Hell Denizen (Early Access on Steam)

[TwinBeast]

Released Hell Denizen Early Access on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2347390/Hell_Denizen/

 

The first version contains the first episode which is 10 levels + 2 secret levels, and 3 deathmatch / survival levels. The game takes place in futuristic southern Finland. The player character codenamed MeowMeow (you can change the name) starts the game at her workplace where the demons had kept her as a slave. Now she must fight the demons and start a rebellion to overthrow the evil demon rulers and their minions.

 

Version 1, Release Notes:

• Default video mode is 1600x1000 windowed
• Forgot R as one of the default bindings for Pause
• 256 color palette glsl postprocessing shader might not work with AMD graphics cards
• RT World Lighting may be very slow

These things will be fixed/changed in the next or later updates. I'll collect feedback data for a few days and then address all the simple easy to fix issues for the next update. Fixing the RT World Lighting slowness can take a little longer and will be in a later update. I'm using version numbering like: 1, 2, 3, 4... So the next version will be version 2.

 

I've also added a Discord server for Hell Denizen, though it's still a bit quiet there.

 

 

The game is running on FTEQW.

 

If you play the game, feedback is very much appreciated :3

 

 

Screenshots:

 

 

 

 

 

The first post as it used to be:

Started working on this game some two months ago. Project name is currently Whatever. Borrowed some content from older projects to speed up development. Level design is sure slow to do for Quake engine. Sometimes feels like I could do the same thing in 15 minutes for Doom that takes 1 hour for Quake.

 

Like the title says, it's a Doom clone, so not very original. I've had more severe depression this year than ever before and it feels like it has damaged my creativity, so I'll just do whatever I can do.

 

Cyborg Zombies (all character textures are rather unfinished):

 

Server Room (HUD gfx most up to date in this):

 

Cyber Noodles (might flatten the middle structure a bit, so you don't need to make 3 jumps to get the stuff on the top platforms):

 

Video, playing through 2 small levels:

 

The cyborg zombies have lots of lines they say, but they get killed so fast, you don't get to hear much from them.

 

The guns have ammo counters, which were initially used, but later noticed it's more fun without needing to reload the weapons. The ammo counters are going to get removed/replaced with something else. Also missing muzzle flashes.

 

Maybe the assault rifle sound got too loud, initially was a bit too pea shooter like.

Edited July 15, 2023 by TwinBeast
updated because I released the game :3

[Silhouette 03]

Saw the video and looks intriguing. Here are my summed up thoughts:

•  some of the weapons could have more impact and better sounds when firing, such as the pistol and shotgun.
   
• The assault rifle fires way too fast. The plasma gun type weapon already fills the fast firing weapon slot.
• I really like the the design of the weapon models. The Aliens-styled assault rifle and the FEAR 3(hopefully the only similarity to that atrocity) styled shotgun looks really good.
• the character models as you mentioned are work in progress, which is fine though some of the enemies look a bit...odd. The duck melee-type enemy is an example

feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. I’m glad to see that you’re out of that depressed state. Good luck with the game development!

[ShortedOutFuse]

Looks fun, the movement and shooting looks pretty on point from what I can see in the video.  It might be good to give the enemies more blood mist or splatter when gibbing them since it looks like they just disappear if you’re close to them

 

Also the duck enemy is great, please don’t remove it

[Skeletonpatch]

I dig it. I love the player voice, please do not change it.

 

This gives off such an odd atmosphere and I love all of it. If this is an unfinished state I can't wait to see what this turns into, assuming you keep working on it.

[TwinBeast]

@Silhou3tte Sounds are also work in progress, some of them are there just so there's a sound. Although forgot some few sounds from Quake. Earlier the AR fired even faster, guess it'll fire slower, as I thought to make (almost?) every weapon have an "upgrade" weapon, and was just modeling a minigun (which looked like a brick with a bunch barrels attached to it).

 

@ShortedOutFuse I'll update the particle and other effects later. Right now they're DarkPlaces engine (or FTE if playing with it) defaults.

 

And about the duckdemon, initially wondered if it got too ridiculous, well, but now it seems there's more positive feedback (outside this thread too) about keeping it. Guess I'll keep it then. Idea for the characters (and weapons) was to not care too much if they're good or bad now, just make as many as possible, then finalize the good ones later.

 

@Skeletonpatch Player character's voice is my voice. I'll just add more lines for her when I think of something funny, stupid or find something from a movie, tv serie, song or other game to quote.

