TigerCake

[TwinBeast]

I thought to put my other project, Blaze, on hold for a while and try to make some simpler game complete in a few months. At the moment it's going to be something with low poly flying things with minimalistic textures, like what I was doing with Blaze earlier. The main theme for the game would be abstract/bio/mechanical/fantasy.

My idea is that player could choose 1 from 20+ ships/things, and the others become enemies, and are scaled into different sizes. Big ones are bosses, smaller are common enemies. And the thing that player chose could appear as a final boss enemy with some huge size. You are your own worst enemy...

Each ship/thing should have some unique weapons/stuff, and there could be some weapons/stuff that can be collected and used by any ship/thing. Player could develop the ship/thing, so it doesn't stay the exact same for the whole game. Enemies get different stats based on their size. Player doesn't increase size, that's just for the enemies...

[Jaxxoon R]

Looks pretty cute. Very Fantasy Zone-esq.

[TwinBeast]

Thanks. Here's another set and some ingame testing with lowres textures (maybe a little too low? 8x8 tex spread on 128x128 game units). My earlier posterize shader works pretty good with this (using 9 shade levels currently).

I had thought it should have sort of flight sim kind of movement, but that might get too complicated for the few months time I've thought to use for this game. Simpler controls could also increase the amount of people who will play the game, easier to get into.

At the moment I'm prototyping it with DarkPlaces, as I'm familiar with it. I've thought to check some other engines too.

Flying Around Video



I'm going to try making the ships into some groups/teams. Similar styled ships become a group/team. They could also work as teams in multiplayer and be associated with a level theme.

[raymoohawk]

it looks really cool, cant wait to play it :-)

[Jaxxoon R]

Color me intrigued.

[TwinBeast]

Now there's 8 ships ingame with different max velocity, acceleration, air and liquid friction. Some move faster in liquids. The enemy flight AI is pretty early WIP. They're like Lost Souls...

2nd Flight Video

[Jaxxoon R]

Seeing them in action reminds me of BIONICLE sets for some reason. Kinda of Quake-ish, too.

When this is done, maybe you could try to get a smaller gameplay video dude to check it out. Like Azurite or something. Guy's got a knack for constructive criticism, he also mainly does indie games these days.

[TwinBeast]

Here's some action... now they got bullets, rockets, explosions and small parts flying around. They start deathmatching each other if they destroy player. Their AI is still kind of dumb, but eventually there's only one/none of them left.

Just got my brother to try it for a bit...



More action
Flying parts

[TwinBeast]

This changed a bit. Flying and third person didn't really fit together, and large levels, even without much detail seem to be compiling a long time and the file size is pretty big too.. and finally it's not even big enough level for flight. Maybe flight and large levels would work better on some other engine, but learning how to use some other engine might take quite a while, so I should continue using an engine that I already know.

I'm still going to use some form of abstract/minimalistic style/theme. I grabbed some model I had done 2 years ago, tweaked it a bit, put it into the levels I had in Blaze before it changed into something Abuse 3D or whatever. I added some new stuff too.. claws, 2 ammo items and a little DM like level (that took 37min to do, and 1min to compile).

Some of the flying things become flying enemies. But at the moment they're concept/sketch quality. Probably like pick the best 4 and polish them.

[Jaxxoon R]

D'aw, now you've gone ahead and made the things adorable. They remind me of those little robot things from the new Transformers cartoon that try to eat the metal in the Autobots or whatever.

I like it, looks like a quirky Gamecube gem that time forgot.

[joe-ilya]

Quake + flying = this

I also like how colorful it is and the graphics style remind me of the sonic games.

[TwinBeast]

Yea, they're probably like little bit cyber/robot, like the self-transforming fractal machine elves. Or like they live in some another reality.

Here's the Dragonant running, jumping, collecting items and using some weapons: http://www.moddb.com/games/tigercake/videos/dragonant#imagebox

==
Today's sound editing.. a strange voice saying "We will know"

It came from my old teleport sound effect when I had used chorus and pitch bending on it randomly to make new sounds from it. Then at some point I decided to reverse the sound when it was a high pitch squeak, then pitch it 2 octaves down and.. We will know.

Was pretty weird...

[TwinBeast]

Here's some enemy model I had some 2 years ago, with some improvements like I did on the player model. I guess it looks a little like a mini cyberdemon. Not animated yet, just has the one pose. I've tried some combat with them and so far it's more fun than the earlier stuff with the ships.


And here's my favourite FPS weapon.. the Plasma Cannon!


The little yellow thingy gives some armor. Inspiration came from some cheese & it's package.

[raymoohawk]

love the new approach and the mini cyber is adorable :-)

[TwinBeast]

Thanks :)

Here's some shots of all the items I've done so far. There's now 4 ammo, 3 health and 2 armor items. The larger armor item has 3 colors and 3 sizes. Their colors could be a little brighter. The armor item was again some old model I had done some years ago, but never finished/textured/used. Well, finally it's used.

