Medieval Style RPG

Inspiration

This game was inspired by old school JRPG's such as final fantasy, I still have a soft spot in my heart for the old Super Nintendo and its rpg/adventure games so thought I'd make a VR homage to the spirit of those games.

Unfortunately I didn't have a ready made game to submit for remixing, as I am new to the horizon editor, so everything you see was made from scratch over the last two weeks especially for this competition, which has been challenging but fun, even though I never completed everything in time.

What it does

It's a remixable, modular RPG style game level, with a modular castle you can configure how you like, there are currently two 'levels' included, a summer version and a winter version, the doors will automatically open when approached, and treasure chests will also open when you stand next to them (due to the way horizon seems to handle axis movements, this only works if the chest is aligned with world axis).

There is an animated waterfall (which currently leads to the winter level)and some animated water in the river (the winter version is frozen ice so no animation).

I have deliberately designed everything to be remixable in any configuration, and will eventually be providing UV maps for re-texturing in photoshop etc.

How I built it

The 3D models were all created by me in a now discontinued 3D program called Rocket 3f, as I am very familiar with this software from developing 3d models that I print and sell online. UV mapping/unfolding was done in wings 3D, and then the UV outlines turned into textures in Paint shop pro. The scripts were made using the desktop editors AI scripting tool. The rest was just using my imagination to design parts

Challenges I ran into

mostly problems with the scripting language ( I can program fine in Arduino and other C based languages, but find scripting languages very confusing), I had to rely on the AI scripting tool to make anything work, which doesn't always make things work the way you want it to. one problem I kept coming across was that when you rotate an object on anything other than the y axis, the scripts generated would only rotate around world aligned axis, not the models axis, this meant that any rotating object would go off on a weird tangent if not kept in alignment with the world axis. So levels had to be designed around that limitation (i.e. the waterfall could not be rotated to fit the levels, so the level had to be built around the waterfall)

I could not get the persistent variables to work at all, I just kept getting a message saying the variables were not created, even though I followed the tutorials exactly, so I was unable to make an inventory system with collectable treasures to work with the treasure chests I made.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Creating a working waterfall using a rotating ring (most of which is hidden behind the rocks) and 'rippling' water using transparent sheets rotated by a script.

In order to keep polygon counts down I used gateway scripts that would make the outside of a building disappear and the insides appear, so the software is only rendering what is inside the building when inside and vice versa. I applied this to the world levels too, so that as the world expands, I'm not increasing the workload, because only the level you are on is rendered at any time.

Because I usually make monochrome models for my online shop (I make upgrade parts for titanic models) I have no previous experience with texturing 3D models. I experimented with Meshy3D to create AI textures but it is very unreliable and made very messy texture maps that were difficult to modify and made it impossible to get any kind of uniformity in my textures. So I had to quickly develop a simple workflow that would enable more uniformly textured models, this involves using the UV mapping tools in Wings 3D, which created UV maps I could paint in Paint Shop Pro.

What I learned

How to think about the end user when designing mixable parts, to give them the most configurable modularity. Things like having windows as separate boxes that could be placed wherever the user wants them. And easy to use transition gateways that can be easily configured to transition from the outside to the inside (there are only two boxes to fill with target objects). And of course I learned how to make properly textured models.

What's next for Medieval Style RPG

I intend to keep developing the world with more models and more level types (deserts, forests etc). And I want to make the UV maps available for end users to retexture the models. Hopefully as I get better at using the typescript generator I'll be able to make things more interactive with an inventory system and collectible treasures.

Built With

• paintshop
• rocket3d
• wings3d