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Program Announcements / SoulHunter -adventure game with sword based combat-

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baxslash
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Posted: 2nd Mar 2011 20:56
Sorry, my fault.

Anyway I guess it's up to ZZZ to decide which version of English he wants to use. I personally don't mind it either way despite being English because I realise that there are people who will be offended either way. I'm glad to have educated DW that the American spelling is not the only (or the original) one.

Back on topic I played the game (some of it at least) but also had some major lag issues. I'll try it on my other PC tonight if I get a chance and let you know how it performs.

I love the effects and can hardly believe the amount of work that has gone into this fantastic project! I hope you find a solution to these minor problems so everyone can enjoy and fully appreciate your hard work.

thenerd
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Posted: 2nd Mar 2011 21:18 Edited at: 2nd Mar 2011 21:26
Quote: "All of the usa and the rest of the world begs to differ with Europe on this issue.
"

I'm American and I can deal with it being spelled coloured. In fact, most countries have their own version of English, and most of those are derived from the British spellings. Sort of insulting myself here, but a lot of Americans tend to be pretty arrogant and annoying about cultural differences like these. If anything, we're the ones with the wrong spelling!

BMacZero
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Posted: 2nd Mar 2011 22:07
Anyway, I just finished the game . Having done this, there are two outstanding issues that I would prioritize above any other bugs or improvements:

1.) I know you probably don't want to get into this, but: the camera. A lot of people have mentioned this. In combat, it finds its way into all sorts of inconvient places and cripples the player way too often. This occurs most often in enclosed spaces - the camera will get stuck in things or camp out inches behind Soulhunter's head, those sorts of things.
2.) The dialogue. I don't think anyone's brought this up yet. The game has a pretty good storyline, and epic, epic art. Unfortunately, the dialogue kind of dragged both of these down for me. It's kind of cheesy and breaks the fourth wall too much.

Fix these two issues, and you have a fun, epic game I would recommend to everyone I know.

baxslash
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Posted: 2nd Mar 2011 22:18
Yeah the camera can be a bit unpredictable sometimes and it does detract from the gameplay a little.

I didn't mind the dialogue too much but I get your point.

DARKHALO2K
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Posted: 2nd Mar 2011 22:19
I just want to congratulate Jarl on a wonderful achievement. I've been playing about with DarkBasic since 1999; joining the DarkBasic Software boards, then the RGT and LLRGT boards, then finally those here. Over these years i've seen a lot of projects begin, and very few seen through to completion.

And not only is it nice to see a project completed, but it's also refreshing to see a DarkBasic Classis project. Especially one of such quality.

What shines through the few small technical issues the game may have is the talent and management skills shown by the author.

I've experienced an occassional bit of slowdown in my short time with the game so far, but certainly no game breaking glitches or drawbacks, and simply cannot wait to spend some real quality time with the game.

For me, Jarl Larsson's dedication to this project will forever be an inspiration, and SoulHunter a testament to what can be achieved with DarkBasic (Classic or Professional) with such dedication.

Again, congratulations. And thanks.
zzz
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Posted: 2nd Mar 2011 22:39 Edited at: 2nd Mar 2011 23:18
@BMacZero:
Quote: "Anyway, I just finished the game"

Awesome!
1) Yeah I know, the camera is not the best. However, making it work perfectly is not something I'm going to do(as you suspected). But the knowledge and feedback will be put to good use in future projects.

2) What I can I say, I'm not a writer by any means. If there's programmer art, I say, let this be programmer dialogue. Or something.

@DARKHALO2K:
Thank you.

Opposing force
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Posted: 2nd Mar 2011 23:01
Awesome! Been following the thread since 2005 and I can't believe it's finally finished! 6 years development, you sure are one dedicated programmer zzz, an inspiration to us all. I'm definitely downloading this when I've got some free time at the weekend. Look forward to playing it.
Darkzombies
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Posted: 4th Mar 2011 06:10
wow this is awesome, can you post some of the code to help me.
TheComet
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Posted: 4th Mar 2011 16:28
I vote sticky

baxslash
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Posted: 4th Mar 2011 16:42
Seconded

It deserves it.