[GoosebumpsFan]

looks pretty good

[Taw Tu'lki]

It's more like Quake. But it's good.

[TwinBeast]

Making some HUD layout design, so I don't use the Quake HUD layout. Borrowed some ideas from CyberShade, little ammo counters were hideous as numbers, the vertical bars look so much better.

 

Still some things to adjust, powerup counters at the top (also how many powerups) are bigger than the hazmat suit and oxygen at the bottom, and player is probably using these two more than the powerups. Does player have extra lives or was the respawn in the video just testing how respawning works in coop without having to be in coop mode. Cat counter is an easter egg, displayed only if found. Space invaders just appeared when I was wondering about what to do with some of the things. Level timer is probably unnecessary if you can see it from the level stats display.

 

[Silhouette 03]

Very Nice. Reminds me of Unreal’s HUD. I’d recommend making the two bars above the armour  counter bigger. Other that the HUD looks really good. Not too cluttered and you can clearly see everything.

Just be aware that i’m not a game developer so take my criticisms as observations. Just thought I’d let you know.

[Redneckerz]

@TwinBeastI love the design, but i also remember Tigercake and Blaze. What happened to those?

[TwinBeast]

@Redneckerz

The texture set from the "chibi" version of Tigercake is being used in this project now as I was unsure when and if I continue that. Then there was a "picmip max" styled version, but kinda lost interest to that after making the player, weapons and couple enemies. Later tried combining the chibi and picmip styles, but that only resulted in an unanimated player character with a few weapons (then started school and had to put every project on hold until graduating). Suppose I like the chibi styled Tigercake the best, at least when I have showed it to people now, I've been thinking: "Why didn't I finish this, this was so cool?"

 

Most recent version of Blaze was some flight game in a WinQuake based engine. Tried to make it have 6DOF movement as the regular FPS aiming/movement felt so wrong in the Quake engine (didn't feel so bad when I tried CyberShade as a flight game). There was something in the Quake code that didn't agree with 6DOF and player's aiming was like player was very drunk. Couldn't figure out what I needed to fix. I think Blaze was better when it was just a human character shooting at some aliens or robots.

 

Though suppose this Whatever could have the name Blaze if I can't think of a better name?

 

And some thought about level design for Quake engines. Would it be a good idea to sketch levels / areas with Doom Builder, and later recreate them with Radiant? It's easy to improvise a level with Doom Builder without any pre made plan for the level. With Radiant it's not so easy and would be better to have some sketch/plan/visualization for what I should do with it. The sketch levels wouldn't need proper texturing, lighting or things placed in them. I guess I could also just draw level layouts on paper, but as Doom levels they could have heights in the rooms too.

[taufan99]

Looks promising, but I hope the game also has some more "open" outdoor areas.

[Gokuma]

Looks like lots of good plain fun with lots of action!   Also kinda reminds me a bit of a first person shooter arcade machine I played down the shore when I was a teenager.   Two machines were connected together for two players and some major bad guy seemed a imitation of M.Bison/Vega(dictator).   Can't remember its name.

 

But beware, Aqua may have a beef about his aquatic people once again being slaughtered!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqdq_oxrV8k&list=PLr_d0IAaoTxUTBnNRNx5aPjQwR0NnQQL0&index=9

[TwinBeast]

Made some changes in the style, so it's not so scifi, and it's more retro. Also noticed that most of my previous textures for any project have been just scifi tech stuff, very minimally anything else. In another thread mentioned something about going to apply for school & making some pre assignments for it, but decided not to apply. Found something more interesting to study, but maybe next year.

 

Also it seems I may need to sell the game when it's finished instead of it being free. Two worries about that: 1) Not get game complete, can't sell. 2) Get it complete, but only like 100 people buy it and then everyone forgets about it.

 

And feeling like this needs a better name than Whatever, that's just too whatever.

 

Player can make a kick when jumping and pressing jump key again. No need to change to melee weapon to do this.

 

Another square room with some sky visible.

 

The curved corridor, tried what happens if it's also sloped up/down: invalid brush shape. Clipped it in two halves: leak. Built a little box around the corridor to prevent the leak: some type of hom effect ingame. Maybe not worth the effort to do such stuff with just q1bsp. So here's it just flat.

 

Yellow brick outside area with a red sky. Cool, FTE could render two different skies in the same level, although don't know if I'd actually use that feature. I didn't want to make another level just to try a different sky, now I was just testing how J.A.C.K. works for making levels. Earlier I've used NetRadiant. Don't know which one I like better, both have good stuff and both have some annoying stuff.

