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Pathways into Darkness - Remake

pidlogo.png


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About the Project


This is a small project to recreate the 1993 Macintosh game Pathways into Darkness (By Bungie).
The aim is to bring the story, gameplay and general experience from the Mac classic game to the current generation, and keep the game from becoming lost in history.

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Background Story
Written by Bungie for the original game


Sixty-four million years ago, a large extra-terrestrial object struck the Earth in what would later be called the Yucatan Peninsula, in southeastern Mexico. The dust and rock thrown up by the resulting explosion caused enormous climactic changes in the ensuing years, and many of the Earth's species became extinct during the long winter that followed.

The object itself was buried thousands of feet below ground, its nearly two kilometer length remarkably intact. It remained there, motionless, for thousands of years before it finally began to stir - and to dream. It was a member of a race whose history began when the Milky Way was still a formless collection of dust and gas - a powerful race of immortals which had quickly grown bored of their tiny universe and nearly exterminated themselves in war.

This particular being, whose name no human throat will ever learn to pronounce, was part of the cataclysmic battle that formed Magellanic Clouds, billions of years ago. It died there, or it came as close to dying as these things can, and drifted aimlessly for millions of light years before striking the Earth.

The heat of impact liquefied the rock around it, which later cooled and encased the dead god's huge body far below ground. As it began to dream, it wrought unintentional changes in its environment. Locked deep beneath the Earth, strange and unbelievable things faded in and out of reality. Vast caverns and landscapes bubbled to life within the rock, populated by horrible manifestations of the dead god's dream.

Only during the last few centuries has the god begun to effect changes on the surface of the Earth. Grotesque creatures have been sighted deep in the trackless forest of the Yucatan, and strange rumors of an ancient pyramid - which is neither Aztec nor Mayan - in the same area have been circulating in the archaeological community since the early 1930's.

The god is awakening.

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Gameplay


Pathways into Darkness is a first person shooter, adventure game where the player has to navigate the dungeons of a large pyramid to detonate a bomb and destory the sleeping god.
Whilst moving down the pyramid, various enemies will challenge the player, each one with their own weakness, but it's not always the weapons in your inventory that are the key to destroying some monsters, sometimes you need to use your wits, check what you have in your inventory and improvise a solution to the problems.
You face horrific monsters, scary monsters and sometimes monsters that simply make you go "wtf?".
Throughout the pyramid are the corpses of other visitors who have ventured through the pyramid, chasing their own goals.
If only there was a way to talk to the dead and learn what they know...

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Screen Shots


pillar1.png
pillar2.png


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Additional Reading


Wikipedia Article - About the original Mac game
Pathways into Darkness Page - The best PiD info site known to man!
Pathways into Darkness by HB - A complete let's play of the original game (Spoilers, lots and lots)
 
Just finished programming up the line loader, unfortunately it ended up becoming encrypted!
I wanted to keep the file formats as open as possible but it looks like it went horribly wrong!
This is the file that loads up the starting 8 faces! (16 vertices)

㱑Ё儀=̄㵑Ѓ儁ȾȄ㹑Ѕ儂пĄ㽑Ї儃ـ䁑܉倀ࡁ䍐܋伀੄㱑܍倀఻㥐܏伀ุ

I might return to try and fix it so it's back to the x,y,partner,texture,quad format I wanted it to be to begin with.
 
After a bit of hacky hacky I finally got the original, clean texture files from the original game. I'm now able to see where they belong so I'm now going to produce the final textures for the game.

finaltexture.png



Also, some suggestions about the UI art style would be cool.
The current Mac OS classic look needs to go if this is to be multi platform.
 
Here's a progress update:
Started figuring out the UI, it's in early stages now.

Map editor and new map formats are being constructed, they're at the level where the layout of all the levels, the clipping and the lines can be defined, however there still needs to be texturing, doors, sprite placements, etc.

Here's a part of the first level generated from the new map editor:
mapedit.png


EDIT: This is the editor itself in it's current state!
editorscreen.png


Also: Framerate is going to be unlocked and the game speed adjusted based on it, I tried the game at 10fps vs 250fps and it's just as playable, although 10fps is obviously slightly jerky with movement.
 
Now I have true textures being used in-game.

fovtex.png


I basically had the original game running in one window and my map editor in another and I textured the first room the player starts in, these are the correct, one-to-one, textures.

I also changed the field of view to be more like the original game.

If you have a good-eye you'll notice that the ceiling and floor textures are now the same as the original game.

Next I need to import all the original floors and ceilings and then sprites can be worked on!

Code has been changed, it's now able to be built on Mac OS X (Yay) and Linux.

The map editor is nearly complete, I just need to add sprite data and then triggers for doors and spawns, etc, etc. The triggers will be pretty hard, so I'm thinking of ideas for a format.

Possible:
Trigger Type
Trigger ID
Result ID
Result Action

So a chain would be:
Chain
Chain 1
Door 2
Slide Left

A proximity door would be:
Sector
Sector 133
Door 3
Slide Up
 
I've now made the head height correction so the player's head is raised above the mid-level like in the original game.

headheight.png


You can see this if you look at the edges of the screen and see where the ceiling and floors start against the top and bottom of the walls.
 

Thank you for viewing

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