Ermes
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Posted: 4th Mar 2011 21:10
seconded, even just for being in development for 6 years and zzz didn't give up!

Soulhunter for sticky, now!


Ciao facce da sedere!
thenerd
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Posted: 5th Mar 2011 12:49 Edited at: 5th Mar 2011 12:49
I think it deserves a sticky, but not yet because all the threads with stickies seem to be ignored...

Quel
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Posted: 5th Mar 2011 16:26
ehm... then it wasn't really a good idea giving them eh?

The trailer shows an official game, would buy it if was in stores. But that's all i can say, because as said before it was 0 fps for me, and i could barely make my computer stand up again. Seems to me you have some killer machine and didn't really pay attention to compatibility. Which is a shame with a project like this one.
zzz
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Posted: 5th Mar 2011 18:25
@Quel:
Sounds weird, I can play the game fine on my 3 year old low-end laptop. Even though there may be some lag, I've never gotten 0fps.
What are your specs?

Crazy Ninja
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Posted: 6th Mar 2011 12:20 Edited at: 6th Mar 2011 12:26
I haven't posted on these forums in about a year since I don't really come here anymore. I still get the TGC newsletter however and had to come congratulate you on the Alpha. Very impressed, even though I haven't played it yet. I remember playing the early demos and loving it, and I'm so pleased you've been able to finish. Props to you, hopefully I'll find some time to play this.

Edit: Also, that was a pretty sick trailer.

Quel
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Posted: 6th Mar 2011 12:44
WinXP, 1.5Ghz, 512Ram, 64video

I guess i have a crappy videocard, i'm not aware of its clock speed, but should be real slow.

Because i get hundreds of FPS with nothing on screen with DBP, but if ANYTHING comes to the screen, let's just say A SINGLE POLYGON, WHICH COMES SO CLOSE IT'S THE WHOLE SCREEN, then the fps is already ~30...

...it is absolutely regardless of polycount for me, IF the screen is covered by "STUFF", there is a drastic drop already.

But i still feel a value of 0 too extreme... i can fluently play with games up to 2004.

Though i remember DB Classic as a very slow stuff regardless of machine. This was the main reason i asked you back then why you stick to it instead of DBP, not coding improvements or anything.
zzz
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Posted: 6th Mar 2011 16:09 Edited at: 6th Mar 2011 16:10
@Quel:
Quote: "But i still feel a value of 0 too extreme"

Yep, I agree. And the alpha ran just as slow as the demo for you? Have you tried lowering all the settings(low resolution, no grass, no FX)?
Quote: "This was the main reason i asked you back then why you stick to it instead"

It's really hard to switch language in the middle of a project. It was not something I wanted to do.

@Crazy Ninja:
Quote: "I'm so pleased you've been able to finish. Props to you, hopefully I'll find some time to play this."

Thank you, I hope you'll enjoy it!

Ermes
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Posted: 10th Mar 2011 14:52
zzz, how many hits/downloads so far?


Ciao facce da sedere!
zzz
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Posted: 14th Mar 2011 09:12
@Ermes:
290 downloads from my site and 101 from indieDB. But I guess some of them might be duplicates.

Kamakazi
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Posted: 17th Mar 2011 07:48
Just downloaded and played the first level. Awesome job! And like a few others have mentioned, it gives a familiar look and feel of the many Rare adventure games to grace the N64. And it's games like this one that are the only reasons why I still have my N64. I did notice that the enemies like to "push" the player around a bit and one of the first enemies in the game tried to push me off the edge of the level LOL. I also notice a few slowdowns but not enough to keep me from enjoying the game. My wife seen the main character and said he was cute.

I'm running a 64-bit Windows 7 Home on an AMD Sempron 2.10 GHz processor with an ATi Radeon HD 4200 graphics. The game loaded rather quickly, taking less than a minute. I only wish that Mario could jump that high in the N64 version LOL.

