Status update

 Posted on July 7, 2015  |  Sascha

Just as the last blog post is starting to collect dust (time flies by oO) : I’m still doing lots of 3D development during the late hours in my spare time, still with C++ (Visual Studio rocks :) ), but most of that development is done under an NDA so that’s the main reason I haven’t been updating this blog lately. Other than that I’ve also been working on a dungeon crawler prototype using modern C++ (C++11/14) and modern OpenGL (4. [Read More]
dungeon-crawler 

Javascript repository

 Posted on September 24, 2014  |  Sascha

Following Java (on Android) and C++ (on Windows), I just released my first Javascript sources over at my bitbucket repository. My first (ever) public JavaScript demo is the random dungeon generator that I wrote an article about (a long time ago). It generates random dungeons of different sizes and can be tested directly in your browser over here. Included are the JavaScript sources for the random dungeon generator that use HTML5 for drawing a simple representation of the randomly generated rooms and corridors. [Read More]
dungeon-crawler  bitbucket  javascript 

3D loader for android, first roaming zombies

 Posted on January 30, 2014  |  Sascha

A 3d game needs 3d models, so I wrote a simple .obj (wavefront) model loader, and it was surprisingly easy with java. It took me roughly 30 minutes and is no more than 50 lines of code (including declarations and comments). So the “game” (still no gameplay in) can now display 3d models, and since it’s a zombie game, I’ve put in a (drum roll please) zombie! But it’s not just visual, but also backed by an NPC class that makes it move (more or less randomly) around the dungeon in a turn based manner. [Read More]
android  dungeon-crawler  gamedev 

Zombie infected random dungeon crawling

 Posted on January 20, 2014  |  Sascha

2014 started off pretty busy and I haven’t had that much time to work on my current (and first) android project. But at least I wrote down the first pages of the basic game design draft, and I plan on doing a randomly generated, zombie themed dungeon crawler with not your usual zombie story. So in terms of gameplay it’ll be a traditional dungeon crawler (think of Eye of the Beholder, or more recently Legend of Grimrock), with semi-realtime movement but with a modern horror theme based on a zombie infection (yeah, I know, zombies are all around nowadays, see the success of DayZ, but I always wanted to do something with zombies anyway). [Read More]
android  dungeon-crawler 

Dungeon Crawler Demo with Source released

 Posted on May 28, 2012  |  Sascha

Some of you might remember my article on random dungeon generation that I released back in 2010. I recently took a look at the demo and sat down to finish it up and release it to the public along with the complete source code. The demo comes with full source code, including the source for random dungeon generation (with practically no limit for the dungeon size) and implements a simple OpenGL renderer with per-pixel-lighting. [Read More]
dungeon-crawler  delphi 

Omni-directional lights using cubemap shadows

 Posted on March 4, 2010  |  Sascha

It looks like my dungeon crawler prototype isn’t actually evolving into a game, but much more into a personal testbed for more-or-less current rendering techniques (due to Projekt “W” I’ve been lacking in the field of recent rendering techniques a bit). And so one of the things I always wanted to implement were shadows for omni-directional light sources. I’ve been doing that with stencil shadows years ago, but stencil shadows aren’t the preferred way of doing this nowadays due to their limitations, including sharp edges (yes, there are ways to get around this, but they’re expensive in terms of computing) and a high demand for fillrate. [Read More]
dungeon-crawler  delphi 

First dungeon crawler prototype (HD Video)

 Posted on February 26, 2010  |  Sascha

Although it took me longer than expected I recently got a first prototype of a dungeon crawler, based on my recenlty published random dungeon article, polished up far enough to show it to the public. Actually one of the biggest issue holding it back were the textures. It uses parallax (bump) mapping for giving flat surfaces a realsitic 3D look (it’s pretty much an extension to bump mapping), and for that technique you not only need a color map and a normal map but also a heightmap for each texture. [Read More]
dungeon-crawler  newton  delphi 

Random Dungeon Generation

 Posted on February 7, 2010  |  Sascha

Javascript Demo If you want to see this in action, you can find a javascript version of the algorithm described in here that runs in your browser over here. Introduction Ever since playing my first dungeon crawler (which must have been “Eye of the Beholder” if I remember correct, but there have been a lot of them in my early gaming days) I wanted to do something similar. And in my first years of coding I even started several dungeon crawlers (using Turbo Pascal under DOS), but none of them really took off due to several reasons. [Read More]
dungeon-crawler  tutorial