The ammo items somehow turned very much like in Doom. Maybe I should have tried to think of something else than Bullets, Shells, Rockets and Cells... I have a Backpack model for the player somewhere too! Think I'll finish the enemy character (animations & sound) before making more items, so I could demonstrate some gameplay in a video.

[TwinBeast]

Here comes some gameplay in a level that is more than just 1 room test level. I added more textures into it. Most are my old ones that were never really used. I made the spine like textures from my tech/component textures with some filters.

Sound effects are maybe still a bit noised, but much better than what they were based on.

[TwinBeast]

Here's a whole lot of new stuff... Menu/Etc GFX. 3 new weapons. Bolt Blaster: unlimited ammo, bolts bounce once, slow. Vulcan Cannon: improved MachineGun, 2x firerate, fire min 4 shots, use 1 cell every 20 shots, otherwise get a little slower. Anti-Tank Rifle: high velocity projectile, high damage, same projectile can hit multiple targets, slow fire rate, use 1 shell and 2 cells per shot, without cells less velocity, damage and target penetration. Then there's also a new monster that is meant to look like a Stapler, and it's called UltraPony. Turns out Staplers look like Aliens. Player also got a BackPack, which will be visible in the model if player has it.

[TwinBeast]

New night sky. But I think I need to render the skies at higher resolution. The UltraPony is animated. There's a new little level for the UltraPonies, and a Quake like Start level with some difficulty selection challenges. I also added some ambient sounds into the levels, no longer quiet when nothing's happening, and no need for music. The ambient sounds that play at random intervals could have random pitches too.

Level filenames can be named something like in Doom2: map01.bsp, map02.bsp, etc, and the changelevel triggers automatically send player to the next level. This should make it easy to just make levels and organize their order later without having to recompile the levels.

Level intermissions show some more stuff like accuracy and how much damage was done, taken.. The text is a bit too small though. Should also have a better alignment.

The videos show some funny glitchy jumping/running up some steep slopes, but I fixed all the jump glitches today (I hope). So it takes a bit more effort to get out of the playarea. But if someone does get out, there are some teleporters to get back and a lavapit for some hot baths.

[TwinBeast]

Recently I've been trying some ideas for dual weapon system, as the player looks like it could have that kind of thing. Eventually ended up with weapons at right arm & bombs at left arm. It may become possible to flip the things in the arms. The player models have the animations both ways.


//== New Abilities
There are 3 types of bombs:
Dynamite: good old big red/orange explosions.
Poison Grenade: explodes into a cloud of poisonous acid.
Shock Bomb: throws the enemies around into walls and each other and possibly stuns them.

The bombs can be thrown varying distance/velocity. Explode if enough velocity when hit an obstacle, otherwise bounce. Explode when hit an enemy or after 3½ seconds.

Bomb Demo - Video

Player's melee/claws became chargeable weapon too. Depending how long the attack button is held before release, player can do quick hit, multi-strike or jump/pounce attack. The pounce is also useful in moving fast and getting higher than with the basic jump.

Little Pit Gameplay - Video

Removed armor points. They're to be replaced with a permanent armor and damage type system. Different characters (both players and monsters) resist some type of damage better than some other type of damage. The character colors may indicate their armor resistance. Red colored things are more likely to survive fire and explosions better than green colored things, while the green ones could swim in slime and breath poison fumes.

I'd like to keep the armor models, but don't know what they would give player when picked up.


//== Fantasy
There's a new player character: The Queen. Her looks may change, I'd like her to be more different looking than the Warrior. Your mission is to save her, but she can be playable too. The characters could have different weapons and stats. I made a bunch of new fantasy styled weapons, some of them could be used, some maybe not. So far only the Dragon Bow is functional...





//== Graphics
Turned the offsetmapping on for some more bump. Looks pretty good on the rocks. The bump maps are going to need some tweaking, most don't have enough contrast or are too bright to have enough effect.




With the gl_picmip_world and gl_picmip_other cvars, the game can look something like my first ideas were. Note: the sky didn't actually picmip to that simple orange fade. Had to load it with loadsky command... The models need less picmip than levels, as they're meant to be like the picmip stuff.

[Jaxxoon R]

Yes! TigerCake lives!

[TwinBeast]

Yea, still going on. It's pretty fun to make simple models and stuff.

Here's some keys. Each key shape can have any of the 3 colors, or they could be fixed to these colors. Should have maybe switched the Gear and Skeleton key places for better contrast on the background.


And some wip of a boss monster called HammerHead. It's kinda like a Balrog. There could also be a non boss version with smaller wings, brighter texture, some different weapons.