CyberShade - Another Video

[Agentbromsnor]

VGA said:

Even at 720p it's hard to see what's going on. But I remember liking the game, so I am keeping an eye out!

I actually put the video in full-screen... Bad idea. :P

I also watched the first video, and even though I think the visuals are pretty good I'm not a big fan of the enemy designs. They look really small and not very threatening. It feels like this game could really use some nicely detailed mech-sprites or something, but that's just my opinion.

[Gez]

Baphomet_15 said:

How did you integrate custom attack patterns for the monsters on Chocolate Doom?
Did you have to edit the source code related to Chocolate Doom to change the monsters/weapons behavior?

Obviously. And if you pay attention it's not the only part of the source code that has been edited.

[TwinBeast]

Yea, I guess I could take a look at that SDL2 branch. And hopefully the whole programming experience with this game helps me to program some new game from scratch. But there's still a lot of stuff I don't know why/how they work or don't.

Thought I might also add player bots (later)... the Survival mode is kind of DM like (should do a video of that too). Maps should be about as easy to make as for Doom, though some Hexen/Doom64 like stuff is possible too. There should be plenty of map slots available too.

Well, most current enemies are small to medium sized with only a few that are slightly bigger. Player's viewheight is also 9 units higher than in Doom. There will be bigger enemies too...

Some stuff I'd like to do for the next release: finish new enemies, 1 or 2 new weapons, small ammo pickups, cheese, some powerup items, some new maps, add new lighting effects for the old maps, improve the worst sound effects, do something for the hud score and credits displays... Maybe have it ready sometime around the change of the month.

[AxelMoon]

Certainly one of my more favorite Doom engine mods, was support for this even added to Slade officially, or was a merge not done for that yet?

[Sayok6]

I'm messing around with the configuration for GZDoom Builder, and seeing what maps I can make with the limitations.

[TwinBeast]

SuperSomariDX: no idea about that...


The palette got changed, started to change it into a mech game, and then to a flight game. One idea was to swap 16 color palettes with different episodes, but might as well have it all in one palette. Also there's 99+99 level slots, so would a 16 color palette be enough even for third that amount of levels? I'll keep the increased palette somewhere around 64 colors if I change it.

Gameplay idea is that player 2 weapon slots for some unlimited ammo blasters and 4 weapon slots for changeable weapons. The changeable weapons can be changed in shops. Player has dual weapon use. Press LMB to fire left weapon, press RMB to fire right weapon. Each weapon has its own ammo pool, and is possible to have the same weapon more than once. Weapons get heat, so eventually it may be necessary to select another weapon, even if the weapon has ammo. But at the moment it's uhh very arcadey, player has unlimited ammo, fire dual miniguns when fire button held down and fire dual missiles every time the fire button is tapped.

Focused on some other stuff... maybe I'll get back to the gameplay programming and finishing the HUD graphics now...

Vertical light diminishing... it's a bit blocky looking, but makes sense to have it if there's lots of verticalness in the levels.


And another...


Minimap that could be displayed all the time, but where, it takes so much space? Also it should rotate, but the map wants to rotate around the map origin, not player. The map shows visible and nearby enemies. Later made it also show nearby unseen walls with dimmed grey. Haven't tried positioning it anywhere else. Is it worth more trouble? I guess these features make the full screen map more useful too. Top right corner shows a closeup on the player "arrow" and enemy.


BOOM! New explosion and smoke sprites. The smoke is a little bit too big for missile trails... maybe ok for some mega missiles?


Got sprite scaling to work. Maybe later try to do different xy scales. Also notice the mid textures can be tiled vertically. Enabled with the upper unpeg flag.


KABOOM! More explosions!


Markers, mines or some target practice drones for a tutorial level? As markers they set player as their owner, and you can only see your own markers in the map.. but just like enemies lose their targets after loading a game, the markers lose their owner, and no longer show up in the automap.


