A top-down action Dungeon Crawler

Hello everyone! How are you doing?

First post here, and straight to the point.

A week ago, I started playing around with Construct 2, and I'm seriously enjoying my experience with it. I've been working on a project I'd like to bring to life, and I want to share my progress.

It's a very early version and I'm trying to implement (way) too many things at the same time, I hope you can see a little of this, a little of that, not all the base mechanics are implemented yet and nearly everything is a placeholder, so it's not really a game, just a taste of what it is going to be.

Notes:

• The dungeon is generated randomly from pre-made square tiles (only 4 so far)
• The character doesn't suffer damage (and zombies do not attack, very basic AI)
• It's spawning 8 zombies every 2 seconds, you'll see many bugs, stay for too long and your PC will become slow
• There's no objective, quit when you get tired
• Whirlwind (RMB) kills everything in one hit

https : //dl.dropboxusercontent. com/u/6512545/Dungeon%20Crawl%203/index.html (Can I post this?)

The dungeon tiles are one single image, I created a specific collision polygon for each tile, it seems a poor way to do things but that's the solution I found, I want to use pre-rendered rooms (I create them in blender), but this also means I had to block the entrances and found a nasty solution for that (a rectangle in those doors that disables collision. What do you think of this? Too ugly?

About large size images, in the tiles case, 864x864, is it too much? I'm still using the free version but my aim is to export for desktop, is this a problem?

I want to create a dungeon crawler that feels like Diablo II, or Torchlight for younger folks, with many dungeon levels going deeper and deeper to find harder content, by the looks of it... is it something I can achieve with Construct 2? Or am I knocking on the wrong door?

All your feedback and questions is appreciated, I hope you enjoy the crazyness!

• John

I see you have had no responses to your post. I know the feeling.

I too am trying to make a top down dungeon crawler in 2d and I have tried about every engine on the market. Also every language, including some cussing language of my own.

Here is a good blog that Ashley posted about tilemaps and memory having to do with images and their size:

https://www.scirra.com/blog/112/remember-not-to-waste-your-memory

I was able to put a tilemap, animated hero moving everywhere, and music together in a few hours in Construct 2 with little to no experience. However, my main concern is that it will always be HTML5 no matter what.

Virkana

That's a good start so far. Try adding more little details and some gameplay elements. Performance was excellent.

LarryP

Yes it's very tough right now because of the restrictions HTML5 and C2 brings to the table. I was developing a top-down zombie survival game which was procedurally generated but at one point I just couldn't bring it all together with good performance.

I have thought about some design aspects from my old game and started using some stuff from it to make a wilderness survival game with top-down style. This time on a pre generated map (4000x4000 for the moment) and it works good for the moment now. Just try to save memory on every single point you could save some.

Look here if you are interested (Look at my last post there) .

I have now about 200 events which includes a basic crafting, basic building system, day/night cycle, starvation, health and stamina system. It's definitely doable in C2 and I really hope this time I am not running into the memory wall again.

Excellent work! Mini map too! That's 90% like what I am trying to get going, but mine will be confined to dungeons.

How did you do the one picture where your hero is by a campfire, inventory says "Berries", and the camera is focused around your hero and feathers off at the edges? That's what I have been trying to accomplish.

Also, are you doing pictures for background or tile maps of some kind?

I can't get to the link. Is the address still valid?

Yes it' still valid.

Excellent work! Mini map too! That's 90% like what I am trying to get going, but mine will be confined to dungeons.

How did you do the one picture where your hero is by a campfire, inventory says "Berries", and the camera is focused around your hero and feathers off at the edges? That's what I have been trying to accomplish.

Also, are you doing pictures for background or tile maps of some kind?

Thank you!

The screenshot is from the night and shows the lighting of the campfire. It is just a transparent png which is mixed with a layer effect.

My map is completely build with tilemaps. I've been using the software "Tiled" for creating the map. In tiled you can export your map which can be imported in c2.

The transparent png I would want to follow my hero and it would be visible most of the time. It would portray a dark dungeon being lit up by the heroes presence as he travels. Does yours travel with the character, or is it stationary for that one picture?

I also use "Tiled" and my first map I imported from Tiled. Then I saved my map in a PNG format and tested the two ways against each other. My hero walked better on the PNG versus the imported .tmx file. The difference was noticeable after a short while.

The transparent png I would want to follow my hero and it would be visible most of the time. It would portray a dark dungeon being lit up by the heroes presence as he travels. Does yours travel with the character, or is it stationary for that one picture?

I also use "Tiled" and my first map I imported from Tiled. Then I saved my map in a PNG format and tested the two ways against each other. My hero walked better on the PNG versus the imported .tmx file. The difference was noticeable after a short while.

The transparent png is only visible on each campfire you have build in the world as long as the campfire is still on.

Still can't get to the link, sorry.

Still can't get to the link, sorry.

The one from the first post?

--> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/651 ... index.html

What browser are you using?

LarryP: it is the link not working, I tried in Chrome an FF. Can you just post a link which shows there please? The original one seems to contain spaces and such not enabling it to forward you to the proper address. After I remove those, it is still not working, but maybe it my bad.

Now the direct link works, thanks —

Altogether my first impression is, that it is "too fast" and hectic. But it is a nice base to develop from.

It's a nice start! Look forward to seeing where you go with it, are you planning to have character classes etc a la Diablo? All that juicy design stuff ahead of you

My own project is kinda similar (link in my sig), and in case you're still worried, it is certainly possible to make a procedurally-generated dungeon crawler in C2! I should think as long as you carry on using tilemaps, and cut down your sprite count wherever possible, you ought to be fine memory-wise.