Windows Reggie Burning (sidescroller action RPG)

Surgeon_

Symbian Curator


Introduction:

Some of you may know that I've been around this forum, on and off, for quite a few years by now, but apart from one jam entry, I've never had any worthwhile creations to show, at least in terms of games... Until now.

The game I'm presenting here has been in development since 2015, though we've had some long pauses due to education and health issues. By "we" here I mean a group of friends, students from different countries, brought together by the love of making games. So the game has seen little investment in terms of money, and a lot in terms of time and passion. As the structure of the team shifted over time, I've been informally "promoted" from a simple UI (User Interface) programmer to the main programmer for everything and anything within the project, and for the longest time I've been facing the task alone, so basically all that you'll see here was coded by me.

About the game:
Here the player takes the role of an old soldier, Mr. Reggie who, faced with a terminal heart condition, decides to spend his final days in one last mission, with his young nephew at his side; A military-grade pacemaker keeping him alive for just a little while longer.

After a worldwide catastrophe, only the very richest can afford comfortable and plentiful lives. Reggie, not being one of the privileged few, will have to think carefully about whether to trade in his valuable finds for more ammo or for medication for his failing heart.

True friends will be few and far between, and enemies will be plentiful - monsters and men alike.

Gameplay:
Though it may not seem like it at first, this game is an RPG. Though not in a sense that you may expect nowadays - there's no levelling up or allocating skill points here. It is an RPG in a sense that the world around you will respond to your actions; Characters will remember how you treated them and will act accordingly.

For example, you encounter a man caught in a bear trap in the woods. Will you finish him off and take his possessions or give him your last stimpack and make a new friend? Choices, choices...

The game focuses on the story and "feel" as much as it does on pure mechanics.

As far as these mechanics go, there's the standard set: Shoot the enemies, avoid getting shot yourself, pick up the loot, craft, trade and speak with NPCs. But allow me to elaborate:

Combat:
In combat, you have a selection of weapons to choose from - Pistols, assault rifles, grenade launchers, flamethrowers (it is Reggie Burning after all) and so on. The all differ in range, accuracy and damage, but also in how much it costs to keep them firing. Some weapons have multiple firing modes and ammo types that they can utilize (semi-auto / full-auto; lead bullets / explosive bullets).

There are also armours to wear. And combat drugs to use. Though be careful, while these drugs may make Reggie faster or stronger, they can also cause significant strain on his dying heart - and chances of surviving a firefight with a cardiac arrest are slim...

And then there are the enemies. These aren't your stock "run toward you and shoot until they die" sidescroller enemies. It took me a lot of time and effort (and the works are still in progress) but these are smart. If you start winning the fight, they will retreat to tend to their wounds or call for backup. But if more of them bunch up together, the dynamic "morale" system will ensure that they require more punishment than usual before they run away. While bruiser enemies will try to run and jump to close the distance as soon as possible, ranged ones will try to keep a distance and stay behind cover.

Social interactions (WIP):
I will cover this more thoroughly in a future update, but for now let's just say that there's nothing out of the norm - we have branching dialogues with NPCs whose opinions of you can change over time and trading with scarce resources - in fact, it resembles the classic Fallout games (which I love!) a lot.

Updates & Demo:
Unfortunately there's no playable demo yet but it's progressively getting closer to completion, and believe me when I say that the whole team is eagerly awaiting the day when we'll be able to publish it.

I'll be updating this thread with new content as often as I can (I expect it will be a few days between each update). I imagine it will be kind of a devlog, where I showcase a different feature / mechanic each day.

My first planned updates will be about dialogues and about enemies / combat.

But for now, I hope you will be satisfied with some screenshots :)

Screenshots:
Warning - Large .GIFs in the spoiler!
Note: A large part of these are my "programmer art" so don't judge.

Reggie standing by the fire:


Reggie holding a rifle and running around:

Edit: This file was too large but you can view it directly on imgur.com (Link).

General look of the game and HUD:


The Inventory screen:


The Settings screen:


An enemy below Reggie lobbing grenades through a hole in the floor (Note: Poor quality is due to .gif compression):
Edit: This file was too large but you can view it directly on imgur.com (Link).

Have a nice day :)
-Surgeon_
 

Surgeon_

Symbian Curator
In the past few days I've made a lot of under the hood changes, so unfortunately there's not too much to look at, but here's something:

Free Look:
I realized that having the camera locked to the player at all times was a bit dumb, so I decided to allow freely looking around (within a certain range) by holding the right mouse button. I don't know if you can see it in the video, but this free looking is blocked by the terrain. I'm thinking about including some items like binoculars and scopes that you can attach to weapons that would increase this free looking range...

Flying Monster (1st Version):
First let me say that this is still in development and that this is an early unpolished version of a flier-type monster, which you can, after all, see by its random unanimated Flying Spaghetti Monster sprite and some debug text around it...
Still, as you can see in the video, its swooping attack works nicely, though its killer attack is actually grabbing the player, lifting him to a considerable height, then dropping him to the ground.
Anyway, it also hits the ground (instead of the player) from time to time, and sometimes flies around in circles for a while before snapping out of it, so it definitely has some more way to go...

Any comments appreciated :)
 

Surgeon_

Symbian Curator
Today I managed to utilize some shader black magic (call it hackery if you will) + blend modes to make the sky essentially not affected by the shadows casted by the dynamic lighting engine. That never made sense and it annoyed me to no end!
I'd say that it turned out pretty well and that it has great potential to look amazing with a bit better art for the backgrounds. Here you can take a look at it:
And to think that I didn't even know what a fragment shader was when I woke up today! (It was a long day...) Big thanks to Shaun Spalding and the guy who goes by the name of Bingdom on Discord - I don't think I'd have figured shaders out by myself - at least not without a significant amount of time and (needles) effort :)

Well, that's all, folks (for today).

EDIT: The sky is just a random image I found on Google. It's not mine or anything.
 

Surgeon_

Symbian Curator
Meant to showcase the new screen shake I implemented (original idea found here in case anyone's interested) but as it turns out I also got to show the melee enemy in action (the sprite is horrible - I know) and the equally ugly main menu... Oh, well :p
 
F

FROGANUS

Guest
Looks great- cool tile and characters, backstory, lighting, pastafarianism, count me in!
 

Surgeon_

Symbian Curator
Cool. But the red flash is violent an annoying. I suppose its temporary?
It's one of the things that's been there even before I joined the project, so I never gave much thought to it, and nobody ever complained about it... Still, it's good to know that some may find it annoying so I'll make it optional via the settings screen.
 
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