The Land of Xundar

Game Description | Technical Features | Journal | Screenshots

Programmed and designed by (click name for website or email)

• Jason Winnebeck (Gillius)
  • Terrain graphics engine
  • Land generation
  • Skeletal animation
  • Sound engine
  • Software design
• Jon Hilliker
  • Dungeon engine
  • Map design
  • Monster AI
• Peter Mowry
  • Game design
  • Map editor
  • Other miscellaneous code( Towers, doors, shrooms, terrain object placement, etc)

Model art by:

• Barry Nardone

Original sound effects and music by:

• Jay Semerad (available for freelance work)

Like Super IsoBomb, Xundar is another 10 week school project. I actually finished the class at the end of May 2003 but the game was not entirely completed.

Unlike Super IsoBomb, we unfortunately didn't finish Xundar as we had desired but it was fun to make from a technical point of view and we got an A in the class ( I thought we were the best project ;). Xundar as a game was pretty much exclusively Peter's idea, and we weren't able to finish it to make it a polished game but there is some fighting and level gaining to be had. It probably isn't to a point that it is worth a 30 meg+ download (because it has MP3 music and quite a bit of content), but if anyone is interested in the game or the source code let me know.

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Game Description

This is the game description as we had intended the game to finish with:

Because this is mostly a programming course, the game is shaped greatly around the technical requirements for the class. We have decided to make a 3D adventure/dungeon crawl type of game. Since the course is only 10 weeks, we are limited to how much we can do.

The player starts in a location outdoors. The warrior meets with a sage to get advice on how to defeat the game's main villian. The sage advises the warrior that he must collect artifacts from a set of dungeons, each dungeon contains only one artifact.

The lands around the dungeons are dangerous, indeed. Tales from the folk tell of monsters seemingly appearing from where monsters were just slain. Inside the dungeon even more dangerous monsters lerk. No one who has ventured to the areas near the dungeons to slay the monsters have returned.

The sage confirms the rumors the warrior has heard. He also tells the warrior that the one responsible for the appearance of the monsters is a powerful mage who is spawning these monsters near the artifacts to protect them, as the mage knows these artifacts can be used against him and his plans to dominate the local area.

Inside the maze-like dungeons are the mysterious artifact items that, when brought together, the sage can use to open up a way through the villian's defenses so the warrior can confront him directly. The sage tells the warrior that neither one of them are powerful enough to face the mage directly. The sage needs the artifacts to strengthen his magic so he can open up a teleport to enable the warrior to fight the mage. The warrior gains experience by fighting monsters -- the sage points out the the farther away the warrior is from the mage's domain the weaker the monsters he is able to spawn, so the sage suggests that the warrior starts his journey with the farthest dungeons.

Before the warrior leaves, the sage tells him that the warrior can return any time for healing.

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Technical Features

Required:

These are features that we are required to do as part of the requirements for the course.

• Indoor Areas: draw smaller areas with walls blocking part of world
• Outdoor Areas: Terrain
• Cameras: At least 1st and 3rd person cameras
• Collision Detection: self-explanatory
• 2D: unspecified; probably some sort of HUD
• Code Generated 3D: 3D world or model complexity generated with code
• Imported Art 3D: 3D model complexity imported from external 3D art

We are Implementing:

These are features that we are adding that are more specific to our game that are not directly part of the technical requirements for the course, or are our implementation of requirements above.

• Indoor dungeon areas
• Randomly-generated outdoor terrain
• 1st and 3rd person cameras, switchable by the player
• Collision detection -- melee attacks and spell attacks between the player and monsters, detection on the terrain and inside the dungeons.
• 2D user interface showing health / experience / etc
• Static models and skeletal-animated models loaded from DirectX 8.0 "X" files.
  • You can find out more information about this system on my CG:A&T course page.
• Outdoor areas have day / night cycles.
• Terrain "widgets" like trees and mushrooms.
• Distance "fog" to shorten view distance.
• Player experience and levels.
• Music and sound system
  • Sound effects.
  • Music soundtrack, with smooth fading between tracks as the environment changes or as the player enters/exists a dungeon.

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Screenshots

You can view the three Xundar screenshots (50 to 125k, click to expand):

Player's avatar standing in front of a teleporter in the second dungeon.

Viewing the tower-like entrance to the first underground dungeon (a staircase is in the tower).

Fighting in the forest with a gargoyle.