The Deep Paths: Labyrinth Of Andokost

I'm all for stats on the character sheets, you want to be able to dig in and work out what's going on. But not in the heat of battle.

 

Huh thats when stats matter most u need to know if you doing the damage u should what if you up against a mob that has good resists to what u dealing u need stats to know who is not doing what .

 

I'd rather see it on a bar. Much quicker visual feedback.

Fighting games are played extremely competitively and with astonishing precision in high level play. There are no numbers on the screen, all bars.

 

I wouldn't advocate removing the bars same as i wouldn't advocate removing the numbers removing one unbalnces the play.As for precision numbers are much more precise than bars. As for the visualization thats the reason i mentioned not liking the portraits been relegated to the far reaches of the screen This is not im guessing a fast paced fi9ghting game? Its a old school romp

 

@tawdry I think you're coming from a very modern standpoint - mobs, and DPS, and all that sort of stuff. That's fine in a modern RPG.

I'm approaching this game from a very old-school mentality where there was mystery in the game systems themselves.

This is "Dungeon Master", not "World Of Warcraft".

 

Actually Steve numbers played a huge role in old school games back then they had to supplement for the lack of graphics I'm surprised to hear you say my viewpoint is modern in addition portraits of characters were given a prominent position. What is World Of Warcraft?

 

SteveJ, you must be loving this feedback. So contradictory. So uninformed. So completely based on false assumptions.

 

Hi all - I just launched the Steam Greenlight campaign for "The Deep Paths: Labyrinth Of Andokost". If you happen to have a Steam account, and this is a game that you might like to play someday, please throw a Yes vote my way when you get a chance

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=420540772​

Here's the new teaser that I did for the campaign:

 

For anyone who's interested, "The Deep Paths" wallpaper by @nipoco - with and without the logo:

http://www.stevejarman.com/tdp/tdp1080.png

http://www.stevejarman.com/tdp/tdp1080_nl.png

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Hi Steve,

Really love the results of the project

Cheers
Cobus

 

Thanks! I appreciate that

 

Hey folks - just a reminder that I could use some help with Steam votes if you're able to follow the link below:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=420540772

THANKS!

 

Was doing a little work in the game's starting area this evening and decided to make another video:

 

Working on texture variations in the levels now.

 

Thanks to everyone that voted! Looking forward to getting this one out into the world.

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Congrats!

 

Just because I thought it was an awesome photo. Posted for #screenshotsaturday this past weekend.

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Just a recent screenshot to assure myself and everyone else that I'm alive and well. I really need to finish this f@#king thing.

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Looks great. Glad to see you are working hard on it. Can't wait to see it done.

 

idk how I missed this thread. I musta just breezed over it when distracted. Just did a quick catch up on the thread - nice progress!
Game looks real good - especially the visuals, and lighting.

 

Thanks!

 

Created for this past week's Screenshot Saturday. Thought I'd share.

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Posted a bunch of new screenshots on The Deep Paths page on my site after play-testing today. Thought I'd share a few. This is the latest iteration of the game.

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Saturday night play-testing on a 60" UHD. Game is getting VERY closed to finished. Hoping for an end of June release.

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ahhhh a game that looks like it could be finally some kind of follow up game to Stonekeep
and I have to throw in my opinion about the interface aswell
I did like the first version tbh, but I think the reason is, that it was alot easier to see all healthbars/mana at once and having all characters kinda occupying the same space on the screen.
It's possible it wouldn't matter much while playing, since it's turn based fights and I do like symmetry alot. Just a thought
Also, in a way I miss a little the older feeling for the interface, it actually looks quite modern with it's bluish tone background and rather straight interface elements, especially the very stylized menu icons on the bottom left, they remind me quite alot of modern app icon designs
It's not something important, but I thought I could mention it.

Else than that.....that game looks goooooood

 

Hey - thanks for the feedback

 

A few more screenshots, now pretty much the final look. The game is maybe a couple of weeks from done, but in my part-time-game-dev world, that can mean anything from 3 - 13 weeks from release. I'm well over the 2 year mark now, so very much looking forward to getting this done and out into the universe.

