Dungeon Master-like games

D

DArtagnan

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Yeah, you know the ones, like Eye of the Beholder, Black Crypt, Captive, Xenomorph and many more.

Back in the day this particular sub-genre was perhaps my favorite. I know the technology has been eclipsed by fancy 3d engines, but it seems to me that only a select few have actually improved upon the gameplay formula. Specifically the emphasis on puzzles/riddles and clever level design. Arx Fatalis is the most recent game of the genre that I can recall, and even that suffered from numerous flaws.

I'm currently starting development on an old-fashioned first person step/tile based engine with 90 degree turns, with my brother, and I'm sort of curious about the interest from people like you on this RPG oriented board. We're still in the initial stages, but at least I've made a program that can assemble walls/objects and draw a room, and we have a pretty solid data structure for storing detailed maps in the works. It looks like it could be a reality - at least eventually. We're not particularly concerned with time, but it'd be nice to get it done within a reasonable timeframe nonetheless.

We were considering doing it in 3D, but neither of us are sufficiently experienced with that and we rather want to do something we have a real chance of finishing.

If we were to do a decent one, do you guys think there would be enough interest in terms of making it commercially viable?

Not that we're doing it for the money, but it would be a pretty nice bonus if we could somehow get enough return to justify spending more time/resources on a potential sequel or another product. It's hard enough making time for this kind of development as it is, and without some kind of funding, it's pretty much impossible for a two man team to make anything as ambitious as we'd really like it to be.
 
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Sure. Make it playable in a 800x600 window in windows, keep the graphics simple and clear but colorfull. Make it challenging enough and add some nice midi music. Keep useless things like animations, sounds and textures to the bare minimum. That way you'll have the chance to finish it sometime.
There are some great opensource tools that would be very handy for an aspiring game developer - but you'd propably know this by now.
You absolutely need to keep it old-school.
Consider also making it single character, that way it will be much simpler to implement. of course, a 3-4 character party would obviosly be very nice.
Tons of dungeons & puzzles. Don't worry too much about dialogue or choices & concequenses and other modernday-rpg crap. No romances or party banter.
Traps, kick-ass monsters, buying and selling items, complex stat/skill system.

And there you have it. Start programming already :D
Good luck!

May I ask which programming language, compiler and libraries (if any) you're using?

There's a book that might prove particularly usefull for this kinda thing:
http://www.amazon.com/Structures-Programmers-Premier-Press-Development/dp/1931841942
 
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We're making it for a fixed 1024x768 resolution, but it can already run in a window. It's a compromise, because I don't want to scale graphics up or down and 1024x768 should be possible for the vast majority these days.

But you're absolutely right about the rest, and some things will definitely have to be kept at a minimum. We have no intention of doing stuff we can't do reasonably well, so that's one of our primary concerns. I can do decent static graphics like UI elements and walls/objects - but when it comes to 2D animation, I can't do anything impressive, and in fact only workable at best. So it will be quite limited.

We do have a music guy willing to contribute, but we'll see :)

The strength will (should) be puzzles, story, character building, and things of that nature. It will all depend on how well everything goes, but we're hopeful so far.

We're developing it using Visual Studio (C# and XNA), which is an extremely powerful environment and many things are made much easier.

It's good to know there are still people interested in this kind of game :)

*edit* Oh, and it's going to be single character only.
 
Allright. Sounds good.
It might be a good idea to complete the first game as soon as possible and release it as freeware. This way you would build up your reputation as well as your skills and experience. Then start working on a sequel/prequel or whatever and make that shareware for example.
 
DungeonMaster and Eye of the Beholder were my first 3D rpg after playing the old SSI AD&D games and i loved them. So please stay us informed about your project. btw: This kind of engine has had a revival at the mobile gaming, ID for example made "orks&elves" with it.
 
