Castle death race updates

[lgb3d]

For Castle Death Race I recently started creating some of my custom graphics utilizing GCS paint

In the past I had great success with GCS paint, it was a lot of fun,... Starting out it's a bit annoying, but it's a very capable graphic art program, althow missing all the whistles and bells we have today with other software but you can do a lot with it regardless. I found it was just like riding a bike after about 30 minutes

I'm pretty proud how these homemade handmade pixel by pixel Graphics came out it's been quite a while since I got to play with GCS paint, it's easy enough to scan images or download them from the internet and convert them to function with the color palette, I'm sure we've all had that experience, I'm doing my best to handcraft Graphics as much as I can utilizing the Orthodox GCS method of GCS paint ;p



In this image you see candle animation I created, as well as a lamp that could be hung on a wall with animated Flame, both animations look stellar I did really good on the flames... a Jar full of eyes, and a jar with an eyeball that is growing... I'm blown away at how good the jar of eyeballs came out. I'm not sure yet that I think I want to put bubbles in the jars like it's a laboratory their farming eyeballs... And in the background you see a wizard I created , he's a simple animation right now but I think he's going to do a lot of special effects and "magic" in the game...

I think I'm going to use the eyeball Sprite enemy for my game at least parts of it, so I was thinking something I could incorporate into a dungeon level could be animations and symmetrical objects that help explain where all these flying eyeballs are actually coming from. So there would be victims having their eyes removed eyes being put in jars the eyes get larger and larger in the jars...... so when you're battling off hordes of flying eyeballs you somewhat understand they came from somewhere, a morbid population of victims who were left blind


This is a closer view of My Wizard character, I'm still going to tweak with him quite a bit , I definitely know I do not want him this bright I want him to be darker he just stands out from the environment too much . so far I have him basically standing raising his arms Flames appear and dance in the palm of his hands. Utilizing Universal registers and having an animation of him visible I could imagine all sorts of weird things happening in the game and it appearing as if he is doing black magic or something. I have a few simple ideas so far on how to employ him


And of course he has a very gruesome death animation I've already been tweaking with 9 frames his chest burst open his ribs popping out his intestines spilling and he collapses to the ground... I think it's simple enough, and if somebody dose him in with the shotgun it almost makes sense.

[lgb3d]

These images are the standard 64 by 64 format and I'm not even using all the space I could have probably zoomed in on them and saved in Zoom mode not to be wasting space with void pixels. In the game they are 60 units wide and 90 units high, and it makes them appear like a super high-res image. But then again I am using the windows GCS version 1.3, these would look awesome in the dos GCS, but look killer with v.1.3

This is just so rewarding, I used to be quite the artist with pen and paper, shoot my brother has a few of my drawings tattooed on his body... But I forgot how good I was with GCS paint as a kid. I wish I had a time machine, I would go back and save any of my old projects and all the hours of artwork I made with GCS paint. I still remember my mom trying to pry me off the old 486sx 66 megahertz family computer at 1 a.m. telling me something about school in the morning... Every night so many hours of work I never got paid for

[lgb3d]

Still working on graphics and sprites for eyeball harvesting dungeon / laboratory..





This is one of four victim sprites im working on, they are windowed walls so they sit flat with the wall like they are chained there, and if you are perpendicular to them they stay parallel to the wall unlike a symmetrical object... again I made this with the basic 64 by 64 dimension, but in gameplay they look pretty darn good. the majority are missing their eyeballs, one guy has a single eyeball still hanging from the socket. If I get wav sounds to work in the game or pstr text he can be the messenger explaining the hideous production of eyeballs as a weaponized Army.

So far they are only a two shot Sprite, one shot opens the skin the second shot almost blows them in half. I'm considering making another wave of the animation so that the player can utilize three shots on them for entertainment value...

www.dropbox.com/s/4c1fl718buv2ydu/20210110_001002.mp4?dl=0

Next time my nephew's see this game they're going to think Uncle Greg is nuts

[lgb3d]

Another gruesome hand drawn victim.. this time I went ahead with the three shot animation , let me know what you think

www.dropbox.com/s/uwk9phci1twhgl6/20210110_193451.mp4?dl=0





So this is one shot two shot three-shot

As well in the background notice Green Mountains going up to rock Peaks and even snow caps... Since I got GCS paint running the other day I've been going through a bucket list of Graphics that I want to fulfill the game.

