Thursday, November 22, 2007

Direct3D

Yet another screen shot of Dragon Siege?

But wait!
I can see through the income - expense scroll!
Yes! indeed you can.
This is one of the free and quite common features available when using 3D hardware to render graphics.

Yesterday I've incorporated Direct3D support for Dragon Siege. The Direct3D details are abstracted behind the graphics subsystem interfaces, so Direct Draw can still be used by simply changing the implementation behind the graphics subsystem interfaces with the Direct Draw abstract factory. However I think the support for Direct Draw will be removed in future. There are no convincing advantages of using Direct Draw over Direct3D.
  • Direct3D has a lot of extra features such as rotation, alpha blending and scaling.
  • The Direct Draw .NET API is deprecated.
  • Direct3D is a lot faster than Direct Draw since the hardware GPU reliefs the CPU of some processing
OpenGL support will definitely be added in the nearby future.

Using the 3D hardware unlocks a great number of possible features in Dragon Siege. Some of these features were imperative for the progress of the game play in Dragon Siege.
I name but a few:
  • Large variety of monster colors and sizes
  • Proper coloring and identification of player units and buildings
  • Semi transparent effects and lighting effects
  • Use of alpha anti-aliased sprites
I'm excited to take on these features!

Monday, November 19, 2007

Parallax Backdrop

In the typical strategy game the top of the map usually ends off unnaturally with plain blackness or an abrupt break in the foreground scenario.

The screen shots of Atu'los online inspired me to end off the top of the map with a parallax backdrop.

I've collected a few suitable panorama scenes for variation and made them tiles.
I know I shouldn't gold plate when there are more important outstanding features, but hey I had to kill an hour or so :)

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Double Dragon Deluxe

Here is a screen shot from a game Called "Double Dragon Deluxe" I developed during 2006.
During end of 2005 I gathered a large database of sprite animations from various commercial games. I decided to write a game similar to the famous game Double Dragon. My version of Double Dragon includes graphics from a large variety of fighting games.
Double Dragon Deluxe is also a multiplayer game, where a large number of Players may join. A player may join either as a "Hero" or a "Computer Controller Player". The game will randomly assign control of enemy avatars to computer controller players. This makes the game quite difficult and interesting for the "Hero" players.

Game characters can also wield weapons of different types: sword, baseball bat (as wielded in the screenshot), metal pipe ...

Heroes gain Experience for successful attacks. A hero can use this experience to upgrade attack moves. For example, upgrading the punch attack will increase the speed of punching, add stun effects to the punch move and more damage. Upgraded attack moves have added visual effects.

In the screen shot you will also note some weather effects. The game engine supports area sounds and area weather effects. If a player gets closer to an area marked with these effects, the effects will increase. Such as, rain will start pouring harder, or sound becomes louder.

The game world consists of different areas. Each area consists of 2 dimensional polygon sectors with height attributes. These polygons overlay graphic art tiles as backdrops. Foreground visual tiles can also be added, for example the lamp post in the middle of the screen shot below.
Each sector can have a trigger. A common trigger is a connection between world areas. If a character walks onto a sector just in front of a door the trigger on that sector will transport the character to the world area inside the door. Sectors can also have a type. The ladder is a good example of a sector type. A character in a "ladder" sector will automatically hold onto the "ladder" and climb around if a player issues move commands.

Problems detected with the networking implementation of Double Dragon Deluxe were improved in Dragon Siege.

I will post a download link to the game some time in the future.
See Downloads
See Double Dragon Deluxe Blog

Monday, November 5, 2007

Game Startup


I had some spare time to create a startup page for Dragon Siege. The startup page eliminates the need to edit a game startup configuration file.

The Multi-player testing was a success and the Engine supports the game very well. I can now focus to improve the in-game features.