itch.io

I'm glad you like what you see so far 🙂
the game is quite low on spec demand ..  have you tried the demo?  🤔

unfortunately the only way to merge is to make a new quad 😓
so it involves deleting the  existing quads and making a new quad (press B and select vertices)

BSP (or CSG) was just a tool I thought would making maps easier  
they are not required to be used by any means 🤔
(but you can use it if it feels easier)

the problem was with them that after around 100 operations
or after certain ones the whole BSP breaks and errors start popping up
and turns out that is just the nature of dynamic  BSP and there is no easy fix 😓
(that is why there were groups added for them - and  groups are
BSP 'islands' that don't interact -  but this  only somewhat helped things)

for Zortch 2 levels I don't use the BSP anymore and I just split away or remake rooms now
after you make a lot of levels it just gets in the way   🤔

but you can already replace the tracks with whatever you want (provided they are ogg files 👀)
or just turn off the music volume and start up aphex in the background  🤔

I really just wanted to make a raycaster fps  - something in the spirit of Wolf3D, Catacomb 3D or BlakeStone   🤔 
a started many but this was the only one that got finished in the end  😓
here is a video of some of them (with early footage of LAB at the end)

it's better than anything I came up with for sure 👍
which is why it's so hard to make a sequel or follow up 🤔
among other reasons 😓

I wish I saved some of the ones from flash sites - it would have been interesting to compare what everyone came up with 🤔
it didn't occur to me that they might go away one day 😓

well there was no story on purpose I kind of wanted the raw gameplay to be the main thing and it was meant as a generic game - hence the setting  🤔
and then I didn't add a story later because every flash site back in the day made up their own story and I thought that was more interesting  🤔

they have internal names in the code but not very creative names:

I'm glad you liked it and damn that makes me feel old  😅
I only plan on a engine revamp later on as Birds reported some errors on his laptop 🤔
content wise I don't plan on updates anytime soon 😓

just a quick update (8 days this time if anyone is keeping score)


redrawn some old door textures - nothing really exciting about that


modelled this low poly bomb for one of the bosses



rebaked the prison guard - as I got a lot better at baking thing since the start of the project  🤔


here is a screenshot from the prison level


it's coming along nicely - only thing is I wanted to be at this stage 1 year ago  😓


if you blast a guard its legs just keep on walking around like this 🤔

any resemblance between the guard robots and the robots in LAB are pure coincidence  👀



not quite sure why I insist on this design tbh 🤔

anyway that is it for now
it's all map building, polishing, and figuring out what to cut from now  
this year is a race to the finish  🤔

until next time 👋

the problem with them was that they didn't look good from an fps view ingame 🤔
so for any new gun this dance would start all over from the beginning  😓

sorry I have no idea which year it will it be 😓
with any luck this one  🤔

that is very pimp my ride thinking  🤔
we put a car in your car so you can drive while you drive  👀
(it doesn't sound bad but it's kind of redundant when you can already fire guided missiles 🤔)

that is very optimistic  😓
in the end it's better to be late than to rush out something bad  🤔

nah I'd prefer to complete the thing first   👀

sorry, he already has a voice (well its just mumbling) 😓

yea it's a problem with my texture baking - they came out too flat 😓
I rebaked them since then so hopefully in the final version it won't be such a problem 🤔 

technically I could but in practice it's too much problem 😓
I want to concentrate on finishing it up for singleplayer first no matter what 🤔

happy new year! 🥳
and I have no idea   😓

they are there - kind of 
its just the navigation is for developer thinking
e.g. you change modes with 1-9 and  hold Q and E to bring up menus 
so thing is for me its very convenient
but how to add a beginner mode is the tricky part 🤔

you can experiment around with the level editor (included in 1)
it didn't change much for 2
of course it's not very user friendly  😓
doubt I can make it easier - i'm not good enough  🤔

the cheats are the same as in the first game 🤫

there are already cheats
and there will be a free demo  🤔
(as in a multi level one - the current one is really just a test demo)

just a quick update
there is nothing interesting to make a devlog about right now
just raw work
I've been making textures mostly


only wanted to make new light textures first but things got out of hand  🤔

but this proved to be a good idea - turns out the more textures you got the easier it is to experiment and make new areas

my new approach is to play around with lights


here is my "new invention" - the light crate 
sometimes you have no other ideas but to place a crate at areas - so why not pretend they belong? 🤔



night areas are super easy to get right with lightmaps



and with the new textures I experimented around with some new setpieces

so there you have it .. I'm trying to find a new direction for the levels
because the demo released highlighted plenty of shortcomings with my approach
turns out just adding an automap won't solve things
I still need to figure out a way to hold the hand of players.. without them catching on 🤔

