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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsNuclear Rune - Pauseable Realtime Party RPG
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Author Topic: Nuclear Rune - Pauseable Realtime Party RPG  (Read 9778 times)
Fainz
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« on: August 15, 2016, 03:30:49 AM »



Summary:
  • A tactical top-down party RPG where the player controls 3 heroes.
  • Real-time combat system with pause/slow-motion mode.
  • Inspired by Dragon Age (Origins & 2) and Infinity Engine classics (Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale).

General:
  • Started august 2016.
  • Made in Finland.

Current features of game:
  • Talent & attribute systems: the heroes have 10+ abilities each, most of which are unlocked through a talent system. Attributes grant static bonuses and certain attribute scores are required to unlock talents.
  • Fog of war: hides unseen areas
  • AI: Enemies use a simple priority-based AI, heroes can auto-cast abilities with the same AI.
  • Inventory & equipment: The usual inventory actions implemented (pick up stuff, equip it, use items etc.).

Story summary:
An overwhelming invasion will soon destroy your country. The heroes seek a legend; some kind of incredible power which should emerge after activating five ancient nuclear power sources. The civilization of old abandoned the technology and attempted to destroy all knowledge of it. After all, great power comes at a great cost...

Demo: Download from IndieDB (updated 12.09.2017)

Devlogs:
#1: The beginning
#2: Player characters & first demo
#3: Sustained abilities & UI updates
#4: Bullet time vs pause
#5: Main menu, new demo
#6: Playmode level editor
#7: Character texturing styles
#8: Fog of War
#9: Combat against large group
#10: Minion test, cursor update, hero icons
#11: Talents & attributes
#12: Map UI
#13: Hidden health & Map update
#14: Pseudorandomness & new icons (+new demo)
#15: Simple and/or elegant UI windows
#16: Cheerful victory
#17: Inventory & GIFs
#18: Nuclear Rune, story & setting
#19: Modeled Maps
#20: Fancy ability effects
#21: Dialog without pause, portraits, zone map (+new demo)
#22: Fog of War & Fishy Village
#23: Tiles & Terrain
#24: Equipment Coloring
#25: Nuclear Reactor Map WIP
#26: Maps progress, camp scene
#27: Closed encounters
#28: More encounters
#29: Modeled encounter zones

Gameplay video:



Screenshots:

Reactor


Activated Rune


Canyon w waterfall


Tiles


Cave Combat


Equipment coloring


Crossing Water


Swimming Pool


Talents


Train
« Last Edit: September 07, 2018, 11:21:55 PM by Fainz » Logged

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« Reply #1 on: August 17, 2016, 01:07:11 AM »

Devlog #1: The beginning

Summary:
  • A tactical top-down party RPG where the player controls 3-4 heroes.
  • Pauseable real-time combat system.
  • Story will probably be a prequel to my previous game Dragonpath (devlog).
  • Inspired by Dragon Age games and Infinity Engine classics (Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale).

General:
  • Started august 2016.
  • Made in Finland.

Current features of game:
  • 3 heroes with a basic attack and 2-3 abilities each.
  • Enemies use a simple priority-based AI. Heroes can use a similar AI for auto-casting abilities.


Early screenshots:






--------------


Improved order queueing by displaying the movement path with particle lines. Different types of orders have different colors (e.g. light blue for normal movement, red for attack move, white for abilities).





(edit 16.09.16: added a couple of the earliest screenshots)
« Last Edit: January 25, 2017, 09:22:19 AM by Fainz » Logged

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« Reply #2 on: August 20, 2016, 06:52:03 AM »

Devlog #2: Player characters & first demo

[Released a short demo]
--
First three heroes in game (models were created long before starting this project). I'm aiming to have a total of 6-8 heroes by the end of project.

From left to right:

Warrior
- Melee bruiser who can draw enemies to attack himself.

Crystal Shaper
- Flexible melee/ranged damage dealer.
- Shoots crystal projectiles from his gun.
- Creates crystal weapons for melee combat with the device in his left hand.

Sorcerer
- Ranged caster specialized in fire spells.
- Currently also serves as the support/healer.

« Last Edit: January 25, 2017, 09:23:48 AM by Fainz » Logged

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« Reply #3 on: August 23, 2016, 07:49:27 AM »

Devlog #3: Sustained abilities & UI updates

Some new stuff:

Sustained abilities
Modes which can toggled on/off. They can give buffs and enable/disable some abilities. 2 of them currently implemented:
- Shaper's 'Sword Shape' changes basic attack and enables Lunge ability (this was implemented in a different way earlier).
- Warrior's 'Defender' reduces both damage taken and damage dealt to make him more tanky.

