GRIND : a Doom-like, first person shooter for a500!

[Lord Aga]

I love the Chaos Engine-y HUD

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Tsak

I'd love to hear if people think the game (with what is already shown) manages to capture this or if it feels lacking.

For me it doesn't look like Chaos Engine or Quake, but it uses the colors really well and creates it's own 'Steampunky' vibe If it is possible the lighting should be used even more. It looks like there are only 2 light level and I understand if you go for OCS/ECS it's hard to get more, but maybe there could be an option to have more for AGA?

[Karlos]

One thing puzzles me. I see that that game has areas of open sky and closed ceilings with different heights. Yet there doesn't seem to be any variation in floor height. Is there a specific reason for that?

[Karlos]

As for the aesthetic, it's definitely a great steampunk feel. Top marks.

[Tsak]

Originally Posted by Karlos

One thing puzzles me. I see that that game has areas of open sky and closed ceilings with different heights. Yet there doesn't seem to be any variation in floor height. Is there a specific reason for that?

Cause the current renderer has variable heights for walls already (4 steps/up to 128px) but not stairs/elevation. There is a second renderer version which already supports that but it's incomplete (no objects clipping and quite unoptimized).

[rothers]

Originally Posted by vroom6sri

If this game had been conceived "back in the day" I could imagine every Amiga magazine going nuts over it. I should think they'd each have had a devoted section every month giving updates and probably new demos. It's truly remarkable.

I'm not sure what they would make of it, there were some games back then which were so ahead of their time they didn't gain much attention.


Remember raycasting 3D games were around from the early 1980s - people got them running in feats of programming just like this on 8bit machines but no one really seemed very interested, it was not until the 1990s which they really caught on with Wolf3d.

[Predseda]

Originally Posted by Karlos

One thing puzzles me. I see that that game has areas of open sky and closed ceilings with different heights. Yet there doesn't seem to be any variation in floor height. Is there a specific reason for that?

I have seen stairs and platforms in one of the earlier builds, but unfortunately KK had to step out from the project before these were properly implemented.

[Muzkat]

Looks stunning. What I would have given to have something like this on my Amiga back in the day.

[Photon]

This + gfx swap?

[ Show youtube player ]

[amifan]

Looks amazing! I love how it looks like an Amiga game from the 90s, not just another Doom clone. Still can't believe how well it runs and looks on the A500. We will have an interview with Tsak about the game in the December issue as well

[buzzybee]

Originally Posted by Tsak

It's probably Chaos Engine 3D meets Darkmere 3D for me .

I'd love to hear if people think the game (with what is already shown) manages to capture this or if it feels lacking.

I love the art direction as shown by the environment and GUI so far. The ingame objects and SFX not so much. The eyeblob- and cyclops-thing remind me of rather generic FPS cannonfodder. Must be challenging to pixel stuff that scales in a viewport with half the y-resolution.

The engine obviously does a tremendous job. I wonder if there is a good reason to aim for unaccelerated A500. The low framerate of 10-15 fps will limit your game design choices. With a minimum rate of 20+ fps on faster platforms, you might pull off much more interesting attack patterns and gameplay mechanics. This is probably a necessity to implement, as otherwise, the novelty of the art might wear off pretty quickly. Especially if you plan to release demo versions regularly.

I feel like this wonderful art direction lends itself to framing the action with explorational vibes aka storytelling, puzzles, and tactical elements. I am aware that this might be a bit too much to ask for, given the amount of work that lies ahead of you.

What an ambitious project! I wish you guys all the best.

[AnimaInCorpore]

Originally Posted by buzzybee

The engine obviously does a tremendous job.

Yeah, crazy stuff indeed! Brilliant work for sure.

Originally Posted by buzzybee

I wonder if there is a good reason to aim for unaccelerated A500.

Well, it hits a sweet spot on the Amiga 500 because the smart Blitter C2P drawing can work in parallel with the game engine. It's even faster on machines wit Fast-RAM so it really shines on the Amiga 1200. Everything is tailored around that very specific C2P approach which works great in that very case but has its limitations in extensibility.

[eXeler0]

I think there’s an important point to be made by keeping it playable on a stock A500+/A600
Its supoosed to be more or less ”impossible”. On A1200 we already have a bunch of FPS gsmes…

[Tsak]

Originally Posted by Photon

This + gfx swap?

Sort of. It does use the Dread engine however it goes far beyond. Besides swapping gfx, new features are added, bugs are fixed and gameplay is getting tweaked, polished and expanded.

Originally Posted by buzzybee

I love the art direction as shown by the environment and GUI so far. The ingame objects and SFX not so much.

Enemies and SFX are planned for a major upgrade/overhaul. I'm very happy with the rest objects so far though (like pickups and decor stuff). I cannot imagine these looking any better given our color and resolution restrictions.

Originally Posted by buzzybee

The eyeblob- and cyclops-thing remind me of rather generic FPS cannonfodder.

