3rd Dragonrise Demo + Screenshots

Good evening fellow game devs!

I think about 3 years have passed since I created the last Dragonrise Demo. (Download 3rd Dragonrise Demo - Download Dragonrise Font "Bangle" and paste it into your WINDOWS/Fonts/ Folder) Through the last 2 and a half years I had no time to continue this project and decided to put it aside. But I made some huge improvements right after the last demo, the game system changed quite strong to a combination of action and rpg style game with a nice level system that allows you to develop the character as you wish.


Setting the stats after level up

However I was just able to create the start of the storyline so far, but it is playable in story mode. Further, to show parts of the features already implemented, there is a demo-level called "death maze" where there are some strong(er) enemies, you got nice equippment and some NPCs for saving and buying potions.
I provided 2 savegames to jump into the death maze or after the character creation.


the first boss in story mode... well I'm not the best modeller! ^^


Fighting burnig skulls in death maze with the earth-shaking war hammer

I'm quite sure there are still some bugs in the game, but I have no time for a straight bughunt atm, so I hope they are not too obvious.


Here you can rest and save in story mode


Some further information:
- Most enemies have a weakness to a certain weapon, just find out which one it is.
- Some enemies have elementary weaknesses, but I don't know whether one in death maze has one or not... *lol* I should know it?
- Your shield is able to block attacks, but be careful, not every attack can be blocked and you can only block blows in front of you!
- To buy potions you have to have an empty potion of the right size for the potion you want to buy.
- In story mode on the ship in the beginning you've got to talk to every one from left to right, during the flashbacks (past) you answer several questions which define in which way your characters stats develop. Strength VS widsom for example, the total amount is always the same, no matter what you answer.
- In the status Screen (Menu) you see your stats, your experience and the needed experience for the next level.


Default controls (redefineable in the menu):
WASD for moving
Q to shot an arrow (see the number on the avatar if you got some left) or cast a spell (must have equipped a magic staff).
E to open/close the menu
Space (action key) to attack (wait for 100% power, or keep the button pressed to charge your sword-blow), talk to NPCs, activate objects in the menu (if they start blinking you've got to press space another time to confirm)
Shift to run (watch your power bar)
F10 to take a screenshot



I hope I didn't forget something, well otherwise I'll edit.
Thus I hope you enjoy the new demo!

Wow. Going to download the demo soon but it looks great (using A6?).

Yea still the very outdated A6.31.4 that I use for all of my projects (I really like this version!).

the multiplayer project and this

SO MUCH WIN!

i like the game and character models(what's with the nued model?).

Didn't like the circular menu much, but dialogue system looks solid. I like the project overall 9.5/10

[usage of code/models allowed?]

Wow, where do you take all this time

Still looking great.

There's a certain "armor" for it, but I didn't put it into the demo, it once was planned as some kind of "secret reward".

The menu has always been a point of critique, maybe because the style is too old fashioned and nowadays easier to handle using the mouse, but I don't like slot-menus.

Improvement hints are welcome, maybe not for this one but for later projects. ^^


Well if you got use for it feel free to do so and show me the result!



Edit:
Good question firoball... I just try to be fast, so that it does not need too much time. xD

What I forgot to mention, you should have installed the font "Bangle" on your computer, otherwise some screens may look not right.
You can download the font here.

Menu is fine with me. I always enjoyed this kind of menu in all Tomb Raider games, no idea why but it feels so fun over the same old layout.

BUT, you should make everything controllable by mouse itself. I was pretty annoyed at how only few sections in the menus suddenly required me to leave the keyboard and turn to mouse. Or how to type the name I had to select a word (which makes no sense on a PC, it's console system purely) from a list instead of just typing my name while I am using the keyboard for everything anyway (unless there is a Gamepad only option this makes no sense at all).

The visuals are fine, though I found the textures to be too blurry for my taste, and lack of proper shadows (probably baked into models) on the ship. I think using normals/specular mapping will really up the visuals in this game (not that it doesn't look good, but it can be better).

Gameplay wise, the opening ship level reminded me of The Longest Journey. I got bored for some reason and the "training" part was so confusing. I didn't train anything, just selected few lines and poof, I was back on the ship, made no sense to me.

Personally I prefer to select race/skills/other rpg stuff in opening character creation screen in games like Baldur's Gate, or recently, Drakensang. It feels like less waste of a time than going through needless walking waking/walking and talking sequences.

