I stumbled upon this a while ago and it blew me away.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBeiLOxm...26899D98AB

Before you click on that link, let me tell you what's there.
This guy made 11 videos of himself playing Diadem of Maunstraut, narrating his playthough. ‎  Its video captured so its not poor quality.

The really impressive part is that each of the 11 videos are over 30 minutes in length A PIECE. ‎  Counting the miscellaneous minutes, its probably 6 hours of professionally shot footage of the game with his voiceovers.

Moved, I messaged him thanking him for the tribute.
Likewise, he responded back, thanking me for making the game. ‎  :)

So, I know its cliche to say that this is my best musical work yet (as I say it with each attempt) but I really do feel like I'm making progress here. The project, once again is Ankou Awaits, and the album's name is Wyllt.
I spent WEEEEEEEKS putting this together. Writing. Recording. Now I'm finally done with all of that.



A few things different from previous albums -
~ I added some symphonic elements. Not enough to be symphonic metal I'd say, but enough to give the occasional late 90's second wave black metal vibe. No "keys" per say, but more strings and ah's.
~ Lead/solo guitar elements and occasional clean/singing vocals.
~ Also, just like better ingredients ~ better pizza, better instruments ~ better recording also applies here.

This is a full length album, but I'll post two songs here - Track 1 and Track 5.

Now I'm going to try to get the attention of a better record label than The Path Less Traveled Records. Nothing against them of course, but you'll never know how good you can get until you start from the top and work your way down.

You literary buffs, this is a split concept album from Welsh mythology. (Wyllt~rhymes with the German licht~is Welsh for "Wild") Part of this is about Gywn Ap Nudd's journey reclaiming his love, but when he makes Cyledr (later renamed Cyledr Wyllt) eat his father's heart, we travel though Cyledr's sanity breaking. Also a touch of King Arthur ~ google is your friend if you want to know more about these legends.

Question, comments or concerns, I'd be happy to accommodate. You can sample all the songs on my project's dot com.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJc6fhIRtQA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yU1KptibmE0

I'm just posting a redirect here so I know everyone sees this:

https://www.swordofmoonlight.net/bbs2/in...opic=139.0

It can be kind of easy to miss because I've stickied it.

Anyway I've had kind of an idea like this stuck in my head for a long time. It's just now all coming together. I'd like to see a game to rival the corporate games, or even make a mockery of them, born of everyone who wants to working on it opensource style just like a lot of software is developed nowadays. I don't see any reason why games should be any different. And I think SOM is the platform for the job, and I think KF is game with the pedigree.

I still think KF2 is the best game of all time. And the quintessential 3D adventure game. So its only right for the first big opensource game to be KF and herald a new era of 3D video games in the same way I think KF heralded the arrival of 3D video games.

I am going for a Shadow of the Colossus slayer but with a more conventional experience so that it doesn't feel like a flagrant exercise in minimalism.


PS: also I am working on new controls for SOM that I think will be the dominant controls for SOM games in the KF vein going forward. They've turned out really well and much better than expected, including: dodging/rushing, jumping, ducking, climbing, hanging, fast turning, shields, all without any new buttons, so pay attention if you are into in that sort of thing.

PPS: Don't be surprised if I don't reply to this thread. I'd lock if I could. Feel free to do so. I honestly don't have any reason to navigate back to here, but I will leave the tab open for a day or two.

Well it's not exactly an addon for SoM seems this was as good of a place as any to post it.

A while ago I got the idea to make a cursor of everyone's favorite sword and decided to give it a shot quite recently. I feel it could use some more work but that could just be me trying to be a perfectionist so I've decided to post it here to get some opinions before I continue to work on it.

I also have it saved as a .png so if anyone wants it for an icon or something let me know. It looked better before it was converted into a cursor in my opinion.

Attached Files

  Moonlight cursor.cur (Size: 9.06 KB / Downloads: 256)

I was playing the game "Dear Esther" and I must say it's one of the best looking games of all time in terms of a realistic feeling, immersive environment. So I thought it would be interesting to look at some of the deign elements the game uses.

The game seems to avoid straight polygon lines such as on the roof line in this picture. Lines that are straight, like the boards piled against the wall, are posed in irregular angles and textures use an effect similar to camouflage with irregular color blobs along the edges to mask them.


You can see the same thing here. ‎  I couldn't find a crate from the wrecked ship that was a perfect cube. Everything was bent in a slight angle.


The ground of the map is raised in a very realistic land-mass shape. Even though it's mostly just covered with a flat texture, the realistic shape of the land makes it feel far more immersive. ‎  I'd guess that real reference data (photos, maps etc) were used ‎  in the construction.


