Android RPG with no name

WIP games, tools & toy projects
#1

I’m working on this one (on and off) since december 2011. There isn’t much real game play ATM, which is why there isn’t any downloadable demo yet. However, i can show some random screen shot and a video. It’s supposed to be somehow similar to the Elder Scrolls series in gameplay…but simplified to work well on touch devices.

I’m still undecided about combat. I wanted real time combat first, but i’m not so sure now, because a turn based combat might be better on a touch device. Any opinions on that topic would be greatly appreciated!

Anyway, here’s a screen shot…

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And here’s the latest video…

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#2

Wow, this looks cool…3D, textured and an RPG! Looks like Oblivion in mobile, like you said.
I’ll be very interested to see how you implement the controls…

#3

Impressive! Good stuff. Definitely keep us posted on it’s progress. I understand the problem however with combat interaction on a mobile device. I don’t know how old you are but “back in the day” controllers were simple, much like the mobile devices of today. I’d recommend doing what we did then and combine a series of movements in one or two clicks. It does remove some interaction with the end user but if done correctly can be quite rewarding.

#4

41…so i’ve seen much concerning gaming and controls… :wink: Thanks for your idea. It reminds me a little bit of the controls in The Witcher and it’s an interesting idea, which i will take into consideration.

#5

Very cool. I never saw any loading pauses as you wandered the world (unless I missed them).

I think a simple diablo style click-to-kill combat system would be good.
Or maybe the camera could zoom out to a top down view and then you could more easily control where the player should move.

What feature took the longest time to program?

#6

This game looks very cool. When will it be avabile on Google Play? :slight_smile:

#7

As I am still new to this type of game programming (used tools like RPGMaker2000 in the past) and still try to dig my way to the core of 3D game programming, I am really fascinated by your game. It looks really impressive! It doesn’t look like one of those typical “selfmade” games.

#8

This is very impressive. Hopefully you’ll manage to make the gameplay enjoyable and support gamepads.

#9

Very impressive.
But please - even if it’s for mobile devices - don’t make it turn-based. Turn based is actually okey, but not for this type of games. Not in an Elder-Scrolls like game.

I agree with CommanderKeith, Add a button for an attack. where the player does some swings and then jumps a step back again. That’d reduce the gameplay difficulty hopefully. But most important: Let the player be able to walk at any moment.

And will this also come to desktop? That would be cool, even if I have a mobile device, it’s somehow more relaxing to play on the pc and it’s also easier, since you have to lay down your phone somewhere, else you’ve only got one hand for touch.

#10

Looks really great.

I don’t know if a real time combat system is good for small mobile devices. I don’t like the stress to touch on the right position without any haptic feedback. IMHO I would prefer a turn based system.

#11

If there were any, i would have edited them for the video… :wink: But as long as you move around in the wilderness, there are no loading pauses anyway. If you enter a dungeon, it loads some data and shows a simple loading screen for a few seconds.

I’m trying to avoid showing the player’s character, because i don’t have one to keep things simple. So this isn’t really an option.

…hard to tell. Leaving aside the 3d engine itself, maybe the grass patches. It actually didn’t take that long to implement them, but it took me some time to figure out how to do it efficiently. All my ideas either consumed too much memory, too much cpu or both. Then suddenly i had this inspiration and implemented it in maybe two hours.

I’ve really no idea. There’s no real game play in it ATM. You can run around, pick some flowers and drop and collect items…there’s no combat, no quest system… I’m hoping to have something playable within 2013.

Gamepads…i never thought about it. I’ll consider it though. Concerning game play…i hope so, too. I’ve some ideas, i have some books on that topic and this is my second rpg (the former one was for the Amiga 20 years ago…), so i hope to be able to pull it off.

That’s what i thought initially, but then i tried some rpg and rpg like games on mobile devices and just didn’t like the controls at all. Well, we’ll see…i guess i have to try some things to see what works best.

Maybe. I’m using a desktop version for faster development, but it lacks some features (like sound) and my main focus is on the mobile version. Making a real desktop version would allow for increased detail though:

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#12

The main problem with mobile 3D games is that usually you drag on the left to move and on the right to look, but then how do you look and shoot? Too bad there’s no trigger like there is on a controller.

#13

If you are looking for control ideas, Delver is my favorite game for android as it is a first-person dungeon crawler (slightly similar gameplay) and has a very nicely done control system for combat, with melee being a simple click per hit, and the distance combat being more target-based… Hope to see more progress on this game, though!

#14

Thanks for pointing me to it. I just bought it and will have a look…

#15

You could make the bottom left corner carry the ‘run’ and ‘attack’ buttons, and make the character walk towards wherever they press their finger on the screen. Run button could toggle between /look/walk/run or whatever. quick tap on the screen would also count as an attack or interacting with an object (as it is now). Just a few ideas, but looks great so far!

#16

Delver is a pretty good game (albeit i usually don’t like the pixelated, minecrafty look…but i love the soundtrack) and i played it for quite some time. Regarding the controls, i still don’t really like how it handles ranged combat. Hitting something with a wand/bow is pretty difficult sometimes. Some kind of auto-aiming would be nice, but then it would suffer from the same problem that mine would: Auto-aiming is fine for projectiles that you don’t see like bullets. It’s crap for arrows especially if the bow that fires them isn’t flat and pixelated. You either have to make the bow auto-aim too (which might look pretty strange) or make the arrow fly in a different direction than one would expect. Well, we’ll see…

#17

Nice progress. Foliage look really good.

How is the performance? If there is any left try add some form of shadows. New devices should handle hardware pcf filtered shadow maps really well.(at lest on iOs side of world).
Is there any kind of lighting?

#18

Looks amazing! I’ll definitely have to keep an eye on this.

-Scott

#19

Performance is between 15 and 50 fps on a Nexus S, 33 and 60 fps on a Nexus 7 and 35 and 60 fps on a Galaxy Note. I’m not going to add shadow mapping anytime soon, because i want to focus on the game instead.
Lighting in outdoor scenes is simple vertex lighting (had per pixel lighting once, but it was much slower and didn’t look that much better). In the dungeon, it’s parallax mapping used for the first light source (which is the player) and vertex lighting for the torches.

#20

Looks very nice, thought about releasing it for Ouya as primary plattform? Basing your controls on a gamepad might give you more possibilities on how to make input or combat system.