Pandemonium, a mod for Dungeon Master Java

Hi everyone!

I'm developing a mod for Dungeon Master Java with the working title "Pandemonium", and I think I'm finally ready to show some gameplay videos and screenshots. I made some posts about this a couple of months ago, under a different nickname, but decided Polarfox was a better name to use from now on.

It would be interesting to hear what people think about this project, does it look good/ok/bad for a mod that will be free to download (and DM Java is also free), would anyone be interested in playing it, and basically any other random thoughts.

What this mod is about is the following:
I'm replacing all artwork with art made by myself, and use it to create a new dungeon that will be about 30 levels deep, contain about 80 different enemies, hundreds of new items, use about 10 different tilesets, and will have a new storyline. My goal is to make something that feels not just like a mod, but a new game in the DM-clone genre. But the mechanics are the same as in Dungeon Master.

What I try to do, to make it feel like something new, is to create an interesting setting and atmosphere. It's a mix of regular fantasy and Lovecraftian horror. The idea is the following: You control a party of adventurers, who are used to beating up goblins, orcs, and lizardmen, but now they have entered a place where they face something they have never seen before. Soon they realize, they are probably in over their heads, and they can't get out.

The story is about a rescue mission. The prince and only heir to the crown has entered the dungeon together with his party, with the intent of cleansing it from evil (there's a reason for this stupidity explained in the storyline).

When he never returned, the king was of course really upset, and now you have entered this place with the mission to retrieve the prince and his friends alive if possible, and as a secondary objective to rid the place of evil and to find out exactly what this huge dungeon is. (who build it and why, what's its function? It was discovered under the city while expanding the sewers, and none who has entered has ever returned alive.)

I'm not sure when this will be released, but it will probably be finished in a couple of months.
I know a similar game (but made by professionals) called Legend of Grimrock was recently announced, and I don't want to release my mod to too close to their release date, whenever that will be. I don't think competing with them would be a good idea. I hope those guys succeed by the way, and as a fan of the genre, I will probably buy their game on day one.

My artwork look a bit rough around the edges, but I hope people can look past that and enjoy it because of the imagination I put into the visuals. There are some pretty unique enemies and scenery to experience here.

Gameplay clips:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8omhmmDRfTc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrQ224vKI2Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWFfBFEqxkk

So, thoughts?

Screenshots:

I think it looks good for what it is. I HATE Java-based games with a passion, as they always seem to perform like shit and they feel very awkward and clumsy. But that's not on you

I've tried this Dungeon Master clone and I found it very competently done, and I used it for inspiration on how to deal with my own stuff. But it's Java-based and I think it suffers a lot because of it. I don't know what it is with Java and its dependency on having it and its libraries installed - but I don't think I ever played a Java game that felt good.

But your new tilesets and enemies look pretty good, and I'd definitely try it out. I'd personally prefer another engine, but that's a lot of work.

But I like the atmosphere I'm seeing in the videos, and I love Lovecraftian stuff. I'm particularly impressed by your monsters - as they seem very well done in terms of art style and execution. It's one of the areas I personally dread to deal with in my own game - because I know I can't draw bodies worth shit.

The rock area in the second video is not very good, to be honest - though. It's too simplistic and the environment blends together in a way that makes it look too uniform and fake. I'd probably spice it up a bit with some moss or other details.

Your screenshots are VERY dark - but it might just be my screen here at work. The videos are slightly brighter - but I might be concerned if it's intentional. I know a dark setting is nice - but you don't really want people squinting at the screen all the time

Oh, and I think the interface visuals could do with an upgrade - but I guess that's not so important.

Just my two cents. I hope it didn't sound too harsh, and I definitely think you're on to something good. Overall, it's very impressive work - considering the amount of it you're talking about.

Thank you for your suggestions and opinions. The darkness is maybe something I have to adress, it looks good on my monitor, but I think I have a higher brightness than most people. It can be adjusted inside the game, but I'm not sure how good that will look. Will look into it.

Is it too dark for other people too?

I agree about the stony area in video 2. I'll see if I will upgrade it at some point.

What is it about the interface you think needs improvements? Something specific? I'm not sure if I can do it much better.

Polarfox009 said:

Thank you for your suggestions and opinions. The darkness is maybe something I have to adress, it looks good on my monitor, but I think I have a higher brightness than most people. It can be adjusted inside the game, but I'm not sure how good that will look. Will look into it.

Click to expand...

What is it about the interface you think needs improvements? Something specific? I'm not sure if I can do it much better.

Click to expand...

Well, it's not really that important - I suppose. It's just a pet peeve of mine with many indie games. I'm not sure how to describe it, but most indie developers tend to overlook the visual quality of the 2D interface elements - because they just need to be "functional" and nothing more. One of the few "artistic" areas I'm reasonably good at is, specifically, 2D UI art and I always try to have an aesthetically pleasing background/window/font presentation. Just that little something to "hide" that it's an indie game.

I'm not sure how much you can do with this engine - and how much you can change. Personally, I intend to draw my dungeon full screen - and have transparent UI controls. I also use either anti-aliased fonts or "shadowed" fonts with an attractive style. For the "boxes/windows" I tend to just use some simple Bevel effects in Photoshop to give them a more pleasing appearance.

However, I've noticed that very few people seem to really care about these things. I've seen several indie games of a "high caliber" and the vast majority of them have AWFUL interfaces in terms of the aesthetics. Eschalon is one of the few examples of a truly competent UI design. Avadon is also pretty good.

