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Work in Progress / Exstasis - [DarkGDK]

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Plystire
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Posted: 6th Aug 2009 12:54 Edited at: 7th Aug 2009 02:19
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Title:

Exstasis


Story:

None, yet.


What the heck this is:

Well, this is a maze game. I love mazes, there's no question about it, and what I love more than mazes is to make a maze game that randomly generates mazes for me to wander around in. This is my latest and greatest maze game to date!!!

It begins by you being teleported into a room, but not just any room... this room is known as "The Room of Exstasis" and defies the laws of physics. You see, in this room, there is no meaning to the word "floor", because any direction could be the floor.

This maze consists of four things, really:
- Platforms
- Stairs
- Doors
- The teleporter that will let you leave

Platforms and stairs are pretty self-explanatory, but the doors in this room are what make the room so special. Each door in this room leads to another door. The only way to find out which door leads to which is by walking through it!

The objective is simple.... Find the teleporter.


I've attached a screenshot of early development so you can get an idea of what a maze in this game will look like.



I know it's hard to judge what's going on by the screenshot, but if any C&C comes to mind don't hesitate to post it.



The one and only,


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meteorite
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Posted: 6th Aug 2009 13:05 Edited at: 6th Aug 2009 13:09
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Damn, thats trippy. Chateau :p


By the way, FIRST!

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zzz
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Posted: 6th Aug 2009 13:08 Edited at: 6th Aug 2009 13:09
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Wow it looks really good, reminds me of M. C. Escher's Relativity.
I'm a little curious since I've fooled around with similar stuff myself; Are you using the normals on the "floor" to
calculate the angle of the player? Or do you have several precalculated angles for the player used for each kind of floor?

Keep it up, I'm looking forward to a demo!

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Plystire
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Posted: 6th Aug 2009 13:16
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Thanks for the feedback, zzz!

Yes, this was inspired a bit by Esher's pieces. I would have loved to get it spot on with one of them, but there'd be no way I could do that accurately

About the walking around... I actually have the entire maze saved into memory, including what the "gravity" direction is for each section. So I was going to "simulate" the collision by the player's position within each cell and the gravity that's supposed to be in effect.

After I get it playable I also wanted to decorate the maze with randomly placed objects! Perhaps some torches or skeletons laying around.


The one and only,


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Red Eye
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Posted: 6th Aug 2009 13:17
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Yep inspired of Esher. But very nicely done. You cant get the same effect as esher had in 2d painting, as this is 3d. But this is very very close to it.

I love painting. (oil painting and such) And because of that i really like this little piece of art. Sureal it is. I also like to do 3D Surealistic Environements in 3dsmax (most of the times inpired by Dali). So i really like this.

Quote: "
Story:

None, yet."


It could be a dream. And alot happens in a dream.

Yep.

Quote: "Exstasis"


Keep this up buddy,

Red Eye

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meteorite
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Posted: 6th Aug 2009 13:19
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Also labrynth, lets not forget David Bowie and Jennifer Connelly.

The bog of eternal stench

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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 6th Aug 2009 14:25
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It looks good, although I'd say the lighting needs adjusting a bit. It's too dim.

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Dr Tank
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Posted: 6th Aug 2009 14:58
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Sweet. I've wanted an Esher game for ages. So you've saved me a job. Will be really interesting to see how it actually feels to play.

I'm wondering if the gravity is determined by the floor you're near, or whether it switches when you press a switch, go through a door or or whatever. This could be really awesome. Happy coding.

SUPER WEBSITE 22G
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Plystire
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Posted: 7th Aug 2009 00:25
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@NeX:

Yeah, the lighting will be adjusted when I get into the nitty gritty of the graphics department. It's actually very bright in that room, I just took a screenshot of the dark end.


@Dr Tank:

Thanks for the comment
Right now the gravity changes when you pass through a door, but that's liable to change later on.


The one and only,


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Uncle Sam
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Posted: 8th Aug 2009 07:29
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I want demo now! Looks fun.

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Plystire
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Posted: 8th Aug 2009 08:29
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I agree, Uncle Sam. A demo would be awesome right now! I, too, am looking forward to playing it lol

I'm in the process of implementing the walk-around procedure... I've hit a bit of a bug that seems to be linked to DGDK, so to get around it, I will need to replace a bunch of my GDK code with native C++ equivalent. This could take a while, but I'm grinding through it and will post when it's done and working.



The one and only,


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gamerboots
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Posted: 8th Aug 2009 11:26
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I woulld like to see you do a remake of marble madness. The work you have done so far looks really good.

