UNLOVED turns into a real game

Hey everyone :)

I'm the guy who made that mappack Unloved a few years ago. Maybe some of you remember that. Since everything has started in this very forum, I thought it might be interesting for you to see where the idea is going next and I would love to involve you in the making of it.

After the mapset was done, I started working on Unloved2 - as many of you might remember. But while I was working on U2, something didn't feel right. The idea wasn't fresh anymore and it felt like warming up an old can of soup. But Unloved still remained something I didn't want to lose out of focus.

Since then I have become a real game developer (or at least that's what I tell myself so I don't have to cry myself to sleep every night). So when my first game was done and launched on Steam, I was thinking about my next project - well, it had to be UNLOVED.

But I didn't just want to remake the original. I'm a big fan of coop games like Payday or Left 4 Dead - and also I love random games like Binding of Isaac or Spelunky.

Well, so the idea was born to make UNLOVED a fast paced (old school) FPS with coop and roguelike elements. But if you want to play it alone - you still can.

Even though I use the Unreal Engine 4, I wanted it to stay true to it's Doom origins and tried to recreate as many elements of Doom as possible. I even want to take screenshots from the mapset and try to recreate several locations for the new game. If you have any "favourite moments" of Unloved that you want to see in the game, please post a screenshot.

I've prepared a little video to present the current state of the game to you guys and hopefully I can get a little feedback.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzyW-jmHWp0

Keep in mind that the game is in early alpha stage - many sound effects are placeholders straight taken from Doom - which will obviously change for the release.

Honestly I think if anyone can judge this game and how it holds up to it's original, it's this community.

This is why I want to launch a public alpha test version in about a week. If you're interested, we can keep this topic alive and talk about the public alpha and I can use your feedback to make the game as best as possible.

Please tell me what you think about the game or ask me anything what's on your mind :)

PS: Yes, Unloved2 might still get finished one day, but it has to be remastered in a major fashion ;)

PPS: If you're offended because this topic might not be in the right forum, please feel free to move it.

All on your own? It's gonna be hard to do the animations for the enemies I think. Personally I enjoy ragdoll effects and the feeling of weight for the bodies, please try to achieve that.

Also if you can emulate Doom's awesome shotguns, the best guns in any fps ever imo, that would make the gameplay really fun.

Also, keep in mind that one of the cool things about Doom is that it makes you feel like a badass when dodging stuff :-)

I haven't played Unloved yet, hmmm.

Cake award?

Anyways I like the sound and idea. Unloved was cool, so this should be interesting.

Sounds ambitious. Good luck with your efforts. I like your games, and I liked Unloved.

Gotta say, it sounds a little strange to make a rogue-like coop shooter based on an atmospheric horror wad. Although I guess the result will depend on how good your level generator will be.

But wasn't Unloved already based on a real game?

This is way cool.

That said, I think that remaking unloved as a randomly-generated roguelike deviates pretty far from the game's original conception, and I imagine that if you intend on bridging the gap between that and the lovecraftian, and story-oriented (albeit subtly) original, it would be a very difficult task. I personally would love to see how the original could be brought into the modern world.

I can understand why you'd take the approach you're taking though, full-on remaking the original would be incredibly expensive.

Alright I like it but I gotta lay some things down first:

·The randomly-generated level designs are the one thing I think is a terrible idea. One huge strength of the original Unloved lied in its atmosphere, it's cohesive intelligent design bringing a surreal horror tone. The randomly-generated maps would be better off as a side mode, like the Battle Minigame from the Resident Evil series. Would you rather play a usermade megawad or 32 levels of OBLIGE?

·I know this is brought up in the OP, but the use of Doom sounds and any other sounds ripped from other games/libraries should be ripped back out far before it even gets within shouting distance of Steam Greenlight. Best to find yourself a sound engineer sometime soon.

·I'm curious as to what the goal with the aesthetics will be. Will they be realistic, or will they be somewhat stylized?

·Can the alpha devil washing machines be secret hidden enemies?

I don't want to come off as discouraging or rude, but these are some things that rather concerned me.

Don't forget you can't use Aphex Twin's music again~ :P

The lighting made me squeal.

