OD Prototype in Lips of Suna Engine

[TheAncientGoat]

Screenshots: http://imgur.com/a/MVcv4

Just a mockup of how it could look like, using an old verision of the Lips engine I had lying around. It will look a lot better once I import some of OD's assets, and make OD like voxel blocks and materials, such as "owned" tiles, gold and gems.

Also note that I'm running it on an intel gfx card, so the game doesn't use the more advanced opengl3 shaders.

[charlie]

Good start!

[Skorpio]

That looks cool. I've played a little bit Lips of Suna and the biggest problems for me are the low frame rate at some places and the interface. Also, the look of the environment/voxels is a bit crude, but it's cool that there are texture transitions between the blocks. The editor needs some work, too. There surely is a lot of stuff that needs to be improved and optimized, but because of the big feature list, it still seems that a switch to LoS might be a good alternative. What do the other guys here think?

[charlie]

I think for this you should set up a git repo so people can quickly check it out.

[TheAncientGoat]

Skorpio: Which version did you use? I'm not sure if the pre-compiled versions have lua-jit enabled, or if the latest release has the scripting + threading optimizations that are in the git... Anyhow, I agree on the UI not being that pretty/intuitive, it's definitely one of the major things that will need working on.

Also, what part of the voxels did you find crude? Did you travel below-ground through the portals, as that is a more accurate representation of what we'd use.

Charlie: My internet is horribad 1gig cap, and the LoS datafiles etc is 500mb already. It will most probably take half a day to upload. I can maybe make patches that can be applied to that latest LoS git though, which will save my bandwidth.

[Julius]

Great start! Please keep the Dungeon Master idea in mind when developing it Doesn't have to be an ARPG, LoS like 1st or 3rd person view for the action players is fine too

I gather that you do all that via LUA scripting? I really need to learn that Maybe I will find the time. Got a pretty bad internet connection here too, and since there seem to be no online servers for the games I play anywhere near (e.g. with a good enough ping ) all the time spend on online gaming has to be used otherwise now...

[paul424]

I would deeply vote no , for the code base change , first of reading and learning current Big Picture of OD took my some time ( and with LOS would be the same ), second I contributed some code , so I don't want it to be lost .

[charlie]

Charlie: My internet is horribad 1gig cap, and the LoS datafiles etc is 500mb already. It will most probably take half a day to upload. I can maybe make patches that can be applied to that latest LoS git though, which will save my bandwidth.

Surely this is a mod for LoS and just a few lua files... I'm specifically talking about sharing those.

Then all you need is instructions i.e. 1. download LoS, 2. download ODmod, 3. place ODmod files in/overwriting X, 4. run Y!

[Skorpio]

I would deeply vote no , for the code base change , first of reading and learning current Big Picture of OD took my some time ( and with LOS would be the same ), second I contributed some code , so I don't want it to be lost .

Maybe we should simply stick to OD. What do you think? Could we perhaps copy some features of LoS like the voxel terrain?

[TheAncientGoat]

Here's the start of a protoype of the behaviours in Love2d:

ODAI.love

Use Love2d to run

(61.11 KiB) Downloaded 811 times

Code is kind of crappy, only items.lua is properly documented, but it works.

Features: Jobs, creatures, items, tiles, start to implement multiplayer system. Creatures can do jobs, tiles can be flagged to have possible jobs, creatures can be picked up and placed, items can be picked up and placed.

[Skorpio]

Oh nice, another Dwarf Fortress clone! It's amazing how fast you could program this. Why has our development been so slow?!? It doesn't matter that the code is crappy if we get something playable very quickly, as Bart pointed out in his new article.

[TheAncientGoat]

C++ runs fast, but you pay for the performance in development speed.

You can script something up in a jiffy, and keep on hacking away, until it reaches a point where your pc crashes from inefficent code :P

[TheAncientGoat]

Implemented basic UI, increased map size, fixed movement, implemented imp spawner, implemented menu screen (hope you don't mind, Skorpio):

ODAI.love

Open with Love2d

(278.26 KiB) Downloaded 812 times

[Skorpio]

Haha, nice!

[Julius]

heh, nice idea to prototype it in 2D first. Maybe you can make a de-evolved retro/pixel DK out of it too

[TheAncientGoat]

A pixel DK that can advertise OD Something "fun" and playable can maybe spread more easily online, and people love de-makes in general. Maybe use the Love webplayer, to maximize reach..

But that tempts me to make a love-webplayer hosting and online editing site

[Skorpio]

I think Open Dungeons will actually need a 2D mode like your prototype, something similar to Total Annihilation/Spring/Supreme Commander. The lowest LoD versions of the creatures should probably be simple 2D icons and the walls need to be simplified as well when you zoom out.

[TheAncientGoat]

Yes, but that would just be a 2d rendering of the game-state, not two different game states running at once. The in-game representation will be quite different code wise; I'm currently sitting with the results of not designing a lot and just writing gameplay: jobs get duplicated when tiles are mined after re-structuring for performance..

[Skorpio]

Do you know how the texture splatting between different materials in Lips of Suna works? We haven't found a good solution for Open Dungeons yet.

[TheAncientGoat]

The texture splatting in LoS is actually quite basic; just a third texture, defined in the material script, with feathered edges that gets drawn on top of the seams between textures; it isn't autogenerated or anything.

Fixed the duplicate jobs issue too, should be able to upload a demo with working gold harvesting and room placement by today

[TheAncientGoat]

Ok, kind of started from scratch, re-implementing it to look like an actual game.

Currently only tile placement works, need to port/re-write creature and job logic, and implement mouse based controls; working with isometric scrolling co-ords is a bit difficult though.

ODAIv2.love

(1.63 MiB) Downloaded 802 times

I used the Flare tileset; if you unzip the love file, you can look at how tiles etc are stored; if anyone wants to implement better tiles I'd appreciate it a lot!

[Skorpio]

Heh, reusing FLARE art is the new trend. Can you only place dirt and gold tiles yet? I recently saw another 2D Dungeon Keeper-like game: http://indiegames.com/2012/12/browser_g ... _dung.html
There's not much to do, though.

[charlie]

You should create a github project (or google code if you prefer SVN) for this, TAG!