To teach the player the control basics, you can always put practice dummies and a lot of barrels all over the place (ship felt way too small for so many warriors.. they are wearing that armor the whole trip? :P ). Everyone likes to break barrels and hit dummies when they are lvl-1.. and maybe find those stored apples.


I didn't progress any further than the ship cause it felt all too cryptic for no reason to me. But, it looks great, the controls are smooth (even though limited) and a choice of resolution in-game will help in the future demos.

@ortucis

if this helps understanding, evrytime you talk to a soldier, you have a flashback

Yeah I thought so.. but it felt like they were throwing me into the mysterious "ship dungeons" all of a sudden for a class selection.

Really though, it doen't feel like a flashback at all. Maybe simple skill selection screen is a better idea. TBH, if I was playing a commercial game, I wouldn't be walking around talking to different random NPC's since that's the first thing we have learned to avoid in such games since NPC's don't have anything interesting to say if they don't have an exclamation mark floating overhead.. *hint* *wink* *hint* :P

I think you're right in some points.

As I started creating this scene years ago I though its a nice idea to combine character creation and story introduction that way. However for most players it was too long and they don't play it through if they aren't really interested in the game plus it's story.


As well as I started making it I wanted to keep it close to console-style, but the turn over to the mouse in the status screen (there hase been a skill-screen once, too, but there are no skills any more since it is more adventure like now) annoyed me, too. =/

But I kinda dislike the mouse control. Dragonrise is a game about fighting, and (for me) fighting includes total control over my character and not clicking an enemy and watching both hitting each other one after another, waiting who'll win. Such a fighting system requires key input (see Secret of Mana, The Legend of Zelda or World of Warcraft), but it could have been in a bit more modern style with a not so isometric view for example.



Well if I had the models with proper animations, I'd love to make a completely new version in a more modern style an multiplayer mode but... I don't have them!

A mouse baed fighting style. I believe only Black & White (mostly the first one, which was the better one) accomplished that. Basically the player would click on different parts of the body of the enemy creature and your creature would attack depending on the areas you clickied or how many times you clicked and all. Using mouse gestures you could make creatures use spells, click & hold on the creature to make him block.. etc. etc.

So yeah, it's possible and is WAY more fun when done like this over keyboard. But then again, it takes a lot more work and skill so it's in the end upto you.

You're really the RPG guy of 3dgs
Dragonrise is to my opinion one of the best games made with A6 just because it features all the needed elements to create a genuine game feeling at its best. There are other games besides Dragonrise that produce this feeling as well but IMHO, this game enhances it even more.

The new demo is nice to play, the cut-scenes really bring you in that good old RPG feeling
One small remark/detail, in the start-up menu, you wrote 'Zweite' but shouldn't that be 'Dritte' atm ^^?

Cheers

Frazzle

@ ortucis
Yes you're right, I guess with some intense brain studies you're able to create a new system like the one of B&W or the likes. But I doubt the feeling would be the same. =P

Oh and to the "Ship Dungeon", this is actually the biggest building I ever created. It is the palace of the amazonian empire "Alcelen" covering 3 floors with a bunch of different rooms starting with stables and goods/weaponary halls at the ground floor up to party hall, religious rooms (some of them can be seen in the flashbacks), restrooms, offices and at the top the residence of the queen, her princess and the high priestress. All in all it covers a ground size of 16.000 square meters and the upper floors and all the stuff in those floors gets dynamically blened out when you move to a lower floor or blended in when you move back upwards. For example the weaponary room is on the lowest floor and you can look into it as you can when talking to the high priestress on the roof top.


@ frazzle

That's really nice to hear, it is alwasy a pleasure if someone likes the whole package since I know there'll always be different oppinions, too. ^^

I think I continued the overall dark/depressing style once mentioned, but I think I pushed it up every now and then. for example the cute fire foxes or the (hopefully) funny signs in death maze.

Well I got this really huge file called "translation.wdl" where all strings are being set to the text of the choosen language (Man in future times I'll just stick to english, what a bunch of work! xD ) and while testing I must have skipped through the texts and dialogues hundrets of times, thus I feared to have misses a "second" to "third" change somewhere or in at least one language!


Thanks and good night for today!
Shore

Great game.

