Dark Crypt (Isometric Dungeon)

[Veleran]

Action hack n slash heroic fantasy,I still have nt done much.
I worked previously on another project with duels but i abandoned because i needed dot3 bump mapping which looked horrible.

Im testing brush shapes and lights radius.






So this one does nt need detail in muscle and equipment,and i can more quickly paint a diffuse only to the quite low poly monsters i plan to use.

I ll start with the classics,first monsters you encounter as you enter the underground dungeon known as the Dark Crypt,
might be the giant spider,the scorpion and the skeletons.

----------------Players--------------------
The player you can choose will be a
1.fighter which can use swords,axes,maces a bow maybe and mines.
2. the wizard which uses wands
3.The third is an adventurer which can use half of the items the other two can use,both swords and magic wands and of course can disarm traps and make mines if he has the thieves tools.

---------------------Weapon repairing----------------------------

What i have nt decided and i have nt tried yet is if the melee weapons are indestructible or if they get damaged (their ammunition is not stamina)
and you need to explore ,open secret passages to find some merchants and to use near them a gold attribute and get maximum attribute for the melee weapon (will look like repair).

This way i could place in some dungeon levels a Merchant in a small room with the weapons of the game around and invisible trigger models around each weapon so you have to touch the trigger model while using the gold attribute to repair.
The merchant pawn will know if you triggered a model by its name from a list in the script and detract the specified gold attribute from the player.

What i have nt thought yet is how i ll check in the merchant script if the weapon attributes are full.
So,if the weapons re full in health/ammunition you cant waste money by triggering another repair.

------------------------------------Hide in Shadows---------------------------------------

Another thing i d like to have is to make most monsters scripts in a way they check the ambientfromfloor of the player (its the standard player not the scripted)
and if hes under lets say 64 64 64 dark they cant see him.If anyone knows if it can be done,tell me because the gameplay can use this feature so when you want to sneak or hide you could hide in the shadows of the level.

All comments are appreciated ,however have in mind that the whole gameplay will be simplified because i ll avoid complicated actions and use mostly the built in entities and script less.

---------------------------------------Pressure Plates Triggers---------------------------------------

Another thing i dont know yet how to do is the pressure plate.
That plate is a tile on the floor that can be activated by pushing a stone on it and trigger a door or a trap and i can show its being activated either by:
replacing the texture with another one to show that the glyph on it glows
use a world moving platform model that moves down as long as it is collided.

or make a pawn that moves down as long as something collides it.

I want to use the moving platform but i cant make the plate platform not to play constantly the animation from the beginning ,up and dwn i want it to stay up when not triggered,and stay down as long as something is stepping on the plate.

[Veleran]

The amount of work this simple dungeon crawler needs to be done is much,and it is nt very possible i ll go on.
From time to time i ll work on it as much as i can.

[Veleran]

I have nt done much yet because i am making characters for my portfolio,i work on these characters i had made for a fighting game i was working in rf and canceled it because the normal maps looked wierd from close.

I did this character normal map test because if the monsters and other objects will be very low poly ,they will need the normal maps to give them a little detail.

I have to do lots of furniture,torture racks,skeletons and such so it wont look empty like now.
The first static stuff i make is library textures,have nt filled it with books yet.
Its a 3d bookcase that i am taking front rendering to use as texture to bsp boxes.

I have done this umber hulk ,higher poly than the average i use in rf and thought to test if i can use normal maps.

However,its still unrigged,a quick test-that is why the arms go through walls.

I had to flip the red z and y green channels because in rf they previously rendered inverted.
maybe that was the case in fighting warriors wierd normal maps artifacts and darkened uvw seams.
Maybe i should re run in rf a fighting warriors monster-the scorpionman to see if the x and y inverting if the normal map fixes it and restart to work on it too,but i am not sure yet.

Anyway,the umber hulk needed an extra light -a spotlight to render,and to choose the rf dx7 driver.
I set the color of the spotlight to 6 6 6 so it does nt over light the rest level geometry,the dot3 nrmal mapped umber hulk does nt need higher light color value.

The textures of the umber hulk were originaly 2048-2048 and i resambled them to 512x512.
The character should be almost black but i raised a lot the texture brightness because i did nt want it to look very dark.
The orc is a left over from tests ii made in 2005-2007 and i will not use it.

I am a little concerned about some black transparent flickering parts i get and an occasional player clipping to the lower corners when i use this driver.
Its the only one i can use to render the normal maps.

Its seems i will have to wait and fill the dungeon a little,make a sample dungeon and post it for testing and see if all have such problems.
the screenshots however look ok.













As a solution i think i will attach an attribute to the player with two bones so the spotlight can be attached there and follow the player to light any normal mapped actors.
I hope most systems will not have flickering display problems with the dx7 driver like me and i will be able to use normal maps.
Otherwise,i will have to paint by hand and pre render metal parts of the textures and wont use normal mapping.
The actors would be cute this way,but a little fake and with the usual darkened parts of the very low poly smoothing groups.

Some would say,that a small detail,better make something complete even without normal mapping,than nothing at all,
i will wait till i have enough stuff to post a small demo and see what i can use after i see the hardware testing results.

[Veleran]

Here is one of the bookcases.

[Nighthawk_0973]

killer models dude! What software did you use?

