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[FuzzySlippers]

I posted a devlog here ages ago on a first person crawler I was working on that fell apart, but the code survived and thrived in a new setting.



A dungeon crawling rpg inspired by classics like Wizardry and Might & Magic!
Features:

• Deep combat system with Real Time With Pause. Ponder your tactical decisions at your leisure with automatic and manual pausing, but enjoy a snappy pace in easier encounters
• Turn based options for even more control
• An elaborate class system designed for multi classing
• Complex skill system to develop your characters exactly as you want
• Unique setting where you can explore weird and wonderful environments at the end of time
• 100+ spells and abilities and hundreds of items to find and customize your characters with
• Art style that blends elements of retro comics, 70s book/album covers, and classic CRPGs

Demo up for download at itch

I'd love to get feedback on the demo!

[bacon]

I really love that art in your first screenshot - what's your art process for developing that?

[FuzzySlippers]

I really love that art in your first screenshot - what's your art process for developing that?

I was inspired by what Double Damage said they did in Rebel Galaxy. The artist has minimal 3D art knowledge and building a lot of models is a tall order anyway so we went for stock art that he paints over in our style. I think it works pretty well for keeping our style while not being too much work for just me and an artist. Especially for scenes like that where modeling a tree isn't anything special, it is the heavy blacks he painted in the texture that make it something interesting.

I'm less happy with how the character models integrate with our art and looking back I wish we'd just gone with 2D art he drew and then animated via bones (Spine or whatever). I didn't realize how mature those tools are and they provide a pretty awesome middle ground between labor intensive pixel animation and a full 3D workflow.

Though all these screenshots use the models directly, but I have experimented with baking the models to sprite sheets or using shaders to turn them into sprite in real time. I think those blend the art better with our 2D but they had some issues when combat was non-modal and the enemies roamed the level. Now that we're limited to a separate combat space they might work better.

[Devilkay]

improve the HUD

[nathy after dark]

It looks like you could end up with a really cool aesthetic here.

[PsycheMac]

The style is really cool in this. It has a cool 80's DnD feel to it. One thing that could help the UI is getting rid of that dark grey as the character background. It kind of drowns out the character art. For now Id just try black and then maybe put in actual background art in the future if you have time.

[FuzzySlippers]

The style is really cool in this. It has a cool 80's DnD feel to it. One thing that could help the UI is getting rid of that dark grey as the character background. It kind of drowns out the character art. For now Id just try black and then maybe put in actual background art in the future if you have time.

Thanks for the comment. I'll give that a shot with the darker color. UI is definitely something we get a lot of comments on. Getting a textured background for the UI is something we had considered but haven't gotten around to trying. Unity UI stuff is kind of a massive editor pain if you implement it in scene which I unfortunately did. I wish I'd gone more code based to make it easier to adjust. I might redo it at some point to do that and I could make it easier to configure how heavy the UI is. We had thought the chunky UI art was important to getting that classic crawler vibe but some people prefer something a lot more streamlined (like Grimrock).

[Schrompf]

Yeah, Grimrock is pretty much the new standard with which you'll compared all the time. I like what you have there. Is it grid-based or free movement?

[FuzzySlippers]

Yeah, Grimrock is pretty much the new standard with which you'll compared all the time. I like what you have there. Is it grid-based or free movement?

It's grid based but I may support free movement as well. It'd be kind of a trick though because the game wouldn't consider you to have actually moved until your grid position changes. Still, some people just prefer how that feels.

[Schrompf]

Still, some people just prefer how that feels.

Not me, though. I think that grid based movement allows for a lot of cool dungeon puzzles and timings. Free movement, on the other hand, doesn't gain you anything unless you design your fighting mechanics around it.

[FuzzySlippers]

Yeah I also think party based gameplay really belongs on the grid. There is already a mild absurdity with the format of 4-8 people walking lockstep behind the camera in a first person party crawler, but when you add free movement it seems even weirder to me. I don't think it added anything to Wiz8 or MM6-9 except dungeon layouts became a little more tedious to explore. Wiz 8's awesome tactical positioning would've worked fine on the grid and would've made positioning more clear.

Though I understand why they added it since people outside this niche tend to find grid movement kinda weird and they were trying to keep up with a pretty tumultuous time in gaming (late 90s/early 00s).

The later Realms of Arkania games added the fake stepping thing where they were grid based but had optional free movement. I think its a decent compromise for people who can't get over grid movement.