EDIT:
I decided to make this “psychedelic mode” an optional feature.
OK the insane filters above are an optional feature for masochists who enjoyed the incomprehensible visuals of the first game.
I added martinsh’s SSAO and brought everything back down to earth.
Final gameplay flow goes something like this:
Spawn as random character on giant random map, littered with chests and enemies. At first, the map has no buildings.
Chests either contain
- Gold (most likely),
- Nothing (likely),
- an enemy (unlikely),
- A Dungeon (Spawns a dungeon in a random radius, very unlikely)
- Dark Wizard (randomizes character, rare),
- Dimensional Portal (wipes map, rarest)
Every time you move through a dimensional portal, enemies spawn with more HP and strength. Every 20 dimensions, you face a boss.
After defeating all of the bosses, the game can loop infinitely, until you are so powerful that you’re essentially making a mockery of the game mechanics. (In the original KS, I promised a game that would bring you to the 5000th hyper-dimension. That is now a possibility.)
In the center of the map is your castle, where you can level up your individual abilities using gold. You can also rent vehicles: magic carpet, mech, and cubemobile. The vehicles are returned to the castle, and must be paid for to use again, after running out of HP or crossing a Dimensional Portal.
Quitting and restarting the game only saves your character, dimension level, and castle data, NOT the map layout. To encourage fast pace and exploration, chests are everywhere, so chances are high that the map is constantly changing around you.
I’m well aware the graphics probably leave something to be desired, but that’s not exactly my forte. Beneath the deceptively simple graphics, there is a deep and complex gameplay experience I’ve been debugging, balancing, and fine-tuning for almost two years. There is no draw distance on these maps which measure about 1 square mile relative to the player, comprised of many thousands of objects. New dungeons sprout within seconds beneath your feet. The game can handle a few dozen enemies onscreen at once, hundreds of bullet physics objects running at any given time, and the entirety of its gameplay takes place in a single Blender scene – all contained in a .blend that weighs in under 50 megs. While there is still a chance of clipping through objects, you really have to be trying.
The end result feels like a mixture of a Roguelike, Super Mario, Red Faction, and Serious Sam.
Sorry if I tend to over-explain myself here. This project is almost complete, and I’m surprised I ended up caring about it so much. I promise I’ll keep my mouth shut until it’s done… though I may bump with a few more screens.
Finished appending over a dozen enemies, a mishmash of pretty damn ugly models I’ve made, all of which will be uploaded to OGA for free use upon release. I’m hoping the visuals evoke nostalgia from anyone who grew up playing Shareware games, especially those old “ONE MILLION GAMES” CD’s they used to sell at stores.
it handles about 100 enemies onscreen before dipping below the target 30FPS
I am really, truly almost finished. Sorry for the delays.