Chronicles will be a single player adventure RPG. Gameplay will be a lot like the 3d Zelda console games (Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask specifically). The story will take place in a fantasy-like environment with swords, bows, some magic, and some steam/gunpowder based technology. The game will be played from either first or third person view, depending on player choice and mode of combat. When using bows or other projectile weapons you will be forced into first person or very close third person, but with sword combat you will likely have the option of whether you want to use 1st or 3rd person.
There is a project page for this game on my website at Chronicles Project Page but right now it has less information than this page.
Demo:
Update 08.08.10:
Here is the second demo:
Demo 2 - Basic Swordplay and Death
In this demo you can now control your sword using the left and right mouse buttons (you still need to toggle the sword with 'F' first). The upright cylinders can be hit with your sword to kill them. Watch out for the one who is flailing a sword around, though, because he can easily kill you. Other changes in this demo include some minor aesthetic changes (press ESC to exit, moved falling boxes so they don't quite land on your head), and the staircase on the tower has been fixed up a bit.
For the next demo I am planning on at least some of the following:
- Improved sword moves with combos/chains and some tweaks to speed.
- Hit points so that a single touch from the sword isn't instant death.
- Sword angle calculations taken into account for rebounds, right now the sword just flies upwards whenever it hits something.
- Scene serialization to allow for multiple rooms and doors.
Here is the first demo: Demo 1 - Camera Rig & Physics
You will need the PhysX System Software to run this.
Movement is standard - WASD to move, space to jump, and mouse to look.
Right now I have only implemented PhysX for collision detection and a 3rd person camera control. There is also a very tentative sword mode (press 'F') but changing the way this functions is my next order of business. Right now you use the mouse to manually control the sword's position. I'm planning on using set movements with key combinations instead - manual control of the sword was my plan but it proved unwieldy, difficult to control and implement, and pretty unrealistic feeling.
The scene in the first demo is fairly simple, just some primitives to try running around on and some falling boxes. A lot of the slopes are too steep for walking up, but you can usually jump up them. There is also another "player" (just a cylinder) who will stand and wait for you to hit him. Players turn green when they are hit, and red when they are falling.
Screenshots:
Some screenshots of the demo scene:
The place where you land, surrounded by fallen boxes.
Stabbing a poor cylinder
Surveying the scene from atop "torus mountain"
Implementation:
Besides irrlicht, the project uses PhysX for physics and Wings3D for models. I wrote a very lightweight wrapper for PhysX based on the PhysX SDK Examples and some code from irrPhysx (mostly just the cooking code).Soon I'm going to clean up the wrapper a bit and I will include it here for those interested.
!