Defining Awesome

I’ve been working further on improving the map editor to accomodate the new bump mapping rendering. I got some initial tests working, nothing fancy, because I’ve drawn it myself. I’m waiting for a real artist to draw the tiles.

In the meantime I’ve been figuring out some changes I want to make in the next release. Here are some things that I’m pretty sure of, but discussion is of course welcome.

1. 30% smaller characters
There is something off with the scale in the current maps. The character should be actually larger I think. But I am not going to make him larger. I made him smaller for a test and it feels awesome. I don’t know why but I want it this way (maybe cause it feels more like Soldat?). This decision means all maps will have to be redone. This isn’t so bad because they would have to be redone anyway with the new shading technique.

2. Default 135 degrees FOV; out of view field painted black
FOV will stay as default. I think it is essential for good tactical combat.

3. Teammates FOV adds to yours
This option will be essential for making the FOV much better. Basically you will see what your teammates see. It will be a variation on 360 degree FOV and no FOV at all. Because if there will be lots of teammates you will practically see the entire map.

4. All weapons and items will be redesigned for the new game mode called “Intrusion”.
This is the game mode I initially designed for LD, where two teams have to attack their bases. Some of the weapon and items were made for the Huntdown gamemode. I’m not sure if cloak for example will fit in the new game mode. All of this needs careful rethinking.

That’s all for now. I hope to have some screens soon.

Remember this?

Multiple light sources done. I’m restructuring the map editor to make it work with the new tile format.
Does anybody know of a good GLSL pixel shader optimization resource? Like what instruction costs how much GPU ticks?

I introduce real-time bump mapped tiles with directional ambient occlusion aka self-shadowing. Here is a little gif preview.

OK… I tricked you. That’s how 2D tile maps look nowadays and looked since 1979. Here is how Link-Dead tilemaps will look for real.

This is a technology to render 2D maps with realistic light sources. The highlighted bumps create an illusion of depth and material shininess. The shadows create the illusion of volume. Can you imagine how godly this game will look like with this?

Just a VERY small test of my new offline lighting technology. Looks like some Mars pyramids. Proper tiles will come soon. I’ll explain how this works shortly (very busy)

I’ve come up with a technique that will greatly improve the look and feel of the maps. It’s an offline bump map and self-shadowing renderer (I’ll explain this shortly). I will be making now big changes because I’m not satisfied with the gfx right now, I relied too much on photos and blurred tiles. I want to aim at a more pixel look.

Dedicated server finally seems stable. There were no crashes since the 1999 release. I’m happy about this. I will be now consequently moving forward towards the beta, make a proper team game mode, get more people playing etc.

Brilliant design lessons; Mechner’s 1 3 2 method & why less talk is always better.

The alpha version of Link-Dead is an iterative process were I might change something completely just to see how fun it is. This new build changes entirely two critical gameplay elements. First of all I unified the damage model. This means all weapons behave nearly the same when doing damage. A picture describing this can be found below. I hope this change will bring some tactical variety to the game because it is now VERY easy to die, so you’ll have to be very careful about what you are doing, how you expose yourself, what gun you are fighting against etc.

Second thing is I removed weight classes and replaced it with a gradual system. This means that every piece of inventory you add affects your weight. Weight then gradually affects your movement speed, climbing speed, ability to climb walls, roll and fatigue. I hope this change eliminates artificial inventory shuffling that was done in order to stay in a given class.

This is not all. There is a couple important bug fixes and other improvements.
I added an Armor Repair Kit for Einheriar. It means you can now weld your damaged armor!

There are also some visual & audo improvements. Step sounds are completely remade and sound a lot nicer. They were done by a proffesional (LD’s musician Maciej Stankiewicz). But most importantly there are new BLOOD decals:

You can download this game for any donation for my game development right now.

IMPORTANT: When you first run this version be sure to change your Sneak Toggle button to Z or any other key you want. If you don’t do this it is probably the same button as melee (Shift).

IMPORTANT 2: If the game fails to auto-update, please go to the LD folder and rename LD.bak to LD.exe.

The SNES port isn’t a joke. Well almost. You can turn the SNES mode on if you change the resolution to something low like: 320×200. To do this open Scripts/autoconfig.gm and edit v_width & v_height.
Meet you on the servers.

Here is the complete changelog.
Changes 1991-1999:


[general]
- added Armor Repair Kit for Einheriar
- changed soldier/bullet collision; hands don't block chest and head
- removed weight classes; weight affects speed and movements gradually
- separated sneak form aiming; sneak is now toggle with (default Z) key
- soldier can walk and patch
- melee and punch now execute fully when tapped fire
- corpse stays longer if is being hit
- recoil doesn't move mouse[effects]
- new reworked foot step sounds
- jump sounds based on material

Last but not least. A week ago I asked Prince to write a song about the new Link-Dead build. Being a fan of my games he happily made a new song called “build 1999″. Enjoy:

Hard times have come. As you know the PC market is on the verge of death as more and more gamers switch to consoles. In a desperate attempt to gain some share of this market I have been secretly porting Link-Dead. I can finally reveal the Link-Dead: Super Nintendo port.

Watch the video I recorded. It is running 100% on the original Nintendo machine at 30 FPS. This is the second game in history to make use of the SNES mouse. The video isn’t high quality but that is what you can expect from a TV signal. I first had recorded this via rf on vcr, and then recorded on dvd, and then prerecorded on dvd by converting rca to vga and then back to rca for up/down sampling the signal. Just imagine how much the signal has been damaged due to the rca cable and the constand adc & dac conversion. This is what has been left off from original source. Enjoy.