kdrnic's Labyrinth
A classic style FPS for 486+ systems
An attempt to create a classic style FPS.
Features:
- A nice little engine, running decently on Pentium systems and with some tweaks should run well on 486 as well. It could even run on a 386, but performance will be limited, similar to Doom.
- RAM requirement is also low: 4MB
- DOS version can comfortably fit in a floppy, even before running UPX on the .EXE, thanks to compressed
- Good pixel art with well-animated enemies, made by a friend
- Interesting enemy behaviour, with pathfinding
- Armour of different levels and different weapons
- Levels loaded from Tiled JSON files
- Made to run with 35Hz in mind, but will smoothly interpolate at higher framerates and is tested to run nicely at 144Hz
- Game code very close to support modding of enemies through JSON files alone
- Game code very close to support "demo" files (input recording and playback)
- Game code could also allow for network play, if only a bit laggy
- Windows version has built-in GIF recorder
- Key bindings are configurable, although only by editing a text file
Failures:
- All the unimplemented, very-close-to-existing features above
- Engine wasn't yet tweaked to run well on DOS (mostly adjusting certain values like max pathfinding distance)
- A bug with sprite rendering causes random crashes in the MS-DOS version, although it seems easily fixable
- Missing first-person weapon graphics
- No menus
- No levels or objectives
- Enemies and weapons need balancing
- Missing sounds for weapons and enemies
- Planned but not yet implemented: portals, doors, traps
Comments (5)
omg the audio is brutal. Really nice animated sprites, very good raycaster. Nice selection of enemies, I have no idea if there's any difference between how they act. Mouse support in DOS is a nice touch and the lack of strafing is frustrating but feels authentic. I hope you flesh this out a little more, maybe it could be a tournament game in the future?
This is a fantastic engine demo. I wouldn't consider any of the "failures" as actual failures either (notice how few people submitted a complete game). Instead I think there's huge potential in this and I'd be excited to see it develop further.
Aside from the frankly brilliant achievement of getting this working in DOS, you've got a lot of the trappings of a polished commercial game already: nice textures, excellent sprites, very real-sounding effects. I also found the lack of strafing a bit frustrating; not sure if that's intentional though.
FWIW I didn't experience any crashes, and it looks like you're well aware of what's left to implement. Please please complete it and release it for DOS. I want to play it in DGC B-)
Wow, look at all this stuff! Bread, health, weapons, systems, things … different oponent-types (each with their own dead body). There's quite a lot going on here! I was excited to see where it would go … but…
I couln't get the game to run on Windows, so I switched to my Linux PC for dosbox. There it ran! Until it crashed. Unfortunately, when it crashed it also took away mouse-control. And the screenshot button didn't do anything. I could get that back mouse control, but only after closing dosbox. So all I could get was this screenshot from my phone :'-)
Anyway, very cool to see so much people willing to brave the limitations of retro PC's in this kajam alone!
Both the DOS version (via DOSBox) and the Windows version work well. While there is no game structure yet, the features are pretty cool already, and the enemy art is great. A mini-map would be a good idea I think, as I got lost easily.
I think I would let the character controller slide much less though, IMHO stop on release is more comfortable for an FPS.