Legion

[sumiguchi]

For the version I downloaded - the last version submitted before the deadline - there is a big hole to get in the grey area - South West Corner.  I went in circles a little but managed to get back on the map pretty quickly to finish the first level. 

I love this game - FANTASTIC work guys!!! 

[thebawp]

That's what I encountered, and couldn't for the life of me exit the level (although I knew where the exit was).  I've tried to replicate the error this morning, but couldn't do it to the extent I was experiencing last night.  I apologise for my 'too buggy' comment, but when I wrote that, I could not get past the first screen, which to me, rendered the game quite unplayable. 

I've made a video of me entering that grey area (apologies for the awful video quality), and also being followed by enemies into the grey area.  The second part of the clip partially illustrates the arrow directing me 'in a circle', which is what I experienced last night.

Seriously though, I do want to stress this is a really great project so far - I think the controls are very smooth and intuitive, the music and graphics, particularly the character animations and dialogue screens, are very cool.  This is certainly one of the most ambitious homebrew projects I've played on the DS - it's not a port, but a game started from scratch and you guys deserve a lot of kudos for that.  I know it can't be easy, and matters were certainly not helped by my rather rude statement that the game was 'too buggy', for which I apologise. 

[MagNet]

@Magnet
Zoom thing, yep, you're right on the spot there. We had the idea of zooming out long time ago in order to effectively use sniper, cover and generally have a better view of the area and enemies. Unfortunatelly, this is still DS we're talking about and we kept cutting things in half all the time just to get constant 60fps and not kill the gameplay.
If you look at the level in the city, those 2-3 buildings, you might notice that they're kinda not too high as they should be -proportionally toward the character. Well, that's just one small example of rescaling, cutting or generally keeping the way as it is to keep the constant framerate and to hide triangles that might be too much for the scene. :/

Is the floor made out of cubes with some polys cut out or planes where nothing else is needed? Maybe making the tiles bigger or the characters smaller would fix all this. I'm sure it can be done better somehow, look at Zelda for instance. Anyway if you want some more 3D assets I'll be more than glad to help you out.

Also for the sniper you could at least show some blobs for enemies and then allow for view movement as aim.

[lobo]

Now I see where it is, yeah, this is the first time I've encountered it and it is on the NW and goes along the line to the NE until you reach the Exit. I did manage to get out of it right away but it is a huge gaping hole. I've notified smealum already, he should be able to patch it.

All in all, thanks to both of you thabawp and sumiguchi and yea, these weird things are quite expectable in the early builds (I've found myself a few scary moments, can't even tell what it is as it is my fault ).

@Magnet, floor is a plane on which 32x32 tiles were applied, on top of that additional layer has the height info (like roads on some maps), and three more layers, for items/environment and enemies placement and 'sidewalls' effect. All in all, maps are huge but nothing that is a killer of the framerate. Now, the actual 3d stuff that goes on top of that, that's problematic.
The latest Brutus MD2 model weighted about 298 faces, take 3,4 enemies with him nearby, especially when zoomed out, bam-1200 faces easy, visible at any rate at least half of it and than add the environment, a building, a tire, this and that...
The problem is that it is an action game and you can run to the certain part of the map then run to another and spawn dozens of enemies to follow you. In Zelda, there is no such case, everything is controlled, the same applies to Warhammer, being turn based and all, much easier to control what the player will see at any given moment and hide the rest behind the fog. The only thing in Zelda is the fact that those guys took, what 6-8 months, a year to finish it with knowing everything about the inner workings of DS hardware, you know. Smealum did all of this in a few months between the school and optimized for speed and constant framerate just a week or two before the compo?!
However, that also means that we can still try some tricks here and there and make it as best as we can do .

So, thanks for the comments and all, too much I typed.

[MagNet]

Yeah I understand, Nintendo of course has a lot more experience and better devkits. Just saying that maybe if you zoomed out you could also have the characters at around 100 polys each maybe, I might try to whip such model up. Also when there would be too many polys onscreen you could assign a poly number to each object and if that number goes over 2048 you could simply load even simpler versions. How's that?

But all in all amazing work guys, for a homebrew and two guys' work it's awesome.

[lobo]

Hehe, thanks but it's three, Zeblackos did the music, actually 3 tunes but only one so far made it into this demo.

About the zoom, well..smealum just told me that he might have some way to get the zoom out, nothing granted, as he said that it might not work but he has something in mind so I guess we'll wait and see what's he cooking there.
On the same note, I sent him the latest model with a few fixes and additional animation for the 'Strafe and Shoot' so I guess for the final version that might get implemented as well. Actually, so far Brutus has about 120+ frames of animation, not even half was used (hitting, crawling, crawl+shoot, two death sequences, run back+shoot, etc.) so by the time we progress to the final, there should be a whole bunch of changes and additions that we couldn't fit into the demo.