All the most recent screenshots here, including the ones shown above: http://imgur.com/a/Bcz9C

[VGA]

I think it looks improved from before with the new palette :D

Have you considered making truly fullscreen+widescreen 16:9 and having a vertical super-HUD at the side? With all info one would need and a minimap? So the player's view port will not be reduced at all.

[jute]

The screenshots look great! Some of them are reminiscent of the first System Shock. The new palette is much more readable.

[40oz]

Its very invigorating how much energy, motivation, and community input you put into this. Its very motivating for me as a content creator. It was very fascinating to see how much this project has evolved over the years and it continues to look amazing. Seriously great work with this, Jimi. I'm a huge fan of your work :)

[TwinBeast]

Thanks. Hmm... well, it's 320x200, which is 16:10. Maybe the HUD could be just the small text and numbers with or without black background, max 1px of the background around the text/numbers? One line of text with the background would be then just 7px tall. 320 width fits 53 characters. I think the weapons/items should still be some graphical icons, having them just as text would feel too lazy. Also maybe then I'd draw some of the nose of the ship visible at the center, so there would still be something that's lit by the level lighting.

Well, here's some more screens...

Mines for the spider like enemy. They can be shot. They work pretty much straight from the box by setting them shootable/solid and remove noblockmap flag, but something in them may eventually crash, and doesn't seem to be there being too much of them (that just makes it happen more likely).


Since player can fly, it would be pretty weird if the fences blocked player when not actually touching the fence. So I fixed that and built a fence maze! Treasures inside. Too bad the level editor doesn't understand the vertical tiling for the midtextures, 3D mode nearly useless for doing something like this.


Support for 128x128 flats. And doesn't break the 64x64 tiling or break if there's like 64x64 suddenly in the middle of it or whatever. I suppose I'll add support for smaller flats like 32x32 and 16x16 too. Should also probably figure out the vertical tiling issues for textures, and allow taller than 128 too.


And when I really should have gone sleeping, I thought to experiment with if it's a good idea to make 3D bridges with negative sector heights: floor height below ceiling height. It kind of works, but kind of also needs to be surrounded by sectors with the highest ceiling and lowest floor. Not a very finished feature...

[TwinBeast]

Another new video. It shows the flight stuff and the new minimalistic hud. Added some target rectangles. Green when locked for missiles, red when just targetted. The targets are acquired by pressing the one of the fire buttons when aiming at something, or when aiming at something and not have any target. The map shows enemies in red, items in yellow, player in white ("should" be green, but isn't because the walls are), important things in blue. Nearby and/or visible things/lines are shown.

The missiles and mines can be shot. This caused a lot of trouble/crashing. All I found out about that is that they may crash when they're inside something that moves, so usually when they're spawned. Then I decided to make some bubblegum tape wrap around the bug, and spawn them unshootable, then spawn a shootable duplicate after a few tics and remove the original. Same crashing in Doom with dehacked shootable missiles...

The new weapon system is not complete yet. Player has 2 weapons equipped, and both fire 2 projectiles at the same time, total 4 if both weapons are fired at the same time. Original idea was to only fire 1 projectile from one weapon... But it's pretty fun like this too. Self damage from explosions was removed, may return later.

There's still no sounds, so I played something with my keyboard. I think it went better than in the previous video.

[Olroda]

It sure starts to look refined now. The large explosion reminds me of Xenon 2, was that an inspiration?

[Agentbromsnor]

I'm really digging the screenshots on this page. Looks like a real improvement over what I saw in the OP. It kind of reminds me of Descent.

[TwinBeast]

@Olroda Yes, the palette was also very similar. Now there's more colors?

 

@Agentbromsnor Thanks, hopefully I can make it better than Descent or Radix. Both them have some annoyances in controls. Descent: slow turning. Radix: no strafe or hover up/down.

 

The new palette has 7 colors with 8 shades, plus some shades of black including black. Each color has its own near white and some different hue/saturation for bright/dark shades like in the earlier palette. This should allow some different episode/level themes. Maybe I make some palette between this and the 16 colors. Tuning the light colors in the colormap is a bit uhh... Still I think this is better than the previous 64 palette and definitely makes things clearer than the 16 colors.