 

And my face drawing skills were so awful that I decided to hide player character's face behind a helmet, with cat ears. Halved the polycount too. Here's her doing some kicking and clawing.

 

[Silhouette 03]

You seem to have shifted  from a “Doom clone” type project to a Quake like type game, the visuals being one indication. I’m intrigued.

[magicsofa]

You could call it.... Catsenjammer

[ReX]

"I live ..... Again!"

"Do you feel lucky, punk?"

 

Call your mod "Dirty Caleb". Heh.

 

[Nice mod for a solo effort, btw.]

[dybbuk81]

I definitely would play this

 

but when it's done I would forget it existed by then due to all the other awesome games also being made I'll forget as well.

 

[TwinBeast]

Found out how to customize the (Quake style) particle effects in FTE (I'll focus on just one engine, too much trouble trying to have it work in 2). The first things I did were make them have a square texture (random rotation is kinda cool) and then made them bigger so that the gib effects look like gib effects (like the ones in software engines), maybe could add that blood cloud into the middle, sometimes monsters just gib in a way that the gibs just smash immediately into the ground, and then no blood trails flying around. Also made the explosions a bit more interesting. Maybe some more texturing in the particles would be ok?

 

Yea, and ignore the rocket launcher model and some Quake gfx in the hud. I think the hud is going to have this sort of dark background with red (bloody?) numbers. I'll have to think how the hud layout should be. If it's similar to this, the hud icons should be on the right side of the numbers. Now with them being on the left, it kinda looks like having 0 head, 100 rockets and 40+ unknown things. Maybe I make the armor, face/health and ammo icon for this hud, replacing other hud stuff would be a bit pointless (not making a Quake hud replacment).

 

Now that I know how to do the particle effects, not going to be using shirt/pants coloring for player, and no need for this to work with Quake levels, the palette doesn't need to have the Quake palette layout with 14 color ranges with 16 shades + the fullbrights. The palette isn't going to have any fullbrights, I'll just do them with _glow textures that have the glowing parts, then they can use any color from the palette.

[Skeletonpatch]

This is looking great! Keep experimenting, I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes.

 

If you're trying to think of a better name, I might as well throw in some suggestions alongside @magicsofa's fantastic option:

• Astro-Felid ("Solar-Cat")
• T.I.G.R. (could stand for: "Tactical Inter-Galactic Reconnaissance", "Tactical Interstellar Guerilla Reconnaissance" or "Tactical Inter-dimensional Guerilla Reconnaissance")
• L.E.O. ("Long-range Extra-galactic Operatives", or "Long-range Extra-dimensional Operatives")

I'm not sure whether or not you intend for this to be more of a space-faring or inter-dimensional type sci-fi setting, so I thought of acronyms that could fit with both.

 

If you do choose to sell this in the future, you'll definitely have my money!

[TwinBeast]

@magicsofa @ReX @Skeletonpatch Thanks for the name suggestions.

 

It's going to be some action-horror and not too scifi. While I still like scifi games, maybe I got a little bored making them (and not getting any project ready), so a little change in theme might be refreshing. Could still have some scifi type energy weapon.

 

Current background/story for player is that she's a cat burglar, who broke into some museum or private collection and stole some artifact. The artifact reacted to player's touch and some of these things: player got teleported away into another world, evil creatures teleported to earth from that another world and/or all/most humans are zombified. Player would be protected from zombification, due to having the artifact. No idea yet what ingame functionality the artifact would have, or is it just a plot device in the story?

 

Tweaked the palette, now it's 16 colors each with 16 shades and no color is fullbright, but any color can be made fullbright. A bit more sane this way. Also the palette works pretty ok with the software look, but colored lighting might make it use colors that are not in the palette, same goes to all transparency effects. It's not very strict 256 colors then.

 

Player has a lighter. Could add some noise to the bricks. The flame could have some additive/transparency too.

 

Can run out of lighter fuel. It recharges when not in use. And yea, it's missing her hand holding it, and the lid could have some depth modelled into it. Maybe also a slightly bloody version of that texture, although not all textures are going to have bloody versions of them, yet they may appear next to blood, so uhh.

 

Found ericw-tools, which are map/bsp compilers that can do phong shading on the brushes and light bouncing, yay. Of course these effects don't work with realtime lighting, that pipe on the right would look rather blocky with the rt lights. Also found NetRadiant-custom, which is a pretty awesome version of Radiant.

