Dungeon Master Forum

Some news about the project.
Everything is working as programmed.
It's time to implement interactions.
- Way : ok
- Obstacle : ok
- Push door :ok
- Locked ; to do
- Code : ok
- Merlin : to do
- Ennemi : to do
- Friend : to do
- Regen : to do
- Teleporter : to d
- Skin: to do
- Hero : to do

This is a view of the game embedded editor :

I already made push doors, and riddle doors, now I'm attempting to program key locked doors.
The place holder graphic for the doors will be a skull door
This one :



And of course, a skull key:

have you uplaoded this to any website for a techdemo at the moment? like vercel or so? would be nice to have a look

Hello ! At this moment, the project if 5 months old and 730 code lignes length. Even if I plan to keep it under 1000 code lines, I think it is too soon to put something online.

Any way, when a techdemo access will be disponible I will put it on http://dungeonmasterspace.free.fr/ witch is the dedicated website that will last for the years to come, as dmweb because it is the same host. I will announce it here.

When doing a game the main interest is to build an editor that will authorise a lot of interactions with complex situations modelisations. So at the same time I implement stuff and modify it to be funky.

Stay tuned

only 730lines of code.. i feel ashamed I just uploaded my code to github.. its more than 750 lines

Don't ! A game engine is somehow easier to program. Same code for many situations with only some flags changed, and, it is a sort of challenge also

Things are going well.

I did the "locked door" mechanism with many variants to modelize : Locked doors of course but also NPC, places or objets that could deliver graphics, message, sound, objects, exige or change change player skin. With this you could :
- open a door with its key.
- find an object to broke a vase (door, wall...) containing another object, with vase staying broken.
- offer a NPC an object and get another object or a message in reward.
- obtain access, message or an object from NPC only if you are wearing the good skin !

To do :
- Moving monsters ; giving or taking vitals.
- stats modifiers objects or png or place (negative or positive value).
- stats with role playing simple gestion of main vitals that will increase with experience.

Player death :
What do you think of this dying procedure for player : If stats are to low, player will lost their corpse and return to ghost. His goods will be disabled until he finds another body to reincarnate. I do not like the idea of letting all the stuff lay on the floor like in DM.

Before this, I will post a techdemo. I don't know when.

I am surprised by the many visits this post get. May be the whole post should be in another more accessible thread.
Thank you.

This week I did the rewriting of the locked door model, with the possibility for the future to do a persistant world. At this point of the game, all doors are self closing and objects are re-spawning for debugging purpose, and easy movements. Once the final game done, the world will be persistant.

I did a lot of bug testing, erased portion of code that were doing nothing (!) or doing two time the same function.

The game loading was improved, allowing player to load a previous game saved file from whatever support media he wants.

To do :
- various obstacle models with functions,
- add objects owned and skin wearing in the saved game file.
- moving items and monsters,
- role playing system with vitals.

The torch is a master object in DM. I did my own but that was difficult !

That's OK, teleportation stuff is done. Once on a case with a teleport device, the player clicks on it to use it. I choose not to teleport automatically the player. The engine could even display a text on the arrival for the narrative point of the game story. Even a classic door could be a teleporter. This allow the game maker to program several doors with "Choose a door, choose your fate" statement !

Anyone that played DM remember the riddles and puzzles.

I planned to make puzzles to pass some special doors with modular html pages containing one puzzle that the game engine could load like in the picture. When the player solve the puzzle, the door opens.

This means that the modular puzzle has to communicate with the parent page. Until now, it was easy to read and modify a parent value from the child. Until now. There are error in the last builds of the main navigators. Certainly because those Technics are going to be deprecated.

So I used another one, a very new one : localStorage, and that did the trick.

I just have to add a line in the solved child puzzle, this line : localStorage.setItem("go", 0); and the door opens. This means me an anyone could write puzzle in the future (any idea ?).

Next things to do : the skin system and the rpg system with moving monsters.

Thank you for your support (so many view for this project, amazing...).

May be it"s easier to understand with this screen cap

Hello.
This week and may be the previous I was really busy moving for a new home so I did not worked so much on the game.
Anyway these are the last dev news :
Did the skin stuff : a case can now :
- display a change skin button to incarnate a pictured character.
- force a discrete skin change
- Block the way until the player will have the good skin (ex a fireman suit to walk through the fire).

Next things to do :
- add a value property to cases, monsters and objects for the rpg system.
- Do the moving monsters stuff.

Need some advice :
The characters that the player will incarnate may have some vitals properties, I am wondering witch I could implement ?? I hope to have the minimum required properties possible (1-10).

Good WE

Introduction to the game play.

Having a good game play for a video game is like having a good single for a record. There is no absolute recipes. DM the game had an original gameplay where everything was created almost from scratch by talented coders.

But some things do not fit for me : the death of the player, when all the cast is dead and you have to reload a saved game. It's frustrating. We, old gamers had no choice and maybe we had more patience than today players.

So I just implemented the life value in the game. Wen the game starts the player is a ghost. He has to discover a grave to reincarnate a character :
- As a ghost he has no access to inventory, cannot take an object, nor open a door. But he cannot be killed by monsters, so he can explore the place and note the traps for later,
- As a character, he has access to most of the places, except the one that need a special character. He can have an inventory and pick objects, use switches, open doors, break stuff and find objects, teleport etc. But he can be killed (and cured in some places).

When he is killed, he reverts to a ghost and lost his access to inventory. He has to find another corpse to retrieve the object that are not abandoned on the floor.