UI
- Added progress bar for some orders.
- Independent AI actions are now shown as orders.
- Enemy health bar updated for better visiblity.
- Players are highlighted when selected.

Other
- Enemy damage and group sizes increased for a bit of challenge
- Particles now completely stop on pause
- Brighter environment. I'm intending to do both day and night levels, as well as dark(est) dungeons.



New gameplay video:

« Last Edit: January 25, 2017, 09:24:50 AM by Fainz » Logged

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« Reply #4 on: August 23, 2016, 07:53:11 AM »

Just came in to say this is looking pretty cool. I think the video does it a lot of justice. I don't like how much the pausing breaks the feel of it but can understand that it's a pretty big functionality of the game. How about pausing makes the game speed reduce to like .05 of what it is, like slow enough for you to think and plan, but enough movement to see what's still happening and a sense of life? It really depends if what you have planned would work.

Keep it up though.
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« Reply #5 on: August 23, 2016, 08:33:43 AM »

Just came in to say this is looking pretty cool. I think the video does it a lot of justice. I don't like how much the pausing breaks the feel of it but can understand that it's a pretty big functionality of the game. How about pausing makes the game speed reduce to like .05 of what it is, like slow enough for you to think and plan, but enough movement to see what's still happening and a sense of life? It really depends if what you have planned would work.

Keep it up though.

Hey,
interesting idea, I'll at least give it a try to see how it would work.
Depending on the speed, it could give a realistic sense of urgency to the combat. After all, heroes don't usually have very much time for planning in the heat of battle.
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« Reply #6 on: August 23, 2016, 10:10:30 AM »

This was satisfying to play.

I agree with Exception, if the pausing was replaced with "bullet-time" it would create an interesting effect. I found myself not pausing at all (except when I was about to die) because of the motion "break".

Also, it would be cool to allow you to target spells on the character icon, so I could press W and then click on the sword icon to heal Shaper instead of clicking on his actual character (enemies love to get my shaper down to 30 HP lol)

Other than that, combat felt really good, and the characters were responsive.
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« Reply #7 on: August 23, 2016, 11:03:41 AM »

This was satisfying to play.

I agree with Exception, if the pausing was replaced with "bullet-time" it would create an interesting effect. I found myself not pausing at all (except when I was about to die) because of the motion "break".

Also, it would be cool to allow you to target spells on the character icon, so I could press W and then click on the sword icon to heal Shaper instead of clicking on his actual character (enemies love to get my shaper down to 30 HP lol)

Other than that, combat felt really good, and the characters were responsive.

Nice to hear, this was the first time anyone comments on the gameplay :p

A bullet-time like mode could well make it into the game as an option (maybe even as the standard choice).

Good point on the spell targeting, I'll add that functionality and maybe also targeting by character hotkeys (so '3' for shaper etc)
« Last Edit: August 23, 2016, 12:07:02 PM by Fainz » Logged

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« Reply #8 on: August 25, 2016, 08:04:06 AM »

Devlog #4: Bullet time vs pause

Added a 'bullet time'/slow-motion mode with 10% speed. It looks and feels better than full pause so it will most likely stay as an option in the game.



« Last Edit: January 25, 2017, 09:25:45 AM by Fainz » Logged

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« Reply #9 on: August 25, 2016, 10:29:12 AM »

This was satisfying to play.

I agree with Exception, if the pausing was replaced with "bullet-time" it would create an interesting effect. I found myself not pausing at all (except when I was about to die) because of the motion "break".

Also, it would be cool to allow you to target spells on the character icon, so I could press W and then click on the sword icon to heal Shaper instead of clicking on his actual character (enemies love to get my shaper down to 30 HP lol)

Other than that, combat felt really good, and the characters were responsive.

This DOES look satisfying to play. And the bullet-time stuff from today looks great. I'll have to set aside some time in these next few days to check out the demo.  Will report back soon.
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« Reply #10 on: August 26, 2016, 01:43:14 AM »

Devlog #5: Main menu, new demo

Made a new demo with the slow-motion mode (+ 2 new levels and a bunch of other updates).

Also added a main menu which showcases the party:
« Last Edit: January 25, 2017, 09:26:53 AM by Fainz » Logged

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« Reply #11 on: September 05, 2016, 04:23:48 AM »

Devlog #6: Playmode level editor

Creating levels in the normal Unity editor tends to be bothersome, so I'm working on a custom playmode level editor.

The editor currently has a tile brush with 3 sizes and a prop brush which can place props on ground and walls (placement is defined in the prefab of each prop).
Levels are saved in XML format, and objects retain prefab references when the level is setup in editor mode (which allows for easily modifying tiles&props across all levels).

