Two Lords - ALMOST FINISHED

[Eponasoft]

The original version of Two Lords, the raycaster version, is almost complete. Here's some recent snapshots of the game in action:


Being approached by a dangerous Zombiehulk.


You can only see eight enemies...but there's more.


Bladelash kisses the ground in style.

It will likely be completed by summer. This version is still built using FB 0.14 but transition to the latest FB beta is in progress. After this version is completed, a DS port will be made. Plans for the true 3D version are still in the works, but I'm unsure if it will ever come to fruition due to lack of time and the presence of way too much competition (it seems everyone's making an FPS).

There are also plans for a sequel, but this won't happen until the original is completed.

[SSC]

Its almost finished . . . again?! lol j/k looking forward to it.

[Eponasoft]

Well, now it's really almost finished. It was never truly "almost finished" before, I was just on a roll and figured I could have it done quickly...so much for that plan. All of the levels are in the game, some just need a bit of fleshing out. All of the normal weapons work, but I've not added any of the subweapons yet. A lot of the cutscenes need to be rendered but all the text and storyline is already in place. One third of the ending is finished, and I still have to code the credit scroll. Some of the enemy AI needs to be tweaked. Finally, new demos have to be developed, as the existing ones don't function properly due to some geometric changes to the early levels, plus changes in enemy behaviors and placements.

As of right now, the game is fully playable from beginning to end. It takes me about 2 hours to play through the whole thing, a little over 3 if I get all the secrets, complete all of the hidden objectives, and slaughter every enemy. And that's without ever getting killed. A regular player is going to get killed a lot, especially if said player plays on the Hard or Insane difficulty levels (I can't even beat the game on Hard, let alone Insane). Also, the game forces you to be a good player rather than a save-whore...no intra-level saving, you can only save the game at the end of a level. I considered allowing "save anywhere" but decided against it...I want this game to be a real challenge, and I want players to feel challenged by it. Guess I've known Lachie for too long.

[Ryan]

Great news!  If you're still in the market, I'd still be glad to beta test for you. 

[BadMrBox]

Good news

[Eponasoft]

yeah, I'm thinking of opening a new closed beta test team list. At least half of the people who originally registered have gone AWOL. In fact, I'd ike to begin the closed beta test in a week or so.

[BadMrBox]

Count me in into that group if you like to 

[notthecheatr]

I'd be willing to beta test, though I can't say just how much time I'll be able to spend at it.  Still, wouldn't mind being part of the group and helping to try things out and Beta test.

Hey, even for something that's only raycasted this looks pretty good.  It'll be yet another game to add to the list of "Great FB games that make FreeBASIC more attractive to the game developing world at large," especially once you port to the modern FB syntax.

[SSC]

I can't remember if I was on the original beta test list or not, but if you release the test version in the next week I'll have some time on my hands to play it. Moving to a new city, no internet, no tv, so I'll have a few days where I'll be bored out of my mind, this should help heh.

[Eponasoft]

SSC: I'll get you a pre-beta build before you go offline, just let me know when. Hope you have a good connection for now though; the game is not small whatsoever for an indie game. I don't have a working figure for how large it is at the moment but it's probably at least 40MB decompressed, though it should archive quite nicely.

So I'll put you three into the beta tester list. Just let me know the name y'all want to appear in the credits. I'm just about finished with the credit scroll function...it works but it's not 100% finished, still gotta add one more special pic display method to it. That won't take much to add.

And for a small update on the progress of development...seven of the nine "sub items" have been added, four of them work so far. Implementing the third one is going to require tweaking of every enemy state machine, but it shouldn't be too much of a problem.


Two new icons have been added, both of the new items are 100% functional.

I also had to update my map editor to add the sub items, since I didn't have them in there before for some reason...

[Ryan]

I'd love to be added and give it a shot this weekend if possible... my wife will be out of town and I'll have a Saturday to kill.  Granted, I'll be going to see a movie and working on the floors/walls upstairs for a bit, but I'm sure I can spare an hour or two to romp around blowing stuff up.  If you don't have anything to send out then, I'm good to review it weeknights, too.

[notthecheatr]

Probably the regular usernames will do just fine, but you could write it as

James S.J. Durtka (notthecheatr)

if you like.

[Lachie Dazdarian]

Wow! This is great news. I’m glad you decided to port it to the latest FB version and wrap it up for good. All these features you are talking about are making me really excited. This sounds like it’s going to be one excellent game. And I’m also happy I’ll be able to play this, the engine not being OpenGL. I am right? I better be….or else…

Anyway, put me on the beta-testers list too. I will most likely find time. It will be either that, or sleep.

[Eponasoft]

Well, as stated elsewhere, I won't be porting it to the latest FB version until the engine reaches 100% completion. There's still a bit of work left to do before that happens.

And Lachie...what kind of CPU do you have? Since the game uses floating-point calcs, it requires a pretty decent CPU. I'd go through and convert it to fixed point but I honestly can't make heads or tails of Lithium's code. It uses gfxlib2 rather than OpenGL so it should run on virtually any Windows-based PC. It just not may run very fast if the CPU can't keep up. For that reason, there exists a framerate switch; it will run in either 30 frames per second or 60 frames per second. The 30 frames per second mode is currently untested.

I'm hoping it's going to be an excellent game. Even my wife loves it.

[BadMrBox]

Just let me know the name y'all want to appear in the credits.

Just call me BadMrBox