You mentioned something about sniper before, I didn't understand that, can you explain what do you mean by the 'blobs' thingie?

[minishlink]

I've just finished it this morning, the game is pretty cool !
So, when you understant that you must go where the red cross say, it's become too easy
Is that normal that the game bug at the end but not crash ?

Great work Smealum, Lobo and Zeblackos ! 

[tiancai]

Does this game not work for R4?

[MagNet]

You mentioned something about sniper before, I didn't understand that, can you explain what do you mean by the 'blobs' thingie?

Yeah, of course. What I meant was some kind of radar that would be there instead of the zoomed out view and with sniper you could move the view around and shoot those targets visible on the radar.

[lobo]

@Minishlink, thanks, yeah I guess once you follow the compass thing you can get to the exit by avoiding some enemies, however there will be instances where you need to pick one of the parts before getting to the exit meaning that finding the part first will get you in the way of awaiting enemies.
Also, we'll probably make the replenishing of the energy slower so it should be tricky.

@tiancai, yes, it works on R4, that's the card that I have, don't forget to put the legion folder on the root of the card.

@Magnet, I think I understand and I think I saw that in some game but can't think of where. Like, moving the screen kinda thing while your character is frozen to target the enemy, not a bad idea actually. We had a bunch of different ideas for the sniper that are kinda similar to this. In case we get the proper zoom out I think this can be done nicely.

[MagNet]

Oh don't make the HP restoring slower , it's already slow enough now, sometimes I have a little problem aiming at the correct spot when shooting somebody and get shot a few times before he dies, I don't want to wait too long before I get my HP back. Maybe with some inventory system and medkits but otherwise leave it at this, thanks.

Also in the dreamworld you could rotate the shrooms in the texture to fit the camera angle. So it looks like an object more like a flat texture.

And again if you want another 3D artist onboard just contact me.

[lobo]

Haha, yeah, it's just these darn kids nowadays, every game is easy for them so you have to 'harden it up'. 
Somewhat, dunno, about a minute maybe to replenish 100 points of energy might be reasonable as we didn't plan the health pickups so we'll see how it goes.

Thanks for the offer, definitely keep you in mind, all the stuff for Legion is pretty much done but we were thinking at one point after the single play version is done to maybe do another build for multiplayer only. In that case, some variety of models would be more than welcome. Which 3d app you're using, btw and how comfortable are you with the MD2?

@Minishlink, forgot to ask but what do you mean bugs out but doesn't crash? 

EDIT: I forgot to say about targeting the enemy, we have this solution where the enemy will be outlined in red whenever your aim is right, so to speak, so that will help.
Mushrooms, heh, that whole level is a joke obviously so the tiles with mushrooms are intentionally like that. Now, that made me think and I'm sure smealum would kill me for doing so, heh but maybe a giant or smaller 3d mushrooms in there, that might be, umm...disturbing enough. 

[MagNet]

Hehe SHROOMS!!

Anyway, using 3DS Max and IIRC I was exporting to the MD2 format for the DN3D HRP so it shouldn't be too much problem getting back into it. I'll just gather a few exporters and I'm all set.

What amount of tris are you limiting the environment models to?

[lobo]

Super, even though I got confused with DN3D HRP until the power of the internet showed what that is.

Environment models, anything goes really, from 8 to maybe 40-ish for 'complex models', hehe. The easiest thing to see this is to get, let's say 'MD2 Viewer', can't find a link but if you don't have it- I can upload it somewhere, and check the 'environment' directory in Legion folder. That will give you the idea how small or large are some of the environment models.

And yea, shrooms, maybe every time you touch it, the controls get inverted, kinda like the 'drunk mode' in Aufwiedersehen Monty. 

[pifreak]

I liked the game, and will admit the controls are hard to get used to but I suppose they will work even better when you can shoot while walking in any direction.

The graphics...are o.k. but would be much better in a different format, because you just can't get as many colors and that makes it hard to tell the difference between low and high ground, and some of the blacks become greens, and you can't get rich golds and other colors.

I tried modding the textures, and now Brutus looks like Masterchief from Halo, except with a tiny head.

How many colors can you use? It doesn't seem like many...but if its not too hard we would all appreciate some more colors, I think. I mean, it might lagg it if you have TOO many, but the ds screens can display 260,000 colors.