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Darkverse (realtime 3d Space Action/rpg)


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#1 scream681

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Posted 29 March 2010 - 03:06 AM

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Mankind evolved, so did warfare. The universe survived mankind, will mankind survive the new universe?




Hello everyone, I've been away for a long time.

This is a new project I'm working on, and the biggest one so far. I'm releasing this demo to test and eliminate bugs in the core system of the game, I wont reveal any details on the game itself yet, since many things will be changed in the future.

Everything is original, and copyrighted, so please be nice and don't steal or rip. :)

Play the game and post your impressions, bugs, ideas, criticism, its all welcome.

OFFICIAL TRAILER



SCREENSHOTS


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More screens at yoyogames.


PRESS F1 INGAME FOR CONTROLS

TIPS

Go close to the base or the Jumpgate and a button to Land/Jump will appear. Although jumping doesn't lead anywhere yet, the cutscene is complete.

You start with 200 credits, land on the base, and buy MISILES. They will make your life easier.

Search for enemies on the map and kill them for the drops and bounty, the items they drop are usually better than the ones in teh shop since they have bonuses, but you can also sell them and buy the ones from the shop.


CREDITS:

Graphics/Programming/Sounds: Nick Larin (scream681)

Music: Vicky Fysika (music composer, and singer of C.O.D.E band http://www.code-music.net/ )

Multiplayer programming: Margus Ojanurme.

Design consultant: Ricky Klepka.

Sin Bass Sound system by Sindarin. (ogg format saved the day)

cleanmem.dll by halo shg.

Category: Space action/rpg
File Size: 9.2 MB
GM Version: GM8
Changes Screen Resolution: no

Download Link: http://www.yoyogames...21404-darkverse


Take screenshots and post them here. The best ones will go to the first topic!

Theres a small button in the corner of the ship preview window. It generates a banner with your ship in it, post your ships, and compare stats with others.

Nick Larin (scream681) ©.

Edited by scream681, 05 January 2011 - 01:21 AM.

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#2 WesIvey

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Posted 29 March 2010 - 03:54 AM

Wow awesome graphics you done there. Simple but still looks great. I've only been playing for about 5 minutes, will edit later.
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#3 Newly Discovered

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Posted 29 March 2010 - 04:38 AM

wow very cool!
It really reminded me of Mass Effect how you can kind of roam through space.
Speaking of Mass Effect, I think you should add some kind of planet exploration system, say find an unexplored planet, scan it for minerals, sell those minerals or use them to upgrade your ship...

The game had a great atmosphere, plenty of space, nice ai (and pedestrian ai), and great menus!
I upgraded everything and played for about 30 minutes. I can't wait to see what else you have to add!
Also, I think a bloom effect would do amazing things for this game...also, maybe mouse wheel could change zoom?

Good luck and I really hope to see this make progress, it has so much potential!
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#4 scream681

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Posted 29 March 2010 - 01:38 PM

It really reminded me of Mass Effect how you can kind of roam through space.


Mass Effect is a great game, although you don't really steer the ship when you explore there, I see what you mean.

Speaking of Mass Effect, I think you should add some kind of planet exploration system, say find an unexplored planet, scan it for minerals, sell those minerals or use them to upgrade your ship...


You will travel through a lot of solar systems and areas, and yeah recourse collection is also in the plans, you will be able to mine asteroids and other things all over the Darkverse, trading and crafting items is also in the plans.

The game had a great atmosphere, plenty of space, nice ai (and pedestrian ai), and great menus!
I upgraded everything and played for about 30 minutes. I can't wait to see what else you have to add!
Also, I think a bloom effect would do amazing things for this game...also, maybe mouse wheel could change zoom?


Thanks, I'm glad you like the atmosphere, its what i worked most on, to get the overall feeling, the neuntral ships AI is very basic at the moment, I'll work on more variety.

About the bloom effect, you have a point, I'll try it out but I'm sceptical about using addons or dlls because I fear incompatibilities with drivers etc (TUC 2 was canselled because of it).

