Vapourware Codexian Game Development Thread

[Chris Koźmik]

I'm working on a retro western RPG. Since the last year but I had a long break. I really hope to finally finish it... I do wish it has "year 2013" as the release date :D



Here is the "official" topic
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...s-upcoming-classic-oldschool-retro-rpg.87241/

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

 

[Ninjerk]

Prosper?

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Ehh, no way.

 

[Zep Zepo]

ok..it took a while, but if you cross your eyes hard enough, you can see the tranny.

Zep--

 

[shihonage]

So I am trying to convert some textures that were bought for Dead Colony, into isometric floor and wall textures for Compound, in order to convert the test prison level into something entirely independent of Fallout: Tactics graphics.

I made the mistake of buying World Creator 2.5+, which is written by an enormous retard. It does allow conversion into isometric, but you have to jump through a thousand hoops, and the interface is a fucking nightmare.

If anyone knows of an easier program, please let me know.

 

[Mastermind]

So I am trying to convert some textures that were bought for Dead Colony, into isometric floor and wall textures for Compound, in order to convert the test prison level into something entirely independent of Fallout: Tactics graphics.

I made the mistake of buying World Creator 2.5+, which is written by an enormous retard. It does allow conversion into isometric, but you have to jump through a thousand hoops, and the interface is a fucking nightmare.

If anyone knows of an easier program, please let me know.

You can use gamemaker (free version should work as far as I know) to rotate pictures to any degree then save them in any of the usual formats. Just make sure there's plenty of empty space around the tile so the corners don't get cut out.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Hm, I would map the texture to a plane, code a specific camera angle and render stuff in needed resolution (in wz4).

 

[Derek Larp]

Added some graphics stuff for squads and vehicles with turrets.

As to why hexes? Guess I just wanted to see if I could wrap my head around hexes, and it isn't as hard as I though it would be. Also, I'm a fan of steel panthers and BI2 (which you can probably tell from the screenshot )

 

[Ninjerk]

P. cool. Looks like a board game I played called Battlecry or something like that.

 

[Destroid]

Added some graphics stuff for squads and vehicles with turrets.



As to why hexes? Guess I just wanted to see if I could wrap my head around hexes, and it isn't as hard as I though it would be. Also, I'm a fan of steel panthers and BI2 (which you can probably tell from the screenshot )

Did you make those sprites yourself? (or are they from BI2?)

 

[Chris Koźmik]

As to why hexes? Guess I just wanted to see if I could wrap my head around hexes, and it isn't as hard as I though it would be. Also, I'm a fan of steel panthers and BI2 (which you can probably tell from the screenshot )

Interesting, I was thinking of dvelling into the hex abbys as well. Which coordiante system you used (http://www.redblobgames.com/grids/hexagons/)? And why (or is there a significant difference between these)? Were there any problems during transition from grid to hex way of thinking?

BTW, do you have a dedicated topic to your game/link?

 

[shihonage]

You can use gamemaker (free version should work as far as I know) to rotate pictures to any degree then save them in any of the usual formats. Just make sure there's plenty of empty space around the tile so the corners don't get cut out.

I'm aware that I can rotate an image and make it into a ground/ceiling texture. The most necessary and hard part is making walls, which cannot be created using that method, far as I can tell.

Hm, I would map the texture to a plane, code a specific camera angle and render stuff in needed resolution (in wz4).

That would require abandoning existing D3DSprite-based framework and writing my own 2D mapping routines from scratch.

Having done this for OpenGL in Dead Colony, I'm not so eager to go through the process with a much more complex codebase, with more sprite effects in play.

If I could find an easy program to make ISO doors and walls out of flat textures, there'd be no problem.

 

[Mastermind]

You can use gamemaker (free version should work as far as I know) to rotate pictures to any degree then save them in any of the usual formats. Just make sure there's plenty of empty space around the tile so the corners don't get cut out.

