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[paifu]

We just finished our last game Miaou Moon and after weeks on emailing tons of Websites there is not much more to do than waiting for the Greenlight.

[EDIT]The project was too big to chew in one time. So we developed another game: Paper Dungeons Crawler.
Now that the game is release, it's time to come back hard on this one.
All my images on my previous post have been lost in our server but keep posted for new screenshots and progress


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So its time to take some distance and think to our next game to clear my mind.

The project is much more ambitious and I wish to be serious about this devlog and share my struggles in creation from the start and post regulary any improvements.

There is not much to show from the moment beside my first attempt on a Logo, I wish to go for an old school AD&D Scenarii look.

All the gameplay elements are already written on pen & paper with some first level design, UI ideas plus some Excel sheets for the stats, leveling and damage calculations.



How do you start a new project, are you going straight for a first mockup with what you have in mind or spend some extensive time on paper until everything is ready?




ABOUT THE GAME:
The goal is to mix a classic dungeon delver experience close to Dungeon Master with a real 3D Cooperative FPS like Left for Dead. The 3D style will be low poly (but not too low) I am aiming for a Torchlight 3dStyle, or Orcs must die but in a very dark setting. Carrying a torch at start will be a must.

The game take place in the world that we created with our first game Paper Dungeons in the realm of Cyndaria. Goram an ancient Wizard King and now powerfull Lich is trying to get back his phylactery the only thing that can kill him, laying on the last level of a deep dungeon protected from any Undead intrusion. So Gorum is riping the soul of every travellers at the dungeon proximity forcing them to go in here to bring back the phylactery for him.

To start the game the soul of the player enter the first Crypt and take possession of one the statues of the ancients heroes to Ressurect or Reincarnate him.


GAMEPLAY:
The game is playable solo but anyone can rejoin the party at any moment for a total of 5 players maximum. The game will increase the dungeon difficulty accordingly. Inspired by the Dead Island system a high level player can join but will see the monsters adapted at his level.

To enhance the cooperative aspect any class will get a bunch of utility Spells or Skills but the players have to choose wich one they can quickcast in game. And they have to rest if they want to change them. The game will use a Draw Spells on Screen system inspired by Ark Fatalis.

The SKILLS/SPELLS are independents of the player level, you must use them to raise their levels.

Another big aspect of the game, the level elements are constructed with tiles so some block can be pushed, destroyed of teleported to change the level architecture and find some new ways to complete the dungeon.

The levels are not randomly generated but handily crafted with 3 variations, so everytime you start a new game you will face a different version of the world. A system inspired by Risk of Rain.

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Its time for me to get my hand dirty and craft the first assets for a quick mockup. I keep you posted with some pictures soon.

Give me your thoughts.

Thanks.

Stephane valverde - Agent Mega

[paifu]

After a long struggle I finally chose to build my worlds tile by tile, and not with kit elements to build copy&past rooms.

This will be easier to draw classic D&D Maps. With all 3D tiles acting as independent gameObjects, I will be able to destroy, move or teleport any of these tiles depending on my gameplay: Push spells / Transform rocks to mud and such. All of this without breaking the world geometry of the other elements.

To speed up the level design process, I invested in an excellent plugin for Unity : TiledEd. Smartly places and modify gameobjects on a 3D GRID. This tool is better adapted to a TOP DOWN Dungeon rather than an FPS one, but should still work nicely with my blocky design.

I found an excellent tutorial to create these kind of dungeon tiles, fast and well explained, you should take a look:
3D Dungeon Tutorial Series

Unfortunately I'm completely new to Maya, so I'm gonna stick to Sketchup that I know well enough to create all my meshes. Then I'll export them as FBX to add and build precise UV Textures with Maya.

I just finished creating the geometry of all my basic tiles 3mx3m : WALLS, CEILINGS and FLOORS plus some stairs and holes to connect them so I can easily design multistory dungeons.



Unity5 can now directly import natively sketchup files v2015, including my placeholder textures. So I can fast check them in game and detect any geometry issues, overlapping faces, gaps, etc.



Now I have to create my gameObject 3Dtiles in order to populate the TileEd editor and create some real test levels.

Later, I'll be able to export the final FBXs with advanced textures on Maya and create some new gameObjects, that will replace the old ones without redoing my level design.

Time to get back to work, I'm eager to test these tiles!

Cheers.