Yeah, it'd be very difficult to have randomly generated levels have any sort of atmosphere. Maybe just area placement? You could have numerous pre-created atmospheric areas that slot together like a nice little puzzle cube, with a few mandatory areas for bosses and suchlike. Also I agree with Jaxxoon, please have sentient washing machines as an easter egg enemy.

Good luck with the game. And I have to echo other guys: The fireball-throwing washing machines should stay in the final version. ;)

Jaxxoon R said:

Would you rather play a usermade megawad or 32 levels of OBLIGE?

I know exactly what you mean. Whenever I see randomly generated levels, they always lack what I consider a "soul". They never feel right. When I was thinking about random generation for UNLOVED, I knew that I want to preserve the hand-craftedness to make the levels feel good.

That's why I've decided to have the game be arranged in random order, but the level pieces are still designed by hand.

Each basement level has a destinct concept. The first level for example is an underground apartment complex. I will design around 20 "blocks", each containing several rooms and corridors designed by hand that look like different old abandoned apartments. When you play a level, the engine just picks some of these blocks and arranges them to a level, places locked doors, keys etc.

About the washing machines from hell... I'll think about it ^^

Take a look at games that did random generation well. Diablo II is a great example. Each dungeon had a few large, unique, hub areas that gave that level its feel, but the paths and side rooms that connected these unique areas were all randomly generated, like what you have now.

A 70/30 split between random rooms/designed rooms could be really interesting.

Also, even though you are doing literal levels your maps are flat. Each map should have at least some height variation. I feel stairs, lifts, balconies, etc. help with atmosphere a lot.

I've always thought creepy AI would try to remain out of the players vision, as if to sneak up on them. As the player turns toward the AI the AI will attempt to strafe out of view (but makes creepy sounds, so the player know enemies are close, creating tension). If you could nail that idea you'd have a pretty cool game.

OMG! This is so cool. But if there's one thing that needs to be improved over the original, it's the insane monster waves that would appear at times. Not only was it tedious, there wasn't nearly enough ammo for all of them! But the atmosphere was fantastic. I hope this game does well!

Oh wow, replayed Unloved not a long time ago and wondered where the hell did its author go and will there ever be part two...

Anyway, this is a really nice surprise. I'll try to keep up, though the only thing I can provide is some gameplay-oriented feedback and stuff.

This is a really good mod.

I don't believe in random levels in a first-person game. They WILL lack the sense of care, coherency and progression no matter what you do. Repetition will also be an immersion killer as the moment you stumble upon a copy paste room will remind you it's just a randomly applied piece, not a real place.

There's no way to have the same memorable setpieces like in the mod with all this randomness. I don't feel right telling the author himself what his creation is... but to me Unloved was always about this consistent, nightmarish journey through strange worlds, not dropping down to the random dungeon looking for loot.

This might be partially due to my personal preferences. I'm a pure SP gamer with zero interest in MP, I'm all about immersion and carefully hand-crafted experience with a strong sense of thought behind the locations and encounters.
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If I were to make any suggestions... I'd dial down the randomness and instead of making levels that are completely randomly generated out of chunks, I'd go for something where randomness is an addition.

Imagine a level where 70% of it is handmade/static. The remaining 30% however would be randomness mixed with the static elements. The level would retain a great deal of coherency but it would also have randomized bits. Then again, this probably goes against the MP-focused randomness you're going for.
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Otherwise the only things I can suggest are those: make a bazillion different chunks and a bazillion versions of those chunks. Add TONS of rules for the Architect to increase the coherency of the random generation. Make chunks that can (at least in some cases) connect not only through doors but also merge into a single area. Add hallmark, unique rooms that never repeat within a seed and can randomly appear (special events?). Play a lot of Diablo III to analyze how it merges static and random elements. In short: do everything you can to hide the fact that levels are random.

Other than that I expect monster placement/distribution to be something very difficult to get right.

Egregor said:

Take a look at games that did random generation well. Diablo II is a great example. Each dungeon had a few large, unique, hub areas that gave that level its feel, but the paths and side rooms that connected these unique areas were all randomly generated, like what you have now.

A 70/30 split between random rooms/designed rooms could be really interesting.

Also, even though you are doing literal levels your maps are flat. Each map should have at least some height variation. I feel stairs, lifts, balconies, etc. help with atmosphere a lot.

