Dungeon Master Forum

Beowuuf is right on how we've been working on it. Cowsmo has also been doing some of the building on the map.

The Engine is called PonyExpress, the game Cowsmo has in it... besides Overhead DM.. ODM? (since people love TLA DM games).

Pronounced ODiuM?... I love it!

You might get sued by the cinema giants though....

Doesn't that mean "smelly"?

Odio means 'hate', in Spanish, and I use it a lot
I didn't know that there was an equivalent in English, but Odium does indeed exist, quote "Intense hatred or dislike; loathing; abhorrence. "

Whatever happened to this wonderful project???

Thank you for bumping this Gambit.
I didn't even know that someone else has tried something like this. If you've ever heard of "Nethack", then I'm planning on implementing a "Nethack" game style with DM theme for my DM clone.

we killed it. Turned out to be impractical in some aspects.. (player viewable area vs character line of sight, multiple players, some puzzles not compatable with this view) Ryan didn't much like the double tall brick set and I couldn't rectify things easily in a strictly overhead way.. so we just let it die.

"Nethack" is character line-of-sight (that gets remembered, but you can only see hostile creatures within line of sight, and your "memory" can be erased be certain spells and such), there was a multiplayer version, and the DM puzzles would work in this view (it's an almost infinite dungeon too, each level is randomly picked from a list of possibilities).

With my engine, it's also going to be a single tile high wallset (unless a wallset flag is set). I'm planning on making it so that it loads an RTC dungeon, and each dungeon level (it requires an instance of a certain object to be on THAT level, so you can leave out levels for "mechanics only") will be used as the "random level list" I mention above, we'll see how we go... so all you'd have to do is compile an ever-expanding list (that any member can contribute to).

I loved "Nethack", I used to play it for hours, and I recommend it to everyone here (it has a sorta DM'ish feel, but BIGGER). The creatures are from lots of different sources... like Dungeons and Dragons & Lord of the Rings (I once managed to use a scroll of taming on a balrog, now that was a "LOL" moment And the friend who recommended it to me, swears that he once encountered USS Enterprise... which he then kicked... and a "Captain Kirk" & "Mr. Spock" came out, and insta-killed him with a phaser. BLOODY LOL! )

Ah, that's a shame Cows. It did look very promising. I was trawling through some old threads last night and found this, and read through it again. It did look like you'd been making really good progress with it. I guess sometimes we have to let projects die if they can't work how we want.

any interest in this still? Ryan and I have poked at it again and had a talk about perhaps implementing the graphics in a different fashion.. more like the map editor graphics I made way back.. and using multiple tiles to make things work.. etc.. So it may be making a revival. I've redone much of the main tiles required and it's looking a bit like final fantasy in a DM inspired realm

I'd definitely love to see something like this.

If engine design is a problem you could try the engine RPGMaker of another similar pre-made engine and add your own graphics and scripts to get the puzzles you want. It may not be a perfect re-creation of the original DM as a top-down game, but you could make new games featuring the DM world, rules and plots. I think RPGMaker uses a version of Ruby scripting, and some others use other scripting languages. I think one of them uses Javascript, but I don't remember which one ATM. Using one of the engines available on the RPGMaker site could also create a bit of a link between our RPG community and the RPGMaker community as well, drawing more new members in.

Regardless of the route you choose to take, I'd love to see you resume this project and see it through to a finish. Even if you do decide to continue with your own engine, the RPGMaker site does feature other RPG making engines so you could get your engine up on that site as a general top-down view RPG making engine, again attracting more people to this community and getting mush more exposure to your game engine as well.

Wasn't so much an engine problem as design.

Then perhaps using the engine you were designing, but with an original dungeon, one suited for a top-down view. Also, posting your engine on the RPGMaker site would be a great way of getting more exposure for the engine you and Ryan are building, and possibly get the members of both our community and theirs contributing new dungeons, games and graphics contents to the project as well, so more fun for all of us then, and hopefully a little less work for you....

