The Somni Team

A couple of days ago I had an idea of how to make a fast efficient mini-map for the game, this is what I came up with after about 45 minutes of programming.



The yellow is the room you're currently in (and any hallways belonging to it) the white are normal floors, gray are walls.

That's a grid control, sneaky, eh?

Just a quick screenshot I took.



It's kind of a hybrid of old and new graphics, plus a better temporary player icon.

As you can see lighting is in to a degree, there still aren't many light sources. Currently only rooms and fire emit light but flashlights are going to be in of course (and they'll be awesome, trust me).

Howdy howdy, this week I've been focusing on finalizing the last few bits of the map generator and getting some of the game modes functional.

I reprogrammed the way the map generator handles generating multiple levels (floors) so that it's not quite as likely for small low-room floors to be generated. It also speeds up the process a little bit. It usually takes about 50 seconds to generate a 100x100x10 map or so (between 10 and 12 floors during my tests). Each floor has about 7-15 rooms on it.

I added two new game modes in addition to the existing 'all out chaos' mode. The first one is a generic zombie survival mode, where you have to survive approximately 15 minutes as endless hordes of zombies rock their way through the station.

The second is an electrical malfunction mode that puts you on a severely messed up station with electrical errors running rampant. This means things like lighting and door/elevator access will be iffy so you'll have to get creative to reach the surface to finish the round -- and remember, water and electricity don't play together very well.

Also, on the note of lighting, I've been doing some work on the core of the lighting system as well, it's not very far along yet but it already adds an interesting atmosphere to the game. Especially during zombie mode.

As far as programming goes there's really not a ton left to do aside from general content work, and adapting existing systems to new graphics as I get them. The brunt of the work lies in things like item content and mode creation (which is very easy thanks to creative programming). Most of the core systems are pretty close to finished as far as it goes, only needing work to make sure they work properly as I implement new things.

Sorry, no video this week -- my computer has been having massive issues lately (hardware issues, yuck) so I've been trying to take it easy on it and not do anything too resource intensive. No worries though, I backup Submerged every time I make a revision to the code.

Hopefully I can finish this stuff off before I'm forced to use a computer I can't get on the internet. When I get paid I get a laptop, so it'll solve the problem.

Stay tuned for more progress reports, and keep an eye out for beta testing. Once I get a good amount of graphics it won't take me too long to have a beta ready!

I did a little gameplay video last night of one of the beta game modes called 'Into the Deep' basically the premise of the mode is that the ground under the station has started shifting causing the station to slowly shake itself apart. Your goal is to reach the surface floor of the station without dying. The round ends when all players have either died or reached the surface.

I died in my attempt, unfortunately.

Right now the mode is only partially complete, each 'rumble' of the station can cause debris to fall down onto players, cause gas leaks or even spark fires. There are other disasters for this mode planned (which will also be used in other game modes) such as flooding and electrical malfunctions.

A few things to note about the video: The quality isn't fantastic, I'm still experimenting with recording software and settings of said software. I did capture the whole game screen this time instead of just the map portion. The output control is purely debug stuff right now, none of the text (if you can actually read it) is going to exist in the actual game. The statpanel at the top right is also debug, it will be replaced with more 4.0-friendly goodness soon.

The video is a bit better if watched in HD mode, so keep that in mind. All graphics are either my half-assed attempt at something to make it playable or donated graphics slightly modified. None of the graphics will be in the actual game.

Hello my fellow BYONDers!

We've picked up a new face here at Somni, we're working with Neblim to do the graphics for our game, Submerged.

Here's a teaser (still not finished, but getting there)