So far what I've created is 3 mountainous landscapes, using them as windowed walls with the maximum width of 1200 units and mixing them together so there's not a specific frequency, as well in this picture the mountains in the foreground are 3,000 units tall and the mountain range behind it is 4000 units tall. So when you're moving through the game not only do objects in the foreground and the wall behind them give you visual dimension as they move at separate rates in your perspective, now the mountains in the distance do the same thing. There is a name for this in animation... see it a lot in anime.. I'm thinking at some points in the game I will have three depths of mountain landscaping..

Something I wanted to do with the game is take the player underground at ground level as well as climbing through castles , so the further he travels through this bizarre Castle complex, eventually I want to get where he feels like he is up on top of a mountain... Kind of like the spooky Halloween castle that setting on top of a cliff. So maybe a couple levels before he reaches that location I will start applying a graphic like that so that he sees a castle on top of a cliff that is apparently getting closer as he keeps climbing staircases.

As well at some point in the game, I want to share a touch of nostalgia... I used to love the Christmas themed GCS demo levels that came with the original GCS. So if the player knows that they're climbing mountains they see snow, it would be really cool to have a snow level , I might have to get creative with my paint palette and the limited range of white colors. I know I can't simply import the yeti monster, because he's running on a different palette... But it would be super cool if he made an appearance, either that or Santa Claus. Kind of like a fart joke Easter egg, but if I pull it off it would definitely give some GCS Nostalgia to those who remember shooting a candy cane at yeti.

As well another cool thing about these landscape backdrops other than the way they move as the players traveling, I started utilizing the fade distance. So far I have left it turned off, as for quite a few years I've solely been doing level design until I discovered this dosBox making GCS paint work thing .. thanks u guys ;p so I just had my first test turning on to Fade to Black and put maximum distance at 15,000 units. At least for this example level that distance works with the mountainous landscape Terrain in the back.

When the player initially enters the level all he sees is the jagged peeks, and they still look cool how they move... But as close as the level permits the player to get to the landscape and still have visibility the first row you can tell that it's green, but everything else is still blacked out just giving a silhouette except for the snow Peaks those little white Peaks pop out nice.








Keep it real you guys, Monday's tomorrow and I have a real job.. I've had such a fun weekend with GCS paint thanks for the dos box tip

[lgb3d]

Break through!

I've had two issues with GCS, although pstr text and wav files work when testing levels, after make final wav files do not run and PStr text crashes the game..

I've been working on this project since 2009, utilizing my Toshiba laptop that runs Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition. Initially when I started pstr text worked after make final.. I can't remember if wav files originally worked after make final all those years ago.

Microsoft kept giving updates for the operating system until I believe it was 2014, I was busy in life around those years and did not spend much time working on the game. So when I went back to working on the game I was surprised that pstr text would crash the game after make final. I do not know exactly what changed oh, maybe my computer was getting old drivers were not working right, or perhaps had something to do with the operating system updates.

A couple months back while I was working on the game my operating system crashed , and I got the blue screen of death. Telling me ntdll.dll was either missing or corrupt.

So I have a professional working with my hard drive trying to salvage Decades of pictures, my youth my pregnant baby mama my baby my dog really important pictures I never thought to backup.

But in the meantime because covid-19 has me so motivated to play with the GCS, I purchased two Dell laptops of similar vintage to continue my GCS Hobby. One with Windows Vista compound and another with Windows XP Professional. I got both of these for a total price of $50 from a retired computer tech who had refurbish them and clean them they both work awesome.

Luckily I had backed up my project on a flash drive. So far I've only been tweaking with the GCS program with the XP Professional . I thought to myself what the heck let's try and make final and I left a few pstr triggers in the game. They worked and it does not crash the game.

When I get a chance I need to try it on the Vista computer. I need to do some process of elimination to figure out if it was my XP Media Center computer its operating system or some variance in the operating systems that is causing pstr to crash the game after my final.

All three laptops are very similar vintage as well as speed although my sick computer XP Media Center had the fastest CPU. So I still think somewhere other than operating system and might have something to do with the frame rate and the Speed the game is actually running at, as sometimes when I am testing levels I see frame rate of nearly 70fps.

Perhaps that's not it but I think I'm onto something hopefully I will figure out what's going on with the wav files. Worst case scenario I'm going to use one of these computers that has just about 500 GB hard drive and partition the hard drive for multiple operating systems, hopefully I will figure it out. But something keeps telling me I might have to emulate Windows 98. Like it is some form of framerate CPU speed Vsync issue.. for example jump does not work, and when throwing a grenade it lands right in front of me it does not travel distance or bounce. If anybody has experience this sort of thing let me know.

