Vapourware Codexian Game Development Thread

[Duckard]

Leaving aside my failure to represent Stamina in icon form, I guess the more important question is as follows:

Is it better to show the success chance of the rolls that will happen (e.g. first you have a 75% chance to hit, then if that succeeds you have 33% chance to crit), or to show the chance of each possible outcome of those rolls (e.g. 50% of the time you will hit, 25% of the time you will crit, 25% of the time you will miss)?

I can't think of a single game that does it the second way, so that should answer the question but maybe someone here knows something I don't.

 

[levgre]

This is what I prefer, all crit info on its own vertical column (and therefore normal hit as well in its own vertical column). And I prefer crit chance as its flat amount as opposed to its proportion of the hit amount. The miss info seems good to me as is.

 

[vlzvl]

What information do you draw from these targeting panels? Also, which panel do you prefer?

In my opinion, i like my information to be less bloated.
I like the first window, since the information uses less characters per line and there are less symbols i.e. heart than the other window.
There are very few games that bloating of information was not at all annoying i.e. Diablo, at least to me.
In addition, that separator in #1 window works wonders when the information is stuffing up and the symbols are not that helpful in a bunch of numbers.
I do not know the mechanics but separating information by lines or short text i.e. "basic" and "special" rather by symbols looks more ease to my eyes.
Are all this information is going to be used by players?

 

[ProphetSword]

The first one is definitely better. I can only guess what all the information and the symbols mean, but from an aesthetic point of view, the first one is easier on the eyes and allows you to discern the information much quicker due to separation lines and less clutter.

 

[Modron]

I largely prefer A because it explains better what is happening, hits/crits/miss and associated stamina cost. B just feels a bit like an excel sheet missing a column and presents some unnecessary information in the form of the 0-0 damage range where just saying miss would confer the same. Also B might confuse some tards who don't want to have to add up the crit and normal hit rate to get their chance to hit.

Plus A just looks nicer. Also don't listen to Kevgre, if a weapon I have a 33% chance to crit on hits I want to know that, not what percent of my swings should be crits.

 

[DavidBVal]

In case you need yet another opinion: go with A. And observe how I am telling you just to go with A without the need to tell you not to go with B... Much like the B option in your example, it would be redundant to establish the "fail" when you have already established the "success".

 

[Mastermind]

Yes I'm aware of shadow issues.

Something's off with the walk animation. Maybe it should cycle a bit faster. Now the characters seem to be skating around.

This is a framerate-driven engine with sprite animations which I pay for, so my options of adjusting this are limited to these, or combination thereof:

1) Double or halve the animation speed (halving would make it choppy, doubling would make it too fast in most cases)
2) Pay the animator to re-render thousands of frames multiple times until we get the timing just right
3) Radically rewrite the engine to be timing-based, with all the glitches that will follow
4) Adjust the amount of pixels per step a person takes

The right amount of pixels is surprisingly hard to nail, as different people seem to require different amounts, and also some animations simply won't mesh with amount of pixels I can ALLOW them to step.

During creation of Fallout, Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarski spent a LOT of effort together as animator and programmer to make sure no character skated, and that NPCs felt completely connected to the ground. In retrospect, Boyarski believes it was a waste of time that could've been spent elsewhere (in his recent Matt Chat interview).

This certainly meshes with my putting it as low priority task, considering how I don't have the team, budget or time they had at Interplay.

just remake it in gamemaker

 

[Talby]

Some screenshots of my weebish Earthbound clone.

Spoiler

That last one I made just for fun.

It's on the backburner for now since it turned out to be too ambitious to complete in a reasonable amount of time without help, but I will return to it after my current project is completed.

 

[Ninjerk]

Some screenshots of my weebish Earthbound clone.

Spoiler

That last one I made just for fun.

It's on the backburner for now since it turned out to be too ambitious to complete in a reasonable amount of time without help, but I will return to it after my current project is completed.

If I could use Nice x 1, you'd get it. Will there be Satanic pedo conspiracy?

 

[Talby]

If I could use Nice x 1, you'd get it. Will there be Satanic pedo conspiracy?

There is a conspiracy, but no pedos.

Spoiler

It's even worse than pedos though.

 

[ProphetSword]

My turn-based combat engine continues to evolve. Now with graphical walls and stuff...

 

[Agesilaus]

My turn-based combat engine continues to evolve. Now with graphical walls and stuff...

That looks very nice, like an old Ultima made new. Do you have a video of it in action, or any documentation? Do you have any books/texts you recommend for designing fun, turn based combat systems? I have an old system I put together, and I have the scrapped real time one, too, but I want to start over.

I've been putting off the combat system while I redo my game mechanics and complete the content (which tbh is going well and I have been in touch with an artist so I'm pretty pleased). I know that there's going to be a day in the next month or two when I can't kick the can down the road any longer, though.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

So I sat down and decided to optimize the line rendering even further because apparently processing 10k+ lines per frame on shit rigs like mine is a no go.
Earlier, I checked every object for duplicate lines (which are inevitable if you use tiles), which kinda helped -- axing a small bunch of lines per object could usually remove up to 1-2k lines per level, but turns out that wasn't enough.
Now I'm also combining lines that share the same position on XY/XZ/YZ axis, which axed some extra stuff on the top. Will spend another day figuring out how I can improve this even further.

