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Perfoon
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« on: January 01, 2019, 12:13:27 PM »

Hi everyone,

I'm making this dev-log to challenge myself finishing a game.
Starting today 01.01.2019 I will try to release this game within 2 months. For this, I've made myself a tight schedule where I will publish my progress report every Saturday for 10 weeks.

Milestones:
  • 2nd of February - public beta test.
  • 2nd of March - public beta test.
  • TBA

About




Dwarf Block is a first-person dwarf colony sim.
You are the second most important dwarf in the colony, next to the king. Which means you have to do all the dirty work, initially at least. You will have to:
  • Gather stone and wood and other resources.
  • Upgrade the fortress.
  • Hire guards and workers to do the job for you.
By gathering gold and cutting down trees you will naturally irritate the goblins and elves who will start sending their armies on your way. At the end of the day, it is your job to keep the colony and your king safe.

Technical
  • Game engine - Unity
  • Online multiplayer - No (not in this version)
I will also use different purchased assets where I can, to speed up the development. But I will modify them enough to avoid making an asset flip game.

Links
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1027780/Dwarf_Block/
IndieDB: https://www.indiedb.com/games/dwarf-block
Youtube Channel: youtube.com/c/Perfoon
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/Dwarf-Block-2426289687449589
Twitter account: https://twitter.com/JaanusJaggo
Discord: https://discord.gg/5yutChM
Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarfblock
« Last Edit: February 18, 2020, 02:49:55 AM by Perfoon » Logged

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Perfoon
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« Reply #1 on: January 01, 2019, 12:20:06 PM »

Starting the challenge
Here is the starting state of the game.
The initial prototype has:
  • Castle level with an outside wall and two inner halls.
  • Player can destroy a respawning block to gather resources. (inspired from Minecraft mod Minevolution)




I'm keeping it in the separate post so I can later update the main post and won't lose the starting point.
« Last Edit: January 13, 2019, 01:40:42 AM by Perfoon » Logged

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bryku
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« Reply #2 on: January 02, 2019, 07:45:33 AM »

Looks nice! Good luck with this!
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Busy working on xcom-like, steampunk/vermintide pixel art strategy game called "Shardpunk".

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Perfoon
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« Reply #3 on: January 05, 2019, 06:43:02 AM »

Week #1 (update)
First week of my challenge is now over. The goal of this week was implementing the gameplay loop.
It was a short week, but as promised I'm going to share my progress with you! Because nobody wants to read the long text I made a video:



Enemies and primitive fighting. Not perfect, but functional, the whole 4th week is planned for the fighting overhaul.


New gate system. The player can open the gates, but enemies can also come through. When the gates are closed, the enemies will have to destroy it first.


Next week I'm planning to do some level design and hopefully, I can get the beta rooms done. I also can not wait to get rid of the Unity's default sky.
« Last Edit: January 12, 2019, 11:04:33 AM by Perfoon » Logged

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LunaticDancer
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« Reply #4 on: January 05, 2019, 07:18:48 AM »

I'm liking what I see Smiley

Hoping it'll turn out good, because it looks like something that could hook me for good.
Are you a Dwarf Fortress fan? I know I am :D

Good luck, lucking forward to see the game in it's full glory!
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Perfoon
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« Reply #5 on: January 05, 2019, 12:55:09 PM »

I'm liking what I see Smiley

Hoping it'll turn out good, because it looks like something that could hook me for good.
Are you a Dwarf Fortress fan? I know I am :D

Good luck, lucking forward to see the game in it's full glory!

Thank you a lot!
I'm giving my best to not disappoint you. I have played Dwarf Fortress before but not that much, I got stuck to the difficulty and never managed to reach the end game. But I'm a fan of dwarf stories and quite sad that there aren't many other games (besides DF) that really go into medieval dwarven settings. So that is one reason why I'm making this game.

By the way, here is another gif about the simulation that I'm quite proud of. It is based on a state machine that all the characters are sharing, so I'm really looking forward to adding new states and behaviors in the future. I hope to get truly dynamic battles this way.
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Cruckz
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« Reply #6 on: January 07, 2019, 03:22:39 PM »

Love it so far! Been thinking of a similar idea myself. Are you thinking orcs must die style defences ? Also dropped you an Email
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JobLeonard
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« Reply #7 on: January 07, 2019, 04:19:45 PM »

That's a tough challenge you set for yourself, but you can count on us to cheer you on! Coffee
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Perfoon
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« Reply #8 on: January 12, 2019, 11:01:20 AM »

That's a tough challenge you set for yourself, but you can count on us to cheer you on! Coffee
Thanks, that is really important for me. I hope it will help me to finish the game Coffee

Love it so far! Been thinking of a similar idea myself. Are you thinking orcs must die style defences? Also dropped you an Email
Thank you! I was not even considering orcs must die in the first place. Although, I really like it and now when I think about it I will probably describe my game as orcs must die meets dwarf fortress Smiley But still, Dwarf Block will put more emphasis on defending with AI guards, rather than placing a trap maze.


Week #2 (update)
My goal for this week was to finish the level design (things that are necessary for the public beta). Once again, I made a short video. See yourself how it turned out:





Behind the scenes. This is an old trick for creating painterly environments. Just a cylinder with cutout material and distance fog.

And a custom skybox shader which allows changing the colors individually.
« Last Edit: January 12, 2019, 12:53:31 PM by Perfoon » Logged

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Perfoon
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« Reply #9 on: January 19, 2019, 08:56:12 AM »

Week #3 (update)
The goal for this week was to create the gameplay interactions. Here are the results:



And to sum it all up, this is how the game plays out Smiley
Chopping wood while goblins are attacking:


Mining stone while goblins are sneaking by:
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Perfoon
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« Reply #10 on: January 27, 2019, 11:39:14 AM »

Week #4 (update)
The goal for this week was to overhaul the combat mechanics. But once I started to work on it, I realized that it would take too much effort to draw and animate billboard characters in all 8 directions. Also fighting against flat surfaces feels a bit weird because you can not see the impact point. So I decided to instead dedicate this week to find a better style for my characters. This video shows all the different types of characters I made before I got the one I am happy with.