Regards
Gamerboots~
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Plystire
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Posted: 10th Aug 2009 00:54
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Strange you would say that, gamer boots. I made a small marble madness engine using DarkPhysics a while back and even made a level editor for it. Had cloth obstacles and all that fun stuff, but sadly the day before it was ready for WIP.... I lost the entire project. Aw well, live and learn.

Anyway, I hope I can bring an update soon with perhaps a demo. Not sure how many people are looking forward to it, but I really am. I've been wanting to walk around this maze forever now!


The one and only,


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gamerboots
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Posted: 10th Aug 2009 01:04
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yes unfortnately I have had this happen as well, from then on , I started backing up my projects on an external drive atleast once a week. Perhaps when your done with this project you might try it again.
I am definately watching this one , I want to see how this one turns out

Regards
Gamerboots~
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meteorite
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Posted: 12th Aug 2009 07:02
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is lookin forward to beta test and/or demo. Looks good.

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Plystire
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Posted: 14th Aug 2009 06:54
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!!! DEMO !!!

Demo time!!

Before you download, I would like to relay a message first!
When asked to input the maze size, please be reasonable!! A maze size of 30 is big and a size of 40+ is HUGE. For a decent size, I tend to use something like 15-20.


Okay, without further adieu, the demo is attached to this post.

Enjoy! And please let me know here if you encounter any problems!


The one and only,


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Garion
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Posted: 14th Aug 2009 11:47
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Nice and working... I didn't menage to win even maze of 5, I suck xD
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Bran flakes91093
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Posted: 14th Aug 2009 18:38 Edited at: 14th Aug 2009 18:55
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Something went wrong.



I just went through one of those door/pathway things (Which I LOVE btw. I like how it gets dark, but I get stuck in them sometimes because I tend to look down...) and ended up in the middle somewhere.

I was able to move along that side of the floor and in the air just to the left of it.

Other than that, this is a really great game! I could only beat a lvl 4 maze though...

Your_Health = (My_Mood == HAPPY) ? 100 : NULL;
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heyufool1
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Posted: 14th Aug 2009 20:02
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Very cool! Their are two things I suggest:

1. Lower the mouse sensitivity
2. Limit the number you can enter for the maze. I entered 100 and it ended up crashing after waiting a few minutes for it to load and in the loading time I couldn't do anything on my computer.

Other then those 2 it was very cool! Max I beat was maze 10

Use Google first... it's not rocket surgery!
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Plystire
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Posted: 14th Aug 2009 23:27
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Thanks for the comments, everyone.

Quote: "I just went through one of those door/pathway things (Which I LOVE btw. I like how it gets dark, but I get stuck in them sometimes because I tend to look down...) and ended up in the middle somewhere."


Yeah, I found that bug last night, shortly after releasing the demo. I'm not sure what's causing it, either. It's a real pain to debug because it doesn't happen on a predictable basis, and when it does happen... I can't get back to that spot to debug the door that lead to nowhere.
I will look into it more, though. Thanks for informing me.

Quote: "Limit the number you can enter for the maze. I entered 100 and it ended up crashing after waiting a few minutes for it to load and in the loading time I couldn't do anything on my computer."


Lol, sounds like someone just had to give it a try.
The reason it crashed is because the recursion depth ran too deep. With a bit more coding, I could get large mazes like that to build properly, but it does take quite a long time. I put a bottom cap on the maze size, so it won't try to build something too small, which wouldn't work given the current algorithm. I didn't want to limit the maximum size someone could build until it became possible to build unreasonably sized mazes, wherein I would need to limit it to something like 80-100 to keep the exe from consuming 1GB+ of RAM


I'm glad everyone's enjoying it so far, though! I'd like to see if somebody can beat a size 25-30 maze.


The one and only,


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meteorite
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Posted: 24th Aug 2009 06:58
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Enjoyed what I got to play, but I suck

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Jeff032
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Posted: 25th Aug 2009 05:07 Edited at: 25th Aug 2009 05:08
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Pretty interesting, I found a couple of bugs though.

1) There were some surfaces that though they were connected to the surface I was walking on, I could not walk onto them. Perhaps they were upside down?

2) If I run into the staircase in the attached picture, I 'flip' over to the other surface. While standing on the staircase, I can then walk back into the platform I started on, to 'flip' back over.

(green arrows indicate 'up' for the surfaces)



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Plystire
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Posted: 25th Aug 2009 05:43
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@Jeff032:

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, if you're not able to walk onto a platform it's because the one you're looking at is "upsidedown" and is actually a platform for the opposite gravity.