I tried years ago your first demo and it was already great.
And your models are cool and really good, you're not a studio of 100 people doing a AA RPG !
i like it , Keep up teh good work.

@ShoreVietam: You could use my font installing dll

@ ratchet

Thanks a lot, yes this demo was a few years ago. *g*
I put a lot of time into modelling an animating so that it does not look too "woody". But that's not enough to fill a whole game.. =/


@ PadMalcom

That would be cool, is it compatible with my GS version? xD
I once tried a second dll but it did not work properly, but maybe I just did somethign wrong.

Hey, here is a code that you can use and it does not even use a dll
http://www.opserver.de/ubb7/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=171865&page=3

I doubt that Lite-C works in A6....

Ah didn't check which version he uses, time to change dude

A freaking "Noes!" here!

I don't even use the latest A6 version, but the one I got simply rocks! xD

Last night I created a video, like I do for most of my games, and uploaded it to YouTube:

Hallo ShoreVietam,

da mein Englisch nicht besonders gut ist, erhälst du mein Feedback auf deutsch.

Der Trailer gefällt mir ausgesprochen gut.

- Die Musik ist sehr eingänglich, etwas tragend und daher stimmig
- viele Features sind bereits eingebaut (Grafikeffekte, Kampfsystem), richtig gut gelungen
- eine Menge von unterschiedlichen Gegnern ist vorhanden
- viele unterschiedliche Locations sind vorhanden

Alles in Allem macht das Spiel auf mich bereits einen recht weitentwickelten Eindruck. Was fehlt denn noch bis zum Release?

GRuß, Andreas

Hi grinseengel,

kein Problem, dann so.
Ja die Musik ist toll, die hat der Herr "Blitzblaster" hier im Forum für DR komponiert (nochmal danke an dieser Stelle). :-)

Also von der Fertigstellung her betrachtet ist es Programmtechnisch fast fertig. Es gibt hier und da noch ein paar Bugs, die aber meist net all zu tragisch sind.

Im Grunde fehlen nun die ganzen locations in denen die Story abläuft, dazu noch eine gewisse Zahl an Modellen (Menschen und Gegner), zum Teil animationen für den Hauptcharakter (Lanzen-Angriff z.B.) und nicht ganz so weibliche Animationen für männliche Charaktere.

Dann müssten eig. nur noch paar Skripte für das besondere Verhalten von Bossen gemacht werden und die vorhandenen Skripte wie Questlogbuch und dialoge mit Leben gefüllt werden.

Alles in allem ist das dann aber doch noch ein riesen Batzen Arbeit, ganz besonders was die Modelle und ihre animationen betrifft. (Ich hab' für NPCs ja jetzt schon Platzhalter eingebaut)

Daher wird es wohl bei dieser Demo bleiben, der Aufwand wäre einfach zu groß.

Gruß
Pascal

Hallo Pascal,
Ersteinmal: Klasse Arbeit, mir gefällt Dragonrise wirklich gut, habe mir für heute abend vorgenommen die Demo die du in die Ressourcen hochgeladen hast und die 3te Demo nocheinmal ausgiebig anzutesten und sie "durchzuzocken"
Da fällt mir gerade noch ein, mit welchem Modeller arbeitest du eigentlich? Teilweise sehen mir einige Modelle sogar ein wenig nach MED aus
Daniel

Freut mich, ich hoffe du hast auch Spaß beim "durchspielen"!

Ich denke zwischen den beiden Demos unterscheidet sich vor allem das Kampfsystem. Während in der alten Version ein skillen pro Waffe vorgesehen war, is das zweite eher Adventure-Mäßig gestaltet mit Waffen die ohne Skills angewendet werden aber verschiedene Fähigkeiten haben. Das sind z.B. verschiedene Durchschlagsstärken. Ein einfaches Schild blockt nur unbewaffnete Angriffe, ein etwas besseres blockt auch Schwertschläge aber keine Hämmer oder Speere usw.
Die Zauberstäbe können auch zum schlagen benutzt werden, müssen aber getragen werden um die entsprechenden Elementarzauber zu wirken. Das ist so der Grundgedanke hinter dem neuen System.

Die Modelle sind alle mit dem MED erstellt, inklusive der Animationen. Mit etwas Übung kann man damit glaub' ganz gut arbeiten. ^^

Gruß
Pascal