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Alpha Ducktards (multiplayer survival and betrayal)

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Opticrow

Guest
Sorry for massive gifs :3
Ducktards is an explosive multiplayer game, focused on survival. Betray your friends completely anonymously, in a huge selection of game modes.





Ranging from simple drop-in murder, all the way to fully fledged zombie survival and collaborative base building, there's bound to be something for you!







Extreme weather and seasons included, along with a dynamic world system, simulating realistic nature! Plenty of wildlife will be present for murdering purposes, and general atmosphere.







Open source map editing software will be provided for free, so that anyone can build a truly unique map to share with the community!






The server hosting package will also be open source. Stacks of documentation will be available on the website, so that anyone can program their own server from the ground upwards.






Disclaimer:
Ducktards has been in development for over a year, and has been restarted from scratch countless times. It's going to be a long while before release, but I want to my progress with you so far! What do you think? :D



website: www.ducktards.net
 
lolslayer

lolslayer

Member
Knew about this game for a while, nice to finally see it on the forums, and I really really really like the art :D

I wan't to mention though, shadows don't overlap eachother, maybe drawing all the shadows with an alpha of 1 to a surface and then drawing the surface with an intensity of 0.4 or whatever you want
 
O

Opticrow

Guest
Zerb Games said:
Wow crazy cool keep up the good work!
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Thanks! :D

lolslayer said:
Knew about this game for a while, nice to finally see it on the forums, and I really really really like the art :D

I wan't to mention though, shadows don't overlap eachother, maybe drawing all the shadows with an alpha of 1 to a surface and then drawing the surface with an intensity of 0.4 or whatever you want
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Hehehe glad to hear it, thank you! The art has been tweaked and adjusted over the years, but I think I'm finally starting to be happy with it!

As for the shadows.... I honestly don't think it's worth the hassle, but quite a few people bring it up! The problem is, it would need a massive surface which would be wasting texture space. All for a "minor" graphics tweak. I dunno. It's the kind of thing I just want to leave out for the moment, and if there's spare resources once the game is complete, I might fix it.
 
lolslayer

lolslayer

Member
Opticrow said:
Thanks! :D


Hehehe glad to hear it, thank you! The art has been tweaked and adjusted over the years, but I think I'm finally starting to be happy with it!

As for the shadows.... I honestly don't think it's worth the hassle, but quite a few people bring it up! The problem is, it would need a massive surface which would be wasting texture space. All for a "minor" graphics tweak. I dunno. It's the kind of thing I just want to leave out for the moment, and if there's spare resources once the game is complete, I might fix it.
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No you don't, you only have to make a surface as big as the screen itself is because you won't see other shadows then that, after you made the surface you draw the shadows of the objects in and a little bit around the view per step and then draw the surface beneath everything else. It's that easy! :D
 
O

Opticrow

Guest
lolslayer said:
There was a test version though and you told me that I might be allowed to play it :(
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Yeah at one point there was! But now it's just a bundle of experimental code, not in any particular playable fashion. If I had a playable version available, of course I'd let ya'll have a shot!
 
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lolslayer

lolslayer

Member
Opticrow said:
Yeah at one point there was! But now it's just a bundle of experimental code, not in any particular playable fashion. If I had a playable version available, of course I'd let ya'll have a shot!
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Too bad :/

And a little reminder:
"No you don't, you only have to make a surface as big as the screen itself is because you won't see other shadows then that, after you made the surface you draw the shadows of the objects in and a little bit around the view per step and then draw the surface beneath everything else. It's that easy! :D"
 
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Opticrow

Guest
lolslayer said:
you only have to make a surface as big as the screen itself
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Well I realise I don't need a 195000x195000 pixel surface, that would be insane!
The world is the size of an unsigned 16 bit integer in both directions, which is 65000, but the grid is 3x larger, so thats 65000*3 :D
 
M

Misty

Guest
I want to play this, but I want more level customizations than just trees. I want buildings, desert buildings, specifically.

Also, I'm gonna have to say no to the shadows, it will probably lag my beast. If anything, use blob shadows or allow detailed shadows to be disabled.
 
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Opticrow

Guest
Misty said:
I want to play this, but I want more level customizations than just trees. I want buildings, desert buildings, specifically.
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Don't you worry, there absolutely will be buildings. However not too many, because most of the building will be done by players for base construction. It will mostly consist of generic structures such as panelling and walls.
But for aesthetic, there will be the odd log cabin sprite ;D

Misty said:
Also, I'm gonna have to say no to the shadows, it will probably lag my beast. If anything, use blob shadows or allow detailed shadows to be disabled.
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You don't even know the performance impact yet haha
You'll be happy to hear that disabling shadows is already an option. However from my testing, it offers hardly any performance boost at all.



