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Work in Progress / [WIP] Purple Complex

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29 games
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Posted: 15th Mar 2013 19:32 Edited at: 15th Mar 2013 19:36
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Purple Complex

An arcade style first person tactical shooter.



The aim of Purple Complex is to find the exit point of each level and escape.



Minimum spec:
- 1.66 GHz
- 1 gig ram
- In layman\'s terms, this works on a single core net book.

Software used:
- DarkBASIC Pro (with Sparky\'s colllision dll)
- Blender 2.59
- MS Paint (it was just easier)
- Audacity 1.3 Beta

Barring any unforeseen bugs, everything works so you can\'t press anything that\'ll cause the game to crash. All the menus work, where you can find details on the controls, adjust the mouse sensitivity and invert the Y axis. There is also a practice level you can play through to get used to the controls (you might need to play through it a couple of times to try eveything out before you play the game proper). More details can be found in the \"readme.txt\" file.



Comments are welcome, it\'s the whole point of this post

one of these days I'll come up with a better signature

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Ortu
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Posted: 15th Mar 2013 20:38
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controls look smooth, nice work on the lean out around corners. is that auto detecting or player controlled? the levels do seem quite empty though

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Sergey K
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Posted: 15th Mar 2013 20:42
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looks fantastic!
i have this intresting idea that you like purple

Advanced Updater for your games!
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ShellfishGames
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Posted: 15th Mar 2013 20:58
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...I guess I'll make an exception then.

I just tried to play the game. In theory it works pretty well, but practically it's rather frustrating since I'm playing on a PC with two monitors. So I accidentally keep clicking into other windows which results in the game being minimized. When I try to maximize it again, it crashes, saying "Object does not exist at line 4219. Object Number Not Found: 2" (I guess it just clears the VRAM due to being minimized, or something like that..?).

However, the controls seem pretty fluid so far and I like the idea of a practice level. The videos look nice as well. Although I have to admit, I neither like purple nor the weapon- and enemy textures, but I guess that's a matter of taste. To a certain extent.

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Chris Tate
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Posted: 15th Mar 2013 21:12 Edited at: 15th Mar 2013 21:33
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Looks great, and I kind of see where you are going with the abstract idea, but... I think you are too good for this, selling yourself short a little. Others may disagree.

There's the game creator that casually wants to make something for fun to kill time, and there's the creator that wants to make something to sell; if you are the latter then I personally think escaping from a purple prison doesn't really add up to what you are capable of, looking at how your entity dynamics and sound effects are so well laid out.

I just can't see myself downloading a game about escaping a purple complex, sorry; even if Blizzard entertainment made it, i'd feel embarrassed to be seen playing it.

But what I am looking at when I watch the videos is not the purple, but what is going on in view of function and flow; I can just watch 30 seconds of that video and know, that this guy is good. IMHO you should just cut to the chase and build an FPS or something along those lines, what you have done is pretty close on the functional level, all that is missing is for the most part 3D models, textures and animation.

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Quel
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Posted: 15th Mar 2013 23:58
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I love it!

Personally i like the idea of you not making a generic FPS, nowadays the only way to really wow people in the genre is to have a very cool story very well executed (AAA graphics is a must... plus a fourth A if possible), or to have style.

I'm totally behind you, if you choose the latter, though you either need some help from a designer to liven up the place a bit, some fancy running lights effects or things like that... or if you can do that yourself that's just as fine

-Mental Hybrid: A unique heavy story based shoot'em ~40% (primary project)
-CoreFleet: An underground commander unit based RTS (canned) ~15%
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wattywatts
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Posted: 16th Mar 2013 02:22
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I just finished portal 2 so maybe I'm more used to oddities lately, but I think it looks great.

http://mattsmith.carbonmade.com/
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Posted: 17th Mar 2013 21:29
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Hi all, thanks for the comments.

"is that auto detecting or player controlled"

I'm not entirely sure what you mean but I'll try to answer anyway. The bullets the player fires just travel in a straight line, the initial position and direction is based on that of the gun, which in turn is based on the camera. Aiming down the iron sights is player controlled, by pressing the right mouse button. Actually hitting any at long range whilst not aiming is more luck than skill.