I made a prototype version of this level editor during Dragonpath development, but it required a lot of updates to be actually useful.


Timelapse of a short dungeon level created in 2 minutes:


« Last Edit: January 25, 2017, 09:27:29 AM by Fainz » Logged

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« Reply #12 on: September 07, 2016, 11:15:42 PM »

Devlog #7: Character texturing styles

I've been experimenting with different texturing styles for characters. Ended up choosing a style that uses flat base colors, strong outlines between materials and handpainted details. I've used mostly procedural textures until now, so this will be good practice in texture painting.






Here's also a bunch of renders from the experiments (one of them is unlike the others).





« Last Edit: January 25, 2017, 09:28:16 AM by Fainz » Logged

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« Reply #13 on: September 08, 2016, 04:37:36 AM »

Just checking back in and its awesome to see you had a play around with the bullet time suggestion. In my opinion it looks brilliant and doesn't break the flow of the game at all like the pause does. Having it as an on/off option is entirely reasonable Smiley

P.S. I'm posting from work so I can't play, will check it out when I can!
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« Reply #14 on: September 08, 2016, 08:21:46 AM »

Just checking back in and its awesome to see you had a play around with the bullet time suggestion. In my opinion it looks brilliant and doesn't break the flow of the game at all like the pause does. Having it as an on/off option is entirely reasonable Smiley

P.S. I'm posting from work so I can't play, will check it out when I can!

Thanks for the suggestion, I have used bullet time almost all the time after implementing it. It's simply more fun to watch sweet slow-mo combat while issuing orders.
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« Reply #15 on: September 13, 2016, 12:51:53 AM »

Devlog #8: Fog of War

Added a simple Fog of War. It uses a texture which changes transparency based on distance and line of sight. All heroes are taken into account when calculating the visible area.

It looks pretty crude and enemy health bars can be partially seen through the fog, so there's room for improvement. Also gotta figure out how to scale it up to work on large maps without dropping fps to 0.



« Last Edit: January 25, 2017, 09:28:53 AM by Fainz » Logged

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« Reply #16 on: September 13, 2016, 08:48:34 AM »

That looks like a good start at the least, I think! ^_^

One piece of critique: right now the fade looks a little sudden to my eye; perhaps have the tiles fade in a little more slowly, and thus (hopefully), a little more smoothly.
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« Reply #17 on: September 13, 2016, 12:05:37 PM »

That looks like a good start at the least, I think! ^_^

One piece of critique: right now the fade looks a little sudden to my eye; perhaps have the tiles fade in a little more slowly, and thus (hopefully), a little more smoothly.

Thanks!

I noticed the same thing and added a smooth fade for newly revealed/hidden areas. It certainly helped make it look less jarring to watch.
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« Reply #18 on: September 15, 2016, 10:15:38 AM »

Three weeks later and I finally got around to playing the demo last night! Everything felt good, I thought.

Loved the slow motion, went ahead and played a few full encounters wholly in slow motion . Still moved at a pace that felt comfortable to let play out, just allows you to react to things more easily. And watching things come at you in bullet time is just fun.

Difficulty system felt good as well. You certainly can’t just mindlessly hack your way through, well, you sort of can in Easy mode, but even then it wasn't too bad. Fog of war is looking good. Obviously a needed touch, but the trick is putting it at just the right distance where if you're not careful creeping up with your mage for the free fireball, you can get spotted, but if you do get it, it feels rewarding to have pulled it off.

Anyway, looking forward to future updates!
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« Reply #19 on: September 16, 2016, 03:22:50 AM »

Three weeks later and I finally got around to playing the demo last night! Everything felt good, I thought.

Loved the slow motion, went ahead and played a few full encounters wholly in slow motion . Still moved at a pace that felt comfortable to let play out, just allows you to react to things more easily. And watching things come at you in bullet time is just fun.

Difficulty system felt good as well. You certainly can’t just mindlessly hack your way through, well, you sort of can in Easy mode, but even then it wasn't too bad. Fog of war is looking good. Obviously a needed touch, but the trick is putting it at just the right distance where if you're not careful creeping up with your mage for the free fireball, you can get spotted, but if you do get it, it feels rewarding to have pulled it off.

Anyway, looking forward to future updates!

Thanks for playing, better late than never Grin

Nice to hear that the bullet time works well.
Difficulty system was copied from Dragonpath, but apparently it's good enough in this game too for a start.

It's currently pretty easy to get a free fireball on distant enemies (there's about 5m zone where they can be seen but don't get aggro), and on enemies behind corners. I might increase aggro range at higher difficulties to add a bit of challenge to that.
« Last Edit: September 16, 2016, 04:13:34 AM by Fainz » Logged

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