Added a speed meter for the HUD. The scale is 16 units equal to 1 meter. In the video/demo the top speed was some 104km/h. Now tried some above 300km/h. It would need some pretty big areas, otherwise player collides too much into walls before even reaching the top speed. Maybe the 104 is normal and +200 is with some afterburner upgrade. Well, the levels need to be a bit bigger with flight anyway. While there are no "vertical obstacles", every detail support, pillar, lamp or whatever might suddenly turn into a fatal obstacle... Flying around dodging incoming mines... bump... 10-20 mines explode into player.

[Urizen]

10 hours ago, TwinBeast said:

Radix: no strafe or hover up/down.

 

Nope, the player's ship in Radix is capable of strafing on both horizontal and vertical axes.

 

Demonstrated in this gameplay video;

 

 

:)

 

I've been following this project since early 2015 - back when the working title was "Blaze" - and it's been fascinating watching it evolve from one iteration to the next. The change (back) to a 5DoF flight game was a particularly pleasant surprise, as I'm a big fan of R:BtV, and (I strongly suspect I'm in the minority, here) found it to be far more enjoyable and accessible than the over-engineered and overly labyrinthine Descent. A 5DoF flight model/level design is perfectly sufficient to provide an engaging gameplay experience for me - anything more than that quickly becomes a bit tedious!

 

Looking forward to your next update, Jimi!

Edited March 17, 2017 by Urizen

[TwinBeast]

Apparently I had some old version without vertical strafe.. and horizontal strafe was just the one strafe button... also the automatic move was awful, even at the slowest speed it would get damage from hitting walls. Patched it up and it's actually playable.

 

This is different than Blaze, although I've been using the same ideas here. Not entirely sure what's going to happen with Blaze, but one idea is that it continues with some of the Quake engines and becomes a racing game (or return to shooting aliens?), since I didn't know the math/coding for the 6DOF, and a flight game on a more 3D engine really should be 6DOF. Now I haven't even "noticed" the limits.

 

Argh, not Jimi anymore.

[TwinBeast]

Got HUD graphics scaling to work in 640x400, then notice it looks kind of chunky, perhaps I could do those graphics in double resolution and not scale 2x to look smoother?

 

Tried another 16 color palette with equal amount of shades for each color ramp. Sort of better than the previous, but now it kind of lacks green. All colors change at the same time in the colormap. So there's "never" color/light combinations that make nearby colors the same color.

 

Messed around with lighting, because everything got really dark with the different style colormap. Multiplied the lightlevel darkening, so it gets really dark in far distance, but powered up the lightlevel brightening, so it's still bright nearby. All non fullbright sprites get some extra light boost, so they can been seen against a black background more often. They can still appear dark when far away.

 

 

[Chloroxite]

I recently stumbled upon this game, and tried it. I love it. It isn't perfect, for one it is a bit hard to tell what is going on. However, judging from these latest screenshots, that demo is extremely outdated now. I hope development is still going forward, I would totally play this when it comes out.

[soner du]

Has someone created new levels for the "beta" version of Cybershade ?

[Halfblind]

I am bumping this tread and I am not ashamed either...

 

I think that you are dong some great work on this game. The original demo was amazing if I say so myself. I see that since last time I looked at it you changed the gameplay from a standard run and gun shooter to a space mech game. I for one would like to see segments where you are running along the ground with a white knuckle grip on your gun and others where you are zipping around in the mech. I think that having both aspects of gameplay would make it stand out even more.

 

Even though I can run the game with the choice engine I would love to see a zdoom port in the future. One reason is to have a wider audience of players. I know how some of us only play with GZdoom now days and we also need to get this on ICARUSLIV3S radar. But hey you got to finish the game first and foremost. I cannot wait for the final release dispute this. Keep up the great work.