I've always thought creepy AI would try to remain out of the players vision, as if to sneak up on them. As the player turns toward the AI the AI will attempt to strafe out of view (but makes creepy sounds, so the player know enemies are close, creating tension). If you could nail that idea you'd have a pretty cool game.

Very good points.

Right now I'm getting all the models in the game and then I will start arranging real rooms with furniture etc. Right now I can understand that the maps look very generic, but let me add a few more interesting elements to the locations and you may see a big difference.

Even though it will be randomly generated, there will be aspects that change for every instance of that room. So even if two of the same rooms have spawned, in one of them a door may be locked forever, blocking a path and you have to find a way around.

Height variation is also a very important thing. In my very first room creation I didn't have any height variation and when I spawned like 20 rooms of that and ran through them all, I felt like playing Wolfenstein 3D. I'll definitely think about adding some cool height variation throughout all the levels rooms.

The AI has been designed to be very random, but fierce. In Doom, most entertainment comes from the very random (and somehow quirky) behaviour of the monsters. I've read through the wiki and all forum posts that I could dig up about that to find out what makes the enemies tick like they do. I've tried to get just as many quirky moments and still agressive behaviour like in Doom. Let's see if I have succeeded :)

Also here is a little screenshot for anyone who might think the game doesn't look "Doom" enough ;)
(shotgun texture is placeholder)

Touchdown said:

I don't believe in random levels in a first-person game. They WILL lack the sense of care, coherency and progression no matter what you do.

I figured I'd see you here as soon as I saw mention of randomly generated areas in the original post :P

I on the other hand am a firm believer that environments created with a degree of randomness can feel more natural and more interesting. I find your radical statements "no it CAN'T" rather silly, because the only obstacles on the way to having total success with it are creativity and patience. Nobody said it can't be possible to devise algorithms that would produce natural-looking and coherent environments. The fact that you haven't seen it done well is not a reason to deny the possibility at all. It's a rather closed-minded thing to say, IMO.

Coherency and progression are very much things that can be regulated in such an algorithm. Repeats can be disallowed, decoration can be altered depending on where in the big picture a given room/area ends up, etc etc. "Sense of care" though, I just plain don't see the value of. It's a meta thing, if you're thinking of a "sense of care" then you're thinking in terms of design and designers and what immersion can be going on during that? And a lot of videogame environments depict something that can very much be random. Nightmarish world born out of a sick mind, what better setting is there for a good dose of controlled randomness? But even the real world has a lot of it: city blocks have all sorts of shapes, houses have all sorts of looks, apartments in said houses can have all sorts of decorations, etc. But in that example obviously the layout of a city block should follow rules of common sense in planning, and layout of appartments inside a building should be fixed. You would not be able to tell any difference between a well-done randomly generated city block like that, and a designed one.

A big plus of random generation is also that it removes the element of thinking about the author and the process of him making the level, which is actually a huge immersion breaker that worms it's way into your mind all the time. When something unfair happens, or a dull moment, or a strange place, you think "why would he do that/what was he thinking/etc". When it's randomly generated, you take everything head-on, like you would were you in the situation of the protagonist, evaluating your chances and your luck and not thinking about the almighty creator and his motives. Sure, you can try and analyze/criticize the generation algorithm, but that's way, WAY less immersion-breaking in my opinion - it's much closer to a scientific approach to figuring out something about a real world, than a sort of 'deistic' (LDistic?) approach you take with a totally manually designed level.

So while I agree that it is kind of strange to think of a potential roguelike Unloved, there's absolutely no reason to believe it can't be done.

Speaking of memorable places from the original, this place always comes to mind when I think of Unloved for some reason... on my monitor the screenshot is insanely dark even though it looked right ingame, so tell me if you can't see it. It's, I think, "halls below", the huge cavernous room with the caged walkways that you can navigate.
And of course can't forget this guy, he gave me legitimate chills.

Antroid said:

I figured I'd see you here as soon as I saw mention of randomly generated areas in the original post :P

Well, it's not like I came here just because of that. :) I've been keeping my eye on this project ever since its announcement.