"the levels do seem quite empty though"

This is mainly to keep the poly count as low as possible. It also means that I can create the basic interiors and levels a lot quicker (simply because there's not so much detail to work on). I think it probably doesn't help that the levels are fairly open but then I didn't want too many cramped corridoors. When I'm closer to finishing the game I might go back and put some more eye-candy in and I actually want to put some more interesting objects in some of the other levels.

"I neither like purple nor the weapon- and enemy textures"

There's nothing I can do about the purple, it was set in stone from the beginning As for the enemy and weapon textures, I should have mentioned that these are temporary and will be changed for the final game.

@Chris
This game is a purely hobby endeavour and the finished game will be free. If half a dozen people on the planet enjoy it I'll be happy.

I can understand if the graphics and art style are off putting but even if I was a better artist the game would still be abstract, it would just be more shiny. If I carry on making games in the future then I'm pretty sure I'll always go with an art style that'll put off more people than it attracts.

I've not really done much 3D modelling before starting this project and have been going up quite a steep learning curve to get this far. There are so many little details that can trip you up (the TGC forums have been incredibly helpful). However, my general philosophy is to take what little knowledge and skill I have and try to create something. I tend to think excessive learning is just a form of procrastination. I'm also painfully aware that there are a lot of games on the WIP board that never got finished and there are a lot of stories from others about how the media take up most of the time. So by keeping it simple (if a little bizzar) it's a lot more managable.

"i like the idea of you not making a generic FPS"

I promise you now that I'll never, NEVER make an identi-kit game. I don't see the point. I also don't see the point of someone like me going toe-to-toe with AAA games. Also, if I was ever to pay some one to create media I'd have to be pretty confident that I can make a game worth playing.

And that brings me onto my last point:

I'm glad people think that the game play looks smooth, mainly because this is what I find most interesting and fun to do. I like to make games and I like to explore game play concepts (see the 20 line challenge board for some of my mini games). I'm most pleased with how the explosions turned out (which is based on TDKs tutorials). It just make the game a little more exciting.

This game is my most ambitious to date. There's a lot of stuff in here that I've never done before so there's a lot of learning going on. I'll give more updates when I can and I'll probably put up some kind of to do list.

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Chris Tate
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Posted: 17th Mar 2013 22:29 Edited at: 17th Mar 2013 22:56
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Quote: "This game is a purely hobby endeavour and the finished game will be free. If half a dozen people on the planet enjoy it I'll be happy."


That's understandable.

Quote: "I can understand if the graphics and art style are off putting but even if I was a better artist the game would still be abstract"


Trust me, I see the benefits of being abstract; all of my projects are abstract in one way or another; it's personally a great way to be distinguishable.

Although it seems like my comments are negative about people taking the abstract route; it was actually just about the purple, for the most part in lexical terms; in view of your 'synopsis'; I know this is extreme for a hobby project, but I can just tell this might end up becoming more than that...

And I am sure you'd agree, being a great game and being an abstract game are two different attributes; and your project looks like it will could be both. But, if you were making it commercial, which I understand you are not; purple and its common association, graphic design use and history is not a great colour term in lexical terms for the description of a prison, on its own, IMO; at least it seems like a prison or fortress of somekind. Others may disagree. Yes, the purple visuals are a bit monotonous, speaking from the perspective of a user with big screens; but its not all that bad... its just the the name and theme 'Purple Complex'. Anyway my comments don't matter, hope you have fun with it.


Quote: "However, my general philosophy is to take what little knowledge and skill I have and try to create something. I tend to think excessive learning is just a form of procrastination."


Why am I arguing with you??? Anyway, I agree with you 50%;

Its just the 'excessive learning' part. What is excessive learning?

True, excessive 'anything' is never good; but Isn't what you learn going to help you? I can understand that if you spend 100 hours learning something irrelevant might not benefit you in the creative context; but even then, sometimes the best ideas come from irrelevant/excessive learning; at least from what I see.

