[SHELVED] Ascension Revolution (RPG TC)

[XCVG]

Now who can guess what this is?

[Arthropleura]

judging by the plasma rifles, size of the base, and uniforms, i'd say it's some sort of human outsider base.

[Sgt. Shivers]

Some of this reminds me of the occupied house in BGPA missions, very cool!

[XCVG]

I don't recommend trying to judge anything from the appearance of the characters, since they are very approximate placeholders. Anyway, more shots.







This is definitely my favourite location so far.

[Arthropleura]

Looks kind of like a restaurant. "Welcome to DoomBurger home of the DoomBurger may i take your order?" but seriously looks good. Found a webpage on castle life, might be a good reference. You also mentioned in the WIP thread you weren't confident about your layouts. Found some real ones!

[XCVG]

Looks kind of like a restaurant. "Welcome to DoomBurger home of the DoomBurger may i take your order?" but seriously looks good. Found a webpage on castle life, might be a good reference. You also mentioned in the WIP thread you weren't confident about your layouts. Found some real ones!

Not a lot of difference between feeding normal customers and customers that happen to be rebels.

The layout is supposed to be based off of one in my Eyewitness Castles book (kids book, yeah, but lots of great pictures) but I kind of botched it.

[Arthropleura]

I've got an old childrens book about ancient civilizations that I've kept around just because the pictures help me visualize the era. Also, a fast food joint would make an awesome easter egg.

[Nash]

I gave this a spin and went to the overworld map (just after the knight attacks in the first village)... while looking towards the direction where all the tree sprites are, the game eats up about ~600 FPS (yes, six hundred). Since my computer is decent enough, it is able to handle your mod at 60 FPS at all times (with v-sync turned on of course) but I dread to think about the folks with lesser hardware trying to run around the overworld map... :(

Upon closer inspection, it seems that there are no 1-sided lines in the overworld map (well, except for the outer edges of the map of course) so nothing is ever being blocked from line of sight... and the huge cluster of tree actors all being drawn in 1 frame are obviously eating up a ton of CPU cycles, too.

I'm sure you're aware of this technical detail, but I thought I'd mention it since no one has in this thread.

[XCVG]

Yes, I am aware that the overworld map is hugely resource-intensive. I do most of my development and testing on a Sandy Bridge Core i5 with a GTX 770 and the rest on a Haswell laptop with dedicated graphics.

The Doom engine can't handle large open spaces, and although GZDoom can, it's still not exactly designed for it. I don't expect this game to run on old hardware the same way that Doom can. However, I will test it with some of my other computers to see if it will run decently on lower-end (but still modern) hardware.

[XCVG]

To be honest, it's not that different from the dev builds if you've been playing them, but this will be the first large release.

[XCVG]

Some more shots from the Bastille Day beta:







Coming soon to a site near you!

[XCVG]

Ascension Revolution: Bastille Day beta is released!











Download

EDIT: Fixed link.

[XCVG]

As of today, Ascension Revolution is indefinitely shelved.

I don't have the resources or the time to finish this, and a lot less motivation than when I started. I have nothing to work with, and I can't make a game out of nothing. It hasn't impressed anyone and I can't sell it, but more importantly I'm not happy with how it's turning out. I wanted to make something professional, 1990s-looking, but not Doom-like, but all I have is an ugly mess full of bad edits and sprite rips. I wanted to make something with story and depth, not something with badly written dialogue shoehorned in. I wanted to make a decent FPS-RPG hybrid, not something buggy, broken, and uninspired. It's been a year, and there's barely been any progress.

Ascension Revolution is not dead. It will return eventually, but probably in significantly different form.

[Xim]

Hey man take a break if you need it. I kind of regret not commenting more but I really love the idea that you're making an RPG. I've had an RPG on the shelf for many, many years now. It's not easy work. I've gone from many engines and even considered doing an FPS version on ZDoom myself. You need to have passion AND the willingness to do a lot of work or you'll go nowhere. But don't feel discouraged.

My tip? Make graphics, it helps you imagine the setting a lot easier and seeing your game come to life can really inspire you. Even doing something simple for 640x480 resolution, as long as you make something original that looks like you put your heart in to it, it will catch people's eye.

Even though I haven't really touched it in a long time, I still haven't given up. You have your whole life to do it, especially if it's a free game!

[Nash]

Sorry to hear, although I may have to agree that, this - unfortunately - probably did not gain enough interest due to the lack of art in the screenshots. The inconsistent quality of the sprites in-game is also pretty jarring. The map design also appears to be pretty basic. Also in my personal opinion, the dialog cutscenes were too draggy.

You've already identified its weaknesses. You should work on some other things and improve your skills in all aspects of modding or game design... then maybe when you feel inclined in future, you can come back to this (or remake it in a different engine, whatever). Good luck! Don't ever give up! I've been using ZDom since 2001 and I'm constantly learning new things (coding-wise) even to this day.