Phobian Odyssey - Episode 1 (Doom dungeon crawler for NaNoWADMo 2021)

[DavidN]

For NaNoWADMo this year, I wanted to do something a bit different and experiment to see if I could get a dungeon crawler style movement engine working in GZDoom. Then it snowballed until I'd accidentally written a whole JRPG style game in it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So venture through the caves, tunnels and labs underneath Tharotia as you try to eradicate the demons! This copy has five and a half levels of dungeons, and lets you try out the cycle of the game, fighting monsters in FPS battles and scavenging materials and treasures. As the name suggests, it's heavily inspired by Etrian Odyssey, the series of W/JRPG hybrids that managed to revive first person dungeon crawling without it being coma-inducingly boring.

 

I'd love to work this up into a full game some day because I wrote a ton of stuff that I didn't even use, like being able to apply special effects and elements to weapons - perhaps I will revisit it if enough people enjoy it!

 

https://files.teamouse.net/doom/wads/phobianodysseydemo2.pk3

 

Runs on GZDoom with DOOM2.WAD or equivalent, and I recommend Xaser's DamNums to complete the JRPG mood :) https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=55048

 

Thanks to

Scwiba/Ryath for NaNoWADMo

Ezo, Ginji, LikoClave and Boomer Spacely for the use of their characters

Temiree, LikoClave, Jan, Licographics and OhMyRichard for the portrait artwork

Ukiro for OTEX

James Paddock as usual for the music

JPBreton for the amazing Mr Friendly, from which I borrowed a significant amount of code

Everyone on the GZDoom Discord for their guidance as I found my way in ZScript!

Edited November 26, 2022 by DavidN

[Kan3]

I didn't know that I would have lived long enough to see a Doom JRPG x)
That's freaking amazing, I kinda want it on my Gameboy now

[Doomkid]

This looks really cool - I like the way encounters work, though it did jumpscare me a bit since the volume of the battle MIDI is so much louder than the e1m2 MIDI, lol! I love the function though.

 

One thing I want to suggest right off the bat is that the "fade in" speed be doubled for the blue text background.

 

This is great stuff, David!

[DavidN]

That's something I noticed in a gameplay video that Thingie! sent me - it takes over two seconds for it to fade in! And the line that does it is actually consistent with that:

 

if (dialogOpacity < 1.0) dialogOpacity += 0.01;

 

So looking at that, it would take 100 tics, or just under 3 seconds. So why does it appear so much faster on my end - some GZDoom setup obscurity? I recorded some of my own gameplay at https://youtu.be/v6EXP89mSkk.

 

Nevertheless, I've updated and reuploaded it now - you can patch it yourself by changing zscript/ui.zs line 176 to add 0.05 or whatever suits.

[azerty]

Great stuff! I love the idea and it has been implemented wonderfully, good job. I have some problems regarding the UI as you can see it isn't scaled properly and idk if that's on my end or not (probably on mine). I would love to play more keep it up with the great work.

 

[boris]

This is pretty amazing.

 

One thing I noticed is that you always start an encounter without a weapon selected when automatic weapon switching on pickup is disabled.

[wizlicos]

Hello! I recently found this in one of your latest videos in Youtube :)

 

I loved the idea and I wanted to try it, but gzdoom shows this message 😭 I don't know if I'm doing something wrong, but I'm not really a guy who knows much about software or code.

 

Also, I don't know why the title bar says 4.5.0 but it's 4.10.

 

Thank you for your great work in this one!