- 14 levels
- 12 songs



I'll be back with some animated gifs. Be prepared.

[Tuba]

Looks cool. Can't wait for the gifs!

[Superb Joe]

have you considered using widepixels

[GalaethGames]

The desert one brings back memories of playing Rambo II on the Commodore 64.


Good luck

[gamesthatcouldbeworse]

@Superb Joe: Are you talking about something like SetPointSize() for polygons? Or is it more complex and based on shaders?

@sionco: you are absolutely right Rambo II and Operation Wolf are the influences for the dessert setting.
I will prepare some old/new comparisons.

And here are the promised action scenes:



so-called "Schießbudenfiguren"



a slightly modified supersoldier:

[Superb Joe]

@Superb Joe: Are you talking about something like SetPointSize() for polygons? Or is it more complex and based on shaders?

the art itself. i guess maybe you could mimic it with a shader somehow but i'm not a computer person. the most common c64 video mode was 160x200, so pixels weren't displayed as squares but 2x1 rectangles:



it's a big part of the c64 look

[gamesthatcouldbeworse]

Ah, OK, I understand. I think the biggest difference to C64 rendering comes from the third dimension. It makes objects that are far away sharper than near objects. So they seem to have a higher texel resolution. A solution could be a very low screenresolution. But modern monitors often don't support 640x480 or 320x200. And when the player is moving around it can lead to eyecancer  

[Annó]

I just fell in love with the graphic style of your game :D

[fingerman]

A shader could be the way forward here to get the desired look. That way you can artificially reduce the number of pixels on the screen and get those rectangular pixel shapes.

[gamesthatcouldbeworse]

@Anno: That's great 

@fingerman: Is this El Topo? Yes, eventually I will analyze the effort of some shadereffects. 8 years ago, when I was studying, I tried to recreate the features of the Cry-Engine from scratch with C++ and OpenGl. I invested over 2 years and finally got lost in technical details with watersurfaces and shadows. It was a terrainrenderer but not a game. I had to cancel it and was very frustrated. That's why I had sworn to keep it very puristic this time.

[gamesthatcouldbeworse]

Some comparisons:

[Geoff Moore]

Man, this looks like a blast! Really love the style 

[fingerman]

@fingerman: Is this El Topo? Yes, eventually I will analyze the effort of some shadereffects. 8 years ago, when I was studying, I tried to recreate the features of the Cry-Engine from scratch with C++ and OpenGl. I invested over 2 years and finally got lost in technical details with watersurfaces and shadows. It was a terrainrenderer but not a game. I had to cancel it and was very frustrated. That's why I had sworn to keep it very puristic this time.

Yes, it's Jodo as El Topo. Well spotted.

Coolio, I have never finished a game really so far, so I can see what you are getting at. Those new comparrison shots that you posted are great. Also the actual gameplay has to be good and not just visuals haha, but mowing down loads of enemies looks like fun #schiessbude.

My post probably wasn' that helpful as it lacked detail. Here is my idea or untested solution how to get the c64 screen displaye effect. It will most probably be detrimental to any gameplay however as it vastly reduces the resolution.

1. Set camera resolution to 160x200
2. Set viewport angle of camera so that there still is a rectangular view
3. Stretch the display of the camera on the screen of the device
4. Shader for colour palette and dithering

Again, seeing your screenshots, this probably isn't what you are going for. Would probably also mess up any writing. Not sure.

Take care,
fingerman

[gamesthatcouldbeworse]

Yes, it could be an approach to render everything into a low resolution frame buffer and then blow it up to fill the screen.

Now I want to show the level editor. In the 90's I was fascinated of the 3DRealms Build-Engine and its easy to use editor. Then the engines changed to full 3D (Half Life, Unreal, Quake...) and the editors got very complex. I just wanted to have the option to add, move and scale some game elements and to change their texture.

The boxes are selected with the mouse (some are already grouped):


A box is moved around:


The texture is scaled:


The texture is changed:

[io3 creations]

Looks interesting!   Definitely has the C64 vibe.

Most of the images look good (i.e. fit the overall style) except the sharp the lines look this enemy

If it was farther away, I might not mind but it seems fairly close where the other enemies seemed to have thicker outlines.

There's a game devlog for Cold Vengance https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=50060.20  that has similar pixel retro graphics style.  Might be useful for style inspiration/reference.


Funny, I was just thinking about one of my favourite C64 games of all time (that no C64 discussion can go without) the other day and here it is: Turrican 

it's a big part of the c64 look

[fingerman]

Keep up the good work!

[Ian_A]

I think the commodore 64 should only be used as a force for good and learning, this is much to violent for my children, I'm going to write a letter to my congressman. Good day sir or ma'am! GOOD DAY!

[gamesthatcouldbeworse]

As mentioned earlier I already composed several songs that hopefully complement the atmosphere of the game. I coded a simple synthesizer based on OpenAL that loads a soundsnippet and pitches it several times to create the half tones of a guitar. I am playing guitar for 20 years and it's easier for me to think in guitar tabs. The melody is scripted with the following enumeration:

Code:

public enum MelodyNotes
    {
        Silence,
        G0,
        G1,
        G2,
        G3,
        G4,
        G5,
        G6,
        G7,
        G8,
        G9,
        G10,
        G11,
        G12,
        H0,
        H1,
        H2,
        H3,
....

It is used in the following way:

Code:

            MelodyNoteCollection melodyPart = new MelodyNoteCollection
            {
                MilliSecondsPerBeat = 120,
                MilliSecondsPerSound = 120,
                Melody = new List<MelodyNotes> 
                {
                    MelodyNotes.E12,MelodyNotes.E7,MelodyNotes.E3, MelodyNotes.E0,
                    MelodyNotes.E7,MelodyNotes.E3,MelodyNotes.E0, MelodyNotes.H4,
                    MelodyNotes.E12,MelodyNotes.E7,MelodyNotes.E3, MelodyNotes.E0,
                    MelodyNotes.E7,MelodyNotes.E3,MelodyNotes.E0, MelodyNotes.H4,
                    MelodyNotes.E12,MelodyNotes.E7,MelodyNotes.E3, MelodyNotes.E0,
                    MelodyNotes.E7,MelodyNotes.E3,MelodyNotes.E0, MelodyNotes.H4,
                    MelodyNotes.E12,MelodyNotes.E7,MelodyNotes.E3, MelodyNotes.E0,
                    MelodyNotes.E7,MelodyNotes.E3,MelodyNotes.E0, MelodyNotes.H4,
                }
            };

The tool supports five simultaneous instruments that can have different tempi and rhythms.

One of the references is the soundtrack of Last Ninja 2:





Here I uploaded an unmastered version of a track that is intended to reproduce the same flow:





There still should be some equalizing and postprocessing.

[fingerman]

Hi, I gave it a listen, sounds pretty neat. Thats an interesting approach doing it in the code. Have you thought about changeing the instrumentation depending on where the enemies are and the levels of action and danger?

[gamesthatcouldbeworse]

That would be cool, but I have problems with the tightness. The sounds have to triggered exactly every 10 milliseconds. If there is a delay, it sounds terrible. And typically the framerate in the game is varying, depending on the rendered elements. So I have to record the tracks separately.

Here is an overview of the army from hell:



10 enemies, including 4 giants, a dog and a turret



a walk animation



8 perspectives



7 different skins, depending on the setting of the level


By the way, everything drawn in MS Paint