Post by K. A. Laherty in Playtest a Retro 2.5d FPS

Viewing post in Playtest a Retro 2.5d FPS

I think the two things I’d suggest are mouse sensitivity options, and some sort of melee weapon for when you run out of ammo… I ran out a few times and it sort of changes the flow a fair bit.

I love seeing people code their own engines, I made a retro FPS a while ago (though I’m still going through and optimising it for Android) and would love to hear about the experience of coding your game. Have you considered a devlog breaking down some of the technical aspects and issues you had to work through? I can understand if not; posts about data structures and algorithms aren’t that interesting to most people and don’t really advertise the game that well, but I’d be very interested.

Another person asked if you were porting the game to Android, and I hope that you do give porting a go… SDL2 really does make it easier (though, not as much as SDL3), and assuming which libraries you used based off the *.dll files packaged with the game; it shouldn’t actually be too hard… though I’m sort of assuming that you’re using OpenGL 2.1, which is mostly compatible with OpenGL ES 2.0 (for Android and browser ports).

Great stuff, keep up the good work. :D

Like Reply

Magicsofa4 hours ago(+1)

Hey, thanks for playing! Yes, we will definitely add mouse sensitivity options. There is a melee attack which defaults to Q, but you wouldn't know that without going into the options ^.^

We had previously thought about making the knife a separate weapon slot, and when running out of ammo you would automatically switch down until ultimately arriving at the knife if there's nothing else. Another option we considered is just to use the knife attack whenever you hit fire on an empty weapon. In any case its clear that we need to make it more obvious so thanks for pointing that out!

The programmer did make a couple of videos about the coding process if you're interested:

Raycaster Engine Series Intro
Raycaster Engine Drawing Walls
Raycaster Engine Map File Format

The second and third vids are pretty long so get comfy! I do think a written piece is a cool idea and would be a more digestible format for some people, though I'm not sure if or when that would happen.

Like Reply

K. A. Laherty4 hours ago(+1)

Ah; I skimmed the key binding, but missed out on that. Those little quirks like automatic weapon switching can only be figured out by watching other people play the game... my game didn't have it and I never heard a complaint, but I always wondered about it. I was always mixed about it when I experienced it in other games, so I just left empty weapons with a dull "click" sound when they were empty and a little console log like "You picked up a shotgun"-when you picked up a new weapon.

Thanks for the link to the dev videos! I should probably get some sleep soon, but I've subscribed and watched a bit of the first video. I'm already pleased by seeing the map editor.... The reason "KatzenKlein Redux" only has four levels is because I wrote the map editor while writing the engine... it was sort of like the build engine, but only using quads... I think I'll return to the idea, but I just kept adding to it and never coded an "undo" and "redo"... very simple stuff to implement early, but it became a mess very quickly.... I just didn't like making maps.

Like Reply

Magicsofa3 hours ago(+1)

Haha, yeah, our map editor is still in progress... it has a very sketchy Undo that frequently crashes, lol. But it has been a really cool experience for me, since I signed on primarily as a level designer, I get to pester the programmer for more features :)

Like Reply

itch.io

Viewing post in Playtest a Retro 2.5d FPS