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What if Lusty Labyrinth... was in Unity...
2 years ago
General
So following a lot of the chat here, everyone seems to agree that Lusty Labyrinth is the jam and although my other work might be interesting, that one definitely is. So it got me thinking: how long would it take to convert LL into a Unity project. And the answer is... longer than I thought, but doable.
Thankfully, at first glance I still have all of the assets for Lusty Labyrinth, the locations, characters and also the code. Having all of the code means that I just need to convert Flash into C#, which isn't a complicated job for the most part since both languages are pretty similar. The bigger challenge is that the state machine Flash uses doesn't exist for Unity, so that's something I would need to make myself. It becomes especially complex when comes the monsters, since those are all a bunch of layers for different colors and pieces of armor.
Aside from that main hurdle, I also want to make it in faux 3d, like Octopath Traveler, which isn't a huge challenge (and it'll look significantly better), but it does mean some considerations to get it to work the way I want it to, without having to dump too much time into it. Thankfully I already have some libraries and post processing experience, depth of field, etc. so I'm hoping to have something to show at some point. I was hoping today but I didn't want to manually make a level, so I started importing the level creation system and everything is so interconnected that now I have over 400 bugs to resolve as I make the groundwork for a port.
Will it happen? Hell if I know, but I just spent this evening on it and I think if I spent a few weeks on it (evenings only), I can realistically get somewhere. So we'll see. And if it does, I'll post it to Itch, at the least it'll be a very safe game to put up there without controversy.
Thankfully, at first glance I still have all of the assets for Lusty Labyrinth, the locations, characters and also the code. Having all of the code means that I just need to convert Flash into C#, which isn't a complicated job for the most part since both languages are pretty similar. The bigger challenge is that the state machine Flash uses doesn't exist for Unity, so that's something I would need to make myself. It becomes especially complex when comes the monsters, since those are all a bunch of layers for different colors and pieces of armor.
Aside from that main hurdle, I also want to make it in faux 3d, like Octopath Traveler, which isn't a huge challenge (and it'll look significantly better), but it does mean some considerations to get it to work the way I want it to, without having to dump too much time into it. Thankfully I already have some libraries and post processing experience, depth of field, etc. so I'm hoping to have something to show at some point. I was hoping today but I didn't want to manually make a level, so I started importing the level creation system and everything is so interconnected that now I have over 400 bugs to resolve as I make the groundwork for a port.
Will it happen? Hell if I know, but I just spent this evening on it and I think if I spent a few weeks on it (evenings only), I can realistically get somewhere. So we'll see. And if it does, I'll post it to Itch, at the least it'll be a very safe game to put up there without controversy.
Still played it four hours, bugs or no, trying to ASSert my way though each dungeon!
What of your projects did you really feel was your piece de résistance?
Just too ambitious to properly invest time into it.
Well, if fate's willing. You'll get a chance
Honestly, I was thinking about doing something very similar to this game with extended features like alchemy, crafting, story etc., but my art, design, and animation capabilities kept me from doing so.
If you want, we could collaborate, you could do the unity & art part and I would write a backend api & editor for it so creating new levels, NPCs, story elements etc. would be a breeze when finished.
That way it could be extended to a whole new level. If we could collaborate, it would be so awesome, because I think, this project is such a good, great, and even unique concept even today. There are some similar concepts, but none with this exact idea (according to my knowledge anyways).
I tried to reach out to you in notes before about it, but never got a response, so I will try it this way, hoping it could become a thing.
(sry for multiple posting and hiding it, I just wanted to send a really clear version of the message)
Honestly, the time consuming part is the unity and art part, there's really no other issues limiting something like this, so unfortunately it wouldn't be realistic for me to collaborate on this on those terms. Between Unity itself and tools I've developed over the years, if I wanted to revamp the game to support those, editing it further wouldn't be too much of a problem. But that's the thing really, it's always a matter of the amount of time I actually want to spend on it, which right now isn't enough to justify the additional work on that level.
It'll (hopefully) look marginally better though.
I will do the editor anyways with a slightly adjusted functionality then, so it wouldn't be a copyright issue.
Since the output of the editor will be JSON through a REST API, it basically could be used anywhere for any program that can handle JSON data so whatever engine we are ending up using (prolly unity) could use it.
I will need to find an artist, animator etc once the editor is done though for sure as I can't do any of that and I really want to create a dungeon crawler at the end.
It won't be for at least a year or so as I have to finish the editor first.
Yeah, time and motivation are always a killer, for sure. Especially if you have a normal day job that sucks all the energy out of you.
Godot is also an option to consider.
Time all at once and time spread across a year is still time unfortunately, and I'm not one to let projects languish if I can avoid it. There's a (time) cost to having to get back into a programming project which I prefer to avoid. It's like traveling, since the cost of getting there doesn't change, in absolute terms, it's better to stay for a longer period than travel twice if you can avoid it.