This game deserves the time to download and play...and, in my opinion, deserves an award for recognition of what DarkBASIC is really capable of. Some of the best games I've ever played take time to make. I'd rather wait for years to have a decent game than to play a game that only took a few months to build only to find out it simply wasn't worth playing. Job well done!
Kamakazi
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Posted: 17th Mar 2011 08:05
@Quel OMG! You seriously need to update your system's memory! 512MB is so dinosaur compared to the minimum requirements of today's computers and not having enough RAM will bottleneck your system's performance regardless of how fast your processor is.

Is your system running DDR or DDR2? If you are running DDR2, I highly recommend getting at least 1 GB of 800MHz DDR2. If you are using DDR, which is more expensive than DDR2, you can obtain up to 2 GB of RAM...but make sure to get RAM that has a speed of at least 400MHz.

This alone will increase your system's performance level and will give the graphics card (if it's built-in) a boost in memory. Windows XP alone can take up the whole 512MB of RAM you have. Not ranting or raving...just trying to help.
zzz
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Posted: 18th Mar 2011 20:58 Edited at: 18th Mar 2011 21:12
I'm glad you liked the game, Kamakazi!
Anyway, the next release will probably be the final version. However, I don't know when that's going to happen as I'm always super busy it seems.

The current version seems to be doing rather well, thanks to youtube I've managed to track down some sites "redistributing" the game.
Anyway, I'm flattered.

Furthermore, I can tell you that another game project is occuping my time at the moment, I'm developing it with a couple of friends, and it got some pretty interesting gameplay mechanics(some of you may already know what I'm talking about.)

tha_rami
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Posted: 19th Mar 2011 05:34
I actually logged back in here when I saw that this was completed, then got distracted by Geek Culture (old habits die hard, I guess), but mostly, I wanted to congratulate you with this amazing milestone.

I downloaded the game and will give it a go

Business guy and developer at [url]www.vlambeer.com[/url] - bringing back arcade since 1956.
Blobby 101
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Posted: 21st Mar 2011 01:26
awesome game, glad you got this finished. I'm stuck though

Same place as a couple of other people, I've got the candle and lit the pot but nothing's happened

Drew Cameron
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Posted: 21st Mar 2011 02:34
Congratulations on finally completing this from another old timer.

Downloading now.

BMacZero
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Posted: 21st Mar 2011 02:44
Quote: "Same place as a couple of other people, I've got the candle and lit the pot but nothing's happened "


My friend got stuck on that part, too. I played the very early version and I think I had to get a hint from zzz on it then, too.

Blobby 101
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Posted: 21st Mar 2011 23:40
@Bmac, not really helped Maybe i'm just thick, but I can't make out what that slab thing is trying to tell me.

tiresius
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Posted: 23rd Mar 2011 04:16
Spoiler:



A 3D marble platformer using Newton physics.
Omnomer
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Posted: 24th Mar 2011 01:26
Sometimes when I play the fog texture simply turns all white and makes playing very hard

Mwahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
zzz
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Posted: 24th Mar 2011 06:32
@Omnomer:
Yeah, some computers get weird graphical glitches. I don't think I can do anything about that, sorry. :/

kamac
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Posted: 24th Mar 2011 11:18
zzz,

Do you still work on SoulHunter, or have other ideas in minds ?

zzz
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Posted: 25th Mar 2011 00:36 Edited at: 25th Mar 2011 18:54
@kamac
I'm busy with another project at the moment. We reached an important milestone today, I might upload a video on YouTube tomorrow. It's awesome.
[EDIT] Uploaded the video now,[here], I know it's a little offtopic, sorry about that.(please comment on the video on youtube, not here).

Alucard94
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Posted: 26th Mar 2011 03:36
You're done? Wow, been following this project since the start, kind of feels weird with it being done haha.
Will definitely play this game when I get the chance to


Alucard94, lacking proper intelligence.
zzz
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Posted: 26th Mar 2011 16:21
@Alucard94:
Feels even weirder(in an awesome way) for me.

