Dugoma Clone

Lesser known clone projects or isolated news items about rare or unusual clones.
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Gambit37
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Re: Dugoma Clone

Post by Gambit37 »

I totally understand how you feel, I suffer with the same issues. Don't worry about things, just go at your own pace. :)
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Erik Bauer
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Re: Dugoma Clone

Post by Erik Bauer »

Look, I'm a software developer myself... and doing it as my daily job i can really understand what you say: users (customers, in my case) always complain and want a little thing different from your analysis...



Have a nice relax, take your time and let your mind to return hungry for duogma coding!
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Re: Dugoma Clone

Post by Hajo »

Thanks Erik and Gambit.

This depression and overall sensitivity stopped too many of my projects. Sometime last year I decided to pick up a few of the old open threads and weave them forth. Things were going quite fine for a while, but late winter is a dangerous time, it seems the cold and darkness depletes my reserves of power and also happiness ... autumn this year was better than expected, also early winter I was surprised how many happy days there still were.

Then came a period of instability, and just recently an almost three week period of feeling very down, with occasional "I want out" energy spikes. It helps to know about the problems, but sometimes I'm just too much down, to do more than try to explain and wait it out. On good days it is much easier to deal with criticism, ideas and suggestions in a positive way, to direct them into productive discussions and actions, but on bad days I lack such skill completely.

Usually it takes a while in spring to feel better again despite sun and warmer weather, but so far each year was this way, that towards summer I felt much better. So I hope it will be this way, this year, too.

Some day I hope to be stable enough again to collaborate with other people. In this forum there are so many DM related projects going, and I want to see if there are chances for more cooperative work, at least synergies between projects.

Two small things, which I need to do, and which I hope to get done once I feel better again, are to decide on a representation of doors in my program structure, and to have a flood fill algorithm to find the area between closed by doors. This will be important to place keys in the same area where the player starts, so they can open the doors once the keys are found. Both tasks are not very difficult, I even had done that for an older project already, but right now it really blocks me. I want to keep the idea that the dungeon is different each time the game is started, and that puzzles and pattern are generated procedurally. Although I think DM had really good puzzles because they were carefully designed by hand, but after the first or second playthrough one knew most of the secrets.

Flood fill should take maybe 15 minutes, and the doors, once decided, like 10, so I do not really understand myself what is the problem there.

Thanks again for the understanding, and I hope to be back with better news soon.
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Re: Dugoma Clone

Post by Bit »

Was a long winter, just wait what the first sun brings.
I also have to jump over some fences until I'm ready to try to apply my drawing routines to CSBwin.
I reached a point to catch a breath. Urgently needed because I'm pretty exhausted. Time for a break and play something.
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Erik Bauer
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Re: Dugoma Clone

Post by Erik Bauer »

@Hajo
Winter... cold winter. Some years, like this one, it has a similar effect to me too.
I'm a Game Master of a roleplaying group of friends and I do it since '96. But lately, I'm feeling discouraged most of the time we play, like I have not enough energy or enthusiasm to do it properly, and I feel the quality of my games goes down because of this.
Usually there are three kind of cures for that disease:

- I take one or two sessions break, taking time to relax, stop playing a bit and reorder my ideas
- I start to gamemaster a completely different game to let my brain find new enthusiasm for something new
- I force myself to write something really really good and GM it as if it was my last game ever... the quality that sprouts out of it usually ignites my passion again for a good number of months.

But at the end all comes to how my real life is going and how many energy reserves I do have in that moment.
All that to say that you're not alone in this, happens to almost anyone and I perfectly see your point: you just need to find out what is needed to renew your energies and enthuse you again.

Returning to your project, I feel myself than when I program something "visual", that has a practical output on the screen, it returns me back most energy and turns on in me the will of continue programming, no matter how much tired I am... maybe you could try to focus on some visual aspects of your project, if you feel to do it.
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Re: Dugoma Clone

Post by Hajo »

The visual side of the project sure is the most motivating. Once I had started to make a tileset for a roguelike, Angband, but in the end I got bored of playing Angband before I finished the tileset ;)

I'll let the programming rest for a while, maybe development altogether, and try to be more active in forums, also with creative work - photography and digital image manipulation that would be. And, as in the "snow" thread already reported it becomes warmer and outdoor activities more suitable. So I'm looking forward to next weekend to do some "real" work - in contrast to the "artificial" work with computers. Will be good :)
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Re: Dugoma Clone

Post by Hajo »

I found a fairly efficient way how to flip images in Java and did some tests, which looked quite promising. Overall it should almost halve the size of the images on disk, and also halve the loading times. Also it fixes a display problem that had annoyed me in the former incarnation of the project.

