DiMono
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Before you pull the raygun over here, hear me out.

Could someone with graphical talent spend a couple days doing up new tilesets and monster graphics to set Beethro in space? Roaches could be Space Amoebae, Goblins could be Martians (The Duck Dodgers variety), Wraithwings could be ...I don't know, it's 2am. But does anyone else think this would be fun? It's just graphics swapping, no actual change to the gameplay at all. And the big sword just gets upgraded to a Light Sabre.


If someone decides to take this on, I'm willing to write some music for it if Emmett doesn't want to.

[Edited by DiMono on 03-15-2004 at 07:36 PM GMT]

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The_Red_Hawk
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I think this could be really great! What would walls be? And would statues become planets?

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MarvinTheRobot
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hah! tilesets!...
dont even talk to me about tilesets!

p.s. i know i havent posted in a long time, im having too much Real-Life(TM) stuff to take care of. hopefully i'll get back to drod quest by the end of next week.

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DiMono
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The_Red_Hawk wrote:
I think this could be really great! What would walls be? And would statues become planets?

Space rocks? I don't know. I was actually thinking of just giving the game a different feel, like it's a futuristic alien dungeon, not moving the setting to the voids of space.

Though it would make it easier if everything was just a different type of spaceship... I don't know what you do for Serpents though. And then I guess walls could be asteroid fields, pits could be... radioactive waste? And trapdoors are high-energy space fields that turn radioactive when Beethro's ship leaves them? And I guess statues would be planets, and doors would still be doors. Orbs could be moons?

Just to reiterate, these are only graphical changes we're talking about, not a new game... though I suppose anyone who wants to make a new Beethro space game could do that too

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Scott
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Snakes could be comets.

DiMono
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Scott wrote:
Snakes could be comets.

I can't believe I didn't think of this. When I read your post, I pointed at my screen and said out loud "They could, too!" Then people looked at me strangely...

So here's what I'm envisioning for this all:

Beethro flies around in a yellow ship, to stick to tradition, and his sword is changed to a glowing light saberish beam.

Roaches: Smallish gray ships
Roach Queens: Motherships. Bigger than Roaches, with docking bays. Maybe taking up the entire square?
Spiders: Ever play Star Control 2? Ariloulaleelay ships (small, round, light blue)
Brains: Command Modules
Goblins: Green ships
Wraithwings: Black space amoebae
Evil Eyes: Mines
Serpents: Comets. With a tail and everything
Tar: Nebula. Tar Babies would be little clouds of nebula... it doesn't matter how

Walls: Dense asteroid belt
Crumbly Walls: Sparse asteroid belt
Pit: Radioactive waste
Trapdoor: Half-irradiated space (falling pit would turn in to radiation completion)
Stairs: Portals?
Statues: Planets
Orbs: Moons
Doors: Still doors, but looking futuristic
Checkpoints: Docking Stations?
Scrolls, arrows and Potions: I think these could remain the same

What do people think? Is anyone willing to take this on? I don't have the graphical ability or time to do this myself, but like I said I'm willing to come up with music for it.

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The_Red_Hawk
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Hmmm..... Isn't this what was suggested with DRODIS somewhere a long time ago?

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Snapping, turning, rising, swirling,
Screeching, flipping, gliding, sliding,
The red hawk's dance of death.

.....the king of the skies.....

joker5
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No clue... this could be fun to play. Unfortunately I'm not talented enough to draw the stuff, either on paper or on the computer. But I'd definitely give this a spin if someone did it.

~joker5

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DiMono
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Alright, I got jumpy and started doing the graphics as well as I can. Attached is my GeneralTiles.bmp file, which stores everything that's uniform across the game. So far I've transferred:

Beethro - yellow ship
Mimic - tile ship
Mimic placing images - transparent ship
Roaches - grey little ship (like the Shofixti from Star Control 2)
Roach Queens - docking bays
Wraithwings - black and purple space amoebae
Spiders - pale blue ships with four windows
Evil Eyes - space mines
Brains - control stations that light up
Blood spatter - now grey, since it's spaceship parts
Roach eggs - emerging grey ship
Beethro's (and mimics') sword - oversized light sabre-ish weapon

So this is what I've got done, hopefully others can build on it and make things look, oh, I don't know, BETTER.

Edit: for those who don't know what to do with this file, go to DROD-AE\\Data\\Bitmaps and backup your existing GeneralTiles.bmp before doing anything else, then copy the one I've attached to the directory.

[Edited by DiMono on 02-09-2004 at 10:03 PM GMT]

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The_Red_Hawk
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What does Beethro look like when he's invisible?

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Slashing, whirling, diving, twirling,
Snapping, turning, rising, swirling,
Screeching, flipping, gliding, sliding,
The red hawk's dance of death.

.....the king of the skies.....

sims5000
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Beethro looks like a light, right?
so it should look like a turned off (glass) light

[Edited by sims5000 on 02-10-2004 at 08:17 PM GMT]

DiMono
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Well, go invisible and find out

Actually, if you look at the file in an editor, Beethro when he's visible is the second set down from the top left corner. I think the top left set is invisible Beethro, and the bottom left set is the mimic. What do people think of what I've got so far? Anyone willing to pick up the ball for me?

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sims5000
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DiMono wrote:
Well, go invisible and find out

I'm not going to change DROD untill your grapcics are finished so I can't

[Edited by sims5000 on 02-10-2004 at 08:29 PM GMT]

DiMono
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It's just a file swap. Copy your existing file elsewhere, so it's preserved, then copy mine in its place. When you're tired of it, put the original one back and everything will be as it was.