Omnomer
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Posted: 27th Mar 2011 04:47
I beat the first boss and went to the old tree but got a runtime error. 99 to be exact. O ther than that AWSOME

Mwahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
zzz
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Posted: 27th Mar 2011 16:22
@Omnomer:
Ok, thanks. I'll have a look at that.

Omnomer
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Posted: 27th Mar 2011 22:53
Im running window 7 and even in Admin mode I get runtime errors

Mwahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
zzz
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Posted: 29th Mar 2011 13:08 Edited at: 29th Mar 2011 13:09
@Omnomer:
Yeah, then there's something else afoot, the errors I mentioned that you'll get when not running in admin mode only occurs when you start the game. I think that has something to do with how DBC stores temporary data, something which was solved in the 1.2 update, but I didn't update because 1.2 bugged the animation. But if you get runtime errors ingame(only at the end of boss 1 or somewhere else as well?), I guess it's trying to delete something that doesn't exist.

Omnomer
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Posted: 30th Mar 2011 04:31
Oh...I take it I should run soulhunter on a computer with windows Xp??

Squirrel!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wilds
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Posted: 2nd Apr 2011 11:12
Hey awesome you finished the game I tried it when you first released your demo.

I was wondering if you could share some insight about how you created the game.

Like what modeling/animation tools you used and how you made some gameplay systems ingame.
29 games
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Posted: 6th Apr 2011 21:44
Downloaded Soulhunter last night and I've got to say it's a really good game. It's an amazing effort.

Some feedback then and I'll start with the things I think really need sorting out:

I've made it to level 3 and then get a run time error (run time error 99) when I go through the oak tree. I've played through the game twice (from the start) and get the same error at the same point in the game.

The camera needs to be improved. If the character moves backward into a piece of scenery the camera moves closer to the character, goes inside the character and points straight up. My suspicion is that the camera is always pointed to at a point just above the character's head. I suspect that if the focal point was a few units away from the character and diametrically opposite the character this might cure the problem or make it less noticeable.

Low frame rate. The slow down is most pronounced when fighting more than one enemy. If you removed some of the enemies from some of the levels, I don't think this would detract from the game at all. For the record, my laptop spec is: 1.5 Ghz processoer, 1 Gb ram, ATI RadeonĀ® Xpress 200M integrated 3D graphics with up to 256 MB of shared memory (As a comparison: G-Speed works fine).



Some things you might want to look into, in no particular order, and for me aren't show stoppers:

The cursor comes up surrounded by a black square. I'm guessing you're using a plane and the black in the texture isn't making that part of the plane invisible.

I got some opache grey walls in the levels (like some of the screen shots from other people's posts). Although I didn't get this when I played the first three levels a second time.

A white box flashes up then dispears just before any dialogue appears on the screen.

The camera is jittery during the cut scene for the old enchanted oak tree.

The map does not show up when I click on it. However, once I got the second half of the map I could then see it, both halves.



Now that's out of the way, the parts of the game I liked:

The cut scenes. I thought they were very good. The opening cut scene (after the menu) made made me want to play the game. I also liked the Fairy of the Forest, I thought it was very clever.

The models and textures were all very well done.

Spoiler in the next one:


The level three boss was really good. I liked that you couldn't just hack at him to beat him.

Like I said, this is an amazing effort. Well done.
Ermes
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Posted: 14th Apr 2011 01:02
Quote: "The models and textures were all very well done."


maybe the best parts of this game, and the best models and textures of 99% PA games,(well, if you cand find games in PA! )

well don't understand why soulhunter isn't on the top. (sticked)


Ciao facce da sedere!
TheComet
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Posted: 14th Apr 2011 17:26
@ zzz

Sorry to post this here, but I just can't find any contact details to contact you privately... Can you send me an e-mail?