I'm using GCS 1.3, but I have tweaked with GCS 3 .8 although I have not made final with that engine I do notice that jump works. So it's something with earlier versions of GCS and the modern system, not that I've thoroughly tested all the issues between the two engines.

At least I have confidence I can continue making the game incorporating pstr knowing that it's not going to crash on all computers during gameplay.

Thank you so much for reading, and any advice would be appreciated

[lgb3d]

still making progress with gcs paint, for various levels. My dungeon is coming along nice. I decided if there are going to be fresh victims having there eyes removed ect... one cell should be open as they were pulled from it. And on the 7th day....

[lgb3d]

another level i have wanted to build but needed gcs paint to make custom graphics for came through the other day.


on this level you enter an area and there is a pond or well.. and not much else..



if you walk out on the water you drop in and descend down a stair case tell you under the water. I used gcs paint to alter the graphic of pies ibrk graphic by using color replacement function starting with the darkest gray replacing with darkest aqua color, progressive moving to the brighter colors.. did the same with the water surface vga from floor ceiling lib, the original was just too dark of a blue for me.



climbing out of the water you find you self in a room with water falls, the one on the left can be walked through and leads to a narrow wet passage with many waterfalls some that have brick wall behind some that you can walk through
 

one of the tunnels leads to this chamber where much water is entering.. cool thing is if you spin around even once its hard to find your way back out

the point of this level is to get the player to feel that they have dropped below ground level, as this level will lead not to a "typical sewer level" but an underground series of caves and waterways.. a labyrinth..

I think the place im at now with level layout and design is like ok prepare you self for part 2... so the entrance to part 2 will be tight like a strong hold.. and i want to give the player the option that there is more than one way to enter part two, not only enter but at various locations.

like keeping in the castle will be difficult to survive and make head way on the games path, you can..but.. the underground network might be difficult to navigate yet give you the opportunity to surface at various points further.

one thing I have never done with gcs is built a maze.. like i have made some crazy stuff in the past... but i think it time for this experience the gcs maze. Im going to try to keep it some what realistic and not just a maze from a crayon coloring book. Wish me luck ;p

[lgb3d]

example of linked levels features of levels and pstr success


you come to this level after many as well many stairs... see in lower left stairs going up, they lead up to the windowed room where you cross the bridge. room and bridge have high vantage point ;p


bridge leads to another high room, this room has two warp to points to another map, one at each end.. entrance a on the left and entrance b on the right 


demonstration of following map/level/encounter.... as well as level design features and gcs object variables/attributes, moving forward with entrance A results in a dead end and coming back out with less health... entrance B is the path that allows you to gain the upper ground. But where dose it really lead...?


And this is where it all leads... Im so happy to have pstr txt messages working ;P long story short... regardless of how the player got here he has to go back out because it dose not lead further in to the game... but now he knows where there is a stash.. as well he can load his back pack, and gets the hint that he can stash stuff himself he dose not need always be carrying a full load.

a few more pics to describe


bridges "no bump" "no radar"... walls you can bump in to meaning go find the stairs, but "will no show on radar"= can shoot or be shot through, and on the right the wall to seek cover behind, shows up on radar and player can bump in to it ;p



stairs "no bump" "no radar" = enemies can travel up and down stair case... just make sure to put platforms with elevation using dos editor, windows editor platforms do not elevate enemies and they will remain at 0 


whats important here is whats happening in the background.. enemy above can see me... can shoot me... but he will not pass the wall, "no radar" on the wall beneath and in front of him.

[lgb3d]

This is a video demonstrating... I guess enemy animation..

Although the video does not show all of the graphics I created for this guard, it might turn a few heads in the gcs community..

www.dropbox.com/s/voqaue6ieb1dciw/20210901_165515.mp4?dl=0

What I did in this video with a guard animation is possible with the dos engine as well..

On another note in the last couple seconds of the video you will see the guard who walked across the room, this goes back to my last post about guards walking up and down stairs... Notice when I shoot him he had just stepped up a stair so his body fell on the first stair.. had I not pulled the trigger right then he would have come up the hall.

All enemies are capable of this if you build your level, using the attributes to enable the enemies to travel... But recently I have been messing with guard 4th txt.. I forget right now what the exact line is called oh, but there's one in there for the 3D World size that the guard takes up essentially meaning how close the Sprite can get to walls.. I noticed when I make my guard smaller they have no problem navigating through a narrow hallway without bouncing off the walls and turning around or getting stuck in the hallway. If they see you in the hallway they will chase you through it and into the Next Room... fyi.. when I say 3D World size I do not mean how large the graphic appears, but more so the boundaries the animation has. Legitimately how close can I get to a wall before I have to react to it

Something this video does not show is that the guard does not only have a shotgun death sequence from the front but from the side and back as well...