Maybe you are talking about time constraints. Thing is, if you are referring to the lack of time that then I still disagree lol. Because learning often teaches you techniques that help save time and money; in addition to making you able to create your own content.

I got a personal rule which is to spend at least 1 hour a day learning something new; modelling, shaders, texturing, music; most of the time related to game development, but lots of times something that works well in one medium becomes an inspiration for a solution in programming. More things just get done period when you are equipped with more capabilities.

Anyway, at the end of the day it's about what works best for you.

Quote: "I also don't see the point of someone like me going toe-to-toe with AAA games."


Keep having fun, do what you enjoy for work; if you keep adding to the engine, sticking to it will make it grow. Ideas come along the way. AAA titles often start from a small over a period of years.

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Posted: 22nd May 2013 02:14 Edited at: 22nd May 2013 02:19
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I can't believe it's been so long since the last post so here's an update. The two main areas I've been working on are sounds and game options.

Sounds:



Sounds coded in (i.e. the code is ready to have these sounds added into the level files):
- player and npc footsteps / movement sounds
- ambient sounds
- ammo box pick up
- close combat swish and impact
- door open and close

Game options:



player can now choose:
- how much starting health they have
- how much starting ammo they have
- how many levels to play

The other change I've made is way ammo box pick ups work. In the demo the ammo box had ammo for all three of the player weapons. Now the ammo box will only replenish ammo for a specific weapon (so red ammo boxes replenish ammo for the red gun, green ammo boxes for the green gun and blue ammo boxes for the blue gun). This was really done to make ammo a little more scarce and to stop the player just taking everything out with the tri-blaster (blue gun).

I've not updated the demo as I didn't think it was worth it just now. I think I've pretty much got all the game play done and it's now about creating the media and the levels. How much content there's actually going to be really depends on what I can be motivated to do. I've managed to do three more basic maps (one of them you can see in the "sounds" video"). This now gives me eight in total but I'd like a few more.

At the risk of derailing this thread, excessive learning:

read / watch all the tutorials, download all the software, experiment with everything but never produce anything of you're own or anything that can be considered a finished game. I sit down and play around with stuff, I think you have to in order to understand anything, but there comes a time when you just have to focus if you ever want to make a game. There'll be plenty of things you'll need to learn along the way, which is what I've been discovering ever since I started this.

Quote: "nice work on the lean out around corners. is that auto detecting or player controlled?"


I just reread this and I think I misunderstood you the first time. The leaning is player controlled, no auto-detecting. All the player controls are clustered around the wasd keys within easy reach. "wasd" are the standard movement keys, q and e are the lean left and right keys (you can see a full list of controls in the "menu" video).

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thenerd
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Posted: 22nd May 2013 03:55
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A few comments, I enjoyed the demo.

So first of all... I immediately like the menu. It feels polished because of the mouse cursor smoothing. It's well designed, simple, and seems pretty professional. Good start.

Going into the training level, I immediately noticed a few things. First of all, the movement and aiming works great. However, it was somewhat choppy and I felt like I was playing at 30fps. Fraps showed 60fps so I know your game doesn't have performance issues. I recommend you add some smoothing / interpolation to the movement and rotation. Even a slight amount will give the game a smoother feel.

My second criticism is that the level environments were pretty bland. They could definitely benefit from some lightmapping. I imagine the levels would look very attractive using the purple textures along with purple or blue baked lights. Lightmapping will also help to define the edges of geometry and give more of a sense of depth.

That's really all the criticism I have I had a lot of fun playing the game. It's very unforgiving, but I like that. At first I was very bad at stealth but I quickly got better and it was fun learning. This is a great start, I hope this goes places

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gwheycs62egydws
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Posted: 2nd Jun 2013 03:36
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@29 games

nice ;o)

it runs smoothly

a little more tipping to the right or the left to look around coroners would be the only modification

one other thought is map showing only what been traveled

I was wondering dose it make up a new map each time or is the map rebuilt ?

to move side ways - is to move forward
Since a Strait line gets thin fast
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Nabz_32x
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Posted: 2nd Jun 2013 04:28
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Had a run on this, runs very smooth.