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Perfoon
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« Reply #11 on: February 02, 2019, 01:37:06 PM »

    Week #5 (update)
    Originally I planned to release a public demo today, but it is not ready yet! During the last two weeks, I have implemented true 3D characters instead of using billboards. It took more time than I had expected, but in the other hand, the new animations look really cool, see yourself:




    This is how the character system works:
    The dwarf body has a custom rig with just 11 deforming bones (the ones behind the foot are for IK). And the body itself has just 179 vertices. The head is not part of the skinned mesh but parented directly to the head bone. This means that
    • The animation is really lightweight and I can have hundreds of animated characters at once without destroying the performance.
    • I can combine different heads and bodies inside the game engine.

    Most of the animations are made of multiple parts, for example, the attack animation consists of 5 parts:
    • taking the position (bringing the hand back),
    • moving backward,
    • idling in back position,
    • launching forward and attacking,
    • recovering from the attack.
    The animations are then cut in Unity and recomposed in the animation controller.


    [/list]
    « Last Edit: February 02, 2019, 02:05:16 PM by Perfoon » Logged

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    JobLeonard
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    « Reply #12 on: February 03, 2019, 10:08:48 AM »

    Nice how manage to keep most of the pixel-aesthetic in the translation Smiley
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    Perfoon
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    « Reply #13 on: February 10, 2019, 02:12:31 AM »

      Week #6 (update)
      This week I was developing the user interface system. My goal was to make it easily extendable and add controller support. The last one turned out to be really tricky to get right. I ended up overriding Unity's default button class and I'm still not perfectly happy with it, but I have to move on. Next week I can finally start putting the economy together and I have some interesting new features in mind.




      This is how the inventory looks now vs before:


      And this is the new currency free trading system that I'm experimenting with:

      [/list]
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      Perfoon
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      « Reply #14 on: February 16, 2019, 01:56:43 PM »

        Week #7 (update)
        This week I finally made Dwarves work for me.




        Carrying resources:
        Making the Dwarves carry things needed a whole set of new animations. But I think the coolness factor of having dwarves running around with huge piles of blocks is worth it. Technically it is the same thing that I used for other equipment. The blocks are parented to the hand bone and then enabled or disabled on demand.


        Warehouse:
        The feature that took me most effort was actually the storage system. I had this idea of having every resource physically represented in the game. Initially, I thought that it would be just a simple representation of your resource inventory. It got quite complex, because of how many divisions it ended up having. Warehouse -> PIle -> Column -> Macro Block -> Resource Block.

        To get it working I took inspiration from Settlers 4 game where resources were stacked in many piles. I assume that these all the variants of these stacks were prebaked into a sprite sheet. So I did the same and made all 27 variant meshes of a 3x3x3 block of resources. This turned out to be quite a laborious process, so instead, I just separated all the 27 blocks and put them together in Unity. Because the individual blocks only appear on the semi-complete stacks, I could pool the unused blocks.

          [/list]
          « Last Edit: February 18, 2019, 02:59:46 AM by Perfoon » Logged

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          JobLeonard
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          « Reply #15 on: February 17, 2019, 01:29:27 AM »

          There's something really satisfying about seeing those resource numbers go up
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          Perfoon
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          « Reply #16 on: February 24, 2019, 07:56:59 AM »

          There's something really satisfying about seeing those resource numbers go up
          Thanks mate! I also hope that is one of many little features that can help this game to stand out.

          Week #8 (update)
          This week I committed to making marketing materials.




          Here are all the pages that I configured this week:
          Landing Page: https://dwarfblock.com/ (unfortunately the call-to-action button does not work yet)
          Steam: Coming soon (waiting for approval)
          IndieDB: https://www.indiedb.com/games/dwarf-block
          Itch.io: https://perfoon.itch.io/dwarf-block

          Also here are some new gameplay gifs I made for this week:


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          Mixer
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          « Reply #17 on: February 25, 2019, 12:11:30 AM »

          This looks wicked. I love it.
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          My twitter is @5Mixer.
          I'm currently making a dungeon game, check it out :D
          https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=59139.0
          Perfoon
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          « Reply #18 on: March 03, 2019, 03:49:31 AM »

          This looks wicked. I love it.
          Thanks Smiley

          Week #9 (update)
          The plan for this week was to make the manufacturing system. However, I had to rework my character system first. But the new character model is really modular, allows to individually change both detail models and their textures.




          How the character is put together.
          The character is made of body, head, beard, and helmet. There aren't too many individual pieces yet, just 7 beards and 7 helmets but by changing between different meshes and textures it can produce a decent variety of different looking dwarves.


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          Perfoon
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          « Reply #19 on: March 09, 2019, 03:06:19 PM »

          Week #10 (update)



          The first ten weeks of this year are over and so is my experiment. I didn't manage to release this game within 2 months and I have to admit that I drifted away a bit too. But despite that, I still want to release this game and weekly update videos have proven to keep me motivated. So I will continue posting updates and the game can only get better over time.

          Workstations
          This week I created a bunch of workstations that the player can interact with. I'm planning to eventually have two types of workstations: ones that have to be hit with a tool, and others that have to be cranked to operate.



          More characters
          I also created even more variations of characters and asked people which ones they prefer.


          « Last Edit: March 09, 2019, 03:16:06 PM by Perfoon » Logged

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