[VGA]

I hope this isn't abandoned :/

[LouigiVerona]

Tried this game today. Loved it. It is super difficult and I was just killed immediately, but somehow I still enjoyed it.

 

Can you post the latest demo? Would be great to try out your recent version, the one we are seeing on the screenshots.

[LouigiVerona]

So, I actually played this for quite a while yesterday. Here is my feedback. And apologies if the demo I played is outdated and you have addressed many of these.

Pros:

• feels like a completely original game
• incredible atmosphere, both visually and sonically
• love the steps sounds, they really add to the acoustic ambience

 

Cons:

• don't like how most monsters look - the green ones are ok, but the red and yellow ones look blocky and uninteresting
• most monsters are difficult to see from afar
• monster projectiles are way too fast
• monsters take too long to kill, which makes the difficulty be of the tedious kind
• monsters are moving too fast and are too frequently above you, having mouse look does not help much

 

Suggestions:

• invest into drawing better monsters, maybe hiring someone for the job
• choose colors carefully, make monsters of a contrasting color to the surroundings
• play around with the difficulty, maybe making monsters have less hp and allowing the player to just go right through them will make for a good mashing experience
• rethink monster behavior, I just don't feel that chocolate doom engine is good for killing monsters jumping on top of you

[TwinBeast]

It's not abandoned, sometimes I just need a break, sometimes a longer break... I recently added a game profile for it on moddb http://www.moddb.com/games/cybershade, though it seems none of the images there are currently visible?

 

Maybe I'll make the monsters go into retreat mode for a moment if they're just above/below player, so they'll move into a place where player can aim at them.

 

The newest set of enemies include enemies that fire slower projectiles. Don't know if they look better, probably simpler, have some animations and backsides too.

 

Haven't fully decided on if the flight is permanent or some powerup. Level design for flight levels is kinda fun, not having to worry if someone can rocket jump over some obstacle and skip half the level.

 

Well, here's some screenshot... They shoot multiple projectiles and hurl themselves at player.

[VGA]

Maybe some maps can be zero G and others normal?

 

Images and gifs look fine for me on ModDB.

[LouigiVerona]

I can see the images just fine! Looking forward to maybe trying this out. Are you planning to post a new demo any time soon?

[TwinBeast]

Maybe some release when I've finished, temporarily disabled or just removed the experimental features and cleaned up the IWAD. The wad is filled with lots of mismatching or unused content that has become weirdly recolored after every palette change. The 4 colors palette with more shades felt like it was missing one color. Changed it back to the 5 colors with 3 shades and have some cyberspace look. New HUD and some view sprites. If after this feel like it should have more colors or shades, then goodbye 16 color palette.

 

The flight is a powerup now, but didn't appear in the video. Currently the "inventory weapon" is selected at the same time as the normal weapon. Pressing the same weapon selection key again swaps the weapon to the other side. Move Down(/Crouch?) + Move Up/Jump does a super jump which use 5 energy points. Energy and Hit Points both recharge slowly if under 100, Hit Points recharge slower. Items in levels can increase both up to 200. The key items were not yet used, they're probably going to be used with some activator line special that activates other lines, so they could be used with any line specials, not just doors.

 

There's no sounds yet, want to redo them (all?), so I made some glitchy music from an accidental recording of eating delicious bread while recording the demo playback into the video. One of my first ideas for sound effects were to make them a little like pc speaker sounds, but then I never really tried that. Maybe now that could fit. Then have ambient sounds something like music. Should think of a way to get more controls into the level editor for the ambient sounds. Maybe a line special that spawns a dummy mobj (into the mid point of the line) that takes in parameters from a control sector (and from the line too?).

 

 

Screenshots...

 

Grenades, the timers are animated, the explosion does little damage every frame it's on.

 

Firing the multi mini missiles. Player fires 6 of them in a sequence.

 

There's a cheat that spawns more sparks and allows them to last longer.

[Chloroxite]

What happened to the old weapons sprites?