I saw a project named "Underhall", which has similar graphics, and uses simple billboard type sprites for monsters, and most likely also the items. I'll see if I want to make use of this approach, too. If I want to have monsters in the game as enemies, I'll need a solution of some sort, but maybe I try very simple geometric shapes instead - there are a few things like mushrooms, floating eyes, bugs/beetles, which can be easily approximated with a few shapes.

Overall the project now looks more feasible again, but there are still quite some open questions. Since I'm no good as game designer, I will now try to make it a traditional dungeon crawl if I can. There are plenty of example ideas existing, that I can mix and expand upon. I'm much better at mixing and developing ideas further, than at coming up with genuinely new concepts. Like I'd need for a puzzle game.
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Re: Dugoma Clone

Post by Hajo »

I found another "solution" to the problem of displaying enemies. It's simple: Do not display enemies.

I remembered Bards Tale on the Atari ST, which just showed the dungeon, but no enemies. A later game which name I do not remember showed just a generic ghost-like image for locations where enemies waited. This is simple enough that I can do it in Dugoma, too.

The actual combat was held on a tabular screen, just stating "You encounter a group 5 wolves and 2 hill orcs", and combat was mostly by pressing buttons, and selecting spells on this tabular screen. It didn't showing any visual effects just stated the outcome, like this:

You cast fire storm.
1 wolf is fried for 10 points of damage.
2 wolves are fried for 8 points of damage.
...


This is a bit boring, but simple enough so that I can do it. And it worked in the old games. So I have some hope it will work here, too. So if he afore mentioned billboard solution for enemies still causes too many problems, I'll take another step back and only use a generic placeholder, or no graphics at all, and just a "random encounter" screen for combat.
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Re: Dugoma Clone

Post by Gambit37 »

Not that I'd want to put you off or anything, but for me that would kill the gameplay stone dead. Using our imagination for creatures was fine 20-30 years ago, but today I'd at least expect to see some accurate representation of what I'm up against, even if it's just a single facing sprite. As you're going for high quality graphics in the rest of the game, it seems an odd choice to not bother with creature images?
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Re: Dugoma Clone

Post by Hajo »

Well, I just have very bad skills at modeling or painting animals and humans. Plants are so-so. Architecture and furniture is much easier for me.

So the question was, let it be, since I can't do it, or do something that is simple enough that I can continue. At the moment I decided to continue with what I can do, since I did not want to let the project die just so.

I still can add images later, but I'm afraid this will sound like a promise, and particularly one that I cannot keep, unless someone helps me with monster images. So I better do say the plan is to go with simple placeholder or no images, since this is what i can do.

I'm well aware that I lose a some players this way, maybe many. I've been thinking some weeks about it, and decided I continue this thing my way, on a level that I can do. I'm sorry to be so harsh, but it is the only option for me. Either I give up, or simplify it so much that I can do it. It's a hobby project after all, and it should be easy and fun. Maybe this forum is the wrong place to talk about the project, since it seems to become more of a Bards Tale style project than a Dungeon Master style project. I thought I post here again, to let you know what is happening.

I'm sorry to disappoint. But just because I can make nice walls, it doesn't mean I am a good painter or artists at all :(

Edit: I forgot to say, that very likely there will not be item images either, since those have about the same problem as monsters. The current plan is to get items only through combat and from containers, and both will have their own UIs to handle access to the items, where I can use lists and texts, and if needed small iconic symbols, which are actually in reach of my skills.

I assume I could make items on a similar level of quality as the walls, but it just takes too long. I once had a project that I worked on 7 years till a bad burnout. I must avoid this, and therefore look for ways to keep things simple and swift. If I'd plan to make money from a project, I sure would have to do differently, and try to be on par with other products of today. For a project that I do just for fun, I do not think I have to.

Again, I'm sorry. But, despite all wishes of mine to do things that are liked by others, I must tailor them so I can do them without getting into the burnout problem again, and this also means to be more adamant in saying "no" to requests which cause too much work for me.
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Re: Dugoma Clone

Post by Gambit37 »

No need to explain or justify -- I totally understand and it's your game at the end of the day, you can do what you want with it. I was just making the observation that not having any creature images at all was perhaps a missed opportunity. I probably wored my message a bit harshly and for that I'm sorry.