The eye enemy was primarily added as the cheapest possible support enemy (ram wise). And as such it needed to be very simple design-wise. I agree it does look quite generic, but at the same time the design itself works exceptionally well imho. It's very well defined and stands out (as it should for that type of enemy) and also fits perfectly with the setting. It also turned out to be one of the most fun enemies to battle against so far.

As for the Head-monster, this is one of the last remaining Free-Doom inspired assets. It's no secret this is a straight Cacodemon copy basically. It remains to be seen what I'll do with it. It is indeed generic as well, however I find the actual design to be pretty good so I'm quite tempted to keep it.

Originally Posted by buzzybee

Must be challenging to pixel stuff that scales in a viewport with half the y-resolution.

Yup, I got used working on it eventually.
Once a good pipeline is set up the rest are easy. What wasn't easy though was to find a pixeling style that yielded the best possible clarity for such a resolution (and color count). Took me nearly half of the development time when I was working on the Dread demo to get there. Lots of tries, loads of (pixeling) rules we had to set and loads of testing.

Originally Posted by buzzybee

The engine obviously does a tremendous job. I wonder if there is a good reason to aim for unaccelerated A500. The low framerate of 10-15 fps will limit your game design choices. With a minimum rate of 20+ fps on faster platforms, you might pull off much more interesting attack patterns and gameplay mechanics. This is probably a necessity to implement, as otherwise, the novelty of the art might wear off pretty quickly. Especially if you plan to release demo versions regularly.

The goal from the start has been to create a playable FPS exactly for a500, more so since expanded machines already have loads of great FPS games to choose from (including -of course- none other than Doom).

Other than that, most people focus on the game running on a500 without realizing that it's on the 1200 that really shines. Honestly it runs so exceptionally well, that makes it unlike any other fps we've seen on a vanilla 1200, both (I'd dare say) visually and definitely performance wise. Having the game run effortlessly above 15 fps (and in the case of Fast ram 25-30 fps) changes the gameplay radically, coming closer than ever to the fast-paced action that we've come to expect from classic and modern boomer-shooters. Which is something we never really had with Amiga originals imho.

And there's also more to that. Making sure the game runs ok on stock a500 helps to keep that great performance on a1200 possible (which is very much needed for gameplay). If I was to go far and beyond then you'd need an accelerator to really enjoy the game on any machine. And it's exceptionally easy to fall into that trap (go far and beyond) so when making whatever needed for the a500 to be playable, acts as a safety net, ensuring a1200 play remains optimal.

Worth noting here is that interesting attack patterns and gameplay mechanics don't pose much of a bottleneck really. Even enemy numbers on screen is not a showstopper. I.e. you can pretty much fill the entire screen with enemies already and the performance hit you get is (surprisingly) many times lower than what you'd expect.

Originally Posted by buzzybee

I feel like this wonderful art direction lends itself to framing the action with explorational vibes aka storytelling, puzzles, and tactical elements. I am aware that this might be a bit too much to ask for, given the amount of work that lies ahead of you.

What an ambitious project! I wish you guys all the best.

Thanks!

Yes, well I think we really need to manage expectations in regards to these.

Storytelling is one of the pillars I want the game to be based on, but there are many layers as to how this can be fleshed out. Visual storytelling with levels and themes is already something that is present and to be expanded. Other stuff could be an additional animated intro, in-between level texts, a map screen and in-game text messages, even in-game cutscene events (like in build engine games with level stuff exploding). For now all these have different priorities and require different tweaks to the engine to be implemented. Once the big and most important features are sorted out, we'll evaluate if there is time and room left for all these.

In regards to puzzles, I think I'd prefer to keep it very simple-rudimentary. Action and exploration is the primary focus in these games. Puzzles.. not so much.

And as for tactical elements, this is to be expanded. Already I plan to include secondary attacks to weapons which will also add extra tactical value. Other things are different enemy types and AI additions (like new enemy states), additional collectables etc. But probably these would be as far as I'd go (for this game at least).

[samo79]

If I may suggest, it would be nice to expand a bit more the options for the game controls, for example making the use of the mouse optional and not mandatory like it is now (something like Doom) and maybe add support for the use of the CD32 joypads

[Tsak]

Originally Posted by samo79

If I may suggest, it would be nice to expand a bit more the options for the game controls, for example making the use of the mouse optional and not mandatory like it is now (something like Doom) and maybe add support for the use of the CD32 joypads

Yes, these are on our todo list as well. CD32 joypad is definitely a necessity for CD32 owners.

[utri007]

Is there a level map?

[Tsak]

Originally Posted by utri007

Is there a level map?

Like a minimap? No. Some work was done for this many, many moons ago but was abandoned.

[Tsak]

A public post was made on Grind's Patreon, celebrating 1 year of development for the project and sharing a list of milestones and goals the game has reached during this time, as well as a detailed roadmap for the work ahead!

[copse]

https://www.patreon.com/posts/48-grinds-one-91177510