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looks cool!
congrats
i wish i could get this far, i always loose my motivation on a project over time and never finish anything, so i just sell models

 

Selling models is probably more profitable

 

By the way, @nipoco is responsible for most of the lovely art in The Deep Paths (and most of my other games).

 

Game looks great. Can't wait to play it.
Did you reduce the specular level and bump/normal on the walls? I think the last screen shots look 5.5 times better than this previous shot posted.


In this previous shot the walls and floor look just too shiny and overly bumpy - with an odd linear bumpiness over the entire walls.
I really like the newer shots over this one.

Since the walls are pretty much on screen the entire time with a dungeon crawler - it's very important to get them looking as good as they can.

What is the new expected release time frame?

 

Looks very cool! Please, release some videos! I would like to see it in action.

 

Thanks for the feedback.

There's a minor plot point in the game that some of the labyrinth floors are "unfinished" - i.e. they're supposed to look rough and S***ty. That particular image was the original blend that I was using to represent that. It's no longer in use though. The new "unfinished" look is much more subtle, though unfortunately none of those new screenshots are from within one of the unfinished levels to demonstrate it.

As for release date, I'm being held up by a couple of issues at the moment unfortunately, so I need to get those sorted out first.
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/unaccounted-in-profiler.425341/#post-2752019
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/occlusion-culling-woes.419273/#post-2752338

 

I have a bunch of captures on my machine that I need to edit and throw together into some sort of trailer. Getting around to it

 

this looks great, @SteveJ . I spent countless hours playing old dungeon crawlers armed with graph paper to map out the levels. this looks like a fun. i can appreciate what you said about the old game systems being a mystery. i just wanted to hunt monsters!

 

Dang! sorry to hear that. About occlusion culling - which I have practically zero knowledge of in Unity other than it exists - have you considered the odd results being related somehow to the lighting or reflection probes? Just going off terrible memory - I remember reading something related to lights - static/non static - with occlusion culling. And I just mentioned reflection probes because they stuck out to me in the images you provided in the other thread. Hope you solve those soon.

Also - I watched the early teaser trailer for the deep paths. You drew the maps in excel - which I remember reading about - years ago, and thinking - that is such an analytical design waste of time. LOL Not knocking the process - because obviously it's useful to designers seeing it used and reading about it years ago.
Care to share why you did that - what benefit it provides to the design of the levels - over simple gid paper with a simple legend?

 

I wasn't aware of any relationship between occlusion culling and lighting. I'll look into that - thanks for the tip.

It didn't come across well in the video because it runs too fast in the transitions between stages, but the idea with The Deep Paths was that I was drawing levels on grid paper, then in Excel, and then Unity builds the level automatically using the CSV data. Those parts of the video were intended for a YouTube video I was going to create for Unity developers showing the process, but I ended up (probably unwisely) using them in the teaser for general public consumption.

I pretty quickly stopped using the grid paper and jumping straight to the Excel stage of things anyway, because it's pretty much the same thing and it's much more editable.

 

I might be remembering wrongly - but maybe not. Hope it leads to a solution.

So Unity reads the letters you place in an excel file and associates it with a room - a 3D model, and will lay it out aligned and oriented correctly?
Actually thats pretty cool - if that's what it does.

 

I think you might be thinking of the setting on the Reflection Probe that tells it whether or not to take occlusion data into account when baking.

Yep - along those lines. It's a 2 pass process, the first building the level, and the second placing objects like torches on walls, chests, etc. I *will* get around to doing a video about it once the game is done. I think it's a pretty cool method worth sharing.

 

This looks great! Dungeon Master was one of my favorite games growing up, so every screen shot is bringing back memories. I have the Grimrock games which are heavily influenced by DM, but haven't gotten around to playing them. Looking forward to this one for sure.

 

The first Legend Of Grimrock game is really awesome - you should definitely play it. The second one... not so much.

I'm a huge fan of Dungeon Master - I still play it to this day on my Amiga

There's also quite a bit of Lands Of Lore: Throne Of Chaos influence in The Deep Paths.