DArtagnan said:

Well, it's not really that important - I suppose. It's just a pet peeve of mine with many indie games. I'm not sure how to describe it, but most indie developers tend to overlook the visual quality of the 2D interface elements - because they just need to be "functional" and nothing more. One of the few "artistic" areas I'm reasonably good at is, specifically, 2D UI art and I always try to have an aesthetically pleasing background/window/font presentation. Just that little something to "hide" that it's an indie game.

I'm not sure how much you can do with this engine - and how much you can change. Personally, I intend to draw my dungeon full screen - and have transparent UI controls. I also use either anti-aliased fonts or "shadowed" fonts with an attractive style. For the "boxes/windows" I tend to just use some simple Bevel effects in Photoshop to give them a more pleasing appearance.

However, I've noticed that very few people seem to really care about these things. I've seen several indie games of a "high caliber" and the vast majority of them have AWFUL interfaces in terms of the aesthetics. Eschalon is one of the few examples of a truly competent UI design. Avadon is also pretty good.

Click to expand...

Most of this I can't do I'm afraid, I'm limited to the engine I'm using, and while it might be possible to change some things about it I don't have the technical skills to do it. Maybe I should have mentioned it in my first post, but I have no knowledge whatsoever in programming. So I'm limited to what the built-in editor in DM Java lets me do (replace art, leveldesigning, changing stats/combat balance for example).

Polarfox009 said:

Most of this I can't do I'm afraid, I'm limited to the engine I'm using, and while it might be possible to change some things about it I don't have the technical skills to do it. Maybe I should have mentioned it in my first post, but I have no knowledge whatsoever in programming. So I'm limited to what the built-in editor in DM Java lets me do (replace art, leveldesigning, changing stats/combat balance for example).

Click to expand...

Fair enough

I don't think you need to worry too much about this. It's just me being obsessive about details.

DArtagnan said:

Fair enough

I don't think you need to worry too much about this. It's just me being obsessive about details.

Click to expand...

Maybe, but your opinions are appreciated
I'm interested in how other people find the brightness-level, I tried to increase the brightness inside the game, but that didn't look good at all, it made everything look washed-out and not sharp enough. Not looking forward to increase the brightness for every individual piece of art manually..

Polarfox009 said:

Maybe, but your opinions are appreciated
I'm interested in how other people find the brightness-level, I tried to increase the brightness inside the game, but that didn't look good at all, it made everything look washed-out and not sharp enough. Not looking forward to increase the brightness for every individual piece of art manually..

Click to expand...

I'll check it when I get home. My home-monitor is pretty good - and I'm sure it will look as it's supposed to look on that one. If it's too dark, I'm sure you can find a guide to deal with brightness as a batch-job if you google it.

I'll get back to you on this

When I look at the screens I posted myself, they're also quite dark on this monitor. So, either my home-monitor is too bright - or this is just a cheap-ass thing at work.

DArtagnan said:

I'll check it when I get home. My home-monitor is pretty good - and I'm sure it will look as it's supposed to look on that one. If it's too dark, I'm sure you can find a guide to deal with brightness as a batch-job if you google it.

I'll get back to you on this

When I look at the screens I posted myself, they're also quite dark on this monitor. So, either my home-monitor is too bright - or this is just a cheap-ass thing at work.

Click to expand...

Ok, let's hope it looks better on your home-monitor. The game is supposed to be pretty dark compared to original Dungeon Master (fits with the horror-theme), but not so much that it gets annoying.

The screens I added earlier looked blurry, so I uploaded them to Imageshack instead, with better quality:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/535/goatdemons.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/199/tentacledhorror.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/827/squidknight.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/714/spectrallich.jpg/

I'm home now….

Checking the screens, they're significantly brighter than at work. I think they look just about right from what I can understand you're going for. So, I don't really think you have to adjust brightness.

DArtagnan said:

I'm home now….

Checking the screens, they're significantly brighter than at work. I think they look just about right from what I can understand you're going for. So, I don't really think you have to adjust brightness.

Click to expand...

That's a relief, thanks Was worried there for a while.

I think your mod looks very good. Esp. the handcrafted monster sprites, very nice.
I hope it has nice puzzles and a good story. Do you have a sample (screen or video) of how dialogs are handled in the game?

One thing i noticed: I don´t know how it is in the original DM-Java, but i find the black background around the gui elements distracting. Maybe there should be a nice handdrawn frame to put everything together?

vidder said:

I think your mod looks very good. Esp. the handcrafted monster sprites, very nice.
I hope it has nice puzzles and a good story. Do you have a sample (screen or video) of how dialogs are handled in the game?

One thing i noticed: I don´t know how it is in the original DM-Java, but i find the black background around the gui elements distracting. Maybe there should be a nice handdrawn frame to put everything together?

Click to expand...

Thank you. It will have lots of puzzles, hopefully good ones, but it's limited by what you can do with a clone of Dungeon Master. There will be puzzles involving pressure plates, switches, illusionary walls, and teleporters for example. And some riddles (guess what item you should place in the alcove). That sort of thing.

I'm afraid there will be very little dialogue in the game, partly because I can't write well in english, but I plan to have some of it at least. Some of the story will be explained on scrolls you find, some of it will be written on walls, and some will just be shown to you in the game (example: you realize what happened to character x, when she attacks you as one of the ghouls).

It's possible to add events in the editor. When you step on a specific square a picture will be shown, and you can select from several choices (or dialogue options), and depending on what you selected, another picture will be shown. Or that's how I think it works, I haven't started messing around with it yet.

The mod will not have a lot of story, but I will try to make it effective, even if it's told by few words.

It's not possible to add a large background frame, what you see are several small squares repeated over and over. I tried to not make it distracting, and I don't think it is, but if most people disagree with me, I might change it.