Laser Pirate SquadLegend QuestA 2D RPG with puzzle elements similar to Zelda, and realtime combat, randomized items, and skills like Diablo II. Playable tech demo available for download. Legend Quest is currently in its 3rd iteration / prototype phase, after roughly 4 months of development. The core engine is custom C** (can't use plus sign on this forum) / OpenGL, and has been maturing over the last decade.Screenshot:Shareware or Freeware, undecidedThis is a hobby project and I am a grad student. No $$ being offered here, just a chance to be a part of making a cool game, and to work with a solid programmer.The game is Mac OS X only initially. Development is in C** /OpenGL using XCode. A current demo is available for download below. The only tools required from an artist will be Photoshop or a similar image editor.2D pixel artist to make scenery tilesets and characterset layers. More details below.My name is Forrest Briggs. At the moment I am the only designer / developer / artists for the game (leaving out credits to one other person for their privacy). I am a Ph.D. student in computer science at Oregon State University, studying machine learning and artificial intelligence. I have been writing games since I was a kid, and have over 15 years experience with C++.There is currently no site specifically for Legend Quest. My main site is www.laserpirate.comPlease direct inquiries to legendquestgame@gmail.comMy best 2 games:Lumox 2 (OS X) - http://www.laserpirate.com/lumox2.htmlOmega Tower Defense 2 (Flash) - http://www.kongregate.com/games/frostytrees/omega-tower-defense-2For more prior work, check out my portfolio: http://www.laserpirate.com/portfolio, or my CV: http://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~briggsf/cv/Ok.. now for a lot more info on Legend Quest, how it has progressed over time, and what I need for art (skip to the bottom if you don't care about the history / earlier prototypes of the game):Here is a video of the first prototype of the game:This demo shows features including:- randomized item generation ala Diablo- tabbed interface / equipment management interface- store that sells potions and other items- fireball, poison cloud, and frost storm spells- zombie, bee and spider enemies- keys, locked chests- basic xp / level system- fireball shooting sentry orbs- a zelda style torch/trap puzzle to open a gateThis version of the engine represented the world as a collection of linked scenes. Each scene had its own image and passibility map. The character and monster sprites were taken from a royalty free collection. I drew the scenes in Photoshop. I abandoned this version of the engine because it was too much work to make each scene individually, and lame to have the character confined to such a small space. I was also not able to make more monster graphics in the same style as the originals. Note that the royalty free sprites include 8 isometric directions and several frames of walk animation in each direction. There were many other problems with this version, but some of the major ones were:- No pathfinding for enemy movement- Enemy attacks were not animated at all, and it was hard to see when the player took damageThe next prototype was in 3D. Much like Bungie's Myth 2, it used a heightmap and a texture map, with 2-D sprites rendered from several angles. This approach fixed the "tiny world" problem of the first prototype, but had the same problem as far as requiring more monster art. It was also a lot more work to program it in 3D down to just about every detail from drawing partially transparent particles correctly with a z-buffer to handling collisions. So I scrapped it... (I try to set realistic goals for the games I am going to make, and I think a 3D RPG is too much to do solo). Here's a screenshot of this version of the engine: http://imgur.com/l3DcFAnd now, without further ado, the current engine...Current Engine Demo Download, Art Resources Download----------------------------------------------------------------Current runnable demo of the engine (OS 10.5+ req.):http://www.laserpirate.com/LegendQuest_techdemo.zipAll of the graphical resources for the game (not for use in any other project):http://www.laserpirate.com/LegendQuest_art.zipKeys / Controls for Demo:------------------------------L - Load saved world. PRESS THIS WHEN YOU START THE APPLICATION!!!S - Save worldTab - Toggle Level Editor PaletteLeft Click - Edit world tile (sets the tile under the mouse to the current selection)Shift Left Click - Sample current tileRight Click - Move playerW,A,S,D - Move cameraZ - Upward SlashX - Downward SlashC - StabV - BlockB - Toggle debug display (shows collision boundaries, character states, and pathfinding field)7 - Spawn a new skeleton at a random locationApple-F - Fullscreen (Currently only supports some random high res 16:9 format resolution... likely to not work on your computer)Design of the current engine--------------------------------The design of the current engine focusses on addressing several issues that became evident in the earlier prototypes:- Mele combat in previous versions sucked (no animation, and it was monster to player only; the player could only cast spells). This version has a mele combat system with animations and collision detection etc.