New Build Engine Game

[musa]

It is called Shaw's Nightmare and it is developed by Mickey Productions. It uses the classic BUILD engine by Ken Silverman.

Story
You are Shaw. You were reading a book then you fell asleep. Suddenly, your headphones start picking up strange sounds: static, men yelling orders, screams, bones cracking and finally silence. Then a hole grew and you are sucked into it.

Things aren't looking too good. You have never been alone in your life.
Plus you don't have your father's guns. If only you could get a hold of a rapid catapult or a camera gun, you could protect yourself.

Suddenly a scout boy comes and you stabbed him with a nearby knife. Then
angry growls arose. They know you're here. There's no turning back.

Screenshots:






It's website is here: shawsnightmare.ucoz.com

[Blastfrog]

You might want to consider developing this on Eternity or ZDoom. Eternity has better portals than the latter, and using a well maintained, modern Doom engine will be more likely to reach a wider audience. They both support slopes, but Eternity doesn't do anything with the collision (you can get around this by making them out of smaller steps). With Eternity's portals, you can make some pretty screwy level architecture that is physically impossible, would go well with the insane nightmare theme.

Besides which, Build is a clunky and messy engine. Eternity supports high screen resolutions, raised render limits to make levels as large and detailed as you want, deep water, scripting. Basically, everything Build can do, Eternity can do it far better (with the minor exception of slope collision detection).

[Avoozl]

The fuck is this?

[printz]

Sodaholic said:

With Eternity's portals, you can make some pretty screwy level architecture that is physically impossible, would go well with the insane nightmare theme.

I don't know if that's still true. Iirc it may just give an error, but it has to be tested.

[Blastfrog]

Okay, I actually sat down and played it. Is this some kind of elaborate... prank? Modern art piece? What?

You built your own install programs, configuration programs, all in DOS, the music is midi puke, the graphics are MS-Paint puke, the physics are all wonky, and you even built a dedicated site just for this game, and show up out of the blue with one post. I don't get it. I don't fucking get it. What is this madness? Can you explain or will the OP be your one and only post on here?

[musa]

I guess it should explain. The game was done all by myself. That's why I've always wanted a team.

[Blastfrog]

musa said:

I guess it should explain. The game was done all by myself. That's why I've always wanted a team.

By the way, I want to make it clear that my previous post in this thread was not hostility, only shock and confusion to the game I saw before me. It's kinda like The Sky May Be on crack and meth. Just want to make sure no one gets the wrong idea.

I have a strange taste for avant garde digital shit, so this does appeal to me in an extremely weird way. I did want to ask, however, if this is extremely incomplete with placeholder assets, what is your idea of what a finished version would be? Well done graphics and sound? What kind of style would you go for?

The backstory doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but I assume it's supposed to be nonsensical. Lastly, an easier way to set up WASD+Mouse would be nice. As it is, I'm keyboarding because I'm not a big fan of moving with the mouse.

[Clonehunter]

I don't even know what I'm looking at. Reminds me of that Doom Engine/Build Engine/WolfEngine/whatever engine game where you ru around eating weed and shooting up africans. Except without all the racist overtones.

[musa]

How is the backstory nonsensical? That's what really happened.

[Tylerisepic1]

No offense, but...

[geo]

Focus on level design, how the weapons feel and enemy AI. Graphics can come later with work and experience, but level design is probably the most important here. Can you program some unique weapons or enemies?

[Flesh420]

At least the boy tried. Obviously allot of effort and time was spent on this. Damn. Looks good for doing it all by yourself, keep it up man.

[geo]

Flesh420 said:

At least the boy tried. Obviously allot of effort and time was spent on this. Damn. Looks good for doing it all by yourself, keep it up man.

This. The OP will only get better at this.

[printz]

Can't people get Doom out of their heads for once? What's with that Doom switch in the third screenshot?

[zap610]

Flesh420 said:

At least the boy tried. Obviously allot of effort and time was spent on this. Damn. Looks good for doing it all by yourself, keep it up man.

Yeah, by lying about how good a terrible looking thing is so we can preserve the author's ego, he will absolutely get better!

[mrthejoshmon]

Just please make something better than Extreme Paintbrawl with the build engine.

[RUSH]

Still better than anything I could do. What's a BUILD engine?

[Springy]

RUSH said:

Still better than anything I could do. What's a BUILD engine?

It's Ken Silverman's game engine, it isn't a category of engine that you seem to be hinting there. The engine runs games such as DN3D (most famously), Shadow Warrior, Blood, Exhumed (Powerslave for the American audience) and Redneck Rampage to name a few.

[Doominator2]

Avoozl said:

The fuck is this?

It's Shaw's Nightmare.

[Quasar]

Springy said:

It's Ken Silverman's game engine, it isn't a category of engine that you seem to be hinting there. The engine runs games such as DN3D (most famously), Shadow Warrior, Blood, Exhumed (Powerslave for the American audience) and Redneck Rampage to name a few.

Technically - and I know this is pretty nitpicky - but technically BUILD is only the renderer and a few other core components. The game code for games using the BUILD renderer is pretty much completely different in all of the above-mentioned games.

[Giomancer]

zap610 said:

Yeah, by lying about how good a terrible looking thing is so we can preserve the author's ego, he will absolutely get better!

Here on DWF we had a macro called /newproject , which was used to shoot down the many "OMG I HAVE AN IDEA FOR THIS AWESOME TC/MEGAWAD" (or whatever) people that were looking for a "team" (that they'd lead, of course) to do the work for them.

Part of the /newproject rant was about how giant projects usually end up being so much vapor, and that if the poster *really* wanted backing they'd put together something real first -- a working model if you will.