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I've pretty much finalized the character system, but I've yet to add all the skills and powers. I do have what I call Martial skills done, and I have a pretty good idea of how the other categories should look. It's a system I've thought about for a few years, and I've never really taken the time to finalize my decisions. The core idea remains the same, but I have to make changes to suit this particular game and certain powers are unlikely to make it in. I need to simplify stuff to have any hope of getting it done :)

Beyond that, I've made progress on the Character Creation UI, and I now have a look that I'm happy with. Still a lot of work left on it, but it's looking pretty good so far.

I'm still waiting for my brother to finish the data structure (he's only had a couple of days), so we can proceed with implementing it and actually using it in the code. The next step from there will be to build a sample dungeon (a very small and rather barren dungeon I've designed) so we can start adding player movement and interaction.

Unfortunately he doesn't have much time, and he's usually not as enthusiastic as I am about getting things done, so I fear I might end up making most of the code myself - which will be extremely challenging - but fortunately there are a ton of resources available for C#/XNA on the net. I've done a few things in this environment before, but I tend to forget things after a few weeks. I do have some of my old projects lying around, so I'll have to update myself :)

I'll probably mess around with the combat system today. I have some good ideas (or so I think), and as soon as I have something solid on paper (in Word, actually) I'll start making a test WinForm application to try out the system.
 
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Yeah, I have that on my harddisk as we speak ;)

I did a bunch of research, testing most games I could remember of this genre, including:

Dungeon Master
Dungeon Master Java
Dungeon Master Return to Chaos
Captive
Eye of the Beholder
Anvil of Dawn
Xenomorph
Lands of Lore

---

I wanted to check out how they handled the layout and there are differences. But they mostly seem to handle the drawing of rooms in similar ways.

Anvil of Dawn and Lands of Lore both simulate "smooth movement" by what appears to be scaling of the wall/floor images. With XNA, I actually think I could do something like that, but I'm not sure it will look right. I never cared much for it myself, and actually I remember disabling it in Lands of Lore as I found it distracting.

I'm currently brushing up on my coding and have made an extremely simple WinForm application that can save and load a few statistics - as a first step towards the character generator. I will eventually do it in XNA and not WinForms, because I want my own look and feel to it, and I don't need windows GUI really. There will be some problems with text because XNA doesn't handle that kind of thing very well. I'll have to write a custom key intepreter to actually read simple inputs like when the player enters his character name. Fortunately, that's about the only text input I will ever need from the player, so :)
 
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I love this kind of games, so good luck with your project.
 
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Take a look at some of the dungeon crawlers for the DS ... and things like Mazes of Fate for the GBA. That shows things that do OK for a modern audience as well.
 
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I love the same type game as well. Keep us updated. And if you go commercial, I'll try to buy, if possible.

I'm working on something similar myself, but am hampered by a lack of time and being devoid of artistic skill. I'm not even attempting to leap the music hurdle right now.
 
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oh yeah, i just bought The Quest for Iphone, which is all 90 deg movement old school rpg, it's the most expensive app Ive bought so far. The reviews of it are pretty much unanimously good, everyone likes it and lots of people are playing it.

There's a demand for this sort of game (seems like portable interfaces really take off) still, it's all about reaching the right people!
 
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They just updated it last week with some new stuff. Cool game.
 
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oh yeah, i just bought The Quest for Iphone, which is all 90 deg movement old school rpg, it's the most expensive app Ive bought so far. The reviews of it are pretty much unanimously good, everyone likes it and lots of people are playing it.

There's a demand for this sort of game (seems like portable interfaces really take off) still, it's all about reaching the right people!

They just updated it last week with some new stuff. Cool game.

Agreed, both series, Legacy & The Quest are very good games. They are also availble for the PC. I have all the games by the developers in both series. I also have the majority of free expansions/worlds available on the developers site, made by people using the editors available for both series.

You read that right, Redshift Games have Editors for both their series available. All you have to do is contact them and make the request. The editors allow you to make your own expansions/worlds, many of which are then sold by those who made them. Redshift also makes some of them available to the community for free download.

While made for the PDA market & casual gamer, there's much to like here for the old school RPGer. I think Redshift could make a pretty decent full fledged RPG for the PC given the inclination and the chance.

