Awhile ago I started a project with the hopes of it being open and accessible enough to anons on /3/ to participate in.Just a fun casual project anons could jump in, do as much as they wanted, and hop out. Much more if they were interested. Alas, participation was null. I pivoted to a different project which got pretty advanced but I'm taking a break from.What is this?This is The Dark Crucible which is a homage to the Gauntlet Legends/Dark Legacy games. The point of this game style is that the mechanics are very simple, and once they're all hashed out the project become 100% art focused. Much more intune with this board than with the gamedev general on /v/.At this point now I'm not sure I want to share this project anymore, but who knows.previous threads with more detailshttps://warosu.org/3/thread/988930https://warosu.org/3/thread/993391
In the original gauntlet there was a broken stained glass window. As you defeated bosses you'd acquire pieces of the window. I gravitated to making this game art themed. Every boss gives you a color, and this color fills in a big portrait in the main hall. Here it is in action.
Characters in the original game had melee attacks, ranged attacks, a turbo move, and also could use consumable magic items to cause a big area of effect attack. In dark legacy you could also use magic to create a temporary shield and also throw it to exchange AOE for range. Here I have recreated this feature.Basically at this point, all I need to add characters is models and animations.
Levels are like diaramas. The camera stays pretty far from the characters sp there must always be space for the camera to look into, and the character details arent super important.(except that they're fun.)
These are the 4 characters I made previously. The formula for gauntlet was each character has a theme and there's always a world based on that theme. So The scientist's world is a Frankenstein castle kinda thing.The ninja will be feudal japan.The dancer's is an evil bordelloThe wolf guy's is desert/spirit world.
I remember I never finished the model I was doing for this. How do you do it anon? When I finish my job the least I want to do is keep working.
>>1021613It's hard. I struggle with it too.At my lowest I just made a big promise to myself that every single day I would at least open up a model/unity and look at it for a few minutes. Just that I'd open the program no matter what even if I had no intention of doing anything. And over time I wanted to do more than nothing, and every little bite I took out of it slowly ate the whole thing.Or obviously it's not done and there's still most of it to do, but you just focus on taking little bites, and inevitably you'll get a groove and take lots of big bites.
>>1021601>sending my whole support and admiration for your project
>le sovl..... tr-Woah, an actual good lowpoly game! Supporting.
>>1021610Sovl
I may not be much help, but I'm interested in trying. Is there some busy work you would like done? Like item assets or enemies?
Thanks for the positive feedback.I started modelling the first world boss. The Abomination, a Frankenstein monster archetype. He'll have some detachable limbs so this is just his main body. More spit balling how this technique can quickly translate into a good enough asset. The resulting model is 27k tris. Way higher res than is necessary at the scale, but it is a boss monster that deserves some extra polies.>low res making of fast forward video. Encapsulated time is about 60 minutes. Some parts were cut of me looking stuff up.https://files.catbox.moe/5x43vd.webm>higher res version of the vid if you want to stop it and see what I'm doinghttps://files.catbox.moe/rpzio2.webm
Close up in unity>>1021674So another thing I want to borrow from gauntlet is that their items were like 3d icons. I don't have an item list. Unless I like wholesale ripoff gauntlet, which isnt necessary. But anything like that for any kind of item. A weapon, a shield, it could be a magic item so it could really be anything. The original gauntlet had a magic egg that temporarily turned your character into a fire breathing chicken. They also had X-ray glasses that were silly, and a big warhammer that was serious. what it does or could do could always be figured out later.
>>1021679and you can see, that's a lot of geometry not doing anything useful. I could cut it down by hand by a whole lot but then this miraculous 1 hour turnaround disappears.
So whats your plan regarding online play? Multiplayer is kinda the while point of these kinds of games
>>1021693Yeah good call. The game is pocally multiplayer right now. I got chatgpt to give me an idiot's walkthrough on setting up network play. Im not going to run a match making server so itll be on the player's to find each other and share the ip of the hoster. In the peiginal gauntlet youd type in a code at character creation. For the arcade version it would save your progress. If a player joined that had some of the progress items and another joined that had the others they could access the higher levels when pmaying with each other. Or a high level player could give access to newbs to the harder levels so they could get easy experience. Thats what im going to go for.When im implementing that I'll surely need online testers.
>>1021705So what do you need for this? I loved Gauntlet: Dark Legacy because I played it with my brother growing up. I've had Idea Guy thoughts about a spiritual sequel for a long time but I'm not going to feature creep you, let me know what you need modeled and I can make whatever I have time for.
>>1021722I had the idea that the invincibility item would look like one of these face of the emperor roman helmets. Just the mask part. Suffficiently creepy looking like this, and as it rotates it would do the "hollow mask" optical illusion
Every world needs these things:Basic mob, small medium largeAdvanced mob small medium largrAnkle biter mob, small mediumAnd each of the mob types need an appropriately themed generator to come out of.If youve played gaubtlet before you get it. Im sorry but the internet is devoid of good screenshots for some reason.Right now i have 4 worlds planned out i already mentionedFrankenstein's castleAn evil brothelFeudal japan/snowy(immortal mountain)And an ill defined desert/spirit world(the verge)I have designs for the evil brothel monsters and the boss as well as level designs. The virge i havent figured out completely.The immortal mountain though is strait forward. Feudal japan, snow. So the basic mobs could be samurai guys. Advanced mobs could be oni. The boss and his arena is going to be the music video for always by erasure. So immortal mountainnis the most fleshed out free game.
Abd my last consecu5ive self reply to anyone interested. I made concept sheets and posted them in the archived threads along with guidelines. If you want to make up a new character/world/mobs/boss feel free too.
Made the arm. The texture needs work so it matches the body betterHere I'm trying to set a good relative scale
with normals. Probably needs a specular map so some parts can looks slimy and other parts rough.
I'm just moving it around in the edit window to see how he will look with the game camera the way it is.
>>1021723Do you want these things to look like a ps2/gamecube era item?
>>1021733No. Idealy I want them to make use of modern rendering advancements.That beign said I want total accessibility. So I'm also not saying "no" that kind of style. I'm also using the built in render pipeline for unity which is not very advanced and doesnt have much options beyond secularity and normal maps. The camera is always going to be pretty far away from the characters and items. The things need to look good while occupying like 1/5 of the screen space. But also the original gauntlet took it too far and the awesome character designs on the box art were not faithfully represented in game. I want a happy medium between the two.If only though, the mob monsters need to be optimized because there could be hundreds of them on screen at once. Players, items, bosses will have more freedom.
>>1021723how do you feel about the mask of achilles?
>>1021859That sounds 100x more appropriate seeing as achillese was supposed to be invincible.
IDk why I didnt bundle the foot into the body. I dont really want them to explode separately.Here's the abomination. He's enveloped, but I havent painted weights yet
Gauntlet had 2 types of bosses. One type roamed around on the same playing field as you. They had a lot of abilities for chasing down players or creating distance. The other type sat in a central location and had an assortment of attacks they did based on where the players were.The other unique thing about the gauntlet bosses was their weakness item. You would sometimes get a special cutscene at the start of a level, and it would show you something like a genie's lamp or a glowing bible. You could find those items in that level and if you brought the right item to the right boss it would disable attacks, or deal a bunch of early damage, etc.The abomination is the roaming type. He has 2 melee attacks programmed but he refused to do the second one. the big hand smash has a particle effect, and his attacks actually deal damage.