After my recent discovery, or should I say success... I made it easier for myself, and I made a new guard set with very few images.. this way I could practice adding graphics to animation and frames in solid txt, with out doing 5 angles of every movement. Essentially the next one I made is a decapitated head, that uses that erratic flying motion."MOVE.TYPE=1".. but with so few graphics to make functioning moving guard "only 3 images", that left me extra energy for the finale images.. I did this 100% free hand pixel by pixel in gcs paint.



This is the side view


This is the first frame of Animation when enemy is struck with the GIB 3000..aka a "attribute #4 weapon".. I used GCS paint blend image feature to get the skull centered on the face with some of the face still showing so it appears there's still a thin layer of skin over the skull... And then I added a couple extra pixels as if the flesh is popping off.

www.dropbox.com/s/cikg9a772avnoen/head.mp4?dl=0
And this is a quick little video showing the guard animation in motion.




Guard 4th txt and solid0 txt have been my friends recently..

Can you believe the guard animation file gives you the potential of four different endings, or responses from your guard to weapons you attack with. .

You have Ninja Kick for knockout, bullet guns for kill, goo gun get creative, and gas grenades, I haven't figured out what angle to get creative with gas grenades.

The thing is the Ninja Kick does not have to be a knockout it can be a Kill, the gun does not have to be a kill it can be a knockout.. so essentially you could have a guard who you could knock down with four different types of weapon, and make it that only one of them could him.

Kick him he gets back up shooting with the shotgun he gets back up shooting with the glue gun he breaks free, but then you catch him with the gas grenade and he never wakes up... Or any way that you see this works... Imagine a guard who eats all your ammo oh, and you can only put him down with that super powerful Ninja Kick... And you only learned that after you ran out of ammunition.

As well, you can set all this up in your guard directory, but in your project directory the solid txt for the level number you could make unique so a very similar looking guard might react different on that level or utilize different sound files.. hmm

In the past I've tried to do what recently I accomplished, it was actually really simple, but for some reason rushing into it I could never get it on my first go, and it would frustrate me and make me step away from it.. I still remember the first time I tried doing this with the goo gun back with the dos gcs.. I must have been about twelve years old

Tip 1.. the basic template for enemy solid txt... The lines pertaining to goo gun.. look close, guard def txt tells you there's three separate images for goo gun responce.. but in solid read the handle numbers.. the last two images are both used on the final frame of the animation... When I was a kid I always tried using the googun to make an extra gory death scene.. which would work from the angle that you made the shot but if you're standing perpendicular to the enemy after you made the shot the Sprite would show the second to the last frame... And it bugged me so much I never stopped to read the handle numbers. And I guess I never looked close enough after using the googun to recognize final frame of the animation was using two images.

And in none of this do I mean that the goo gun finale has to only be three frames, you can add images to guard def txt create your own handle numbers that you associate with solid txt and refer to the frame number from solid txt in guard 4th txt..

If everybody else already knew this why did I never see it utilized in other gcs games..

Then again I never played terminal terror or lethal tender..

Okay I'll be back with an actual update about my game soon. I have a ton of screenshots of interesting levels and graphics from the last few months.

[lgb3d]

Having fun filling in some of the voids..

In this video you see an animation of a green orb acting as a projectile weapon. The projectile animation is sending invisible blast in each frame, the radius is greater when the projectile explodes ...
www.dropbox.com/s/tim31t0b639q2pi/20211021_000514.mp4?dl=0

In this video you see the same orb being display, wizard animation is the trigger mechanism
www.dropbox.com/s/lcmy1fso6h04qk0/20211021_005120.mp4?dl=0

Third video is a little more advanced but the same principle.

www.dropbox.com/s/teghbtwzxle8r3v/20211022_012410.mp4?dl=0

As you leave the shelter of a structure, there's an invisible platform that works as the initial Universal register trigger that activates the wizard. If you step back into the structure there's another platform that deactivates the wizard. The wizard animation will continue bobbing in the air but not trigger any projectile animations.

The wizard activates the orb. In this example I have given the wizard three options as to triggers he can pull. This was a good example of making an animation utilizing skip next if "register value not equal to". Wizards projectile options are based upon one of three invisible platforms the player activates.

