9 replies to this topic

[Mattias Gustavsson]

The last few days, I've been experimenting a bit with art for a type of game I've been wanting to make for quite some time: a game in the style of good old Dungeon Master. Is there anyone here who used to play it, or other similar games? If so, I'd like to hear about what sort of things you remember from it, what made it fun and what would make you want to play a new game in the same style :-)

Anyway, here's a few examples of what my game will look like:

[rouncer]

thats some real pretty graphics man.

doungeon master? not quite sure what game your talking about, but there was this game where you built a doungeon then
heros would try and slay all your monsters, in the "play as the bad guy" type thing.

But i bet thats not what you mean, by the look of your screenshots you mean something like "eye of the beholder"?

I guess multiplayer is the thing you could add, but i remember playing maybe slightly less graphically pretty games like secret of
the silver blades and curse of the azzure bonds, and they had the snap scrolling doungeon. I spent many hours playing them.

With all your graphics rendered like that, it would be nice i bet.

[Mattias Gustavsson]

Ah, sometimes I forget that you kids today don't always know of the classics :P My old age showing, I guess...

I believe you're thinking of "Dungeon Keeper" btw, and no, it's not that kind I mean. Curse of the Azure Bonds are spot on though - but I'm hoping to have "smooth" or animated snap scrolling.

For reference, a video of Dungeon Master:

But surely, there must be people here who have played it and remember it, no?

[rouncer]

Woah, totally smooth?!?

[tyree]

is that from a render or the engine. I knew what you were talking about, Im old enough to know. started out as a card game.
I think your question should be who likes fantasy games, what is it people like about it. and first person games those are the two audiences

[monjardin]

I remember playing Dungeon Master on a friends Apple IIGS. I loved it. You're not the only old timer around. ;)

IIRC, the PC version shipped with an audio adapter that connected to the parallel port!

[Wernaeh]

Ah the good old days -
When I was little, I played Dungeon Master on my old Amiga for days - back then, my entire party kept starving because I didn't know the concept of "farming" those green mushroomy things for food...

My suggestion were to add more of a Myst-like puzzly element (perhaps like Crusader: Nemesis had) instead of hardcore creature slashing.

With multiplayer - I think there'd be issues with the actual integration - for instance, how do you handle multiple players on the same field ? After all, there is just little room on these regular-grid maps, and blocking entire cells will be ugly for cooperative play...

Screenshots look very good, by the way.

Cheers,
- Wernaeh

[Mattias Gustavsson]

Haven't worked on this for a few months, but I've spent the last few days making a first little walk-around demo:

http://www.colossuse...onGrind_0_1.zip

[Wernaeh]

Really nice :)
Would love to play an actual game with this kind of graphics.

There's two things I'd fix though:

* The edges of the wooden panel walls leak out a bit (... this is hard to explain...)

* Currently, it seems to be fading from one position to another, like in the classic game. I'm not sure how you do rendering, but if it already is 3D, it'd probably look better and smoother if the player was actually moving in between tiles.

Good work!
Cheers,
- Wernaeh

[Mattias Gustavsson]

Thanks :-)

Yeah, the wooden panels need a bit more work, I think.

It's not realtime 3D, just pre-rendered bitmaps, so I can't get a fully smooth transition - but I think I'd like to try and improve the transitions at some point (but first I think I'll need to get more of an actual game in there :P)