I'm aware that I can rotate an image and make it into a ground/ceiling texture. The most necessary and hard part is making walls, which cannot be created using that method, far as I can tell.

The image's corners are transparent. You just stack them so there is partial overlap and they fit together:

Alternately you could use the same concept but instead of rotating the image you can skew it (also done in game maker but I'd imagine a more dedicated art program can do it better, paint.net doesn't seem to have the option)

 

[shihonage]

New floor looks okay, new wall looks made out of carton. I can't make it "thick". It's unbelievable that nobody made a simple dedicated ISO wall generator.

 

[Ninjerk]

was that texture intended to be tiled?

 

[shihonage]

Not necessarily. It's just a test, but I would like to find a semi-automated way to give them depth.

 

[Ninjerk]

Depth as in...?

 

[tuluse]

Not necessarily. It's just a test, but I would like to find a semi-automated way to give them depth.

Don't you need a top and side texture to create the illusion that it's a 3d object? Then just create one image from the 3, and tile them and they should cover up any parts that shouldn't be visible.

If that doesn't make sense, I think this video of the Shadowrun editor should show what I mean.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=GhWfXRP95u0#t=238

 

[Ninjerk]

The fact that there is no perspective takes away from it having depth, but if you look at the Shadowrun apartment tiles iirc they are pretty uniform when you scan them horizontally (unlike above, the red splotch tells us that this is tiled over and over again and breaks immersion) like the FO:T tiles in shihonage 's picture. I believe the Shadowrun wall tiles (and the FO:T tiles) have a slightly darker value across the bottom to suggest depth, however.

 

[shihonage]

Not necessarily. It's just a test, but I would like to find a semi-automated way to give them depth.

Don't you need a top and side texture to create the illusion that it's a 3d object? Then just create one image from the 3, and tile them and they should cover up any parts that shouldn't be visible.

I know, and the only program that does this is Worldcreator.

It is terrible, however. I will need to resize all source textures because it loads them "as is", covering the UI, and it has to be poked and prodded along to do the most basic tasks. Resizing and then iso-resizing will result in increased loss of quality.

But there appears to be no choice so I'll bear with it.

 

[tuluse]

If you're manually rotating 1 image to create the wall portion, can you manually rotate 2 more to create the depth part, then just stitch them together in whatever image editing software you're using?

 

[shihonage]

If it comes to that kind of menial work for every single fucking texture... it's easier to just use ShitCreator. I really would rather not have to waste time on textures at all. But alas.

 

[Derek Larp]

Did you make those sprites yourself? (or are they from BI2?)

Made them myself. Though the style of the trees is copied from steel panthers.

Interesting, I was thinking of dvelling into the hex abbys as well. Which coordiante system you used (http://www.redblobgames.com/grids/hexagons/)? And why (or is there a significant difference between these)? Were there any problems during transition from grid to hex way of thinking?

BTW, do you have a dedicated topic to your game/link?

I used the coordinate system found here (Well, not exactly, my hex array is rotated 90°, but that's just changing a == to != or vice versa in the code). The link in your post didn't work for me, so I can't tell you what's the difference from this to those other systems. I picked the first one I found and went with it.

Getting into the "hex way of thinking" wasn't really that problematic. The key difference is that (with the hexes ordered like I did) there's two kind of hexes movement wise, depending if y is even or odd. Once you have the groundwork done, it's not really that different from working with a square grid. It helped that I already had lots of stuff from other game projects that I just needed to convert from square- to hexgrid.

What was quite tricky was LOS by intersecting hexes, but that was the first time I intersected anything with lines (only used bresenham before), so it might have been that.

There's no website or anything, since for now it's only a hobby project: a hexmap with LOS and pathing and pretty pictures I wanted to share. I started working on basic combat resolution mechanics, and I still have to draw the stuff for terrain height differences and roads and buildings. If I get it to where you can play a small infantry skirmish I will post a demo.

 

[Destroid]

Good job, they look great.