If you're playing any of these games or decide to give them a try there's lots of help available here: 1src Forums

Ubbax
"So, are we talking about traditional gamers or the infamous new generation that can't read, is confused by numbers, and likes anything shiny? - Interview by Vault Dweller

Redshift states that Legacy will not run full screen on the PC but here's what it looks like running on the desktop of my 22 1/2 " CRT Monitor:
 

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One of the things that made those games so good were the treasure that you could use to upgrade your stats. I would focus more on magic items and treasure, and less on graphics and 'smooth transition' between nodes.

I always liked it when the inventory objects and items were large and well drawn, and the stats were on the same screen so you could arm/change out things, and compare items to see which ones benefited your character the most. I always hate it when a game doesn't show you the change in stats from magical items on one screen, and makes you go to a separate stats screen to see what has changed.

Black Crypt was the best of all of those games, IMO. Simple but really well done. Another node based game you didn't list that was pretty good, and came kind of late was 'Dungeon Hack' by Dreamforge. Replayability was a unique feature, because each time the dungeon was generated randomly, but it wasn't as good as Beholder/Black Crypt/Anvil of Dawn/Dungeon Master.

Best of luck on the project!
 
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One of the things that made those games so good were the treasure that you could use to upgrade your stats. I would focus more on magic items and treasure, and less on graphics and 'smooth transition' between nodes.

I always liked it when the inventory objects and items were large and well drawn, and the stats were on the same screen so you could arm/change out things, and compare items to see which ones benefited your character the most. I always hate it when a game doesn't show you the change in stats from magical items on one screen, and makes you go to a separate stats screen to see what has changed.

Black Crypt was the best of all of those games, IMO. Simple but really well done. Another node based game you didn't list that was pretty good, and came kind of late was 'Dungeon Hack' by Dreamforge. Replayability was a unique feature, because each time the dungeon was generated randomly, but it wasn't as good as Beholder/Black Crypt/Anvil of Dawn/Dungeon Master.

Best of luck on the project!

Black Crypt is my favorite as well, with excellent level design and puzzles.

After a looong break - I've actually just started again, and this time I'm doing it with actual objects - as in taking advantage of object oriented language. I'm not exactly a coding genius, but I managed to build myself a level editor and a little engine where you can walk around a simple dungeon.

I'm now working on implementing items and interactive elements, like levers/doors and that sort of thing.

Some day it'll be good enough to release something for you to test out, should you want to :)
 
Black Crypt is my favorite as well, with excellent level design and puzzles.

After a looong break - I've actually just started again, and this time I'm doing it with actual objects - as in taking advantage of object oriented language. I'm not exactly a coding genius, but I managed to build myself a level editor and a little engine where you can walk around a simple dungeon.

I'm now working on implementing items and interactive elements, like levers/doors and that sort of thing.

Some day it'll be good enough to release something for you to test out, should you want to :)

I've beta/alpha tested a boatload of games, and would be happy to give you feedback on what you have going on if you get to that point.

One of the original designers of Black Crypt started a project to port it over to the PC, but the project died for some reason. But, there is a 2 level demo for the PC out there that was a little clunky, but it was fun to play just for old times sake.

Some screenshots from Black Crypt; it's really amazing how good this Amiga game looked considering it played from only 3, 3.5" disks.

http://www.ravengames.com/blackcrypt/screenshots.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Crypt
 
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I've beta/alpha tested a boatload of games, and would be happy to give you feedback on what you have going on if you get to that point.

One of the original designers of Black Crypt started a project to port it over to the PC, but the project died for some reason. But, there is a 2 level demo for the PC out there that was a little clunky, but it was fun to play just for old times sake.

Some screenshots from Black Crypt; it's really amazing how good this Amiga game looked considering it played from only 3, 3.5" disks.

http://www.ravengames.com/blackcrypt/screenshots.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Crypt

Yeah, I was miffed that they dropped that project.

But it runs fine in WinUAE and it's playable. Still more fun than most contemporary "RPGs" :)
 
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