Again, I think we could use bits of randomness to spice up a man made design. Leave some areas and paths random and such. I can see that as something doable. But a whole level?

Bias however is an interesting thing here. I wonder how much of the "I know it's randomly generated" affects the perception of it. What if I didn't know? It's hard to say.

However in the end a random generator will not create scenarios as unique as a real person can. It doesn't have "ideas". You can guide it but it'll only follow its limited ruleset and thus, won't surprise you. It'll not invent a unique progression or set of events. Sure, you can say that we all follow certain 'rules' when coming up with ideas so it should be possible to replicate it (at least to a degree)... But can you really imagine what an impossibly difficult task that would be? Maybe with a real AI that can learn and evolve.

In the end I can point out countless examples of great level design by people. Can you point out a single randomly generated level that can make everyone go like "I can't believe it's not designed by a human"? We can argue whether it's theoretically possible all day long but the bottom line is this: there's not even a proof of a concept of that. And until there is, my opinion will remain the same.

I mean, don't get me wrong. I'd love to see it working. But as I think about it, I can't even begin to grasp how hard that'd be to get to that level. We might get a decent ENVIRONMENTS generator but an interesting GAMEPLAY scenarios and progression? I'll believe it when I see it.

Touchdown said:

In the end I can point out countless examples of great level design by people. Can you point out a single randomly generated level that can make everyone go like "I can't believe it's not designed by a human"?

Well, you're not too far off I would say. But did you ever hear anyone say "wow Diablo2/3 has such random generated maps it takes me right out of the immersion"?

I hope everyone understands the major difference between randomly GENERATED maps (for example Oblige does this) and randomly ARRANGED maps (the trick a lot of games do like Torchlight and Diablo).

When a map is generated, the computer does all the work to create a level brick by brick. The programmer has to make the machine so intelligent that it does this in a fashion to create different architecture by itself: rooms, corridors, hallways etc.

When a map is arranged, the designer (in this case yours truly) creates level "chunks" and feeds that into the machine. The computer just takes these pieces and places them in random order into the level. In this case all rooms, corridors etc are 100% hand crafted and hopefully give the illusion of a level that has been made by a person, but still every level is different because of the random arranging.

A good example is Binding of Isaac - one of my favourite games. In BoI the designer made around 200 rooms and fed them into the machine. Whenever the player starts the game, an algorythm takes a bunch of these 200 rooms and pastes them together to give you a random dungeon.

I use exactly this method, but I go a bit further. Instead of 200 single rooms, I create chunks with a bunch of different sized rooms and corridors that give the illusion of a real place. For the first level, the overall design is "underground apartment", so every chunk has the feeling of being a place some person used to live.

BlueEagle said:

A good example is Binding of Isaac - one of my favourite games.

*High fives*

:D

BlueEagle said:

Well, you're not too far off I would say. But did you ever hear anyone say "wow Diablo2/3 has such random generated maps it takes me right out of the immersion"?

To me the difference is in perspective. In a hack%slash isometric game where a full body armor drops from a swarm of insects, I perceive the gameworld in a less 'realism-demanding' manner. Due to its nature you don't say "that's not realistic" because it's not supposed to be. It's all about leveling and loot. It's, hm, easier to separate gameplay from the world.

However when I play a first-person game, it's as close to "it's really happening to me" as you can get. I notice the silly stuff easier and everything that makes no sense (can't jump onto a box because reasons) stands out more to me.

So in case of random levels, I don't expect a whole lot of realism from an isometric game or a 2D platformer. But in FPP, I'd question stuff immediately.
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By the way, I'm not trying to discourage you. Do whatever you want to do with it. :) Just saying I'm not convinced about that idea. I've seen it fail before but I'm yet to see a clear success. There will be some opportunities for experiments though. I know that Strafe is using a similiar method.
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At the end of the day, the gameplay will probably be a bigger issue anyway. Speaking of which, what do you plan in terms of level progression?

By the way, does UE4 support some sort of composite navmesh technology? I haven't looked too much into how pathfinding is done in UE4 yet, but from what I saw it was still using traditional pre-generated navmeshes, which you usually can't move or edit at runtime (or, strictly, before the actual gameplay, when you would arrange the levels). Although I know of a custom pathfinding system for Unity that, I've been told, allows to load and overlay multiple navmeshes that work together as long as there's some overlap... Maybe UE4 can do something similar by default?

