Dungeon Crawler
About
This game prototype is a proof-of-concept for a retro/modern “gridder" engine (eg. Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder, Black Crypt):
- True 2D engine: no actual 3D involved here, it’s all an illusion.
- Fake texture details: all wall angles and 3D details on them are generated on startup, making the process of creating art for such engine quite fast (you only need a wall texture and its height map)
- Smooth movements: using various motion design tricks, the movements should be smooth and understandable for an external spectator.
How to play
- LEFT MOUSE BUTTON (or touch) - Move around: click in the middle to walk forward and on the sides to turn
- ARROWS - Walk around
- W/S - Walk forward/backward
- A/D - Strafe left/right
- Q/E - Turn left/right
- ENTER or RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON - Open menu
Credits
- Textures from Eye of the Beholder
- Dungeon Crawlers
Development log
- Floors and new darkness techniqueSep 27, 2022
- LightingSep 20, 2022
- Vegetation testSep 19, 2022
- Moving objectsSep 18, 2022
- Lighting reworkSep 17, 2022
Comments
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so many attention to detail, lovely
I'm 56 years old, and I worked at Westwood when Eye of the Beholder was developed. I was a QA tester on Eye of the Beholder, Dune II, Lands of Lore, Legend of Kyrandia, Command and Conquer, and Young Merlin. I saw the textures and thought they looked vaguely familiar; then I saw the credits. A Blast from the past, man! so cool
this is really well made, beautiful illusionary graphics
come back?
This looks fantastic, any news on the development?
Gorgeous and fluid, yet still charmingly artificial!
Really cool design, definitely innovative. Can't wait to see more
Show post...
cool oldschool look!
very beautiful!
darn I can't run it in LibreWolf.
This was really something. What did you write this in? Are you planning to open source it? I saw what you did there with the height maps. Very clever, ashamed I didn't think of it. Brilliant way to make use of the 3D engine and still keep the faux 2D appearance.
P.S. Are you using flares for the colored lighting? I've been trying this but my fake 3D lighting with flares doesn't even come close to this appearance. I'm also using an expensive stylized shader for the cross hatching of shadows and it still doesn't look as good. Your effort truly captures the original crawlers in both spirit and visuals.
From the description it says this is a fully 2D project ;) The 3D is all an illusion.
I've been dying for an update for this engine. I think what he is doing is rendering these panels with height maps in 2D, then going through and cutting out the 2D image which is scaled to represent various distances. That's actually the way old time blobbers do it but here he is taking advantage of height mapping to produce features on the surface of the texture map. Very, very impressive results from very little image data. I believe he is creating the illusion of movement using scrolling and adjusting the viewport in real-time to make it look like we are zooming forwards. The end result is an extremely impressive emulation of the original 2D crawlers.
I'm pretty sure you're right yeah, I've dabbled in building my own 2D HTML/JavaScript based engines and think you're spot on with the movement. From what I can see he's fading out and in the old and new image but with the zoom used it actually feels like you're moving.
I've also seen some videos on how Doom, Wolfenstein and later 2D simulated 3D engines work and this looks exactly like that, just prettier.
But Sébastien was lead dev on Dead Cells, so I bet he knows some magic. He has a github, might be interesting to crawl through that: https://github.com/sbenard
I'd love to be able to click at the bottom left/bottom right to sidestep with the mouse.
Nice
Really smooth and good looking
I like the multiple texture options
I'd be glad to see this proof of concept evolve into something
Pretty good, just needs a block of cheese at the end ;-)
Seriously thought, close to Wolfenstien in graphics quality. Just add some interaction with the critters and the environments (secret doors, stairs, elevators) etc...
I would either make the controls configurable or make A/D turn and Q/E strafe. I end up looking at walls far to often with the current scheme.
Looks incredible for 2D!
This looks unbelievably good!
Woah, this is very cool.
Very cool!
Again, it is amazing...
'How to play' is obvious, but in description seems to be a typo. Q/D & A/E. Just FYI.
Thanks, I fixed that :)
Very impressive. I look forward to seeing this progress. And, as mentioned in another comment, we can't pick up the green "gems"!?! (I realize they are probably visual artifacts of some sort.) You know that the kind of people playing with this are RPGers, right? Not being able to pick up the green "gems" hurts us to the core. THE CORE!!!1! ;)
Ah ah! ^^ These were forgotten placeholders that were recently replaced by floating light balls that don’t have any sort of effect on you. I’m pretty sure you will love the addition :D
seems pretty cool
That's a badass illusion! Amazing visuals, gotta check the engine out
What is the point of the green gems?
These were just placeholders :)
This does look very good. What are your future plans for this?
It’s a proof of concept for a larger game I’d like to develop :) Nothing truly official yet!
Looks really good! Also nice it plays fast with the keys. Is it true that you can't perform any action? Like picking up the green gems?
Thank you! Yes, you can only walk around.
is this part of your open source github?
It’s not open source yet, but I’d like to, when the code base will be cleaner.
amazing work! love this style of games
wow! impressive work!