Re:Here's a mad idea...
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Spellcasting: B-U-R-S-T.
The Pause option/FREEZE spell etc will be context-sensitive. You will not be able to pause during dexterity puzzles, password or riddle sections, when a spell or potion is in effect, or anytime your Dungeoneer is in immediate danger. So you won't be able to pause on a Timed Causeway and take five minutes to work out your route, or go and phone your buddies to work out teh answer to a riddle, and so on.
What I could do - and this is a bit outlandish, but bear with me - is to have a Temporal Disruption every, say, fifteen minutes or so. Actually, scratch that. I will just have a Pause button, but you won't be able to use it all the time, that's all.
This is great - you guys are forcing me to think of everything. Keep it coming!
Skip
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Hello everybody!
Sorry I haven't contibuted much in the way of this thread for a while. In my defence, my computer nearly blew up. That sounds like a reasonable excuse to me, I reckon.
Anyway, the work on Knightmare: The Deeper Dungeons continues apace. I've now begun work on the 'room engine'. I'm using the same techniques here as were used by the programme makers when it comes to rendering the dungeons. I start off with what we could call the 'bluescreen layer', which lays out where the dungeoneer can walk, which parts of the screen are fatal, where doors are etc. Over that I place a generic, fairly bland room graphic. Then I add incidental details like doors, brickwork, pits, and other textures. Then over THAT I add shadowcasting effects - a bit like the digital spray-painting done by the programme makers - to make the scene all moody. Then I add the 'physical' objects like tables, wells, the dungeoneer, pickups, etc.
It sounds complex, but the end results are already looking impressive and, crucially, take up a minimal amount of space. The fact that everything is broken up into small elements means that it's easy to make all sorts of rooms and layouts by reusing the same pieces in different ways. Best of all, it can all be tinted and re-lit to create an entirely different mood using exactly the same layout (again, this was done frequently in the programme itself)!
It's all very well me talking about it, but in the next week or two you'll be able to see for yourself when the development site goes live. And who knows, I may just be able to get out a small playable demo by the end of the month - just five or six rooms, but enough to give you an idea of how it will work!
I've also been working on a control system, which is a basic mouse-and-keyboard combo. There will be a small on-screen matrix of controls for forward, backward, sidestep and turn left/right. When clicked on normally, the dungeoneer will carry out the instructions at normal, walking speed. However, the Shift and Ctrl keys can be used as modifiers in conjuntion with this. Holding down Shift when using the matrix will add speed to the dungeoneer's movements, making them run, dash, turn 180 degrees, etc. Using the Ctrl key, on the other hand, will allow small adjustments (shuffling, half-steps, 45-degree turns, etc.). This will be pretty intuitive once you get used to it, and reduce the amount of clutter on-screen.
The ideas are really starting to come together, I can't wait for you to see the work in progress!
Keep those comments and feedback coming.
Skip
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Just a quick update - I'm currently working on some very basic room graphics. At the moment I have five demo rooms. They don't do much at the mo, but I've created them as an exercise in re-usability. All the rooms are the same room graphic, see, with merely a different arrangement of doors, shadow and lighting, plus the odd bomb, wellway or table . There isn't even any incidental detail yet (torches, windows, cracks in the wall, tiles etc), but it already looks great, even if I do say so myself. I'll stick something up here in the next day or so!
I was looking at the **That Damned Life Force...**thread, and the question of how to implement the Life Force rears its head once more. But it isn't a question this time of what form it will take - it's how to use it. The immediately obvious answer is 'It starts at Green, ticks away, and when it runs out you're dead.' But that simply will not work - for the simple reason that it was never, EVER that way in the show itself. In fact, the dungeoneer's progress had no effect on the Life Force clock at all, as far as I could ever tell, except of course when someone was about to starve to death (which would only happen if they had not completed a puzzle correctly, like Series 1 Team 1's 'darkness' death or the unfortunate 'divining rod' team).
So if the clock will not be depleted by time in the real sense, then what? We could follow the first Knightmare book's example and deplete it by one grade evry time the player enters a new location, but I dunno if that would be a bit too heavy-handed. I mean, having to stop and pick up a loaf of bread every three rooms seems to be taking it a bit too far, no?