You could do what I was doing on my now abandoned project for RTC: Grab images from somewhere like Cool Mini Or Not -- since you're using placeholders, you could simply just cut out the front view of a figure and use that?
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Re: Dugoma Clone

Post by Hajo »

Yesterday I was thinking about coding a routine that will read a single PNG image, stretch and shade it accordingly, to use it as an item or monster. But after thinking for a while, something came to my mind too - I have at least twice made game "engines" by adding feature upon feature, and in the end, after years of work, I still had no game, just a collection of code and graphics.

Then I decided against writing the code and looking for images.

I felt afraid I'll go the same path again, add features and prettify things, and still not make a game. Well, I can't promise I actually will do better this time, but I hope that if I simplify things sufficiently I'll get somewhere. At the moment the UI sketches look quite promising, and I can go fairly directly into the design of enemies and items. There will be a few questions about inventory management and such, maybe also shops, that I'll post in the development forum. But at the moment I'm happy that the project is alive again, and I feel confident that solutions work sufficiently well.

I can understand the wish for "more", but I made too much vaporware, so I want to be more careful this time.
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Re: Dugoma Clone

Post by Hajo »

Now that I have the technical questions cleared, it's urgently time to decide about a theme for the game. For this type of RPG, there seem to be a few options:

- Escape from the dungeon.
- Rescue someone or something.
- Search for a secret place, or try to reveal a secret in general.

Currently the last one looks the most appealing to me. I'm leaning towards a fixed world this time, which lowers the replay value, but is easier to do, and I hope to finally get an RPG project done.
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Re: Dugoma Clone

Post by Beastman666 »

What about a combination of all three ;-) Search for a secret prison and rescue the princess, then escort her back out of the dungeon preferably with the still living beauty at your side...she can even be a helpful "party member) and not just inventory...
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Re: Dugoma Clone

Post by Hajo »

At the moment I favor the idea of finding the lair of a big old dragon, who is in possession of something that the player wants. Slaying the dragon might not be the best idea, though - must see how to do it in detail. Basically that means to go for the "rescue something" cliche, which includes searching for the dragons lair, and later to get out again safely.

More news:

I've been trying to sketch up a combat panel for Dugoma:

http://www.funkelwerk.de/data/dugoma/pa ... review.png

The enemy will be displayed with a portrait and a description text. Maybe I'll have to skip the portrait, if I can't get good graphics. Below the portrait and the description there will be a log of the combat (to the left) and the available actions (to the right).

Should be pretty straightforward.

Mixed encounters will not be possible with this interface, since portrait and description can only display one sort of enemy. I don't think this is a big problems, and finally mixed encounters could still be done this way, just with different usages of portrait and description areas if really needed.
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Re: Dugoma Clone

Post by Hajo »

It seems I'll need items on the floor, although for a while I had hope to find solutions without. But I want some items to be found in the dungeon, and also items to interact with the environment, which requires them to be dropped in places.

I think I can make a number of simple items, which should do in the game. Made a sword now, and I can make a few variants from that, like a long sword, dagger, broad sword and such without too much additional effort. Keys and coins I have, too. Armor will be the most difficult thing to make, at least in the past I had big troubles with armor.

http://www.funkelwerk.de/data/dugoma/sword_preview.jpg

I wanted a more shiny sword, but it didn't work out. So this must do.
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Re: Dugoma Clone

Post by Hajo »

Loading and saving a dungeon with all items in it works now. Also I have most of the needed editor functions in place, so I can start modeling a first dungeon floor now. Seems like the real work is starting now ...

Since the big swords were not looking good in the former inventory layout, I decided to try a vertically stacked inventory view. This seems to be a quite nice solution and works well so far.

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Re: Dugoma Clone

Post by Gambit37 »

Looking good so far, it's quite cool to see something taking shape like this :) A small observation -- can you make the items anti-aliased using alpha masks -- those hard edges in the inventory are a bit crispy ;-)
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Re: Dugoma Clone

Post by Hajo »

Was a big step for me to have a persistent dungeon that I can edit, save, and later load again :)

The alpha blending should be possible, the system supports that. Should be easy enough, and I'll put it on my list. Thanks for the suggestion!

