Dungeoncrawler Project
This is something I’ve been working on for a while, so I should probably write something about it. It started with my fascination of learning OpenGL and exploring the concept of 3d environments, particularly those in retro first person dungeoncrawlers. It later evolved into a question of how one would like to create content for such a game and what’s significant gameplay-wise in such an experience.
Often times, the complexity of an editor can be very time consuming, though you can practically create anything with it. Other times you are very limited but can work very fast and without effort.
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One of the things I have done repeatedly before implementing is measuring a certain feature with how much it will vary gameplay and how easy/quick-worked an editor implementation can be. In some cases it's both significant gameplay-wise and it's easy to do in editor and then it's a go!
Height levels, texture mappings, doors, switches and portals are done and more dungeoncrawling elements will be added, so the most important factor is that if it's not simple enough or can be made simple in some way, leave it out in favor of the project one day reaching a finished state.
I'm still pondering on the best ways to work with items and mobs editor-wise and I'm aiming for a solution that won't require scripting knowledge. More like combining different modular states in some way.
So it's clearly limited to dungeoncrawler like gameplay, and that limitation will hopefully make a streamlined and really nice workflow. Another significant limitation is that billboards will be used for everything but terrain, and that means it will be really easy to draw your own enemies and weapons and generally to be able to create various kinds of content fast (if it's reasonably lo-fi).
Everything is written in Java and will run on Win/Mac/Linux as long as you have a reasonable graphics card. Don't worry, system requirements will be low! I have no idea when it will be finished due to other work and not wanting to rush it, but I will keep updates coming as work is progressing.
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