I see you with more silliness next time 👋

it's tricky because they both come with tradeoffs 🤔
with a physics based one interaction with physics objects is easier 
with a kinematic one you get more freedom but all the physics interactions are hacks 

both can be responsive and snappy thought that is only about how input is processed
in that case a very snappy one is easier with kinematic
as with a physics based one the physics take care of deceleration and inertia  🤔
so this may be a strange answer but both is possible and the only difference is which part of the code is hacky and cheats 🤔

another late update
it's getting increasingly hard to post on itch
there seem to be many outages lately

good news is that one big milestone is ready

all the guns are complete!

plus by popular demand this gun wheel was added for quick select
more like a gun ellipse as there were so many of them they didn't all fit 

the latest new weapon is the railgun - after weeks on weeks of modelling and experimenting
I ended up with this very generic looking sci-fi gun

these guns are very challenging - in the end the most important thing is how they look in the fps view 

other guns got redesigns too - this is the new flamethrower
the alt fire was changed to shoot fireballs making it a bit overpowered

some other guns only got their design altered a bit
the citrus juicer (or acid shooting shotgun if you prefer)
now has three barrels on it's end (I simply removed the triangular cap from the old design)

the grenade launcher is more sleek now - almost as if it got a hd update

and finally let me show you the rejected railgun designs:

as you can see unlike many people who work smarter I just work harder   🤔

and now with all the guns finished and all enemy models done it's finally time to concentrate on the levels
so more working hard for me will commence  🤔

until next time 👋

I'm glad you liked them  👍
Nekkrobox was indeed a game jam game  
(for the bad lovecraft themed games jam  🤭)

oh I want to share things with everyone - I just find code to be harder to share (to be useful for others) 😅

that is a good question as I'm not that familiar with unity myself 🤔

usually the character and animations on top is just another object linked to it somehow
i'm not sure what is the best way to set that up in unity though 😓
in the end you are probably better off with one of the bought ones as this was never fully finished  🤔

you would be surprised but this is often the easier route  🙂
but a character controller is always tricky 🤔
this lara is just a sphere floating above the surface  🤫

I tried recently to bring a similar movement to unity :
https://mutantleg.itch.io/otto-takes-on-unity
among other things, I was helping out my friend FreeHawk with his game
and made various experiments - so the code is a bit crude but it might inspire you
I don't really use unity for my own projects
as it just feels so inconvenient to me 🤔

I'm glad you liked it 👍
yes, it was the engine's debut and a complete catastrophe  😓
and it led to me rolling my own level editor later in Nekkrobox
and that was further developed into Zortch
so not all was lost - but this game highlighted the shortcomings very fast 🤔

that was actually the intention but I screwed up 😓

the dinos get placed but their ai attacks anything non-dino before you get to meet them 😭
and get invisibly slaughtered offscreen - greatly reducing enemy count in the last area 🤔

and we are at 3 weeks since the last update
I mostly spent the time tightening up stuff

so I figured I should replace the old shotgun sound and this led to a bunch of other changes
and I remodelled some of the guns

now the rocket launcher feels like it got a hd udpdate - yet its the same high res model 🤔

also I did some optimising this time by only baking and modelling the visible parts 
turns out being lazy and optimising goes hand in hand  👀

the shotgun looks much more neat now

and the machine gun now looks like it means business  🤔

on problem with baking these characters is the lighting
I lost count how many times I rebaked this gal
problem with monochrome is they look very flat from far
this is a problem if you want players to notice them easily  
up close is fine but turns out you only see them up close very rarely
as these gals are always on the move 🤔

the solution was to go for the old trick  or orange-blue  lightning  - this really brings out the shapes of black stuff
and this was inspired by checking how people light up their alien toys - which being full black usually have the same problem 🤔

now I have to rebake all characters though
this new wall head was remodelled recently
and already in for a rebake

