Dungeon Sketch (alpha)

Hi all,

I've been plugging away at my 2D Action RPG title Dungeon Sketch (formally known simply as SimpleRPG (http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=8961)). I've started a new thread due to the name change.

To recap, Dungeon Sketch is a 2D Action RPG inspired by action rogue-likes such as Diablo, and Fate, Dungeon Siege and others. As the name suggests the art style is made up of simple sketches, resulting in a clean, and sustainable art style for a one man effort.

Currently the game is still in alpha. A lot of the functionality is in already, but there isn't much content yet.

There have been many improvements since I've first shared the project here. Here are some of the more note-worthy changes:

• 
  - Towns are fixed, and should no longer freeze the game
  - GUI has been re-written, and re-designed
  - Quest system is added and functional
  - Added shops in towns
  - Player now starts on a beached boat, and can use the boat any time to travel to a new island/world (equivalent to restarting the game while retaining your character)
  - Broke up level loading with yields for smoother transitions / load progress

I still haven't designed alternative camera controls, but they will come eventually.

Have a look if you have a moment, and leave a comment or two!

P.S. Press H in-game for the help menu.

[UPDATE March 2]: Added some screenshots

 

any plan to make a web version of your game ?
i would love to try this (since i love rpg game) but i don't have a mac with me right now :cry:

 

Hi!

+) Wonderful colours in the intro screen!
+) Cool that i first arrive with a boat (although it should be more far away), entering dungeon levels(loading a complete scene each time you go up or down the stairs?), save&load, everything worked properly.
+) I like how the doors are swinging when you open them, also the bright/dark light regions look nice and add to the mood.
+) Pressing f is fun. You should visualise this as a spell each character is capable of.
-) The camera and steering is work and no fun! You run in zick zacks and as much as you bump into walls i would suggest don't try anything else than an ogre. Point click is way better and we already talked about the camera.
-) Inventory is too small and not enjoyable to use. Look at games like Dungeon Siege 2, as this is a marvel in this aspect.
-) I do have problems with the perspective and would favour if you can slightly rotate it (whilst still working as it is) or enlarge the gfx or show them from the front (nethack) because it's not interesting to look at them this way.
:

Keep up the work, curious for the next version. :O)

 

No I have no plans to make a web version of it. The game relies on largish save files (everything is saved, including corpses). However, when/if the game goes commercial I will use the first bit of profit to purchase Unity Pro so I can do a Win32 standalone build.

You mean the boat should be further away from towns/dungeons? I do plan to do distance checks like that later.

Actually I don't make use of scenes at all. The entire game is a single scene. The main reason for that is that the levels are randomly generated on the fly (when you first enter them), much like Nethack. So I can't have pre-baked scenes to load. Instead I just destroy all the objects in the scene, and generate new ones.

I'm still wrestling with this in my head. I really do want to keep the rotating screen, and I do love the keyboard controls myself, but I do recognize that it's not everyones cup of tea. So I will definitely explore other options.

The perspective is limited. But thats a definite choice I made early on. The huge advantage of the current perspective is that I only need to draw the sprites in one orientation, and they can rotate to any other orientation perfectly. If I angle the camera at all I will then need to draw each sprite in 4 or even 8 perspectives. That's not something I'm willing to do given the time and resources I have.

 

>>>
You mean the boat should be further away from towns/dungeons? I do plan to do distance checks like that later.
<<<

I thought it would feel better if you actually first have to find the island. Coming out of some spooky fog and beeing glad discovering some island (of course it also shouldn't be really hard). Could also be better for an intro...

>>>
I'm still wrestling with this in my head. I really do want to keep the rotating screen, and I do love the keyboard controls myself, but I do recognize that it's not everyones cup of tea. So I will definitely explore other options.
<<<

The WASD steering already shipwrecked quite some otherwise good adventure games. Either you make the character move more clever or i strongly suggest changing to a point&click steering.

>>>
The perspective is limited. But thats a definite choice I made early on. The huge advantage of the current perspective is that I only need to draw the sprites in one orientation, and they can rotate to any other orientation perfectly. If I angle the camera at all I will then need to draw each sprite in 4 or even 8 perspectives. That's not something I'm willing to do given the time and resources I have.
<<<

I don't know what you can afford and what not but that's were 3d comes in handy, if you can make models (whilst maintaining the gfx style) and make them wander around or just render thoses perspectives out for the final flat usage.

Otherwise i would give the player the possibility to zoom in/out as otherwise the gfx are already pretty small depending on the resolution you're playing at and looking straight from above already isn't the most interesting perspective.

 

Amazingly polished in some respects ... I didn't HATE the movement controls, but click to move would be better.

I really think this screams to be 2.5D. I know, a lot more work ... and you've done well with your limitations.

I wish the character and critters were opaque and easier to see.

The UI needs to be more graphical. Having to remember key equivalents sucks. Also -- some stuff should just be automatic (like going up and down stairs).

 

I don't mind the pivot steering.

Frustrated by:

No being able to interact with NPC easily - do you have to face them? As they are moving 'round randomly 'tiz a pain. Could you merely be "close"?

Can't drink potions! No obvious solution to this and no hints on the the help screen.

 

Yes, I'll eventually put buttons along the edge of the screen for all these.

Originally I didn't want this behaviour because I thought it might be annoying if the user accidently runs into stairs and gets sent to another level. But in practice this doesn't seem to be a concern, so I might do "automatic stairs".