Edited March 11, 2021 by TwinBeast
fixed doesn't to don't

[TwinBeast]

The new gang, zombies and fiends:

 

Yawning in notarget mode:

 

So let's take a look at their asses:

 

Big flame:

 

In action (no sounds):

 

Was kinda fun texturing the monsters with Quake style front/back uv maps (did both in one day). The shotgun has a Quake 2 style diagonal uv map, but that's sort of awful/difficult to texture. Have been thinking the weapons could have a demonic look, but right now they're pretty generic looking. But don't want them to be some fantasy staffs/etc. The claws are kinda badly positioned, earlier tried them with WinQuake, and it has kinda bad nearclip. And have to see if there's some settings for particle nearclip or whatever makes them kinda disappear when close to the camera. Need new gib models, so I don't use the ones from Quake.

 

Plan what to do next is to make some deathmatc/survival levels, monsters and weapons, gameplay. Survival is a game mode where the enemies spawn indefinitely with increasing numbers, eventually overwhelming player, goal is to survive as long as possible. Items respawn like in deathmatch. Story mode levels can appear later.

[Skeletonpatch]

Looking good! I love the fiends.

 

This is really triggering the worldbuilding parts of my brain. I can't help but try to piece together a more fleshed out story from the smaller pieces of info you've provided.

 

If you want the weapons to look less generic, they could be composed of a mixture of flesh, bones and metal.

[TwinBeast]

Added some spike things for the weapons, maybe that's an ok style and not too generic. Swapped hud icons to the right side of the numbers. Might redesign it later to include what weapons and other stuff player has.

 

Testing the surival mode. Video quality seems to alternate a lot between sharp and blur, too fast paced action? Still no sounds, should install sound editing software on my new computers, but have been lazy to do that.

 

[magicsofa]

That boot at 0:46 was quite satisfying

[TwinBeast]

The Brute Butcher, their hobbies include scratching their heads and wondering about if they're pretty:

 

Dimensional Shambler, when they're not hunting for player, they like to parkour on thin railings and look at the scenery from high above:

 

Note: they both have temp textures based on the earlier two smaller enemies. The Dimensional Shambler might get another set of spikes on the back before texturing it properly. Maybe the Brute Butcher can get a hat and wear it on Halloween.

[TwinBeast]

Finally thought that new name: Hell Denizen. It refers to the player character, so she's some Hell denizen. One thought for the backstory is that she was a powerful being in Hell, but a rival took over her domain. Now she's looking to get it all back. So, continuing with the action / horror theme.

 

Also this is going to be a third person game instead, wanted the player character to be more visible, but that's just not going to happen if it's fps. At the moment player character has a pretty wip texture, as I was testing if I can get upper and lower halves use different animations at the same time using the skeleton.

 

But seems like I'm having trouble getting that to work. My choices are then: split the model into upper and lower halves, make way too many animations (every run / attack / weapon combination) or make player unable to move while aiming/shooting (excluding forced melee charge). At least the IQM format doesn't have attached parts twitch like what would happen with MD3 tags.

 

Anyway, some third person pics

 

Whipping, note: normally player can't rotate the view like this when attacking

 

But it's possible to look around when standing without the character turning immediately

 

[Skeletonpatch]

Looking good! I was worried that you may have abandoned this project, it's good to see that you haven't. That's an exciting new direction, it's cool to see this slowly build its own identity.

[TwinBeast]

Thanks :) and I had some concentration issues in May, June and July. Maybe it was the unusually hot summer and some anxiety too. Probably continuing with weapon models next. Want them to be something else than the usual modern/futuristic guns and weapons that look like melee weapons are most likely to be just melee weapons, but definitely more melee weapons than just the whip. Modelled some throwable bombs, but didn't texture them, as I got a sudden inspiration for the whip.

 

Also wondering if the game should be hudless, kinda like it without a hud. Stats could be seen from some inventory view. Player and monsters could have some damage textures, so you'd get some estimation on how much health you or that monster has? Or something more minimal looking hud than earlier.

 

Looks pretty nice with realtime lighting on, though then the 256 color palette isn't exactly used, and even if it was used, it would only sort of show up half way:

 

 

And made a Mod/Indie DB page and a title name text logo:

 

https://www.moddb.com/games/hell-denizen (looks better with the red Mod DB color theme than with the green Indie DB theme), not much new content there, just some new screenshots taken with the third person view.

[Skeletonpatch]

I don't know if this is even possible in the engine, but if you want to go hudless the way health is displayed in Dead Space immediately comes to mind for me. Maybe the tendrils (hair?) on her head could get shorter/longer depending on how much health the player has?