At worst I can implement a small function to purge smaller lines from an object in case I stuff too many of them into the level.

 

[vlzvl]

At worst I can implement a small function to purge smaller lines from an object in case I stuff too many of them into the level.

Now this is what i call a proper developer =)
Sometimes the developers only develop and forget about optimizing and then, after releasing, they forget about updating as well,
thinking their game is super good as it is and moving on to their newer shit of a game.
Kudos for professionalism.

 

[Zep Zepo]

Is Gas Dundershift drawing just lines? Or are you using polygons?

Zep--

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

At worst I can implement a small function to purge smaller lines from an object in case I stuff too many of them into the level.

Now this is what i call a proper developer =)
Sometimes the developers only develop and forget about optimizing and then, after releasing, they forget about updating as well,
thinking their game is super good as it is and moving on to their newer shit of a game.
Kudos for professionalism.

Thanks. This is the least I can do, since these modern and available engines were designed to make the development painless and deliver better games (at least from my point of view).

Is Gas Dundershift drawing just lines? Or are you using polygons?

Zep--

Both. Polygons are used for enemies (to give them a silouette-like look)/walls and floors (to obstruct the view as well as avoiding overdraw)/certain details (e.g. fake lights), but they're usually used together with lines.

 

[Zep Zepo]

Both. Polygons are used for enemies (to give them a silouette-like look)/walls and floors (to obstruct the view as well as avoiding overdraw)/certain details (e.g. fake lights), but they're usually used together with lines.

You should be able to find polygons that share vertices and remove the 'shares'. Not sure if that would help your speed or not.

Not sure how you build your 'levels'.

You might have been better off to pre-compute your lines as I had suggested earlier (Like the old Wizardry's did.)

Zep--

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Both. Polygons are used for enemies (to give them a silouette-like look)/walls and floors (to obstruct the view as well as avoiding overdraw)/certain details (e.g. fake lights), but they're usually used together with lines.

You should be able to find polygons that share vertices and remove the 'shares'. Not sure if that would help your speed or not.

Not sure how you build your 'levels'.

You might have been better off to pre-compute your lines as I had suggested earlier (Like the old Wizardry's did.)

Zep--

I use simple cubes to represent walls and use a Quake-style editing tool to deal w/ floors and ceilings. Cubes are a reasonable choice, since they're easy (and faster from the editing perspective) to work with and mask doors on the minimap. As for floors and ceilings -- that depends on how complex they get. Polygons arent't a problem though -- they're fast to render and don't use too many triangles/vertices.
Fake lights are done using the same approach as lines (except they render a deformed quad), and they work pretty fast -- there aren't many of them in the first place and there are extra precautions to make sure they don't render when they don't have to.

About finding the polygons that share vertices -- a similar approach is already implemented for the lines and it works well, and keeping the amount of lines in a frame below a certain limit is the main challenge since you have to balance draw calls and the amount of lines in the frame, so it's not uncommon to have 2 or 4 line tiles attached to a cube.

As for the Wiz-style approach to rendering -- still figuring it out when I have time to play around.

 

[Joined on the 4th of July]

Quake-style editing tool to deal w/ floors and ceilings.

What's this?

 

[Zep Zepo]

Maybe he meant Doom Style...as Quake Levels were BSPs and didn't use line drawing at all.

Quake used additive BSPs (adding blocks to the world) while UnReal used subtractive (carving a level out of a massive infinite solid shape)....basically.

Zep--

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

What's this?

It's not 100% similar to QERadiant/LithTech DirectEditor, but this little tool should've been available for Unity at the start.

Maybe he meant Doom Style...as Quake Levels were BSPs and didn't use line drawing at all.

Lines have nothing to do w/ it. Treat polygons as basic walls/floors/ceilings and lines as textures/detail objects.

 

[CryptRat]

I've been working on full screen mode and on settings. I'm still undecided about what normal maximum party size will be (something from 5 to 10) but ulitmately it's just a number and if you want to play with 14 characters it shouldn't be a problem.

 

[Joined on the 4th of July]

What's this?

It's not 100% similar to QERadiant/LithTech DirectEditor, but this little tool should've been available for Unity at the start.

How well does it export stuff out of Unity? Manual seems to say something about .obj export, but that might mean material/texture information doesn't get exported at all, and you'd have to assign them again in some other program.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

What's this?

It's not 100% similar to QERadiant/LithTech DirectEditor, but this little tool should've been available for Unity at the start.

How well does it export stuff out of Unity? Manual seems to say something about .obj export, but that might mean material/texture information doesn't get exported at all, and you'd have to assign them again in some other program.

I don't care about material or texture information (my game doesn't use textures and there is only a handful of materials I ever use), so I never bothered to test that. There is a free version available, and it's going to be a part of the newer Unity versions so you might as well see for yourself.

 

[LESS T_T]

Heh, I didn't know the developer of Super Win open sourced its impressive CRT simulation: https://github.com/MinorKeyGames/CRTSim

(You can download standalone executable version if you're curious: https://piratehearts.itch.io/supercrt

It has various sliders and options ready, so this is the result I tinkered with SMT screenshot.)