I'm being more lazy with lava and other damaging floors
but they still give me a lot of work 
for these mouths I had to write a tool from scratch to generate the animated texture 👀

and finally here is a puzzle that got cut from zortch 1 involving getting large balls to a goal
so far I got one area where I want to use them - and that is why they look like giant billiard balls 🤔

until next time! 👋 

I just find spheres easier to use for slopes and stairs (and the math is simpler)
for player movement they are perfect
I only got problems with the enemy code because they insist getting inside little holes 
- so for first person I found sphere to be better but  for third person capsule would be probably better 🤔 

sure, it's rather simple (in concept 😉):
- first you linetest against the plane the triangle is on (any point on the triangle and the triangles normal)
- then you have the point where you hit the plane
- and you need to find  the closest point on the triangle   to this point
- and then you measure the distance between these two points and if it's below the radius it's a hit

of course it can be done in a more sophisticated way by also doing a linetest for each vertex as if they were spheres etc.
and less sophisticated: just using more than one raycast to check for the floor

what tools are you using btw? would you like example code? 🤔

i'm glad you like them 😎

thank you! ☺️

apart from that they are both rts games not really 🤔
the title is just a wordplay based on it
(as in this one the commanders are staying put
and the game is really just a warcraft clone)

drat I thought I was only gone for a week - turns out it was almost 3 😮
no wonder development takes so long 🤔

I set out to finally get things together and update the maps with the new lighting from level one
and naturally ended up working on ninjas instead

the ninja model was what I'd like to call an insomnia model - sometimes when I cannot sleep I just model away for fun
the idea is that they are blindfolded and rely on their senses to fight  - and thus you cannot sneak up on them

originally it was just going to be a novelty enemy  to have more midboss level enemies
but after implementing them they seemed to be a lot of fun to play against - so now they have this whole fortress/monastery thing in the works
and I also made plenty of new textures for it

here is a dojo area - for the most part they just run about doing acrobatics and slap you around

I also added color variants and a very expensive ghosting effect (the model is redrawn 5 times total  😬)

a new npc is the ninja master - she explains you being beaten up are just trials and tests - turns out the ninjas didn't become evil after their transformation - as they couldn't get any crazier 🤔

now this new area seems to work well overall and there is plenty of room for gags and fights
the challenge now is to figure out how to add it to the story as none of this was planned 🤔

until next time!  🥷

I feel tired lately and sometimes making a devlog is just too tiring 🤔

but at least most of the tiredness is coming from making the game 🤔
let me show you what have I been up to:

The ruins area is slowly shaping up - I made a new new textures and came up with these mummies

here we see a former emperor who is grumpy for being awakened so early

overall most of the crowd around doesn't take well to your presence

probably the most cliche looking mummy ever - I kind of feel bad about it 🤔

I also managed to finish up the sphinx model 
rumor has it that originally it was a giant locust that was reshaped to be a wasp 👀

here is the low poly version in the editor - with additional statues

of course these are supposed to be ruins so I made a few broken versions of the statues

and for last here is an amusing wallpaper thing
I swear that kid always gets in trouble somehow 🤔

see you next time! 👋

it's tricky - as from side and other views it looks ok - it's that damn fps view where all these guns fall apart 😔

thank you for your feedback 👍
indeed steam works in mysterious ways 😓
I guess until there is a full release there is no way to add reviews 🤔

the movement was indeed rewritten from the ground up - for better or worse
I tried to make it feel as close as possible but only somewhat succeeded 🤔
(the old physics were tied to 60fps and these new ones run at 250fps)

I guess with the better graphics some of the charm was lost
but it's not intentional they are just made with a a different technique 🤔
(main difference is that the 3D models are not hand painted this time)

just a short update - i'm busy making characters
and as you might know itch.io got a lot busy lately
due to unfortunate events  🤔
it's kind of nice to see some activity around here but
I wish it had happened in some other way 🤔

but I digress, once again I updated the demo (build 2072)
https://mutantleg.itch.io/zortch-2-test
this has fixes for the map that make the zoom better
and various small bugfixes
once again I'd like to thank everyone who reported them 👍

and here is the latest devlog stuff:

my new lightmap fixes are giving me a lot of trouble when it comes to making ambient lights
on the other hand it did wonders for the lowpoly model
this previously made train model now looks decent thanks for the lighting
the fixes for the normal calculation brings out it's shape much better

I made new textures for box cars and also made a new model for the wheels
they are also now placed in the correct position at the sides of the box

here is an attempt at a passenger car - strangely enough real railroad cars are twice as long as these
but at that size they feel too long - it's hard to get scale in a game to feel right - realistic measurements often don't feel realistic 🤔
irl a passenger car this size was only found in britain in the early days of trains and was considered the smallest 🤔

overall I have much more luck with characters - I decided to split the baseball player into two creatures

and the design of this propeller headed gal was finalized too - coding her will be a bit more difficult though 🤔

and finally a sum up of all the characters so far
there is also one for Zortch1: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3540307407

turns out I've been a lot busier than I thought 🤔
if only I had the same luck making levels 😓

oh well..

see you next time! 👋