What musa has posted here looks terrible, yes, and I'll take Sodaholic at his word about the rest.. but you know what? Musa didn't come here begging for help, didn't come here with nothing trying to "assemble a team", they came here simply to show what they had. Only after Soda criticized the quality of the game did musa say they had always wanted a team.

I'd say that what Flesh420 and geo were referring to wasn't the looks of the graphics, but that the whole project was put together by one person, musa, who has obviously put in a hell of a lot of effort and that should be encouraged.

- Gio

[geo]

zap610 said:

Yeah, by lying about how good a terrible looking thing is so we can preserve the author's ego, he will absolutely get better!

Stomping a baby is easy. Raising them is not. If only people weren't harsh against Hitler's art.

[BlueFeena]

printz said:

Can't people get Doom out of their heads for once? What's with that Doom switch in the third screenshot?

It's worth pointing out, that half of the game's story reads like a paraphrased copy of Doom's from the instruction manual. Almost verbatim in a way.

Edit: Just wanted to point out that this isn't meant to be a post taking the piss out on the developer or his game. Seven years is a long time, although I do feel -- for the sake of integrity of his work -- that the art does need immense improvement.

[GreyGhost]

Avoozl said:

The fuck is this?

MS-Paint Nightmare - or something like that. Needs a bit of polish before it's ready for the App Store.

[Shadow Hog]

I can look past the hilariously awful art, since at least it allows you to prototype easily.

I can look past the god-awful music, since it can similarly be replaced pretty easily later on in the game.

However, I don't think I can look past some issues with the gameplay itself. Problems I have:

• No vertical mouselook, as best I can tell. Moving the mouse up/down makes you walk forward/backward, and I don't see any button to alter that to looking up/down like in Duke Nukem 3D. This wouldn't be a problem if vertical autoaim worked; if an enemy is above me slightly, my character insists on shooting straight ahead instead of shooting upward slightly to compensate, forcing me to look up/down with the keyboard or jump around like an idiot to land a hit.
  
• No autorun. If you want to move any faster than a leisurely walk, you have to hold down the run key at all times. I can't help but feel this is a little too antiquated, especially when I can't think of many good reasons why I'd want to move at the slower pace. (I can think of at least one; I'll bring it up in a sec.)
  
• The horizontal mouselook is insanely over-sensitive, with no means of turning it down any. The end result, combined with a very low amount of friction when you stop walking, makes it feel like everywhere in the game is a slippery skating rink, where it's very easy to fall off of platforms or walk somewhere I really didn't want to walk. (This is where the absurdly slow walking speed kind of works to your advantage...)
  
• There is seemingly no way to escape the pit behind the leather armor in the first level of episode 1. If you fall down there, you're stuck. The map seems to indicate there's something on the far wall behind the armor, but pressing Use didn't reveal anything of note. It's bad level design to drop the player in an inescapable pit without the decency to either give them a teleporter/platform out or make the pit kill you (either instantly or over time).
  
• This is more visual than gameplay, but it's weird how the game runs at what seems to be sub-30 FPS, despite the voxel objects clearly rotating at something closer to 60. Why doesn't the entire game run at that speed? As it is, the pace of it all feels lethargic. Combined with the insane mouselook speed, and it's all incredibly disorienting to actually play.

I can't help but think this might be better off as a ZDoom project, since as far as I can tell you're not really using any notable features of the Build Engine that ZDoom can't already do - plus, with ZDoom, a lot of the headaches with mouselook, momentum and framerate would be handled for you already. I suppose licensing headaches would prevent you from selling it, but honestly, with the game as it is, who'd want to buy it? There are too many issues that desperately need addressing before you'd be at that level.

[Clonehunter]

Well going off of the "working model" concept, if it could be moved to make use of the Build Engine stuff, it might be worth sticking to the build engine. I don't know what modifications Shadow Warrior had for cars and turrets or how PowerSlave had pushable blocks, but those would be rad additions, if they can be built from the ground up. I have no idea how that works, but it'd be something, and I don't think ZDoom can do either of those things, right? I mean, as simple as PS Blocks were, they added a bit of interactivity with the map and could grant access to heights. So, it'd be something.

[Koko Ricky]

Flesh420 said:

At least the boy tried. Obviously allot of effort and time was spent on this. Damn. Looks good for doing it all by yourself, keep it up man.

Effort and talent aren't necessarily synonymous. Judging from the screenshots, this appears to be an example of one man simply not having enough talent to do it all himself. Let's not praise someone for simply trying; the output has to reach some sort of minimum acceptable standard, which this does not. He really needs a team if this is going to work. I don't think it's worth going through all the trouble if it looks this crude. It need not look as slick as Duke, Doom or even Wolf, but this does not represent an aesthetically pleasing level of quality for even an amateur effort.

[Shadow Hog]

The problems with the game run deeper than just aesthetics, though; there are significant mechanical problems that are just flat-out turn-offs (as I spelled out above).

[Cupboard]

This could actually be a demented horror game if the lights were dimmed, sprites were made more grotesque, and spooky sounds added.

[Aliotroph?]

This is unplayable. The mouse movement is at odds with every fun FPS ever created. The player always turns at a fixed speed with the mouse. It gives the mouse movement a feeling of inertia while it catches up to where it thinks the position should be, making it nearly impossible to point anywhere, even for walking purposes. When coupled with the lack of mouselook it means I fell into the inescapable pit behind the leather armour just by trying to turn around. The sluggish movement keys make more sense in that context.

Some of the colour combinations also physically hurt my eyes. The bright greens and oranges are murder.

People keep suggesting Doom ports, so the question is does this game do anything a Doom port can't? I can't get far enough to answer that question for myself, but the level design I've seen so far could be handled by almost any game newer than Wolf3D. We shouldn't be nitpicking engine choice so much, except that right now it appears to be making this unplayable.