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sims5000
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but it's a waste of time really (unless it's finished)

Koro
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Ya know, it would all gel a bit better if you got some nice sound effects, too! Like an explosion upon death, laser sounds for roach killng, radar blips for eyeball detection. All very stealable-- er.. produceable sound files I'm sure. I mean, if you plan to go all out on this and make music and such, Don't forget sound files, too.
Peace in Outer Space,
Koro

[Edited by Koro on 02-11-2004 at 02:04 AM GMT]

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The_Red_Hawk
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Koro wrote:
Ya know, it would all gel a bit better if you got some nice sound effects, too!

That's a good idea!

Anyways, what would trapdoors be? And the 'Neather?

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Snapping, turning, rising, swirling,
Screeching, flipping, gliding, sliding,
The red hawk's dance of death.

.....the king of the skies.....

DiMono
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With pit as irradiated space, trapdoors would be semi-irradiated. I don't know how I'll do either of those yet. And I guess the 'Neather would be a black and green spaceship I've yet to design.

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DiMono
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I have a question for someone who knows much about GeneralTiles.bmp:

What are the images at 13 down, 10 and 11 across? I don't think I've ever seen either of them in the game.

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Schik
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DiMono wrote:
I have a question for someone who knows much about GeneralTiles.bmp:

What are the images at 13 down, 10 and 11 across? I don't think I've ever seen either of them in the game.

'Neather hitting an orb.


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The_Red_Hawk
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You know, I always wondered why the 'Neather could only hit an orb directly to the south of him.

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Snapping, turning, rising, swirling,
Screeching, flipping, gliding, sliding,
The red hawk's dance of death.

.....the king of the skies.....

ErikH2000
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The_Red_Hawk wrote:
You know, I always wondered why the 'Neather could only hit an orb directly to the south of him.

In Webfoot DROD, I wasn't a very good programmer and I wrote many limitations into the game that were hard to get around. I would do things the quick way because I hadn't had much experience at that point to look ahead and predict that I would need more functionality later. My code was also quite brittle and small changes often introduced bugs, so once I wrote in some limitation it could be very difficult to change it.

A major limitation was that there could be only 256 tiles used for drawing monsters, walls, etc. I simply didn't have the space to add tiles depicting the 'Neather hitting an orb in each of the eight directions.

Other decisions influenced by this:

- The tar baby only got two tiles.
- The spider was actually a tar baby, but when a certain graphic style was set, it became a spider. So it was impossible to have both a spider and tar baby in one room.
- The trapdoor and red door were added (along with the spider) very late in development after someone at Webfoot suggested the game needed more elements. I added them because they only took two tiles from my precious 256 count and code for them was very simple and unlikely to introduce new bugs.

-Erik

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DiMono
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I remember there also being a limitation on maximum monsters in a room at one time. This just goes to prove what I try to tell my coders on a regular basis: Don't hardcode anything.

For the sake of letting people know, I'm currently pallette shifting the tar to a nice pasty nebula-ish purple (anyone have any ideas for the eyes?) and I've turned the checkpoints in to space stations. Times like this, I wish I knew how to do an automatic pallette shift in Photoshop.

Oh, Erik, since you seem to be checking out this thread, are you cool with me emailing you my interview questions for my column within the next couple weeks?

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ErikH2000
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DiMono wrote:
Oh, Erik, since you seem to be checking out this thread, are you cool with me emailing you my interview questions for my column within the next couple weeks?

Sure, that's fine.

A suggestion: Your column starts off describing the big studio approach to creating a game, and paints a somewhat stark picture of budget requirements for a newcomer that would like to make a game. You might ask some questions related to what is possible making smaller games and using open source collaboration. Not to lead you, but I think I know much more about this than the column-described conventional game production to which I'm a stranger.

-Erik

____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)

DiMono
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Just between you and me, I was planning to ask about the history of DROD and how it developed, and how you dealt with having no budget to speak of. Roper had a budget, you didn't, and that's a contrast I certainly wanted to present.

Isn't it great when great minds actually do think alike?



Also:

New version of the bitmap. Added to the previous one:

Goblins are green robots
Serpents are meteors
Tar is nebula
Checkpoints are way stations
Tar Queens and Babies look nebula-ish
Borders of nebula appear wavy without breaking the Caravel-release rules of "tar doesn't reveal what's under it"

Basically, everything in this file is done except the 'Neather and the doors. I know what I'm doing with doors, haven't thought of a good design for the 'Neather yet. Any ideas?

I've also removed the old vesion, since it's now outdated.

[Edited by DiMono on 02-11-2004 at 11:01 PM GMT]

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Scott
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How about the death star for the neather?

joker5
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*ducks the raging horde of lawyers* How about.... whirlpools for the eyes?

~joker5

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DiMono
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The evil eyes are space mines. I guess the 'Neather could be a mobile black hole, but then I can't justify it hitting orbs. Any other ideas?

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bandit1200
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DiMono wrote:
The evil eyes are space mines. I guess the 'Neather could be a mobile black hole, but then I can't justify it hitting orbs. Any other ideas?

Could the 'Neather play the part of one of those wobbly flying saucers in Plan 9 From Outer Space? Or maybe one of the zombies? Would even have the outstretched arms for hitting the orb. No? Oh well.

The_Red_Hawk
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How about the 'Neather being a really evil alien?

____________________________
Slashing, whirling, diving, twirling,
Snapping, turning, rising, swirling,
Screeching, flipping, gliding, sliding,
The red hawk's dance of death.

.....the king of the skies.....