The shadow is literally just the same sprite drawn behind at a skew. Best case scenario, you halve the draw count. Having a 'blob' shadow wouldn't change anything, it's still a draw call!
 
lolslayer

lolslayer

Member
Opticrow said:
Well I realise I don't need a 195000x195000 pixel surface, that would be insane!
The world is the size of an unsigned 16 bit integer in both directions, which is 65000, but the grid is 3x larger, so thats 65000*3 :D
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So... fixed shadows are coming? :D
 
trg601

trg601

Member
I can't wait for the release! I've been following this for a little while, and I've been meaning to show you this relevant comic I found a long while ago:
 
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Opticrow

Guest
trg601 said:
I can't wait for the release! I've been following this for a little while, and I've been meaning to show you this relevant comic I found a long while ago:
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I know!!! The thing is, I saw this a long time ago too and found it again recently! But it wasn't the inspiration for Ducktards remotely! I'd completely forgotten about it. Weird huh!

lolslayer said:
Realistic ;)
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Realistic shadows were always coming! The very first graphics concept had realistic shadows :3
 
lolslayer

lolslayer

Member
Opticrow said:
I know!!! The thing is, I saw this a long time ago too and found it again recently! But it wasn't the inspiration for Ducktards remotely! I'd completely forgotten about it. Weird huh!


Realistic shadows were always coming! The very first graphics concept had realistic shadows :3
Click to expand...
They didn't intersect with eachother xD
 
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Opticrow

Guest
I feel like this is getting a bit spammy, so I'll try to address the whole confusion with one post.

Since the very first graphical prototype, shadows have always been a darkened, distorted version of the sprite, drawn with a lowered opacity. Meaning that if there's another shadow cast on top, it will appear to overlap. A handful of people have suggested that I use a surface to fix this issue. However, I don't consider it worth the performance loss, as I still have plenty of intensive things yet to implement. On the other hand, if there's any spare processing power once Ducktards is complete, I might reconsider.

There are quite a few slightly unrealistic aspects in the graphics. For instance, shadows should really be cast on top of other world objects too, and the lighting of the sprite doesn't reflect the direction of the light source (sorri 4 pun). I honestly don't think things like this are worth fixing, as there will always be further improvements that can be made. Development is slow enough as it is anyway ;)

But who knows, only time will tell. I may come around to the idea in the near future, I'm not closing any doors ^_^
 
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lolslayer

lolslayer

Member
Opticrow said:
I feel like this is getting a bit spammy, so I'll try to address the whole confusion with one post.

Since the very first graphical prototype, shadows have always been a darkened, distorted version of the sprite, drawn with a lowered opacity. Meaning that if there's another shadow cast on top, it will appear to overlap. A handful of people have suggested that I use a surface to fix this issue. However, I don't consider it worth the performance loss, as I still have plenty of intensive things yet to implement. On the other hand, if there's any spare processing power once Ducktards is complete, I might reconsider.

There are quite a few slightly unrealistic aspects in the graphics. For instance, shadows should really be cast on top of other world objects too, and the lighting of the sprite doesn't reflect the direction of the light source (sorri 4 pun). I honestly don't think things like this are worth fixing, as there will always be further improvements that can be made. Development is slow enough as it is anyway ;)

But who knows, only time will tell. I may come around to the idea in the near future, I'm not closing any doors ^_^
Click to expand...
To be honest, it wouldn't really be that big of a performance loss, because the surface only has to be the size of the screenand you need to draw the shadows the same amount of times compared to not having a surface.
 
O

Opticrow

Guest
lolslayer said:
To be honest, it wouldn't really be that big of a performance loss, because the surface only has to be the size of the screenand you need to draw the shadows the same amount of times compared to not having a surface.
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It's a texture swap I can avoid, and if you're playing on an HD monitor, it's still a very large extra surface to be carrying around. I want Ducktards to run well on lower end computers as well. Obviously, low end computers won't be sporting a 20k monitor, but even an extra swap can cut dents into precious fps!
 
lolslayer

lolslayer

Member
Opticrow said:
It's a texture swap I can avoid, and if you're playing on an HD monitor, it's still a very large extra surface to be carrying around. I want Ducktards to run well on lower end computers as well. Obviously, low end computers won't be sporting a 20k monitor, but even an extra swap can cut dents into precious fps!
Click to expand...
True, true
 
Zerb Games

Zerb Games

Member
Opticrow said:
I know!!! The thing is, I saw this a long time ago too and found it again recently! But it wasn't the inspiration for Ducktards remotely! I'd completely forgotten about it. Weird huh!


Realistic shadows were always coming! The very first graphics concept had realistic shadows :3
Click to expand...
How you do teh shaedohws?
 
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