Stephane valverde - Agent Mega

[paifu]

After a long break putting Miaou Moon on Steam and handling its promotion, we are full back on Depths of Cyndaria.

The level building system worked nicely with TileEd, allowing us to quickly build up any level by piling up our basic construction blocs 3x3x3m.



Unfortunately, it was a nightmare to populate them: the ceiling blocs obstructed the visibility, and even putting these blocs on a different layer was cumbersome.



So I had to build only the inside of the blocs, with no exterior textures, and finally divide them into parts of 2x2x3m for corridors and 2x2x5m for the rooms.



This gave me the best result with large rooms and corridors easy to construct and populate. But it also means that it will much more difficult to destroy and move blocs like I intended first in my gameplay So, I will introduce later some special movable blocs to emulate this feature, though in a more limited way.




With this problem finally solved, it was time to start our Avatar system and tackle with Maya. We wanted to stay close to the graphic style of Paper Dungeons and allow the player to choose his gender and class. But also propose some customizations like different haircuts / faces and skin colors. To avoid building up different equipments for boys and girls, we adopted a simple androgyne figure.



Drawing up different haircuts was quite fun: we ended up with 13 haircuts for each gender instead of the 5 initially planned.



I am currently modeling some equipment to see how I can handle this Avatar system, some new pictures soon.

[paifu]

Hi again!

[AVATAR]
In the end, it is really difficult to put any armor without seeing the skin coming out when the character is animated. Even when the armor is skinned on the same skeleton or when I copy the body paint weight on the armor. Maybe its because my character is really low poly.

I equip the character at runtime, and will have tons of possible combinations in the future, so I can't bake perfectly the mesh together and load up a few different characters when needed.
 
Just using mask not to draw skin coming through should work too, but my body uses multiple textures to work well with UFPS. Different (Head/Arm/Body) textures separated on the same mesh. Finally I just decomposed the textures even more in (Head/Collar/Torso/Pant/Arms/Hands/Feets) and used a custom script to apply a not visible shader on these materials when an armor is equipped above them at runtime.
It doesn't look really clean for the moment but at least it's working.

I think that to be really perfect, I would have to stop the animation and merge these meshes together in some way, to get rid of the problem.
Have you faced the same problem ?
What's your solution?


[CAMERA]
I use 3 cameras that can be switched at runtime, so the player gets the view he prefers in play. The FOV(Field of view) will also be accessible in the game settings.

First Person View:



Close Third Person View:


And a Free camera to view you character and take screenshots.

[TonyManfredonia]

Oh wow! The latest screenshot / character model looks great! I love how you're going for a more "chibi" look in an otherwise daunting dungeon crawler.

Keep it up!

[LachlanZ]

Love the artwork in those last few screenshots and the lighting as well.
Definitely going to be watching this one!

[paifu]

Thanks guys for your comments!

[LIGHTING]
I am going to use the light as gameplay like in the great Dungeon Master. The player will have access to torches or light spells, fading over time. But you will still see a bit of your environment and the monsters can be seen from afar with their glowing eyes.



Surroundings and monsters have a special border that is always visible and not affected by lighting. So you can still see them even in complete darkness. But this will not happen if you keep enough torches in you inventory or got some light spells ready to cast.



[STARTING LEVEL]
I have completed the modeling of my starting level: it's an abandoned Gothic crypt, where you start as a lost soul...





As you enter, you'll find on its center a holy statue. This level will also be used as a hub on multiplayer.



Touching the statue will reveal your destiny and awake the ancient heroes' statues.



You can float to them and either choose to [Resurrect] a specific hero or [Reincarnate] him as a new one.



I am currently working on the character creation UI.

[paifu]

I lost all my previous post images when we changed our internet hosting.

Time to start to work again on Depth of Cyndaria, now that our last project Paper Dungeons Crawler is done.

Topology of our first character a female warrior.

[paifu]

First character rigged and textured Whohoo!!





#indiedev #indiegame #gamedev #unity #depthsofcyndaria

[paifu]

Working on the first level lightnings.




#depthsofcyndaria #indiegame #indiedev #unity #screenshotsaturday  

[paifu]

Some gameplay elements in place with our first enemy, the goblins!

[paifu]

Depths of Cyndaria - Devlog 01.
Some gameplay  elements in place, don't mind the UI placeholders and such. Recorder on a my old computer at 1080p with graphics at max quality with GTX750 and dual core E8400, the real game is less laggy .