To improve the gameplay and give little goals, there was some special objects in DM, like the firestaff and the skull key.

I plan to make some :
- a key that could open every door,
- a special map that can teleport you where ever you want,
- a simple map,
- a bag to put objects,

The engine already can manage those things.

Next to do : moving stuff, weapons (yes I forget them completely !)

How weapons can be created : in think to write the weapon power into its file name like this : "sword-100.png". Where 100 is the weapon power.

About the techdemo, I don't know if a should do it soon or when the engine would be finished.

I'll do a beta testers call in the near future, in order to have just some people to write bug list because it would be too much time consuming to make an open demo.



Player being hit by a monster.

Hello !

While the work is becoming close to completion with 926 lines of code /1000 (that means I only get 74 lines to write the moving monsters) I will need in the near future some people to test the game engine (not the playable game with story and all the stuff of course).

I already set a portal at http://dungeonmasterspace.free.fr/

I will ask here for some help and give invitation codes to the 10 first persons in private messages. Why 10, because I can't handle much more than 10 persons testing reports and advices.

All of this only once the closed beta will be available, I hope for the end of April.

Thanks.

I was not really happy with the entrance picture for the coming techdemo so I updated it, and did some torch animation too
Here :
http://dungeonmasterspace.free.fr/

How many interested people ? I don't know. I put a visit counter in the future demo entrance page. (No pub or data sniffing).
As usual the url is (and will remain) : http://dungeonmasterspace.free.fr/

I am on the moving monster stuff. I will use this redone mushroom old friend as model. Off course the game engine will add anti aliasing to the sprite.

It was easier than I thought It will be

The monsters can now attack the player, follow him and attack again when the player becomes reachable again, with a moving sound or an attack sound. I created a little room for testing and even only 3 mushrooms in the 6x6 room is a challenge because they move and block the way. They will follow in rooms and corridors but do not cross the doors, so I can assume they are restricted to the area they were pasted in.

Monsters will ignore the player in ghost state, so the player can explorer (but not interact) the return with a corporal character yo move on.

The total lines of code is 966. That means some place for the remaining stuff to do : weapons.

I would like to use the original moving monsters sound found in some version of Dungeon master(Amiga may be). But I do not find it.

Thank you for following the making of this game engine.

give me a mail and i can send you all sounds extracted fo the 3.6 dungeonmaster.

Really cool, thank you.

I'm doing the weapons gestion for the game engine. Every object can now have a power in % to be used upon anything that have a resistance property. So you can fight monsters of even doors.

At this point of programming, the power of an item is in its file name, so "sword.50.png" will have a 50 hit points. The monster or door or wall resistance is set by the edition module in game.

To continue, I will need an animation for death or break of an opponent. The one in DM (the black fog stuff) is cool and may be used, if someone had it, I would be pleased to receive and reuse this graphic.



-= Some weapons have numbers to indicate,their power. =-

Same with more visible font color.

Yesss...
After 7 months of intense (lazy programming, the game engine is done. Everything is working as expected, there are some bugs but none that can be frustrating for the player.
Because Im an old coder, I like to factorize my work at the maximum to get the minimum line count :this is it : 1000 lines for the whole game engine ! From now I stop counting.
I would probably not have done it without AI graphics, because graphics are for me a strong motivation. I used all of them.

What next :
I'm witting with the engine a global presentation technical demo. It will be a closed beta for the engine only.
Once online, I will publish the link to invitation entry and ask for people that want to try it.
They will receive the code in PM.
People that supported & helped me will not have to ask, they are my guests.

Then :
Let's make the game with a modular scenario so it can be played and developed in the same time. May be alone, may be with a team, I don't know yet. I will depends how much peaple will like it or willlike to be envolved.

Greatings :
- ChristopheF : for hosting the page project and support,
- Cycl0ne : for help and support.

Starting closed beta testing this WE.

If you want to participe at the game closed beta test , just send me a private message asking for an early access and you will receive before the end of this week an invitation code with instructions !

See you there very soon

Hello !

After 6 months of development, I am opening the technical demo to everyone on this forum.

Some people reported some bugs. Some were fixed for the open beta, other will be in the first version of the game engine. There are finally very few bugs.

Everybody can now try the engine.

Remembrer this is just a technical demo. The final product will be different. Many options thar are playable in the beta will be earnable things later.
I just used the engine to modelize some situations but many more are possible that are not in the demo.

URL is : http://dungeonmasterspace.free.fr/index.html
Invitation code is : 1609

You may find in game my mail to share your thoughts about the game with me.

Enjoy !

Well done on reaching this goal. It's not easy to create a project like this and I admire your perseverance. I don't have the time to try it out but hopefully others will join your beta test and help you make it as good as it can be.

Thank you Gambit37 for you kind message.

May be I did never grow as an adult even if I grew old But DM was my first emotion in game playing. I played it with a friend and felt so much fear in its corridors ! I just wanted to do an update with modern computering.
The code will be active for the 10 years to come, so you could even try it some day.
But the tech demo will change to updated version from time to time , with the same invitation code.

I just updated the last engine version, it removes some buttons (auto map, coordinates, teleport map) You know have to find the items that enable theses functions in the maze. Some bug fixing. Fixed functions to adapt the game to computer or smartphone screen...

I checked your game out. I didn't have much time but enjoyed it.
Thanks for your effort. I hope to find time (and take the time) to play around with it later.

Ok ! Thank you for your message.