I'm not sure what happened with the staircase problem you had... the first thing wrong with that picture is that your platform shouldn't be that close to the stairs to begin with, so that's a problem with the maze generator. The second thing wrong is that since the cell you were walking into is a different gravity than the one you're currently in, the collision system shouldn't have let you move into that new cell, so that's a problem with the collision system. Two bugs in one, nice find.

I hope you had fun with it regardless.


The one and only,


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JRH
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Posted: 29th Aug 2009 11:59
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Nice, and really weird.

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Jimpo
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Posted: 29th Aug 2009 21:14
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I tried a size 15 maze and couldn't beat it I swear I tried every possible path!

I don't know if this was intentional, but the player can't walk up or down simple changes in floor height, like this:


There were also countless times when the floor lined up perfectly, but the texture did not, and I was not able to walk on it - like an invisible wall. And once, I saw a staircase the just went down into a wall, no door. Sadly, I couldn't even reach that section of the maze to see what would happen.

But keep working on this, there is a lot of potential with this idea! Makes you wonder why no one thought of it sooner.

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Plystire
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Posted: 31st Aug 2009 13:03
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Thanks for the feedback, Jimpo!

The reason you couldn't walk onto the misaligned platform is because that platform was not -- er -- align for the gravity you were in. It was for the opposite gravity, so to walk on that platform you would have had to have been upside down.
I wanted to get a seperate texture for the bottom of the platforms so that there was a distinguishable difference between the walkable side and the side you can't walk on.

Sadly, this project has taken a back seat to another project of mine. So there most likely won't be any updates for a while.

I have also experienced a number of traveling bugs in the current game, such as walking through a door and being transported to somewhere in the middle of the maze or seeing doors above platforms (meaning you can't get to them because they would be on the "ceiling" and the player can't get there). When/If I get back to this project, the first thing I would do is most likely rewrite the generation algorithm so that things like this won't happen.


The one and only,


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Plotinus
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Posted: 31st Aug 2009 16:20
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This is great. It looks very atmospheric, with an appealing graphical style, and the basics seem to work pretty well. It really made me think of Labyrinth and that has to be a good thing.

It feels very random walking into doorways and not only not knowing where you'll end up, but being unsure where you have ended up, because it all looks the same no matter which way up everything is. I think that having landmarks in the maze (i.e. unique objects scattered about - perhaps some large and some small) would help a great deal with this, and give the different locations more of a sense of place. You'd realise "Oh, I'm over here" rather than just "How does this relate to where I've just been?"

The ability to alter the environment - perhaps drop objects or make marks on the floor - might help here too and provide a sort of mapping capability.

It's weird not being able to walk onto platforms or stairs that look like you should be able to walk onto them, just because they're the wrong way up. You definitely need different textures for the undersides. Even better would be to give the ability to walk on the undersides, or even to turn gravitational corners without going through doorways (e.g. walk forwards off a platform and continue downwards along a platform angled at 90 degrees to it - Bowie-style...). But that might be hard to implement with the maze generation system.

Anyway, I hope you do continue to work on this as you've got a great base for an interesting game.
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Plystire
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Posted: 1st Sep 2009 02:51
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Hello, Plotinus, and thanks for the feedback.

You're right, it does need some more interesting site-seeing bits to give it a better feel of direction. The following are a few thoughts I had:
- Lava texture (or some other undesireable walking space texture) for the bottom of platforms
- The floor of the room would be lava with a faint orange glow radiating up the walls/onto platforms above. This would give the player a feeling of what direction they're in at all times.
- Random objects placed around the maze, one in particular would have been a large candelabra with lit candles in it. The flames of the candles would have been particles and since flames always go "up" when there's no wind, the particles would always point to the universal UP of the room.
- A super large statue in the middle of the room. The statue would be almost as tall as the room is and the walkways/stairs would all weave around the statue.

Those were just some ideas I was tossing around a while back for giving a better atmosphere to the game.


The one and only,


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Plotinus
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Posted: 1st Sep 2009 12:24
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I really like the big statue and candelabra ideas. Perhaps you could have a few vases on plinths, or things like that, placed here and there on the platforms themselves. I think objects such as these, which are believable in their own right and fit into the graphical style you already have, make more sense and would look better than things like lava which doesn't seem so appropriate and is a bit of a platform game cliche. If the "weirdness" of the game comes from the crazy staircases and odd gravity effects alone, it is all the more striking. Just my view anyway!
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