Secretum Labyrinth Dark Castles WIP 2018/04/20

[peteym5]

Here is the latest Work in Progress of Secretum Labyrinth Dark Castles.

 

 

New features include, collecting currency, buying items. New items with new functions. Text from scrolls can ask questions/riddles. Multiple choice ones be able to perform different action for each choice. Many new monsters, and capable of having many more rooms in same memory area. Cannot reveal all the features as I am still making progress.

[Lord Thag]

Cool. This series has some potential for sure. I look forward to seeing where you take it.

[xrbrevin]

i particularly like the speed of the gameplay and those intense near-misses!

[peteym5]

Speed of game play and smooth movement of sprites is one thing I wanted for this game series. I want to keep the action based Role Playing Game format with many things moving around the screen at once. This has 8 sprites generated with 2 players overlaying each other for the "Binary OR" from the first 2 colors to make a 3rd color.

 

New things that I had added is collecting currency and needing to buy items instead of just being able to take them. Enemies will be able to damage more than just your hit points.

 

The goals of making another game in the series is making a much more in depth role playing game, have more items and tools to work with and would need to figure out what they do. I am working on the over-world with towns and forests on top and under-world dungeon set up also. However I am not replicating anything from a Zelda game. There has been issues with Nintendo's Lawyers making contact people selling games similar to their stuff, on here + 2600 & 7800 forums.

[Goochman]

Pete,

 

One suggestion to make this a bit more fun IMHO is to align the monsters with room/activity. You created an excellent engine to allow multiple multicolor objects roam around a room but for this series it always seemed strange to me that I would run into a unicorn, dragon, bug, skeleton, etc... all in the same room bouncing around. I think it would be better to have more constraint on the monsters and for them to have a purpose for wherever you are. Lots of spiders in a room I could see - a dragon tends to live alone.

 

Just my $0.02

[Lord Thag]

Pete,

 

One suggestion to make this a bit more fun IMHO is to align the monsters with room/activity. You created an excellent engine to allow multiple multicolor objects roam around a room but for this series it always seemed strange to me that I would run into a unicorn, dragon, bug, skeleton, etc... all in the same room bouncing around. I think it would be better to have more constraint on the monsters and for them to have a purpose for wherever you are. Lots of spiders in a room I could see - a dragon tends to live alone.

 

Just my $0.02

If you are looking for input, I'd agree with this. Something along the lines of Venture where different kinds have different movement styles. It would add to the perception of variety.

 

I'm really looking forward to this, whatever you end up going with. Not a ton of ARPGS on the system.

 

 

[peteym5]

I am actually thinking about something along those lines. Newest version of the engine allows for any number from 0 to 6 monsters to be in the room, and be of any type. I am looking at one single powerful or "boss" monsters in places to multiple weaker monsters.

 

Something that goes on is that I made a small dungeon and put all the stuff close together so it is easier to see and see results. I put lots of different enemy types in the to see how they look animated in the dungeon. That dungeon in the video no longer exists as I am building actual multiple dungeons for this new game.

 

There could also be non player characters in the rooms also. Might be real simple like someone selling something and you need to answer either yes or no.

[Lord Thag]

I am actually thinking about something along those lines. Newest version of the engine allows for any number from 0 to 6 monsters to be in the room, and be of any type. I am looking at one single powerful or "boss" monsters in places to multiple weaker monsters.

 

Something that goes on is that I made a small dungeon and put all the stuff close together so it is easier to see and see results. I put lots of different enemy types in the to see how they look animated in the dungeon. That dungeon in the video no longer exists as I am building actual multiple dungeons for this new game.

 

There could also be non player characters in the rooms also. Might be real simple like someone selling something and you need to answer either yes or no.

Ah yeah, I do that when I'm programming too. I call it 'sprite salad' lol

 

Sounds like you are heading in a cool direction with this. This reminds me quite a bit of a more action oriented take on the Apshai games, which are some of my favorites on the system. Are you planning on a designed dungeon layout, or will it add roguelike/random elements as well?

[peteym5]

I do appreciate some feedback from the work-in-progress videos.

It will be a designed layout, however, the other Secretum Labyrinth games had quests you can select before the game begins, that simply randomizes the start positions of different objects. This time I am looking into something that can alter the dungeons slightly for each quest.

I am making changes to the design, back story, graphics as the game is developed. I email Video 61 and other team members almost daily during development, tossing ideals around and trying to figure out what will work and what not.

I will look into ideals of having different types of monsters in different parts of the game or group several of the same type in some rooms. There is no absolute rules on what you can or cannot do while putting these games together.