Great!

Hi guys!

I wanted to show some progress of the game so far! Just finished player's movement, main game logic (loading, restart and score), weapons system (it's not fully done yet, f.e. the very first weapon which is called blade spitter still doesn't throw spinning saw blades and big thanks to Superku for helping me out with that 'timing' and 'VAR' problem I was facing), and some props (doors, which intentionally do not close). Not all weapons are added into the game, I'll be working on this now. Next thing after finishing weapon system and particle effects is going to be AI. Also I would like to thank txesmi, for making me this awesome shader pipeline, it really makes the game look more colourful and alive!

Here is a video:
GAME_PROGRESS_WIP_01

Here is a useless screenshot:


Best regards!

This looks like fun!

Looks promising! The guns seem to have a nice feel/ handling to them again like in your old shooter prototypes but the weapons itself are a tad too pixelated for my taste.
Overall there are a few styles clashing with another. The drawn highly pixelated 2D guns (I like the perspective on the guns though), the 3d environment (which is fine IMO, esp. those stonewall texture approach), the static shadow maps and the soft shader flashlight shadowing.

Things you could try:
- Have a look at the RTS "8 bit armies" and their models. You could use that approach for guns (but then you'd have to design enemies in that way too, probably more time consuming).
- Have the flashlight shader put out pixelated shadows, like on an 8 step gradient (that is use the current shadow value and transform it into that).
- Disable static shadow maps (thus flat shadowing only), maybe even all dynamic shader based but pixelated lighting could work out fine and cool.

What are you planning regarding content creation? Fixed levels like Doom 1 or randomly/ procedurally generated levels maybe (with optional loot/ grinding/ exp)?

Thank you guys for your kinds words!

Yes, I can see what you are saying man. I was planning to mix oldschool style with nowadays 'look'. F.e. I was thinking about enabling dynamic shadows from the sprites (spotlight, point lights, sun etc). But then I face a problem with lack of shader programming knowledge. So it looks like this, kind of undone and really rough. Static lights are only there, because they keep that 'shaded' feel on the surfaces, cause when it's all 'flat' it looks really empty to my eye.

I'll take a look at that game, never hear of it before.

I would actually love to do this things and I would really like to have pixelated shadows out of the flashlight (and other lights too!), but as I'm not good at shaders, I can't. About soft shader flashlight, I guess I could 'fix' this by having a smaller (low res) defuse map for the flashlight. As it's just projected over the surface, pixelated bmap would help I think. I would like to mix oldschool with nowadays modern graphics like developers did in this game:
Legend of Dungeon Gameplay Levels 1-15

I'm planning to create 'fixed levels', and for a reason. The main goal is to beat the level as fast as you can while finding all secrets, collecting all items and killing all enemies, so having a good practice on the same level could be challenging. But I see that nowadays procedurally generated games are more popular.. So I guess I'll have to think again about the main concept. To stick to my original idea with fixed levels, or move on with nowadays stream/tide.

Thank you for very nice tips!

Best regards!

float sizeoftexel=1.0/8.0;
float3 wpos=round(IN.wordlPos/sizeoftexel)*sizeoftexel;

i used that equation in unity to "pixelize"(scale) pixels, sure someone can help you ..

Thank you! I think, I'll 'adjust' visuals when I'll something more or less playable, so I could interest someone who might help me out.

Greets!

It's looking awesome!
My one point about the visual style would be the lack of environment light/shadow on the hand-weapon and the lack of self-light/shadows on the hand weapon.

The environment is lit but the hand weapon doesn't change near or far from a light source. Edit-(I do not mean that the environment doesn't flat shade the whole sprite, I mean that the sprite color set doesn't change shading to faux it's shape.) -end edit. More to this is when the gun fires, shouldn't the hand-weapon receive lighting-shadowing colors and shifts for the gun blast light source?

Anyway, it looks great and I've no experience with 8-bit shooters so my points might just be out of place.

Hey man! You input actually is very useful, I completely forgotten to add lightning while shooting (will do that right now). The weapons themselves aren't going to have any shadows unfortunately, I really would like to stick with more or less minimalistic style, but maybe my attempts aren't that successful

Best regards!

Edit: youtube marked my game video as 'minecraft'... what a shame
Edit2:
I didn't get this one to be honest. Maybe you meant something like 'bumpmapping' to 'faux it's shape', or what?

Small update:
- I rewrote weapon part once again, cause it was a bit messed up
- Removed static shadows and soft shader spotlight, what you think guys?
Edit: I guess I could 'fake' darkness with fog around the player..

Greets!