I think the next item that I'll make are flasks. I should have an older template to use. Hopefully it will be easy enough to adapt.

Edit: Flasks go well so far, and I found some more of old scene files that I already had forgotten and which should be similarly easy to convert. At least gems can be directly used, flowerpots were a more questionable find, but fountains will be good, although those will need ages to render, due to being very detailed. So I'll let those be till late in development.

What bugs me most currently is the question of wall texts. I think I'll do some sort of blackboard or rock slate image, and bring the text onto that when viewed from front. I want to avoid side wall text rendering, that's why I hope the board/slate will be enough of a hint "here be text" and once faced directly, one can read it. Must see how that goes.
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Re: Dugoma Clone

Post by Lord_BoNes »

Why the avoidance of "side-viewed wall text"? What did it ever do to you? :P
Seriously though, couldn't you just have a generic image for each line/character of text, like RTC does? Or is it that you're trying to keep the overhead down as much as possible?
 
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Re: Dugoma Clone

Post by Hajo »

Currently I want to keep things as simple as possible. At time options open up once the project has progressed further, which make things easy that seemed difficult at first. Maybe I should say "not now" instead of "not", but it seems easier for me to put a few features aside unless they are really needed.

First I'll try the board + text idea, if I find ways for unreadable scribbles on the side walls, I'll do that too. But I do not want to spend much time on research now.

Something that seemed more important at the time, was to have good item descriptions in this game. Also I hope for many interesting item mods, so I decided to give item information a panel of it's own, which will be shown instead of the dungeon view when inspecting items:

http://www.funkelwerk.de/data/dugoma/pa ... ection.png

Writing good item descriptions turned out harder than it seemed at first, and at the moment I wonder if creating good graphics takes about the same time than writing good texts. I guess there are no real shortcuts in game development ...
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Re: Dugoma Clone

Post by Lord_BoNes »

Like the description! It really fits.
Hajo wrote:...but it seems easier for me to put a few features aside unless they are really needed.
Given that I'm also working on an engine of m own, I fully understand what you meant here. If it can wait... then let it wait, until it can't wait anymore... else, wait a while and repeat :P
 
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Re: Dugoma Clone

Post by Hajo »

I've been working on flasks for potions, and they turned out quite nicely:

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Re: Dugoma Clone

Post by Hajo »

There passed some time now, and I tried to make up my mind, what to do with this project.

I had to realize I'm not a game designer. This is independent from this project and has been an ongoing problem for my game related projects since a while. I think I finally want to accept it, and look for projects that fit better to my skills. Also, I like to explore new things, but seldom carry these experiments further than to the point where I learned what I wanted to learn. So in general, long lasting project do not fit me, since soon I'll want to move on to new grounds.

I now know fairly well how to make pseudo 3D dungeons from tiled images, also what works well in this approach and what is hard or close to impossible to do. So it's been good.

I'm sorry if I have to disappoint. But I made the mistake once to push a project forward way beyond the point where I enjoyed it, and I do not want to do that again. Dugoma has been a good and interesting experience though, so I don't regret having worked on it.

A thing that made it easier for me to make this decision is the fact that there are good DM clones in work, also there seems to be a big repository of custom dungeons. So there is no need to make another clone, it's being done already. Might sound odd, but I'd feel more responsible for continuing if this was the only project that gives hope for a DM revive, but there are other and most likely also better options already, so I can quit without causing harm.

Having said that I want to send praises to all the DM clone makers, and the Dungeon crafters who work so steadily and skillfully on their projects! I'll stay and watch these, also try to help where I feel fit to help.
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Re: Dugoma Clone

Post by ian_scho »

Simply put - good luck in whatever you put your mind to!
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Re: Dugoma Clone

Post by Gambit37 »

Hello Hajo. I totally understand your point of view: a personal project has to first and foremost make the creator happy, and if it's not what you want to do, then you are right to stop. I wish you good luck with whatever project you decided to work on next :)
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Re: Dugoma Clone

Post by Hajo »

Thanks :)

I think I'll try to move from game development to tool development. I want to stay in the field of RPG projects, though. I have a few things in work, but I don't know how useful those are. At the moment I think they are more toys than tools. I'll post pointers when I think I have something that can help with DM clone development.

So far it's been fairly entertaining to work on these tools, so it's been good :)
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