After talking about making small games and so... We are going to change to 2.5D! Well... not sure, but is a idea. The maze walls will be 3D geometry and 2D sprites for the rest, so we keep the 2D lighting system. The camera is now changed from Ortho to Perspective and it seems to work fine.
As said, we see a lot of problems in this change so don't know if we finally will do it, but it's really a visual improvement.
Thinking in turning all the game's structure in a Scene2D object. It looks interesting, but breaks with the MVC structure that I was following till now, so I don't think I would do the jump. The next task I've been doing is tweaking with the environment lights, so I could make a twilight effects and I found I have to use Open GL 2.0 in order to "shade" the color of the textures.
We should be writing the story, but instead we started a discussion about the convenience of make small games to gain experience or don't waste the time and embrace a big personal game with a brand new visual style "never seen before", even if you never reach the finish line, because at least you have been working in something that never been tried before.
The half way look good for me... I think "The Dark Maze" is a small game, but with some twists that will make it unique.
We encountered a serious problem... The recursivity levels in Android are very limited and the algorithm that generates the mazes was a recursive one, so we remade it in a iterative fashion. Now it works 100% and can generate mazes the size we want to... or at least of 900 tiles, what gives us a maze surface of 3600 square meters.... not bad, uh? If we want larger mazes we can refine even more, drawing only the tiles around the character, but I don't think we need mazes so big.
The history will be revealed from the main character memories, that he will recover finding elements diseminated in the mazes. We will see what he remembers like we read a comic. At the beginning it is blank and got drawed when you find the correct elements. Every level will be from five to ten mazes, and will draw one page of the comic, plus one page in the ending.
New FOV revision to add a "map view" where you can see a wider area of the maze if you left some lights on. We ended programming the system to add new lights while you are playing.
In your path you have to find "atrezzo" to make one maze different from the rest. This atrezzo will vary acording the level where you are, so in the first mazes you will find fountains, plants, etc. but later on you will find spiders, skeletons, etc. These elements will have two functions: help you find the exit (".... it was to the left after the statue and then to the right in the fountain...") and give the possibility to find secrets. If you search the elements you can find things to unlock secret levels, give you another play mode or a gallery with the music of the game (like the old Genesis and SNES games :D)
Collision system and entry and exit points done. Good! Our first maze can be played. We start in a defined point and we have to reach another defined point, that will mark the begining of the score calculation or start an animation, or whatever we want to happen. The lighting system proved insufficient. We have to modify it so we can toggle a bit what we want to show, because right now it is so black that it feels claustrophobic. We hope the new lighting will make it more appealing and funny.
We will try a cartoon style in the texturing, perhaps cell shading. We have a lot of work here, because there will be different sets of textures in the different mazes.
Regarding the history, the reason why the main character is in the maze will be that he entered chasing his girlfriend. She thought it should be funny try to find the exit and the main character followed her after a while. With this idea we can use the voice of the girlfriend to guide across the maze, whispering "you will never find me" or "you are getting close".
Working in the light and shadow system, We cast 2D shadows from the walls of the maze, because the main character moves with a torch to light himself, so everything out of the range is pitch black, excluding those places where you left some torch litted.
We are wondering the reasons the character is trapped in the maze. Was he kidnapped? mmm... Saw alike. Was the victim of an accident and he should resolve the maze to escape? mmm... Lost & Bioshock move in those lines. Perhaps he WANTS to enter the labyrinth... Interesting... but, why? to find something or someone? Perhaps he thinks he wants to enter, but he is being manipulated by someone...
Texture and camera test. First build with a maze randomly generated from a seed that you can recover to replicate the level, using a tiles system to draw the walls. The camera can change its FOV and move around the maze in order to test everything is how it is supposed to be.
Concerning the storyline, the main character could be a test subject that doesn't know he is just the entertainment of some people who bet how long he will survive or how far he will reach. We ear their voices between the levels, learning about them by this way.
Taking account the original idea of random labyrinths, we developed a random maze generator, mixing some classic maze generator algorithms with the addition of an utility to insert open rooms and loops to avoid brute force solvers
In a first iteration we thought the better score for solve the maze was if you discover the 100%, turning on some torches along the maze before leaving, but now we think it should be better the opposite way... The less maze you crawl, the more score you get, so you are rewarded for finding the fastest way to finish. Even so you still might want light the torches to make it easier find the exit.
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