However in the end a random generator will not create scenarios as unique as a real person can. It doesn't have "ideas". You can guide it but it'll only follow its limited ruleset and thus, won't surprise you. It'll not invent a unique progression or set of events.

Honestly, I think there is no concrete reason to believe any of this. You sound kinda like if a person in 1940-s was insisting that no, it is simply impossible to land on the moon, it just can't be done, no way in hell. I mean, nothing says that following a limited ruleset can't surprise. Nothing says you can't implement some sort of specific system to make it do surprising things once in a while. Again, I find it very silly to wait for a proof of concept to even allow the thought even though it's obviously theoretically possible. All you ever have to do is implement a way for the generator to achieve the same result you have in your great ideas. With proper rules, a random generator can be made to replicate any idea of the author, in multiple ways too to keep it fresh. People just haven't really tried yet, apart from some rather banal landscape generators or room rearrangers. But hey, as I said before, quite a few years ago Minecraft was already generating caves that ended up being some of my most memorable gaming experiences, and their shapes quite often had unexpected little passages and untraditional layouts just because it wasn't human-made. Having it all be "naturally occuring" was quite a huge draw, in fact - it was much more fun exploring in that game than pretty much any manually designed one I can think of, including stuff like Skyrim.

But this discussion doesn't actually apply that much to the game in question, since it seems like it will be of a "room rearranger" variety.

Touchdown said:

Speaking of which, what do you plan in terms of level progression?

The actual level progression is in 3 steps. Red key, Blue key, Gold key. Some areas are locked by red doors - open them to get to the blue areas and then finally you can open the golden rooms that containt some sort of activity the player has to complete to be able to finish the level.

Besides that there will be two progressions for the player when playing.

1) To give Doomers a true "pistol start" expierience, you cannot carry over items from one episode to the next. An episode will consist of 1-5 maps. Every level may spawn different weapons, armor, trinkets, weapon-mods, power ups etc that you keep throughout the episode, but if you die or start a new game, it will be all lost.

2) The player gains Karma (experience) that he can spend on skills, talents and other active or passive skills. This is something the player will always keep - even if you die, only some of the Karma you got in the level will be lost. Active skills have to be refilled by killing enemies and they vary from corpse-explosion to healing you and your friends (currently 12 are planned). Every player only has 1 active skill that has to be selected before playing the episode.

It is 100% possible to play "purist" and never spend Karma to always stay level 0 without any skills or talents (for the true retro experience). If you spend Karma however, it will increase your level and other players can see if you are more or less well equipped to play on harder difficulties with them. Karma points can always be unspent, so if you want to play with a low-level friend, you can just unequip your skills to be on the same level with him.

What I'm currently not sure about is difficulty progression. Sure, the player gets more and more Karma that increase his stats, but I'm not sure how monsters will adapt to that. There sure is only limited fun to be had when you're just blasting through enemy hordes without any challenge. And UNLOVED is all about challenge. Monsters will probably have increased fireball speed, revive after being killed etc.

I really don't like the idea of bullet sponge enemies, so I will avoid increasing monster health as much as possible. You will rather see screens full with 100 enemies that keep respawning before you have to unload your whole ammo on one enemy.

Antroid said:

By the way, does UE4 support some sort of composite navmesh technology? I haven't looked too much into how pathfinding is done in UE4 yet, but from what I saw it was still using traditional pre-generated navmeshes, which you usually can't move or edit at runtime (or, strictly, before the actual gameplay, when you would arrange the levels). Although I know of a custom pathfinding system for Unity that, I've been told, allows to load and overlay multiple navmeshes that work together as long as there's some overlap... Maybe UE4 can do something similar by default?

Almost forgot to answer your question :)
The UE4 pathfinding is pretty advanced. It generates the Navmesh on the fly and is 100% dynamic. Currently I'm just using a 200.000 x 200.000 meter grid for the whole level and it generates extremely fast at runtime.

Antroid said:

Honestly, I think there is no concrete reason to believe any of this. You sound kinda like if a person in 1940-s was insisting that no, it is simply impossible to land on the moon, it just can't be done, no way in hell.