I love the simplistic style , but I had to figure out how to run at the beginning.

Maybe the jump kills from above are a little bit too much, when I think about the jumping shooting kills of Quake 3 Arena, you wouldn´t have to rely on solid aming there, allthough you could be easily killed when doing a jump kill action without shooting, so this could also be a good feature.

Looking forward to seeing more of this,
keep up the good work.

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silkroadgame
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Posted: 5th Jun 2013 10:16
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It's looking attracting so far,looking forward to your improvements on the guns and character.

Silk Road Game:http://www.game-silkroad.com/
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Posted: 8th Jun 2013 05:57
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Hi, thanks for the comments. I'm glad people are finding thing they like about this.

Quote: "I immediately like the menu"


Thanks, I've never really done menus before so I just kept it simple.

Quote: "level environments were pretty bland"


Yeah... Part of me would like to do light maps and stuff, I do agree that it would look good, but I'm going to leave this for future games. I don't call myself 29 games for nothing

It's already been mentioned that the levels are a bit empty so I've decided to address this rather than the graphics style (or lack style depending on your point of view).

In general, when it comes any kind of art I've never been all that good at the details.

Quote: "I felt like I was playing at 30fps.Fraps showed 60fps"


I've used a rather crude timer that effectively limits the movement and controls to the equivalent of 35 fps without effecting the actual screen refresh rate. The menu doesn't have any kind of timer which is probably why it felt smoother.

Quote: "a little more tipping to the right or the left to look around coroners would be the only modification"


The tipping of the camera (it's actually more or a roll and side ways movement) is not part of the collision with the map so too much leaning and the camera can go through the walls.

Quote: "map showing only what been traveled"


I think the levels are small enough not to require this but I think some more detail to the levels would give the player a better sense of where they are. There's one level in particular where even I get confused.

Quote: "I was wondering dose it make up a new map each time or is the map rebuilt ?"


I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this but I'll do my best to answer. At the start of each level the map, doors and npcs are all loaded in and then deleted from memory once the level is complete.

The map can be made from a single object or multiple objects. At the moment, the most obvious use is in the "stair well" level where sometimes the crawl spaces are blocked off.

The levels are all generated from data files, there is no procedural generation (although, in hindsight this might have been a better idea). For each level, the starting position for the npcs is chosen at random and there are two possible positions for the exit point.

Quote: "jump kills from above are a little bit too much"


It was inspired from the film The Dark Knight when Batman drops down on Scarecrow's van. It thought it looked cool, it was easy to code so I added it in.

Quote: "looking forward to your improvements on the guns and character"


I've started work on the gun textures but I have to admit I've sort of grown fond of the current temporary textures so I'm probably going to use this as a starting point.


Thanks again for the comments.

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Posted: 30th Aug 2013 00:21 Edited at: 30th Aug 2013 00:21
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Very quick update.



- all npcs are now textured. The above image shows the guard. The drones and turrets are in a similar style.
- player weapons have been textured. These are similar in style to the one the guard is holding but with a bit more detail.
- all textures for the levels have been redone in a higher resolution (512x512 as opposed to 256x256) and have a little more detail.
- ammo boxes textured
- doors retextured
- created some scenery pieces like: desk, chair, computer and crates.

I've also created some more levels but haven't done any more sound effects, which I really need to get on with.

Hope you like the look of the guard.

one of these days I'll come up with a better signature

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Nabz_32x
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Posted: 30th Aug 2013 00:40
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Good to know this is still being worked on.

I like the textures of the guard Modell, they look like they could go well with the main theme of your game.

Looking Forward to see some pics of the updated maps with the new textured enemys and weapons.

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Posted: 13th Sep 2013 13:33
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Thanks and, yes, I'm still working on this.

I think the art style ties together and nothing looks out of place.

I've being doing quite a bit on this recently, mainly on the maps. I've got one more that needs doing then there'll be 15 for the game.

My netbook was struggling with some of the newer levels so I added a "setup" file that allows the player to change the screen resolution and turn vsync on and off.

