Horror Hospital [new art preview]

[Gnome]

Well, I'm pretty sure an editor can be immensely important really...

[FuzzYspo0N]

Heh, It's a fair point though. There are two sides here, Binding the gui stuff i have been battling out in my 'spare time'.. It's not time taken away from the 'game time'. It is also something I have been tinkering with since before this game since it is a long term feature of my game engine.

Now, the game editor is a totally different affair to me. I see the scene editor as a critical part of iteration and stuff this specific game will need.There are a lot of unknowns right now regarding the intricate details of the mechanics in my mind... If i spent a week extra on making it possible to build a level in 10 minutes to try a new mechanic - I'd say thats exactly what i am doing.

For now, I am done with the game editor stuff since I can already spawn interactive or scripted items in the levels wherever i need and things happen. Like before I had a hardcoded location of the reception. Now i have a scripted entity that can assign the patient a bed, or send them home, or tell them to wait in the waiting room to consult a doctor.

You can see in this shot that I am already working on mechanics now and no longer messing on the editors, so this is the exciting part for me :P

[Isaac]

Did you make that Gwen skin or did you find it somewhere?

[FuzzYspo0N]

Ah, yea I just made that quick by greyscaling his and then making the window look different.

Here, free for all licence. You'd need to change a few of the colors on the skin from code side to make it 100%, but I am making a much better of this skin at the moment. When i do, Ill paste the c++ for the colors and the images for the skin since they are real easy :)

[FuzzYspo0N]

I was just reading this super interesting article from the spry fox team : http://www.edery.org/2011/07/characteri ... ming-teams

'There are exceptions to every rule (for example, sometimes it may be necessary to invest in technical infrastructure, which will temporarily slow down iteration) but in general we’ve found fast iteration to be vital to team success and morale.'

Really good reading, and keeps me motivated knowing i might have been failing/been wrong about the tech time. :)

[FuzzYspo0N]

Yay, properties. Now i can edit the properties on the javascript objects directly..

[FuzzYspo0N]

Latest editor video,
As it mentions this was the last steps i needed before the major game play hit. I did finish the base entities functionality already though, and have started on the mechanics for the players (as i had most of this done already before uploading now)



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bafyP5a46Y0

Edit : ^ this one was a bit silly, so i posted a better one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T6HBJsA14E

[Jasper]

The tools look awesome... And the environment is really intriguing. Still not sure what the gameplay is like yet, but I am looking forward to finding out.

[FuzzYspo0N]

Hah, thanks Jasper. I am working on game play stuff to make a video of how it might work.

I do need more ideas, though. I am adding the line of sight stuff at the moment which will give the sneaking and controlling the other doctor mechanics some boost so i can see how that feels, and whether or not i should add some lighting changes to sneaking to be easier.

BUT LOOK OUT! SECURITY ON THE LOOSE. And rogue nurses (the art is obviously temporary).

[Darien]

You know what would be keen? If this game had not just multiplayer, but *PvP* multiplayer. One player controls the two doctors, the other player controls the security team. The win condition for the doctors is to eliminate their target; this is done exactly per what you already have, with the target arriving at the hospital at some point in a relatively random fashion. When the target arrives, the doctors will immediately know who it is, though security will not. So the game for the doctors is basically to create confusion about their objective to throw security off the scent.

Security, meanwhile, can win in three ways: by catching the false doctor, by catching the real doctor in the act of committing a crime, or by default if the doctors fail to eliminate the target. There is a set number of security guards to be moved around the map, but the player can directly control only one of them at a time -- so if you spend all your time shadowing the real doctor, you leave the false doctor huge leeway in doing whatever he wishes to do.

I think it's an interesting idea -- a bit of SpyParty to it, really -- though it likely needs a bit of polish. In particular, I'm thinking security is too strong; perhaps the doctors need a bit more in the way of "tools" to distract the guards. Or perhaps the guards should have no way of distinguishing the player-run real doctor from a number of CPU doctors.

[FuzzYspo0N]

heh, thats actually pretty interesting Darien. I like the concept of the team based game play too.

I was messing around with this quick to see if i could get some makeshift FOV but it turns out the line algorithm has flaws when it comes to this application... So back to the roguebasin for me! For anyone interested in tile based LOS and FOV check out this wiki, it has tons of good info http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment. ... ex.php/FOV

[Isaac]

Do your really want the FOV to be tile-based? You can get a similar effect (like this: http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/87883427a47948f86b18d43745a280bb) with something like this: http://archive.gamedev.net/reference/programming/features/2dsoftshadow/

[FuzzYspo0N]

Hah, yea Isaac actually I have done that too. If i have every NPC doing line of sight (for whatever reason) i don't want them all fighting over CPU for something trivial like this. The tile based one is cheap, and non-essential NPCs can use it for fun. Say a patient sees you knock someone out, they can react. It doesn't need to be visible even ( and likely won't be ).

For nurses and security its definitely going to be more along these lines :


You can see some of the experiments i was doing with this a while back,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BP5dOnJga8M

Edit : My ninja roguelike friend gave me a better algorithm.


Added a view cone :


But this also looks kinda interesting :P Keep in mind this isn't really a visible grid that i can think of. Just messing around.

[Pnikosis]

I kind of like how it looks the tile-based shadow approach. Reminds me the early footage from Monaco (the game, not the cisty, of course), but I think a little work on softer edges (the umbra from the casted shadows) would improve it a lot visually. It would be interesting to see how it looks in movement.

It seems that a lot of us are working in games with 2D shadows by the way :)

[FuzzYspo0N]

Yea, i wouldn't worry about visuals at this point. I know what style i am looking for :)
Here is the Low res FOV in motion, for those wondering to see it in motion!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOcWsZxpz8s