The engine is not very new. But is constantly being worked on. Has to be more than 13 years old at this point and has a large user base. . Just not known to this forum

whoops double post.. my phone must have glitched.. anyway.. now that I'm not on my phone.. I'd like to also note, that RPG maker to my knowledge doesn't allow many people from many locations to login and play/world build at the same time on a server like this. It's kind of like Minecraft.. just made long before minecraft was..

ahh, I see. But it is new to me though.

Erm...but you can log into the same world as someone else in Minecraft - that's what multiplayer is for . Even on single player you can open your game up to LAN so those on local computers can access it.

This can be run from your machine and contain your own world and yet allow you to connect to someone else's world instead. . As this is what he's been doing as far as I know.. while not minecraft.. it's got it's similarities

Oh okay...I suppose Minecraft is only like that if you're using your own comp to host your server, then, which apparently is a big resource hog so is generally not recommended - having a spare comp to host it or using an external host is better.

update, the engine is reading dungeon.dat now.. not all of it.. but it's moving forward. The man is fast

All hail the man!

this is it with some temp images to make it go.. few items from some other RPG for the moment.. with a few of my own.. trying to resolve the design issues still.. pure over top means seeing all sides of walls.. but then creatures become less unique looking from straight down.. and the current size of things makes it hard to define a sense of scale too.. huge keys.. bottles.. etc..

Looks good although it does lose some of the charm of your original designs, as the "3D"ness is lacking. Is there a way of adding some depth to the walls, and also retaining the slight angle of the creatures? I've spent some time looking at RPGMaker sprites in the past and they're not viewed directly overhead, everything actually "looks forward" at an angle (like the temp character you have in the middle).

There's also not enough contrast between the walls and floor, and too much detail in the walls, it's starting to look a bit noisy on the eye and hard to interpret. I think the texture of walls/floor in your original images are much better balanced. I know these are temp images, but just wanted to give some feedback

I agree with you 100% but need a design solution for alcoves and fountains on the sides and back in that case. The floor is missing shadows which make a big difference. . I can post an example later when i'm not on my phone.

I agree with gambit's assessment as well.

The overall look is starting to remind me of the early 90' overhead RPG's from platforms like the SNES and Genesis and their classics like Shining force for the Genesis, and SNES classics like Breath of Fire or Final Fantasy. Although I've never played any of the FF games, that's mainly because I've never had the right platforms to play them, I have played Breath of Fire via an emulator and d/l'ing at rom, and was impressed with that game.

Of course, one issue is the visibility issue (being able to see behind walls, doors and other solid objects. One suggestion I have for that would be to work out a method in your engine of determining if an area is visible or not and hide all areas that are not visible. The way I'd do that is divide the dungeon into "rooms" where each room is defined as an area surrounded by walls and doors. To see into a room your character is not currently in, you would need to create a connection between the 2 rooms by, for example, opening a door or movable wall, which would make the other room become visible and thus be shown on the screen.

the differnce with shadows.. once they are working that is.. As for being behind walls.. we've tried it. we also tried 3D..

Although the difference is very subtle, the 2nd image is definitely a big improvement with the shadows added. They create more contrast between the floor and wall tiles which makes both the walls and floors appear a little less busy.

have you considered dividing dungeons into sections, where each section is on a different screen, So you can't see what's in a new room until you enter it? Or how about having your dungeon being composed of rooms, connected by doorways, passageways and moveable walls? each room could then be made of the standard tiles you currently use. This way you could then have a simple Boolean variable on each room that sets whether the room should be shown or not. Of course, working out a way to define what should be considered a "room" object would be the next step.

on a side note.. if anyone want's to provide some graphics/ideas for Ryan as well.. he's always keen on new art.. if you can come up with a visual solution that's better.. by all means.. I'm just helping out.. but as you know.. I'm completely unreliable

what is Ryan trying to do--is there some concept or plan already?
have you solved some of the issues that arose back then?

- it is interesting, and I have already thought about this and
came up with couple of questions.
If there is need I will post them.. things to consider
(I fear it could litter this thread too much)