Choosing to model subjects with expectedly straight lines can enable low polygons with a feeling of high detail. A lot of the models in the game use quite a low-polygon count but still look amazing and it frequently chooses to model parts made after real objects which have straight lines. For instance, I've seen real walls constructed exactly like the ones pictured below. They use a cap of flat cement on top of natural curved rocks. So even though the wall model is extremely low polygon, it doesn't look as fake as it would if the model was a mimicking a pure natural-rock wall.


The rocks are quite low-poly too, but the game uses the polygon lines to reinforce an appearance of natural striation layer lines.


Plant positioning, coloring and type are consistent to what you expect to see together in the real world. They are actually just flat single poly "billboards" with undetailed, blobby textures, but their positioning, coloring and type make an overall immersive feeling.


The game uses a staggering amount of subtle motion at any give time. ‎  In the picture, the horizon fog was drifting right, clouds drifting overhead, waves toward shore, sporadic dust clouds blew toward the player, and plants bobbed in the wind. In the real world things are almost always moving subtly so this seems to add a lot of immersion. ‎  I've seen some games that use excessive motion (Gothic 4) and can become very obnoxious. I think slight, slow and sporadic is the way to go.


Sound unquestionable plays a huge part in this games realism. Wind-gust noises are played now and then as well as occasional unexplained, but natural sounds nearby- cracking wood etc. Sound may be one of the easiest things a game maker can use to create realism. Again, I think subtle and sporadic is the way to go.

It thought it might be good to collect some general "tips for success" for aspiring game makers. These are some tips I've read from successful game producers here and on other sites.

Work steadily.
Serious game making requires momentum. Setting aside time to work on a project regularly (several times a week) should increase the odds of completing the project successfully.

Have realistic goals.
Everyone would love to make an epic game their first time out, but it requires a huge amount of talent and labor to produce such a masterpiece. Start off with making a small simple game increases the odds of success. You can always move on to an "epic" after you get a few simple games under your belt.

Start with the "hard parts".
People often start making a game by tackling the easiest parts- writing the story or making items/weapons. The hardest part of making a game is usually map/level design and creating entertaining events to fill in gameplay time. It's normal to be more enthusiastic when a project is new, so projects often stall as the newness wears off and they hit the "hard" parts of game-making. If you tackle the hard parts first - make your maps/levels and design entertaining gameplay event layouts, you should have a much easier time efficiently filling in items, story and decorations.

Have a good plan before you start building.
Sketching out map/level designs before you start building can save a lot of wasted effort. Make sure you have enough entertaining gameplay events to spread across and fill your map before you spend time building. ‎ 

Don't let perfectionism shackle you.
It's tempting to give in to perfectionism and expend a lot of time/energy trying to make a game exactly as you picture in your mind, but that makes it easy to become burnt out. If your game has a good solid idea behind it, people will enjoy playing it even if it is a "pale shadow" of your perfect vision. Most gameplayers are trained to not even notice minor imperfections. You can always "add frosting" to your game at the end, or better yet, ‎  use your experience to make a sequel that moves closer to your "ideal" vision.

If anyone has more tips, please add! ‎ 

I've always thought "HP" was kind of a cheap, lazy way for games to measure a player's condition. It seems like it would be neat to implement a system of "wounds" as an alternative to HP.

Taking damage would cause long lasting negative statuses like bleeding, sprains, disorientation etc which would hinder the player's abilities till they slowly heal. Armor could protect against specific types of wounds (helmet=resist disorientation etc). ‎  Severe wounds could cause unconsciousness or ultimately death (game over). ‎ 

If balanced properly, it would be a way to make the player's performance have a lasting, but not devastating impact on the gameplay - beyond just having to "chug a potion" to heal at the end of battle.

Opinions?

sup! just lettin you know sorry about the let down on cursed dungeon dream realm, i lost the project folder and the computer it was in is now gone and im working on a new game on a laptop, game is called record of highgate :P

I am pretty new to SoM and would like to know how exactly I would go about adding water to my maps. I know that I would have to import some models but that is where I get lost, can anybody set up a tutorial on how to do this (preferably using pre-made water, as I am no good at modeling)? Thanks.

Edit: I have found some water sheets here: https://jdo-translations.100webspace.net...loads.html
Unfortunately, I have no idea how to install or use them. ‎ 

Ive got moderately far in eternal ring after rebuying it.

Something i noticed is that alot of cavern areas have map tiles with no roof. Theres a cave section in the game where i looked up, and saw no roof model and around the highest sections of the walls, there was a purple hue (receeding colour)

Its probably not a big deal for people, but do you think having no roof model is noticable? Im asking this because im about to start redeveloping my entire cavern set once and for all.