CRPG Book

[bigsofty]

https://crpgbook.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/crpg-book-preview-5.pdf

This is a preview by the author but it is already a great read for anyone who is into CRPG's. I thoroughly enjoyed it! 

[erico]

Yep, pretty great. I don´t know much about the newer stuff though but the retro part is cool.

[bigsofty]

It's a genre I have always admired but never had the nerve to have a go at coding. Maybe after my current game is complete I'd like to have a go at it, possibly a dungeon crawler ala Dungeon Master. The recent Grimrock games have shown that there is a market for them. 

[erico]

Would hired guns fit the genre? If so, that is one I greatly love. I did a try-out some years ago I´m pretty sure you saw it too.
Most of these games as fantasy related, I know only a few that are not.

What is that current game of yours?

[bigsofty]

Yes definitely Erico, hired guns does fall within the CRPG. There's a few sci-fi dungeon-crawlers here (see "Captive" is one of the best IMHO), strangely the author refers to this genre of CRPGs as "blobbers" which I've never heard of before? But yes, Hired Guns was one of the first(or only?) 4 player dungeon-crawlers. Great game, I wonder why the author missed it?

[Ian Price]

had a brief look at that book and it immediately whetted my appetite for the full version

Cheers Erico.

[Moru]

There was a multiplayer game graphicly similar to hired guns for Atari ST. I think it was called Substation but the only information I can find is that it was published 1995. It was networked with MIDI-cables, not sure how many players though.

Looks like a very interesting book, thanks for the link!

[erico]

I will look for it, I´m quite interested in dungeon crawlers that are not fantasy based. As for captive and its sequel, I´m aware of them.
One gem I never played back on the amiga days was Perihelion. I think I talked about it before but I will leave a video link here just in case, quite nice gfx.

With Hired Guns, I was lucky to own an a4000 with an hd and lots of memory at the time, I even did the proposed by manual genesis joypad modifications on my two pads so I could use all 4 buttons. Me and my buddies had a blast with it and the game will stay forever burned on our heads.

[hardyx]

Cool book, RPG is my favourite genre in computer games. The book looks very complete and good for retro adventures lovers. 

[bigsofty]

Ooooh you luck man! The Amiga 4000, without a doubt the best home computer at the time bar none! 

What is that current game of yours?

I'm doing a very retro, all vector lines 3D shooter. I'll be posting a demo soon, with little luck. 

[erico]

What about a preview screen shot?
Is it anything like Major Havoc arcade or the Vectrex console?

[bigsofty]

I've attached a screen shot of the main menu to get an idea of the look I'm after. I'm not too keen on posting the main game screen-shots just yet,("puts tin hat on head") the games got a unique gaming mechanic as far as shmups go and I don't want to go public on it yet.

It's a tube shooter, ala Tempest but different enough to avoid problems with copyrights (I hope! ).

[erico]

Understood. Uau, that looks quite wonderful!
Are you drawing the polygons inside GLB? Is the glow a shader or something coded?
If it is better for you, I will wait for the release and post thread to make more questions, but it looks absolutely great.

[bigsofty]

Thanks Erico  , all alpha-blended polygon lines. The vector line is basically a 'stretched' glow particle bmp, stretched along a rectangle that is rotated between two points. Everything is vector lines, objects, particles, fonts etc. The only cheat here is the dark rectangles behind the buttons to offset the glow from the particle bloom in the background. As for the code it's all a mixture of C(25%) and GLBasic(75%). I don't use the GLBasic 3D engine, I use my own OpenGL one, optimised for rendering vector lines and batched geometry.

[erico]

Nice to know, seems quite advanced, are you looking to do mobiles too?