Steel Archers - An Action RPG in the Wild West

Community Showcases
1

Hey all, been awhile since I started a thread! Just wanted to show Steel Archers, my Wild West action RPG. (yes I had started a mech sim with the same name…didn’t work out!)

Updates - Procedural level generation in, but will have to be reworked. Merchants are sort of in, as are weapon upgrades etc.

Builds 2012-12-13
WINDOWS
MAC
LINUX

Features (some in, some planned)

  • Procedural Levels - different game each time!
  • Difficult choices - only 4 inventory slots (plus a main weapon)
  • Difficult Choices - “parts”, the currency in the game is used for purchases, upgrades, and to activate (most) powers
  • Steampunk influences as the game progresses
  • Professionally composed soundtrack
  • 3rd person Perspective
  • Simple, clean retro flat shaded polygon style

Currently you can run around and shoot stuff, collect parts, and get a few upgrades (from the barrels, no stores in yet). The buildings at the start are procedurally generated. WASD to move, keys 1-4 for the action bar, LMB to shoot. When the parts window pops up, press key 1 to 4 to buy and assign to the appropriate slot (or escape to stop). There are only 4 slots, buying something for one slot will replace anything else in the slot. (You can have multiple copies of powers in different slots, so you can have two of the same dynamite power if you wanted t use it more, your choice)

I’d especially like to know if the Mac and Linux versions work as I have no way to test them at the moment!

Technical Stuff:

  • Using SQLite Kit for my backend database
  • So far SQLite database has entries for each skill or item
  • I use Excel, with a worksheet per table to enter and manage the info
  • I use SQLite Data Wizard, with a saved template to push the Excel values into the SQLite DB (also using SQLite Maestro for DB management)
  • Using Mecanim which has been great!
  • Have a handy little script in there to keep non-physics item on the ground - so it will fall sans gravity until it hits something (based on layer), and then stay there. You’ll see it on the scorpions (which use generic mechanim settings) and the item barrels as well.
2

Great Game! I’m really digging the Low Poly/Origami style world :smile:

I love the randomness of the game(how it generates differently every time), How did you make the monsters spawn correctly/randomly when the level generated?

3

Thanks for the compliments!

The level itself is not completely procedural yet - but basically what will happen, similar to the buildings (which are procedural), is that there will be preplaced objects in a given segment that can optionally spawn a spawner so-to-speak. (Right now there are some pre placed scorpions and snakes for testing, and two scorpion generators).

These segments would then be stitched together - that’s my next big task to get some macro prefabs done. I’ve done something similar before - basically you take prefabs that have special exit and entrance gameobjects, which spawn gameobjects aligned to those objects. The trick this time around, is that I need to have exit/entrance types - so say you have a corridor with a Type A exit - say it’s a simple on 1x1 square - it’ll look in the library for a corridor with a Type A entrance and line 'em up. Now this new corridor might have a Y junction with two a Type A exit and a Type B exit (I dunno, maybe a hexagon shaped portal) - those exits would in turn spawn new corridors with the appropriate entrance type at each.

The trick is making sure you don’t get corridors crossing over each other - I had this solved before by delaying giving like a master, large collider for each segment. The exit tries to find an entrance that doesn’t collide with other geo in the level, or caps it off as a last resort. I think I also had like an angle counting variable, so it would add up the turns and wouldn’t go past a certain amount. (So if you’ve made 3 30 degree right turns, you’re at 90 degrees, and the next piece MUST include a left turn)

The only thing I wasn’t able to figure out (and still haven’t) is how to close a loop.

4

It works on my Mac.
A few notes:

  1. Backpeddling is pretty hard. If you want it that way, that’s fine. I seem only to be able to walk straight backwards.
  2. Controls for movement seems somewhat unresponsive because of the the animation blend time, but aiming and shooting works fine.
  3. I like the retro design, but for some reason, I feel the buildings are aesthetically off. Most people would ignore that, though.
  4. So, this is the game that was a time-splitters inspired shooter, turned mech sim? If you don’t mind me asking, why didn’t the mech game work out? You were working on it for quite some time, and it seemed to be coming together fine.
  5. When in a wild west setting, steampunk is often referred to as “Weird West”.
5

Hard to say, basically wasn’t feeling it - it never felt like a game to me, and I couldn’t find a direction that worked. Plus Hawken and MWO seemed to be taking care of that genre quite well. The next big thing that happened was after Gamercamp in Toronto and seeing all these awesome, retro titles. Now there are plenty of 2D 16bit type retro titles, not really a whole lot of 3D titles. And I started thinking about what made me nostaglic, and realized it was the Virtua era - the early steps into 3D.