Zooming is a good idea I gave it a lot of thought, but when I tested it it just gave me the feeling of a strategy game, not an action rpg. A fixed camera give it a more "personal" feeling, if you know what I mean. besides you can use the radar and the map to see a the area around you, zooming wont be really adding anything practical.

Good luck and I really hope to see this make progress, it has so much potential!


Thanks again for the constructive post, I'm expecting the same things :medieval: .
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#5 Tarik

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Posted 29 March 2010 - 02:17 PM

Hey Nick, great to see you working on a new project again in one of my favorite genres. It's looking great, I'll leave some comments later on.

It's quite a lot of fun to play so far. I'm curious though to hear more about the game, in particular the scope you're imagining. Will you feature dozens of solar systems and groups, or will you limit it to this one large 'arena' in which everything occurs? Are you planning to have a storyline or will it be a shooter with some rpg elements?

Also there's a bunch of humor in-game right now which is a great touch, will this remain in the final game? It might really create a unique selling point, one of the reasons I've always enjoyed Darthlupi's games was because of the personal and often humorous element.

Anyway I didn't encounter any bugs, there's a lot to praise, I like the transitions and the battle-music feature in particular. You've also kept all the interfaces very simple and made everything easy to use, while many other space games get way too complex for their audience. It would be nice to see a higher resolution though, in 2010 I think it's good to make use of the real estate many of your players will have. The most simple form which I'd suggest is just increasing the size of the view depending on the resolution with some hardcoded limits, I'm playing this on 1680x1050 and I wouldn't mind simply having my view increased and the interface elements moved accordingly.

Let us know what kind of feedback you'd like. I'll be following this in any case, I really loved TUC and Battle Arena (played it a bunch with my brother, great mplay game!) and of course you were a huge GM pioneer with the racing game back in the day.

Edited by Tarik, 29 March 2010 - 02:58 PM.

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#6 scream681

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Posted 29 March 2010 - 02:25 PM

Thanks Tarik. Its cool to see one of the old members still active, I always lliked your games. Your demo of Faction wars was awesome, hope you release a new one soon. And hope you found a way around the surface problem, it seems they are quite glitchy on many computers.

Edited by scream681, 29 March 2010 - 02:26 PM.

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#7 Adr3nalin3

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Posted 29 March 2010 - 02:38 PM

As soon as I start the game, there's an "Error defining an external function" coming from obj_globals.
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#8 scream681

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Posted 29 March 2010 - 02:39 PM

You have to extract everything in the same Directory.

The game uses sinBass.dll and external music files.
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#9 Adr3nalin3

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Posted 29 March 2010 - 02:51 PM

Yes, I know T-T
I did extract everything, 2 DLLs and 4 music files (in a folder), won't work.
Downloading again, maybe the archive was corrupt or something.

EDIT: Tried renaming the DLL to sinBass and sinbass, didn't work.

Edited by Adr3nalin3, 29 March 2010 - 02:54 PM.

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#10 scream681

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Posted 29 March 2010 - 02:55 PM

I hope its not an incompatibility with the dll, but if you get the same error again, try testing Sindarin example, and tell me the results, it will help a lot.

Here is Sin Bass topic:

http://gmc.yoyogames...owtop...0&st=0


You could also try playing the game using the yoyogames player. It works there for me, and you will be sure you didn't do any mistakes with extraction.

Edited by scream681, 29 March 2010 - 03:02 PM.

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#11 Tarik

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Posted 29 March 2010 - 03:03 PM

Adr3nalin3, have you ever had any problems with DLLs of GM projects?

I added you btw Nick, just going to make a sandwich real quick! Oh and I edited my previous post.
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#12 scream681

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Posted 29 March 2010 - 03:27 PM

It's quite a lot of fun to play so far. I'm curious though to hear more about the game, in particular the scope you're imagining. Will you feature dozens of solar systems and groups, or will you limit it to this one large 'arena' in which everything occurs? Are you planning to have a storyline or will it be a shooter with some rpg elements?


