This looks super cool Smile. Keep up the good work, JamesV!
hello is this released yet?
kingj161616 wrote:
hello is this released yet?

Clearly not, the last post in the thread was from 2018.
Far from release, but not forgotten about. I have made a small amount of progress recently, with character panels now a tiny bit more interactive, a basic inventory screen, and the compass being implemented, etc. The actual map engine needs rewriting though, currently it only really handles two block types (floor or wall).

Great selection of party members.
It's good to hear this is being worked on, it's a very interesting project. You mentioned that it is a "block by block" psuedo-3D engine earlier. How does this differ from raycasting?

And as always, nice work, it's looking great, especially the 3D-look UI.
Looks amazing as always - And hehe great party! Very Happy.

How many different block types are there?
elfprince13 wrote:
Great selection of party members.
Seemed like a strong party, although I'm not sure what the class breakdown would be. Who are the Fighters, Rangers, Thieves, Clerics & Mages I wonder?

epsilon5 wrote:
It's good to hear this is being worked on, it's a very interesting project. You mentioned that it is a "block by block" psuedo-3D engine earlier. How does this differ from raycasting?

And as always, nice work, it's looking great, especially the 3D-look UI.
Yeah the engine doesn't use raycasting. Because view orientation is in fixed 90 degree increments, each frame it redraws the ceiling/floor background, then starting from 3 blocks away it scans back to the party and draws wall sprites as required. So it's far from efficient in that it draws over itself a decent amount, but I believe it's the same method that was used in the original Eye of the Beholder games that this is based off.

All the various wall sprites are stored in 4-bit, then converted to 8-bit on the fly when being drawn. The party panels also are stored in 4-bit with their own palette, and converted to 8-bit when drawing.

tr1p1ea wrote:
Looks amazing as always - And hehe great party! Very Happy.

How many different block types are there?
I'm in the middle of researching how the original EOB map engine worked (and also playing the game through to refresh myself on mechanics, etc.), but I believe each "block" used 4 bytes for the 4 horizontal faces, so that a block could be a "normal wall" on one side, but have a "shelf wall" on another side, or a button on another side, etc. Levels were 32x32 blocks, so took up 4KB of memory, plus any other data such as mobs, loot and event scripting.

The below YT playlist has a cool playthrough of the original game (by an Aussie guy no less Wink ). Whilst this game isn't intended to be a direct remake/clone of EOB, I'm hoping to keep a lot of similar features.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLelCFE4iPD8_c9xSGm7G_GZO60vfWY9hz
JamesV wrote:
elfprince13 wrote:
Great selection of party members.
Seemed like a strong party, although I'm not sure what the class breakdown would be. Who are the Fighters, Rangers, Thieves, Clerics & Mages I wonder?

Kerm is definitely a Mage and Mateo is a fighter. Would tr1p be a ranger? Razz
Ranger would suit I think Smile.

I was watching some of the gameplay - have you put any thought about incorporating USB mouse support for the game at all? (perhaps down the track).
I'm reasonably sure that at least among that party, I'm most likely to be the cleric.

[edit]

tr1p1ea wrote:
Ranger would suit I think Smile.

I was watching some of the gameplay - have you put any thought about incorporating USB mouse support for the game at all? (perhaps down the track).


Or gamepad, perhaps with haptic feedback?
elfprince13 wrote:
Great selection of party members.
I second this emotion.
I just saw this. make. doom.
elfprince13 wrote:
tr1p1ea wrote:
Ranger would suit I think Smile.

I was watching some of the gameplay - have you put any thought about incorporating USB mouse support for the game at all? (perhaps down the track).


Or gamepad, perhaps with haptic feedback?
These are both cool ideas! The mouse would lend well to the gameplay.. The original Amiga/DOS versions of Eye of the Beholder use the mouse heavily, although you can play without the mouse, but it's more of a challenge.

arusher999 wrote:
I just saw this. make. doom.
Heh, I really hopefully someone tries to make Doom, or as least Wolfenstein 3D. Unfortunately, this isn't that game, or engine. This is a block-by-block engine so I don't think it would translate great for a FPS.

I'm not spending too much time on this project, but I have started rewriting the engine. My first engine was based off the level being a simple 32x32 tilemap, but this doesn't lend well to having countless combinations of different faces on each side of a block. The new engine works more or less the same as EoB, in that each block has 4 separate faces. So the 32x32 level takes up 32x32x4 bytes (4KB), and then plus event scripting, items & monsters once I get around to that.

I'm also now ripping the graphics from the DOS version (previously I was using the Amiga one), as they look a bit nicer imo. I'm a little concerned about how big this game could get with all the graphics if I ever finish it.. I guess the original DOS game was 1.44MB, so in theory this could definitely fit on the CE with a lot of data files.. I'm curious to see what people think of that though?


Custom level editors ftw! How many of those have you written now? Razz

Looks to be running nicely Smile.
tr1p1ea wrote:
Custom level editors ftw! How many of those have you written now? Razz
Too many Razz

I've done some more work on this and got the new map/rendering engine mostly working, so blocks can now have 4 different faces. This clip doesn't really demonstrate that too well until I get some more tiles into the game, which is the next item on the to-do list. But if you look closely you can see the alternating wall tiles and how they remain consistent from different angles.

This looks incredibly cool!
A rename! I'm still looking forward for this project and I love the graphics and layout. I wonder how battles will be in the final version since you got 6 characters, as I haven't seen many pseudo 3D dungeon crawlers and RPGs in action where there were more than one character. Smile
Whoa, when I saw this I thought it would be a classic "Is this finished yet?" bump, but its a real status update! It looks super awesome!
DJ Omnimaga wrote:
A rename! I'm still looking forward for this project and I love the graphics and layout. I wonder how battles will be in the final version since you got 6 characters, as I haven't seen many pseudo 3D dungeon crawlers and RPGs in action where there were more than one character. Smile
In the original Eye of the Beholder game, battles were based off DnD rules but played in real time... I'm intending for it to be a similar feel in this. The first link below shows a playthrough of EoB, and the second link is where you can play it on Internet Archive.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLelCFE4iPD8_c9xSGm7G_GZO60vfWY9hz
https://archive.org/details/msdos_Eye_of_the_Beholder_1991

I've imported a few more tiles, including the ladders down & up to move between levels, and the gate which will function very similarly to the door shown in the previous clip, but you can see through the gaps and will also be able to throw items through it (either to trigger a button or pressure plate, or to attack an enemy behind the gate).

  
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