So what should we do? It is definitely going to be implemented, so no 'leave it out altogether' suggestions. Please help!
Thanks
Skip
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How about having it on a 5 minute sequence, every time food is picked up the sequence restarts from the beginning, if the sequence gets to the end you're dead.
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Hmm, see that's what I want to try and avoid, as it never worked out that way in the show itself. Think of the 6-minute discourse between Cedric and Folly at the end of Series One... the dungeoneer would have been dead three times over if the Life Force Clock ran in strict time!
I don't want to rush people through the game, except when the situation calls out for it (Timed Causeways, goblin hunts, bombs, 'starvation scenarios' and what have you). Other times, like when you're in conversation or trying to work out a puzzle, shouldn't be hurried, it will hurt the atmosphere.
Hm, this is a tricky riddle indeed...
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I've decided that I'm going to use the Life Force clock the way the original programme makers intended - as a device to speed up the player when necessary. I've realised - and it's a credit to the makers of the show that they knew this themselves from day one - that many of the dungeon rooms don't do an awful lot, but by adding the Life Force clock to the screen, the place suddenly seems like a deathtrap.
For an absolutely perfect example, think of either the very first Corridor Of The Catacombs in Series 1 Episode 1, or the 'divining rod' death from a few series later. Both these examples are bare, static rooms with a few basic audio cues. By themselves, they are plain, boring even. Throw in our grinning skeletal friend the LF Clock though, and it adds tension, urgency and a palpable sense of danger (which of course turned out to be well-founded in the latter 'divining rod' starvation death).
So to clarify, the Life Force will only appear at key moments, and will not be diminishing 'in the background' while the player progresses through the game. And that's that one sorted out.
Don't believe me if you don't want to, but there will be a demo of some sort for you in the next week or so. Promise.
Skip
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Good, I'm glad we're in agreement. As I've stated countless times, I want to remain as true to the spirit of the show as possible - and what better way to do that than by employing the same art techniques and dramatic devices as the original makers?
The forthcoming demo will comprise some early graphics treatments, a test menu interface and maybe some interactive content. However, I haven't got round to animating our dungeoneer friend yet. Also, the demo will be of extremely rough quality and is not to be taken as indicative of the final product blah blah blah.
Skip
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It's nice to see that some of you are as sick-minded as me when it comes to re-imagining the classic Knightmare obstacles. Here's my own take on a potential Corridor of Blades:
The conveyor will be divided into three, with two runners between them, along which will fly poles with rotary blades on 'em. The blades will be rotated 90 degrees from the original CoB, so instead of spinning parallel with the floor, they will spin parallel with the walls (flipped on their ends, if you will).
The rotary blades can be spinning on one or both sides of the pole, and can be at head height or knee height (like in the original). Head height ones can be ducked, while the knee-height ones will obviously have to be sidestepped. I'll try and put a small diagram here to show you what I mean later.
To make things really evil, the poles may shift position when they're halfway down the corridor! A head-height one may suddenly drop to knee-height, or a blade on the left of a pole may suddenly whip round to the other side.... if anyone makes it through this, they deserve to win.
Any more hot ideas?
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whoah if you put that in then its gonna be realy hard. make sure its towards the end so then when u die on it u have to go all the way back to the start.
how about a room with a thin path at the start and end and they both lead to a small maze of paths(not big at all) but as you near it the bits of path of the maze shift positions so you have to keep thinking and u can't plan a route. if you missed the next piece of path then u fell ahhhhh. i'll probably do a drawing and put it up as i am bored
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I've just put that same idea on the Video Game thread! I would play if it was a modern flash game. Since my video game plan went downhill a online game is the next best thing!!!! It's got to have good graphics for a online game! I don't like the old-faishioned graphics!! (It is the 21st century!!!)
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Skip, I have another idea
You know Block and Tackle from Series 4 and the Fireball room from Series 8.
Why don't you mix them together so you get the Fireballs raining down and takeout the floor while the side blocks come along and try and whack people to death.
Now that's what I call "LOVELY"
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When you die have 'ooh nasty' on the screen.
Anyway, if you can, make it so that you can have three advisors just to help out. This could be done with them being able to view your character and using a chatroom style board talk to each other and to you. It would make it more authentic.
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