Yeah different solar systems and areas are what I'm after. This is just a test area I use to polish the basic gameplay. There is a storyline and a "world concept" already, I just don't want to move to adding the real content untill the main engine and gameplay works as good as possible.

Also there's a bunch of humor in-game right now which is a great touch, will this remain in the final game? It might really create a unique selling point, one of the reasons I've always enjoyed Darthlupi's games was because of the personal and often humorous element.


Actually I was just writing stuff to test the description script. I also like humour in games, but it wont be on such a big scale as it is now, I plan to have some real descriptions aswell :medieval: .

Anyway I didn't encounter any bugs, there's a lot to praise, I like the transitions and the battle-music feature in particular. You've also kept all the interfaces very simple and made everything easy to use, while many other space games get way too complex for their audience. It would be nice to see a higher resolution though, in 2010 I think it's good to make use of the real estate many of your players will have. The most simple form which I'd suggest is just increasing the size of the view depending on the resolution with some hardcoded limits, I'm playing this on 1680x1050 and I wouldn't mind simply having my view increased and the interface elements moved accordingly.


Thanks, I tried to make the interface to be as simple and familiar (the classic rpg style). About teh resolution, yeah you have a point there, I'll work on it.

Thanks for the good post mate, its very helpfull.
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#13 Adr3nalin3

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Posted 29 March 2010 - 05:20 PM

First, instant play doesn't work with Firefox 3.6 D:
Second, this does work on my laptop, and the game's epic :medieval:
The only bug I found was when I retrieved some missiles from a space pirate I blew up, and when I went to the starbase, it said that it had a negative array index.
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#14 AB10784

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Posted 29 March 2010 - 08:03 PM

How do you switch to second and 3rd weapon, is there only the one mining area? Looks pretty :-) How do you make money? how do you tell whos a bad guy? You should include in game help/tutorials
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#15 phathod

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Posted 29 March 2010 - 10:04 PM

[Edit] Accidental quote.

Game ran fine for me, no problems here. I like the concept so far but I have a few comments. The combat seems like it has one serious flaw. If I circle an enemy continuously, he will fly in circles while I shoot him in the back. Granted it's not incredibly easy to remain directly out of reach of their weapons, but it is possible. Perhaps you could set a timer for the AI that increases while the AI can't shoot the player. If the timer goes high enough, the AI will change directions in hope of targeting the player.

The stars looked pretty, except for the background image, it looks very static compared to the nearer layers of stars. If you made it move ever so slightly, slower than the other layers of stars, I think it may have a better effect. Enough bad stuff now.

The inventory systems is very clean and well done. The upgrades look promising, lots of potential for amazing weapons and armors.

The room was huge, yet it ran very well. How big is that room exactly, haha? Overall I think this game is off to a great start. Looking forward to some updates.

Edited by phathod, 29 March 2010 - 11:04 PM.

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#16 AB10784

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Posted 29 March 2010 - 10:23 PM

Actually I did only have one error, docked and bought lasers 2 put it in my second weapon slot and threw and error, just hit ignor and it worked, but again, how do you select which weapon you are firing? I used the jump gate thing to the up and left of the dock you start by, it took me to what looked like the same place.
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#17 scream681

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Posted 30 March 2010 - 01:36 AM

First, instant play doesn't work with Firefox 3.6 D:
Second, this does work on my laptop, and the game's epic :medieval:
The only bug I found was when I retrieved some missiles from a space pirate I blew up, and when I went to the starbase, it said that it had a negative array index.


Thanks. Yeah I fixed that error, changed something at the last moment and forgot to add a line of code. Can you try testing the sinBass on the computer you get the error? If this is an incompatibility it could cause some problems.