- To enable a larger game world while requiring less artwork, this version moves to a tile-based world. All of the tiles are stored in a 256x256 texture. Each tile is 16x16, so there are 256 distinct tiles in the texture. There is also a corresponding 256x256 black and white passability map. The world is a 64x64 grid of tiles. Tiles are drawn scaled up 2x to better match the character sprites. These numbers can be changed. The file tileset_grass.tga included in the above download links is the tileset texture. It is 100% original programmer art (with some content modified from sources offering free use).- This version has pathfinding for enemies, which works pretty well (they can solve mazes, avoid standing on top of each other, and rarely get stuck or spazz out), and scales to large numbers of monsters (pathfinding runtime actually doesn't depend on the number of monsters at all... it scales to 250+ monsters).- Previous attempts indicated that creating character / monster artwork is hard for me to do well, and very time consuming. So whatever graphics I can get should be used as effectively as possible. For this version of the engine, my goals is to have the engine use human generated art to produce much more in-game content. The idea for how to do this is to basically to generate textures for characters by compositing a collection of layers (body, head, clothes, etc), much like a dress up game. I was inspirited by Charas (http://charas-project.net/charas2/index.php), which is an online system where users have submitted many such layers than can be composited for use in the game RPGMaker. My concept is to have all humanoid and monster characters in the game generated along these lines. This will enable a lot more diversity in the characters with a lot less art. For example, in the current demo, notice that some skeletons carry a bow, some carry a sword and shield, and some have an axe. Any type of monster at all could carry the same weapons. This will also make it possible to draw the player to reflect their equipment. Some problems with Charas are: 1) The characters it generates only have frames of animation for walking. They don't perform any other actions. 2) The material on Charas is questionable in terms of copyright, because it looks like some of it is original and posted with the author's consent to use, but some is ripped from old SNES / Genesis games (and then extensively modified).The engine basically has its own sprite compositing engine similar to Charas, but with an additional frame of animation for 'attack' / 'generic action'. The image below illustrates how this works:Resources Needed--------------------Here's what I need to keep going with this:- More background / world tileset artwork. This does not have to be done at 16x16; it could be larger. There is no specific requirement for this content, but the sort of stuff I am look for is:- Grassland / cliff / water / trees- Caves / Dunegeon / Crypt- Towns and indoors- Icey wasteland- Jungle- Desert- Molten lava- Scenery objects like chests, torches, tables, chairs, rocks, fences, bridges, flags, etc- Ideally, the artist will provide the corresponding black and white passability mask for tiles- More characterset layers for human and monster characters. Here are some examples of what I am looking for here:- Base body (as in image above) for other species e.g. troll / goblin / lizardman / zombie / spider / minotaur / etc...- "Accessory" layers that fit on top of the base bodies, i.e. alternate heads or hair and other distinguishing features- Characterset layers for equipment and weapons. Currently I have a sword, axe, bow, shield, and helmet. Some of these aren't very well drawn however. I would like to have graphics for at least the following types of items:- sword- dagger- wand- bow- staff- spear- flail- bardiche / halberd- shields (several types)- armor (several types)- hats and helms (several types)The layers should be designed to be as interchangeable as possible. For example, any equipable item should look reasonable on top of any humanoid base. However, there will be situations where this is not feasible and that is ok (e.g. a spider monster probably can't equip anything).I am OK with throwing away any of the current artwork so there is no need to match the style.Downloading the current art resources will make it clearer what sort of files are required.ANY