 

Hi,

Just spotted this game. I like it's tempo and style. I've never liked spamming buttons to dodge enemies. I don't think that's why anyone should play a game like this. If you want doom, play doom. So in that respect, this game has it correct.

Onto some vague thoughts:

- the UI could be a bit smoother when it comes to picking things up and using items. For example the key to the lock - shouldn't have to go through inventory, just double click the lock and the lock would check the inventory of each character and offer a yes / no to use said key from the character it finds - ie automated. This saves tedious inventory hunts.

- generally dialogue could happen in realtime, without OK boxes, for more atmosphere. You could do things to make it feel like there's a story, and unfolding camaraderie a bit more. You could have passive skills on some characters which comment for example "there's something strange about this room..." or "I have a bad feeling about this..." to add to atmosphere, to get the sense there's a group here instead of a mysterious floating eye with split personality.

- story, it needs a deep story in my view, especially a single player campaign, and perhaps the ability to meet and converse with npcs.

I do like the look of the game. It's clean and overall I think it could be a great game. It needs a few touches to make it stand out but the base game as I can see it looks very solid. Nice work!

 

Thanks for the feedback!

This is stuff I've thought about - the key is a great example. I like to try to draw a line on doing too much *for* the player. It can reach a point where the player starts to feel like a back-seat driver. The "tools" for example (keys, lockpicks, pickaxes) automatically close the inventory for you because they assume you want to use them outside of the inventory, but they don't perform the action for you - you still have to tell them what to apply to. It's interesting that you raise this though as I did debate it quite a bit with myself before reaching the current compromise position.

This does happen. At least, to a degree. There are conversation lines that are specific to professions. e.g. a Rogue might comment that an area looks suspicious and might be trapped. A lot of this is triggered, but hopefully to the player it will appear fairly improvised... at least, on the first playthrough of the game

Here we disagree. This is the third dungeon crawler of this type that I've done, and at this point I've come to the conclusion that *less* story is better. In fact, I was thinking that for the next game I'd like there to be no story at all. You're an adventurer. This is a dungeon. So, explore it. The Deep Paths has a fairly "short" story fleshed out through conversations and discovery of letters throughout the dungeon. It's by no means a complex or deep story though, and that's intentional. I love an RPG with a deep and involved story, but I find that it works best in the big, open world type games. Not in games with a fairly limited scope in terms of locales and characters.

 

Thoughts/feelings on my "programmer art" attempt at a trailer?

 

And a new extended gameplay video:

 

Hey Steve - The Trailer seems a little too long imo. I think I started to get antsy right at a minute. Might just be me though.
The very first scene with the text looks good - however you use the same scene with a simple zoom for all the other text overlay scenes - and it looks very repetitive. Also the simple zoom has an ease in/out on it so it looks like the viewer is moving then stopping, then moving again, then stopping again, even though its the same scene.

You might consider instead - create one longer scene with a longer extended zoom with each text segment overlayed sequentially. Then cut it up into 3-4 (however many needed) separate scenes and splice it back into the video.
This will remove the start/stop feel of the ease in/out and make the viewer feel like they are progressing toward the glowing portal - continuously, even though there are scene cuts between these new segments.

 

Hey - thanks for the feedback! I was actually pretty happy with the length, the timing of the music, etc. I'll have another look though and give it some thought. Either way I always appreciate people taking the time to respond

 

Sure thing.
Have you solved the occlusion issues?
Do you have a release window yet?

Looking forward to playing this!

 

YES! That reminds me that I need to post back into the occlusion thread with the solution to that.

Release date for The Deep Paths is October 14th. At this stage, there's nothing that will stop that from happening, but you never know. I was hoping to solve the "Unaccounted" performance problem too before release (http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/unaccounted-in-profiler.425341/#post-2752019), but I have found that the game runs perfectly fine on my gaming PC, so I'm a little less concerned about that than I was previously.

 

Steam store page is up!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/375500/
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41 wishlist additions so far - going to be god damned RICH!