How do you switch to second and 3rd weapon, is there only the one mining area? Looks pretty :-) How do you make money? how do you tell whos a bad guy? You should include in game help/tutorials


Some Hulls support more weapons. The first one only have one, even if you equip the weapons you still cant use them, if you guy HULL 5 for example you can have all 3 weapons at the same time. It mentions how many slots each hull has in their descriptions.

Yeah so far theres only 1 area, because I need to debug a lot of things before I made area transitions.

I mentioned in the first post how to make money, destroy enemy ships, collect the items they drop and sell them for money at the Base shop.

You can tell who is a bad guy, either by the radar dot (bad guys are red, white neutral, green friendly), or by the fact that they have healthbars with a red outline over them. Also the music changes when you enter combat.

Yeah there will be a tutorial later on, this is just a debug demo.

[Edit] Accidental quote.

Game ran fine for me, no problems here. I like the concept so far but I have a few comments. The combat seems like it has one serious flaw. If I circle an enemy continuously, he will fly in circles while I shoot him in the back. Granted it's not incredibly easy to remain directly out of reach of their weapons, but it is possible. Perhaps you could set a timer for the AI that increases while the AI can't shoot the player. If the timer goes high enough, the AI will change directions in hope of targeting the player.

The stars looked pretty, except for the background image, it looks very static compared to the nearer layers of stars. If you made it move ever so slightly, slower than the other layers of stars, I think it may have a better effect. Enough bad stuff now.

The inventory systems is very clean and well done. The upgrades look promising, lots of potential for amazing weapons and armors.

The room was huge, yet it ran very well. How big is that room exactly, haha? Overall I think this game is off to a great start. Looking forward to some updates.


Actually enemies change the direction they turn, its just random, and not very frequent. They also stop and just shoot at you, and try to avoid the missiles (in vain most of the time, but still they try). Besides, in all space games, or even flight sims you have to go behind the enemy and stay there, ofcourse thats when you just have the basic weapons im planning on adding a lot of different effects and weapons that will change that. I know that if you are used to these kind of games, the gameplay is pretty easy right now, I just make the enemies slower and less agile than you because people that dont usually play with this kind of controll system found it very hard(one friend keeps saying its iimpossible to fight without misiles). I'll work on different difficulties later, when the mission system is done, right now there are just random enemies spawned all over the map.

The universe is quite big :) . Those stars in the background are supposed to be millions of lightyears away, its absolutely logical that they dont move, I agree with you though because if they moved very slow it would look a bit better, i tried that at the beginning of making the environment, unfortunately when you move an image with such small dots like starts they get really blurred when between pixels and then back bright again, it looked like the whole sky was blinking, which was incredibly ugly.

Actually the room in the GM editor isn't that big, you just can go out of its boundaries in the actual game(you cant see them), and the enemies are spawned outside of it by an object.


Actually I did only have one error, docked and bought lasers 2 put it in my second weapon slot and threw and error, just hit ignor and it worked, but again, how do you select which weapon you are firing? I used the jump gate thing to the up and left of the dock you start by, it took me to what looked like the same place.


Yeah I fixed that error, its the same one Adr3nalin3 had. Read above about the weapons.

Yeah I mentioned, in the first post that the Jumpgate is only the graphics for now, it doesn't lead you anywhere yet.

Thanks for your replies guys, cheers.
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#18 Poddington

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Posted 30 March 2010 - 05:39 AM

I'm really impressed by your game, I really enjoyed playing it. It feels like a Top Down Elite, well sort of. I can't wait until it's finished.

Wish there was MORE : P
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#19 Adr3nalin3

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Posted 30 March 2010 - 10:09 AM

I tested the sin-bass example, it loads the DLL perfectly, it just can't define the function thingies from the DLL :/
Weird, this only happens with this DLL, as I can define stuff from 39DLL...
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#20 dadio

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Posted 30 March 2010 - 12:03 PM

Cool to see you back scream.
Amazing work on this game - very polished -
will get back with detailed comments when I've played through more.

(I always wanted to make something very similar to this myself - but as a small MMO with lots of trading going on.)
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