For what it's worth, I'll gladly admit my defeat if I see it up and running. :) It's simply one of those things that I can't quite imagine, especially when it comes to memorable setpieces and sequences.

BlueEagle said:

What I'm currently not sure about is difficulty progression. Sure, the player gets more and more Karma that increase his stats, but I'm not sure how monsters will adapt to that. There sure is only limited fun to be had when you're just blasting through enemy hordes without any challenge. And UNLOVED is all about challenge. Monsters will probably have increased fireball speed, revive after being killed etc.

I really don't like the idea of bullet sponge enemies, so I will avoid increasing monster health as much as possible. You will rather see screens full with 100 enemies that keep respawning before you have to unload your whole ammo on one enemy.

Perhaps keep the monsters at the same "level" as the player. Let's say the player has spent x Karma points. In that case give monsters an equivalent buff of power. For Monster A it'd be something like this:

1 Karma spent = monster gets x% movement speed increase
2 Karma spent = monster gets y% more health (in addition to previous buff of x% movement speed)
3 Karma spent = monster gets ability z (increased resistance to a certain damage type, stun, teleport, whatever) again, in addition to previous buffs
Etc.

So 15 Karma points spent would translate to 15 buffs for monsters. Something like that. There's also a question of whether you'll have a level cap for the player. Endless levels will eventually buff monsters so much that it won't be possible to survive. I would vote against respawning enemies though. I believe you have a chance to spawn enemies on picking up items and such? Levels would easily get flooded with monsters at that rate.

New Development Progress video!

http://youtu.be/ui8Owrt7LJ4

In this video I finally show the models of the final game. I think they look amazing! Now the game is getting a destinct look. What do you think about the models and the music?

Here it is! The very first public alpha prototype.

Download:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/okg4unlxqhmrm29/UNLOVEDalpha.rar?dl=0

Please keep in mind that this is a very early prototype version. There will be bugs etc, but hopefully if you see behind the rugged edges and see where I'm going with this.

There is also no multiplayer yet - a few last minute bugs kept me from having this feature in. I'll fix it as soon as possible and let you guys know.

Feel free to spread this link anywhere you like, so more people can play the version and tell me what they think :)

I'm very open for any suggestions and comments - what do you think about this game so far?

It heavily lags on my computer, guess it's just not powerful enough to run this game, like most games.

I think it's good. I wonder why don't you use any height variation, but I admit that I've barely read the thread.

What are the controls? Specifically, how do I crouch, and how do I exit the game without terminating it via task manager? (which is what I had to do)

A couple of quick notes:

1. I can see the potential. With proper content that will eventually appear, it might be pretty cool.

2. It's almost pitch black for me, even darker than your YouTube presentations. Can't see a thing.

3. Navigation will be a problem unless you have some sort of map planned. I keep getting lost. Because there's no visual progression between areas (at least right now) and because of random levels, it's basically running around blind hoping to stumble upon a key (or a keyed door). The multiple keyed doors of the same color are also confusing with the current environments. I never know whether I'm within a red area or just entering one.

4. No fullscreen mode.

5. Enemies like to clutter for some reason. Sometimes they don't even seem to move at all.

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EDIT (after a couple of runs)

The level progression seems to be the biggest issue in the current version. Like I said before, it's hard to say whether you're already in a colored area or not. It seems like sometimes the colored areas are broken into sections that are not connected (or maybe they are connected but the doors between the chunks are rusted shut?).

This is what I'm the most worried about, that levels will be too maze-like and after 10min the player will be more interested in "finding the damn way to go" rather than having fun exploring. I'm not sure how you're planning to flesh the progression out. It's really hard to say where you're going. During one run I've traversed the same areas like twenty times before stumbling upon ONE door I haven't opened.

Maybe you should consider adding special case rules to the Architect in order to prevent certain random things to happen and/or to create a clearer progression. I think it's crucial to have at least some idea where you're supposed to go. Maybe adding more variety of chunks would help the players to map out the surroundings.
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Another thing I'm concerned about are the forthcoming animations. Unfortunately for you, the character animations are some of the hardest things to do because it's easy to make them look silly. You'll need a REALLY good animator(s) to do the job properly.