Tuesday 9 November 2010

dungeons

So, I have this set of dungeon graphics I bought ages ago that I've been dying to use and have kept trying to come up with crazy schemes just to work them into a game.

The problem is, of course, that they're someone else's dungeon graphics, and therefore tend to include tiles I'll never need, but fail to include tiles I WILL need to do any of my wacky ideas.

... you may be aware there's a dungeon in Magical Diary. Yes, these dungeon tiles are finally (I hope) getting some air. I'm still having to futz around in paint shop trying to bang together important missing pieces of the tileset (what were they thinking?) but I think I've covered the most important missing bits and should be able to build at least basic maps to walk around in.

In the long run we're likely to wish we'd just built the whole dungeon from scratch using individual elements (like Cute Knight) or 3d (which spiky is working on ANYWAY) instead of static 2d backdrops, but darnit, I have these dungeon bits and I'm going to get them into a game somehow!

Can't show screenshots at the moment because since this is finally a freeform walk-around-and-cast-spells dungeon section (the second exam; the first exam is under strict limits) we have all new interfaces to design and they're not done yet. We DO have a very simple test layout up and running that the player can walk around in (turn left, turn right, go forward), a scribbled minimap, and a spell list you can select from, but the spells don't DO anything yet, and it all looks quite messy right now.

2 comments:

Milki said...

Question about the walking around bit: Did you decide about the controls already? Will moving by mouse be enabled to or will you have to use the keyboard? Or will there be both?

Whiner said...

It's mostly mouse-driven, there are buttons to click for turning and moving. Because there are so many control buttons for other things (and some people insist on being able to control the whole game with the keyboard) the keyboard arrows move focus from button to button rather than directly affecting movement.

Keyboard movement shortcuts may sneak in later though but it's not a priority atm.