Thanks!

I found a few glitches, not quite sure if this one has been mentioned yet : Walk down a slope, press and hold "q" (to draw in souls to your sword). The character will draw the sword, but then instantly stop again because he's "falling", then he'll draw the sword again and so on...

Quite fun to play, I really liked the fact you were able to do bone animation in DBC! It ran at a clean 60 fps at all times here:

AMD Phenom X6 1090T @ 4.2 GHz
8 GB RAM @ 1.2 GHz
nVidia GTX 580

TheComet

Schriev
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Posted: 26th Apr 2011 22:53
Awesome game! (even though I kinda suck at it)

How do you beat the level 3 boss?

ps: it runs perfectly for me with no lag but I have a high-end Alienware and I'm sure lower-end computers might have problems with it.
TheComet
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Posted: 28th Apr 2011 16:35
Quote: "How do you beat the level 3 boss?"




TheComet

Quel
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Posted: 4th May 2011 15:53
"It ran at a clean 60 fps at all times here:

AMD Phenom X6 1090T @ 4.2 GHz
8 GB RAM @ 1.2 GHz
nVidia GTX 580"

...

No joking...

-In.Dev.X: A unique heavy story based shoot'em ~12%
-CoreFleet: An underground commander unit based RTS ~15%
-TailsVSEggman: An Sonic themed RTS under development for idea presentation to Sega ~15%
Quel
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Posted: 10th May 2011 18:36
Finally had the chance to try it out, though still not at a pleasing speed, but i finally could witness the stuff.

It is a cute game, definately got its own sucking-in atmosphere.

Since speed is still an issue for me with this new(er) config (3Ghz, nVidiaFX5500, 512ram), i would rather go into technical whining other than gameplay since i'm not sure if i experience things badly due to you or the slow movement.

Number one, you used ghosted plains as fog VERY heavily. This is nuts man I believe you guys this isn't a challenge for today's cards, but it is 10 fps minus per every layer here for me, and there are 3 to 5 or 6 different layers of plains here and there, that's killer!...

The loading time is really long. Do you load in everybody at the same time? Because if yes, you should have done it like loading in 1 of every kind and then duplicate them as needed to have better performance and short loading time.

-In.Dev.X: A unique heavy story based shoot'em ~25%
-CoreFleet: An underground commander unit based RTS ~15%
-TailsVSEggman: An Sonic themed RTS under development for idea presentation to Sega ~15%
zzz
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Posted: 12th May 2011 15:21 Edited at: 12th May 2011 15:22
Hi, sorry for not posting in a while.
@TheComet: I now have a contact form at my website.
@Quel: Thanks for trying it out! DBC does not support model instancing which is why the level loading times are so long. Sorry, but there's nothing I can do about that. I could add an option to turn off ghosting in the next release. However, I don't know for sure when that's going to be, I'm pleased with finishing soulhunter after working on it for so long, and I've moved on to new projects. Fixing arduous bugs in a non-oo language is not high on my priority list right now. Don't get me wrong, there will be an update, I just want you to know that it might take a while.

I'm grateful for all the feedback and downloads!

Quel
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Posted: 12th May 2011 16:20
Bug fixing is easier in object orientated stuff, or how do you mean that line?

Are you kinda done with DB?

What if you looked into the Pro, they (god knows why) did everything to keep the classic dark basic alive, but even this way it is nothing compared to the Professional.

...aww i just keep fantasizing about how all this would have turned out if you had started with DBP..

-In.Dev.X: A unique heavy story based shoot'em ~25%
-CoreFleet: An underground commander unit based RTS ~15%
-TailsVSEggman: An Sonic themed RTS under development for idea presentation to Sega ~15%
zzz
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Posted: 12th May 2011 16:51
Quote: "...aww i just keep fantasizing about how all this would have turned out if you had started with DBP.."

Probably about the same, I knew nothing when I started.
But hey, developing soulhunter has taught me a lot, so you can start fantasizing about my future games instead.

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