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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsDas Geisterschiff: turn-based adventure/dungeon crawler hybrid
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Author Topic: Das Geisterschiff: turn-based adventure/dungeon crawler hybrid  (Read 1324 times)
Surt R.
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« on: January 08, 2017, 07:00:57 AM »

The project is completed and available on Itch and also coming out on November 24 on Steam.

Original post:
Quote
After prototyping since February and actively developing from scratch since July, I guess I'm ready to show my little project.

Das Geisterschiff is a turn-based adventure/dungeon crawler hybrid inspired by Carmine (an old PC-98 adventure), Armored Core series and partially Akalabeth. You're piloting a mech and you have a set goal and some tools to accomplish it, yet it's not that easy to pull off without proper planning and resource management. The gameplay may remind you of various turn-based dungeon crawlers, however, in this case there are several differences:

  • No healing -- you start with a set amount of HP with no way to replenish it.
  • No ammo pickups -- you get a few weapons, some ammo and that's it. Either you use it wisely or get wasted after a few encounters.
  • Advanced turn-based combat system -- you can ram your enemies to cause additional damage and conserve ammo, destroy interactive objects to render them inoperable and use the environment to buy yourself some time to run away from the encounter.
  • No character progression -- you're only deteriorating by taking damage and losing the precious weight after each shot.
  • The story is optional in many ways -- there are no lengthy cutscenes, just logs and information that's up to you to find (if you want!)

I'm keeping it short, but sweet (~40 minutes for Der Geisterjäger (the demo chapter), and about 4 hours for the final game). Also planning to release Der Geisterjäger in February or so -- the engine is ready, some of the content is implemented, all that remains is the rest of the content. Das Geisterschiff is planned for June 2017.



You can get the latest updates on my Twitter page.
« Last Edit: November 02, 2018, 10:25:17 AM by Surt R. » Logged
and0
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« Reply #1 on: January 08, 2017, 07:27:23 AM »

Now that sounds interesting. I appreciate you shifting the complexity/depth from stats to something more organic, especially in a genre like this!
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Surt R.
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« Reply #2 on: January 08, 2017, 07:51:21 AM »

Now that sounds interesting. I appreciate you shifting the complexity/depth from stats to something more organic, especially in a genre like this!

Thanks!
Indeed, dungeon crawlers as a genre offer a lot of room for improvements/experiments/additions, but unfortunately we get what we get. While I appreciate that there are people out there who are trying to keep the genre alive, it's sad when the majority of games are realtime and the only noticeable improvement is fancy graphics.

There are still stats in my game, but they are few and far between. I could easily summarize them like this:

Damage -- the power of the equipped weapon.
Accuracy -- the accuracy of the equipped weapon.
Evasion -- base evasion of the mech + weapon penalty.
Mass -- weight of the mech + weight of weapons + weight of ammo.

Mass is crucial when it comes to ramming, and the damage is calculated by the difference between the player's and enemy's mass. In other words, if you hit someone heavier than you, you're only going to hurt yourself.
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Rhuantavan
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« Reply #3 on: January 08, 2017, 08:01:49 AM »

Looking forward to play Der Geisterjäger Surt! It is already looking pretty cool, and above all different from the vast majority of dungeon crawlers out there.
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Surt R.
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« Reply #4 on: January 08, 2017, 08:09:52 AM »

Thanks! I'll do my best to polish it as much as possible.
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Surt R.
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« Reply #5 on: February 19, 2017, 05:34:06 PM »

Small update.

I've postponed the demo a bit to rewire the rendering and do additional polishing of the game mechanics. I was unhappy with the performance of the game on low-end hardware (remember that Unity games are infamous for running like ass for one reason or another?), so I decided to do some tests.

Watch the render test here:



It's a lower-level replacement of edge detection effect that was crucial to the graphics style. I'm going to spend more time on optimization to make sure it takes as less resources as possible. More updates soon.  Wink
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Surt R.
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« Reply #6 on: November 24, 2017, 11:17:12 AM »

Long time no see, folks.
I've been quiet for a while in order to do some changes to the gameplay as well as other stuff (after all, the original codebase was written when I wasn't very experienced, so now it works like a charm).

I've released a small tutorial demo to gather some feedback as well as show off the latest changes and additions. It's available on itch.io, IndieDB and GameJolt. I am also working on a level demo which will show the scale of planned dungeons as well as pose actual challenge to the player, since the tutorial demo is just a tutorial to let people play around with some of the mechanics.

There's also a video in case you cannot give it a try right now:



And a few screenshots too. Smiley


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Surt R.
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« Reply #7 on: February 16, 2018, 06:05:10 PM »

Hi everyone.





There's a new demo available which can be downloaded here:
https://surt-r.itch.io/das-geisterschiff/
http://www.indiedb.com/games/das-geisterschiff/downloads/das-geisterschiff-demo-v044p1
https://gamejolt.com/games/das-geisterschiff/299106

It includes 2 segments from the first chapter of the full game and 3 enemy types. Feedback is appreciated. Smiley
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Surt R.
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« Reply #8 on: November 02, 2018, 10:31:31 AM »

Been pretty quiet lately, but I'm happy to announce that the game is ready and available on Itch.

It's also coming out on November 24th on Steam.

Feel free to wishlist it and check out the launch trailer. Smiley



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