The Next Step, now instead of a universal register the invisible blast of the Wizard's projectile explosion functions as the trigger. invisible blast explosion animations placed close enough to trigger one another. Comes off like a trail of gasoline and a match...

by the time I finish this level I intend each of the projectile blast to send off a similar chain event. As it is right now it's pretty easy for the player to get to the key setting beneath the wizard, I need to up the difficulty level for sure.

[lgb3d]

Screenshots from Level created earlier this summer, Underground cavern maze level... I did not want it to come off as a sewer level, and I did not want it to come off as a coloring book Maze ... I think I pulled it off pretty decent . Here are a couple shots of the main entrance room.







You will notice passageways in the walls and two Bridges at different heights.. all of these passageways lead somewhere some connect .

When this level starts out you're at the top of the waterfall and you can look down and see the room and bridges, but once you commit to going down there's no more getting back on top of that waterfall, no easy return to the prior level however you can walk back under waterfall into a cave at the bottom of the waterfall as well as the various other passageways.. you can find your way up to the first bridge and then threw another maze where you will travel back underwater and then back up to the second bridge.

[lgb3d]

Adding a few characters in a bit of storyline

A living victim who the player liberates from his cage shares a bit of the story, and runs off... But this ain't the only time you run into him.



I'm using the lab rat I found at GCSgames.com as a friendly character. He spills the beans and tells you a little bit about what's going on. In one of these images you see him with the floating heads he is in a facility where these heads are being decapitated and manufactured into weaponized flying heads... in that level, all of the floating heads are just setting in their closet bobbing and will not approach you. But once you come into the labrats sight he comes to you to talk. If you damage any of the floating heads or him they're all going to be hating on you real quick. So this encounter takes a little planning. FYI unless you kill that labrat you're not going to get the first key needed to progress in the game don't worry the players made aware the lab rat possesses the key before the encounter.

As well these Lab Rats AKA scientists show up at various other points in the game.

[lgb3d]

Making little Improvement... Initially I had a pitfall scenario with a red platform that triggered Universal register 127. If the player walked out onto this platform he would instantly die. It would happen so fast he would never drop to the elevation.





So I'm employing a new technique with my lava pitfall. Still using the Doss editor platform to set the player or enemy elevation so that you visibly see the enemy or yourself fall into the pit , as well I used extra features editor to add a textured platform so you're not just looking at the color red. And I made a flame animation which I'm pretty proud of visually it looks good. It is giving off a continuous invisible blast within a small radius of itself which just about perfectly matches the boundaries of the pit. So if you're standing near the pit the invisible blast never hits you, but once you're within the zone of the pit first you fall and then moment after Moment The Players doubt damage it is fatal but it gives you a couple seconds to appreciate the fact that falling in the pit led to your demise.

Since the animation is using the invisible blast feature this kills enemies that fall in the pit as well wear my prior setup simply using a platform that triggers Universal register 127 had no impact on enemies who would wander into the pit.

I think the only other change I want to do but don't have to do with this... I want the flame animation to jump to a different frame with a larger image of fire if the player is close... So if the player did fall into the pit most of his vision he would see the fire as if his body had caught fire. As well it would be really cool to do this with enemy characters. But that would be a little more tricky, because for an animation to recognize the enemy they have a feature Branch if enemy is not close.. it would be cool to see the enemy fall into the pit and as they die the flame grows around them

A little bit at a time, I will figure it out before I'm done, but I'm proud this looks a lot better than a red rectangle simply triggering Universal register 127.

[Mystery]

Great to see your progress, little by little. I often don't work on my project if I just have a little bit of time, because I think I won't get anywhere

[lgb3d]

I know the feeling. Sometimes I can put in a few hours a day and pull that off for a week or two... But sometimes life's priorities stall my game progress. The worst part is when you have the time but suffer from writer's block... Gcs paint anxiety... one frame at a time one pixel at a time, but the finished product is definitely worth it.

The scary part is the memory of losing so many other projects and Graphics I had created in the past due to poor preservation techniques. Many years ago shortly after I left the nest, I came back to my mother's house to discover a box full of old floppy disk I had stored in her garage were deemed by her unnecessary for storage, as she had no idea what was on them.. I very much remember looking her in the eyes and saying the words are you kidding me ... my heart broke that Day.. as well my youthful attempts to make web pages thanking uploading my game to the internet would make it live forever, only to discover those were short-term storage..

So it is a pain to do what I'm doing investing so much time. In My project directory the oldest date of a file is the Year 2007. True labor of love... Good thing I kept notes by hand to refer to as what Universal registers and values I've used and what they do. As well the countless backups I've made of the project directories.. modern thumbnail drives are awesome.