You have to be close to the NPC, and press space. I'll tinker with this.

You have to right click them in the inventory. There will be a different way of drinking them eventually, probably shortcuts like seen in many games of this type.

 

+10 Game of Fantastic

I assume that in the future, as you complete quests on an island and go to another one, the quests will progress based on your level. I got the flam and acid swords and I wanted to go kick some higher level butt, but alas, there was none to kick...

 

Oh yes, the game will go on for much much longer, and the difficulty will keep increasing.

What I'm undecided on is how to progress the difficulty. I have two main ideas:

- My original idea was to have small islands with just a few areas and quests that you can finish in one sitting. Once done you'd move to another similar small island with increased difficulty, and just keep going in that fashion. Each island would have slightly different quests, and of course each area is completely randomly generated.

- The other idea, is to have much longer adventures on one island. There would be the "main" dungeon, which goes on for levels and levels (with lots of variance between them), getting harder and harder. At different points in the main dungeon you'd encounter NPCs, or maps that reveal locations of much smaller dungeons/"areas of interest" on the island that you can optionally explore as well. If the player reaches the end of the "main" dungeon, and kills the last boss they are rewarded somehow (I like the idea of getting an upgrade to one of your items, this was done in the game Fate). At that point the player can retire their character, move to another island, or perhaps stay, and explore the dungeon even further "beyond the end". The dungeon could keep going infinitely past the main boss, getting harder and harder to the point of ridiculous.

What do you think about those two options?

 

Potions = Rt Click. I assume there is no option click for Laptop users or single button mouse users. I tried every combination I could in my MBP,and couldn't get the dang potion to activate. Also - health didn't seem to regenerate over time, so without drinking the potions, my character was slowly being whittled to nothing.

 

Thanks for the feedback, I should eliminate the need for right clicking. I'm too used to my 3 button mouse! Anyhow, you can always "right click" on a one button mouse/pad in OSX by holding down the CTRL key and left clicking (although I haven't tried this in Unity, I assume it works as it's probably handled at the OS level, rather than application level).

No, there is no natural health regeneration yet. There will be eventually, there will also be items that will increase regeneration passively, and by "leeching" health from enemies you hit.

 

Actually you have to implement your own alternate right-click functionality in Unity. Fortunately that's pretty trivial.

--Eric

 

Any chance of getting a few screens for us bandwidth-challenged folks? ;-) Pleeeeease?

-Jeremy

 

Done, although I wanted to post more screenshots, but the limit is 3 attachments. Perhaps I should get started on a website!

 

I haven't played this new release but enjoyed the first one immensely.

Regarding comments some others have made:
- Perhaps dragging a potion onto the "player" could be a way to use said potion, like how armor and weapons are equipped.
- Going up/down stairs should not be automatic (keep it as-is). I found myself running near stairs without a desire to use them a few times.

 

It looks like the dog is humping the blue sphere. Besides that, I like your style.

 

Yeah I thought of that, I'll implement it! I'll also put in right clicking with CTRL for one button mice/pads. A shortcut "belt" with slots represented by number keys on the keyboard is coming too. In fact I had it in the previous release, but it was buggy so I removed it for the time being.

I'll see about moving his pelvis further away from the sphere

 

is it harder to do a sprite based game in Unity than a 3d model based game or is it trivial?

 

lion-gv,

Depending on your artistic skill it may be easier to produce 2D assets, than 3D models. Although it's definitely harder to animate 2D art than 3D, since you have to draw each animation frame separately, instead of using skeletal animation.

Assets aside, programming is more or less the same, you just render everything as a textured plane instead of a model, and ignore one of the 3 dimensions.

 

EXCELLENT! I love it!

My only criticism is that I have to agree with Taumels earlier comments about the camera. Rotating it around like that is dizzying. Even if you don't agree, I can tell you from experience that only a minority will prefer the rotating camera. We launched a top down racing game with the same camera system and got a lot of complaints from users. I'd say go for a simple, lazy follow cam and keep the rotation static. If you look at our (http://www.fuelindustries.com) Flash top-down racers you'll see that our first one (Jeep Goonies) had a rotating cam and everything after has static, non-rotating ... totally due to user feedback on the dizzying effect of rotato cams

Aside from that I think this is fantastic Keep up the great work!

 

This is a great game - and although I would prefer a point - click movement and interaction system, I'm actually quite fine with the current movement controls; they're very smooth and intuitive. It has a different feel to it than most Action-RPGs, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

The game is a little lacking in content at the moment, but that's entirely understandable considering that it's still in a very early stage of development. One thing that you should definitely consider is building a random item generator - it kinda takes the fun out of loot when all the items are exactly the same. Character attributes and a spell system would be great too. Finish that though and add more content, and you'll have a great little action RPG!

I have just two other suggestions though: First, the current UI is kind of small. The item icons should definitely be bigger.
And secondly, I know that you are currently using the right mouse button to drop items, but a feature that I really like in Diablo (and many other RPGs), is right-clicking an item in your inventory to auto-equip it in the corresponding inventory slot, or sell the item to a vendor. It's not too pressing, but auto-equipping is very nice in a RPG to quickly swap equipment, and I kind of missed it while I was playing.

 

I don't understand, am I the only one that can't find a link to the game? I'd like to try it if it's avaiable.