Saw one guy was working on a flat shaded zombie game. And it kind of got me thinking about it - so in the hotel that evening and morning, I messed around with the lopoly stuff - in a short time I was making interesting looking stuff, I liked the look, and realized what was really driving me into the ground with Metal Archers/Steel Archers, it was trying to do AAA graphics on my own. (Well not quite AAA, but you know hifi stuff) It was dragging me down, spending weeks on something and it wasn’t done or rigged or anything. It was not feasible.

Meanwhile I had this fresh looking lopoly stuff. I’d already started changing the tone of the mech game from hi-tech to steampunk, and the first cuts of my music game in from my music guy (contracted with him for like 10 min. of music). It was very Western sounding, and something about it really hooked me. The project you see here is about a month old, and it already seems to be working very well, I’m excited about it, I’m getting positive comments when I show it (other than control issues). It’s just really coming together.

Maybe I’ll get to a Timesplitter style FPS some day, and maybe a mech game, but this is the first project that will go thru to release!

Sometimes I fret about the time wasted on the old iterations project, but it wasn’t really wasted - I learned a lot, and I doubt if i’d have this working demo in a month without that experience! Really I should’ve spent more time prototyping from the start, to make sure things were fun. But I kept getting sucked into modelling and such, and focusing on stuff that was not important.

phew, longer post than I meant to make! And yeah, the controls need work :slight_smile: Still getting the hang of blending the animations - still not sure I’m doing it right!

6

Indeed, I have more unfinished projects than fingers on my hands, but the experience helps you get started quicker. Plus, you can always steal assets from yourself; cannibalize your own project folders.

I think the animation looks fine, whether you did it right or not, it just seems to be bogging up the user input.

7

I think it’s something to do with the transitions…or I’m still missing transitions.

8

looks intriguing

The Death thing bugs me
the 3rd camera view bugs me a little
the aiming down by the feet is awkward when firing on enemies

but all in all like to see this continue

9

Game is good, camera is annoying though. Aiming down and walking backwards are both buggy. But the game is fun so far! Keep working on it.

10

Got the first bits of the level generator in place:

This is built from 3 parts, plus the starting part. My program assembles them by choosing appropriate parts and matching up entrances and exits more or less. The one thing I haven’t quite figured yet is how I’ll keep the map from intersecting itself in weird ways. Right now it’s just some test geo, but the level bits would have stuff in there to create other variation - create buildings or rockfaces, and place monster spawners…etc.

11

Coming along pretty well!

WINDOWS
LINUX
MAC

12

Got in merchants and weapon upgrades, and more terrain. The whole system will have to be reworked though, it basically makes a series of branches, which sucks. Like if you get to the end of one branch it’s a long ways back to try a different one.

13

Haven’t updated in a while here:

New graphics:

These scene pushes things to 500K triangles or so, but Unity still seems to keep on trucking!

Lots of other tweaks and changes - finally come to an understanding with mecanim and we’ve agreed, for the most part, to not fall thru the world, or float anymore (hint: make sure you choose bake y movement for your animation clips if you want to use gravity). (Scorpions aren’t fixed and love falling out of the world) Have maps, compasses, and if you find the exit you end up in a weird test dungeon, which I need to get rid of :slight_smile:

BUILDS HERE - the Windows version is the latest, the Mac and Linux versions don’t have the newer hipoly models just yet. And I’ve heard the linux version doesn’t work at all!

I’ve actually hired an artist, so hopefully start having some good looking enemies popping up soon!

14

WOOP! Super addicting and fun! I love the way it looks all blocky. Great job on it :).

15

For some reason the blockiness makes it seem more detailed…?