I want to add some more NPCs (a heavy drone and heavy guard) but I think this will depend on how much a get done before the end of the month. I'm trying to get the whole thing finished before the end of the year.

The things I need to get done are:
- finish off the last map
- more sound effects
- intro screen
- outro screen
- pause menu

Once these are done then I'll think about the extra NPCs.

All things being equal, this might actually be finished by the end of year.

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Posted: 27th Sep 2013 01:45
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A brief video showing the new textures for the player's weapons and some of the new maps.



And, yes, I do consider shooting NPCs in the back as "tactical".

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Posted: 22nd Oct 2013 02:13 Edited at: 22nd Oct 2013 02:18
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Update:



[edit] The image uploaded, hurrah! (a little bigger than I intended but never mind). It's of a heavy guard, if you're wondering, and, yes, that's a big gun strapped to his wrist that shoots a circle pattern of "laser-bullets".

- Finished the modelling: maps, npcs, everything. I'm not doing any more. I've had enough
- Scrapped a couple of maps from the demo and replaced them with new ones.
- Added an option to allow the player to chose to play a random number of levels.
- Done a proper "game over" screen. It only shows the number of levels that were completed. I might add some more info: such as alarms set off, guards killed but I'm not too sure about this. I think people like stats. It's not just about winning, it's about how much they won by. I kind of like the stripped down ending, no fuss, no reward, no medals, no parades.
- Scrapped the idea of a pause menu (mainly because I was fed up with doing menus). Pressing escape now just ends the current game (failed), gets the player to the game over screen and then to the main menu. There was only going to be two options in the pause menu anyway: resume or quit.

Things left to do:
- sound effects, ambient and npc.
- create levels: placing of npc, player start point and level exit points etc.
- intro screen, this will include the credits.

Speaking of credits, I don't really know what the etiquette is so I'm just going to mention everyone who's posted on this thread, whether they've made positive or negative comments. Let me know if you agree with this or not, or if you don't want me to include you (email me if you want).

One last thing, rereading ShellfishGames' comments about the twin monitors. The two ideas I've come up with are:
- allow the player to run the game in windows mode. At least it wouldn't crash when it loses focus
- lock the cursor to a position on the screen so it wouldn't travel across to the other screen.

I don't have a dual monitor set up (and the computer at work that doesn't have dx9c) so I can't test this. So is this a good idea or should I just leave it? I might add it into the "setup" file options so at least the player can turn it on and off themselves. I might add a hot key so that when the game is being played in windowed mode, the play can lock and unlock the cursor position.

Anyway, it's all moving forward.

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wattywatts
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Posted: 23rd Oct 2013 05:20 Edited at: 23rd Oct 2013 14:34
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Looking good, my man! If you need any tracks for your game let me know, I've a full on studio in my house that I haven't used lately enough! (My game's using chiptunes so its a totally different system unfortunately)

http://www.indiedb.com/games/max-vs-mars
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ShellfishGames
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Posted: 4th Nov 2013 00:43 Edited at: 4th Nov 2013 00:43
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I've had a tab with this thread open for a couple of weeks now, and finally got around watching the 50 second long video just now.
It still looks very good (as it did before), and I quite like the walking animation of the enemies.

While I wasn't too convinced of the purple-ness of it all the last time I commented, I have to admit it "grew on me" a bit... I see now that it does add a certain, unique ambience to the game.

Quote: "Scrapped the idea of a pause menu (mainly because I was fed up with doing menus). Pressing escape now just ends the current game (failed), gets the player to the game over screen and then to the main menu. There was only going to be two options in the pause menu anyway: resume or quit."


Can't you just make a really simple one, possibly without any interactive menu items at all? Better than nothing if you ask me. For Flow Motion I had a very simple pause menu that just shows some text with the game in the background, basically telling you to press ESC to continue playing or Return to return to the main menu. Took a few minutes to program, but does the job.

Quote: "Let me know if you agree with this or not"


Totally, put me in there!

Quote: "One last thing, rereading ShellfishGames' comments about the twin monitors. The two ideas I've come up with are:
- allow the player to run the game in windows mode. At least it wouldn't crash when it loses focus
- lock the cursor to a position on the screen so it wouldn't travel across to the other screen."