[Veleran]

I used max2011 for basic shape and uvw unwrapping,and mudbox2010 for sculpting the high poly version and rendering the normal map-and painting the colors directly on the model,
- yet you could also use the free ones :Gmax and sculptris for the digital sculpting ,painting and normal map.
If you want to use very low poly models,then the normal maps help,
yet i will note that the pawns change lighting direction suddenly as the player passes nearby lights.
I described earlier what i did about that,putting a spotlight attached to some bone following the player,besides that you may find something else that does the trick for you,or just let the pawns change lighting suddenly.

One note,i added bsp furniture-very low poly like a long food table with sitting bench,and an empty cupboard to fill it later with potions and book rows,and saw that the light entity did nt light the table with nice falloff,
like i wanted it to show that a small light spot from a candle on the table was slowly fading.
So,i switched the lights with suns fallof type 2 and its better now,
also the normal mapped monster does nt mess its lightning direction (kind of mix as of which light is closer to the player to use for dot3 light direction calculation).

Of course i have now to use normal mapping to all actors because sun does nt light the rest actors at all and i dont want to use default fill color (unless i have to in some occasion,like a wraith with transparent tattered clothes-dot3 does nt have transparency)

Finally all the normal mapping effect you see is just from the spotlight i have high above.

I replaced all lights with suns and the torch like spots are more intense in the start of the light which looks good.

Another note:
i have to remove all dynamic lights other than the one spotlight because the muzzle flashes and projectiles lights change the light direction of the normal mapping.
I mean you fire once,the monster gets that muzzle flash light from below and sticks to it,it does nt switch back to the lightning of the spotlight i have for it.
I guess i cant have it all together,projectile dynamic lights and dot3 normal mapping.



notice the falloff of a sun on the table to the upper left corner.
I made the table and the cupboard from vertex edited boxes using snaps of 4 units in max 4.2 and exported them from there as .map with a script and opened them in rfeditpro to adjust names,uvw"s and texture lock them so they can be used.
The cupboard needs a texture for the four drawers on each side before i make stuff to fill it.

I wanted the furniture to cast and receive bsp shadows so i did nt add them as models,the dark parts that the shadows add give some contrast to the brown wood color of the furniture and this way they are more easily distinguished.
I prefer strong suns and light-dark contrast with just a small 32 32 32 default light to smooth it a little than the commonly used flat twilight default lightning as main and smal radius lights as supplement-
where many adventure items of importance may go unnoticed because of the lack of lightning contrast-just like dungeons and dragons online-
you dont see the switch until the cross hair targets it.

[Nighthawk_0973]

geeez... thats crazy compicated, the RF Dev Team needs to develop an easy to use modeling program allowing users to create objects, link them togethor, give them animations, and script them with RF Script Edit/notepad. I really see RF more of a game creation toolkit than a software and thats because you can't do it just with RF Edit Pro and still have a decent project. also though, how come the RF Developers force the users to have so much extra things, many require cash to get, such as milkshape, just so that people can make games with the softwares. Its like the main portion of the game creation but you still need other sub portions, its kind of frustrating...

[Veleran]

If you can find gmax and sculptris,you ll avoid some money.
Other games cost thousands or millions dollars to make,having a building full of programmers modelers,animators ,scripters,art directors,texture artists,sound editors,level designers,etc and give regularly extra freelance work outside to others.

with rf its easier to make very simple flash-style games like:
a stage with two clowns running around and you shoot the ground to trigger huge hammers to come out of holes and hit the clowns etc.

[Nighthawk_0973]

Wow I didn't even know that was possible, say, do you have to use scripting and triggers to pull that off because the whole problem with RF (save the bugs) is the fact that it says

... Games Without Programming

Yet scripting and programming are like the same things really. Also if you don't have access to the forums your kind of hopeless...

[paradoxnj]

You can create an entire game without scripting. If you want your actions to be customized, then you require scripting.

Software like RealityFactory is for hobbyists who want to learn about making games. If you're looking for commercial quality, then you need to hire professionals to help you. Either way, you will need to learn some form of programming whether it be scripting or a compiled language.

[Nighthawk_0973]

ok but they go keep going on about how you can make games without programming and license them as your own product, as appose to the quack or unreal editors. These are the reasons that so many people get this. But unfortunately there is prgramming that need to be involved. I've seen programs that let you create your own animations, easily without scripting, if the RF Dev Team can incorperate that then they can really say its games without programming. As far as other features, they could at least get a little more in deft about it and put an acuall tutorial on the website teaching the art of scripting. I mean what else are they doing, releasing new versions that have more bugs than other versions do? I mean come on... its kind of rediculous.... Anyways, it's not like it matters, you guys might not say the forums are dead, but they are barely surviving, and so is Reality Factory. It's so non-popular, with not enough community out there to help developers move past the bugs and even get the skills to make decent games. By the time they do have the ability they're already fed up with it and ready to move on to something else, something people will play, and they'll know that the people will play it. People don't just waste time making games so they can distribute it to a few hanful of people.

No offense but this is just something I do ocassionally, its really not the greatest but its still something.

[paradoxnj]

Well...I hope you find what you are looking for. Good luck.

[Nighthawk_0973]

yeah, would it be ok if I announced the beta here when I'm ready for it. Theres really not much other ways to gain popularity and you don't have to have a computer to download it. You guys are all gamerz here right?

[Veleran]

I m making the cupboard set,all those potions and scrolls and skulls need some normal maps except the colors.
Its taking a while,but the items of the cupboard will then be stock objects and will be used again in other compositions like wizard study desc,skull piles,broken potions as rubbish etc.

[Nighthawk_0973]

fine by me. Do you know how to make a trailer for the game? I can show you how when your ready.