Sounds like a reasonable approach! Having both things in the setup file should be easy to implement and at the same time user friendly enough, considering that probably relatively few gamers have two or more screens. I could certainly test it then.

Quote: "I might add a hot key so that when the game is being played in windowed mode, the play can lock and unlock the cursor position."


Either that, or maybe you unlock the mouse automatically when the pause screen (given you make one ) is on.

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Ashingda 27
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Posted: 4th Nov 2013 03:48
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Nice model, I like it.

I personally don't care about winning stats, all it matters is that I beat it, no matter how ugly it went.

As for credit I'd just put it where it's due. I'm not really sure if criticism or simple post counts because it's easy to just say things but hard to actually do.

Glad to see progress, keep it up.

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gwheycs62egydws
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Posted: 5th Nov 2013 00:48
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@29 games

taking a second look at this it remind me of original Wolfenstein 3D
but much sharper graphics and better sound

the last time I tried to pay that that game
I started to get noshes

it took me about week to get use to how the game was
after that I played like I did in the old days lol

yours is far better than that was and at lest
you can look and go up and down

one final thought having a simple pause
would be nice

as far how far your going to develop this
being able to save and load back up from that spot
would be the only other thing if mutable levels

to move side ways - is to move forward
Since a Strait line gets thin fast
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Posted: 9th Nov 2013 14:41 Edited at: 9th Nov 2013 14:46
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Thanks for the feedback, everyone;

@wattywatts: thanks for the offer but I finished all the sound effect earlier this week before reading your post the other day. Maybe another time.

Update:



Based on the feedback from my last post, I've implemented a pause menu and a proper mode for playing the game in a window.

The mouse is locked when playing the game and unlocks when any of the menus appear (main menu, pause menu and game over menu). This also happens when playing the game in full screen mode.

To turn full screen on or off, the player will need to set a parameter in the setup file before they run the game.

The setup file looks like this when play full screen at desktop resolution:


To play it in windowed mode at 640x480 (as in the video), changed it to this.


There is some error trapping if the player enters an unsupported screen resolution so hopefully it's all fairly straight forward.

The reason I originally scrapped the pause menu was that I wanted all the menus to be consistent in the way the player interacts with them. The way I was doing the menus before was making this more trouble than it was worth and a simple pause menu (i.e. press 1 to resume, press 2 to quit) would've looked more out of place than not having one at all. However, I ended up having to rewrite the menu code when I did the windowed mode so it all got a lot easier. I'm now just using the mouse cursor and "pick object" for all the menu. It's easy to forget some of these commands exist.

One other thing I've done it to rewrite the sound code. The way I originally did it was to have "local" sounds, that were point sounds that diminished in volume with distance (which made them spherical) and "global" sounds that were just constant across the map. I'm now using a "box" for determining the volume of sounds. This allows me to fill a room with a sound but then have the volume gradually drop with distance (the drop of rate can be adjusted for each sound). It's still not particularly realistic but it's better than treating the sounds as spheres.

Quote: "being able to save and load back up from that spot"


No game saves is part of the design of this game. This thread on the game design theory board will hopefully explains more:

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=187417&b=19

I've not read that thread in a while and Purple Complex, in terms of game play at least, is pretty much turning out how I described.

So what's left to do? Not much.

- Intro screen
- creating levels (basically the placement of NPCs and other bits and pieces on the maps)


Not to get to ahead of myself but I think I've almost finished.

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Posted: 20th Dec 2013 01:08
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Two brief updates:

Update one:
I've replaced the setting.txt file with a "settings editor". This is a stand alone application that allows the player to adjust the screen settings via a mouse driven interface. The editor also allows the player the reconfigure the keyboard controls which I thought might be useful.

Update two:
The game is finished!

I'll upload it the program announcement board in a couple of days, I just want to put together some videos first.

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Posted: 22nd Dec 2013 06:22
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Purple Complex has now been released and can be found here:

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=209253&b=5

Thanks to everyone for their comments and encouragement.

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