Tag «7DRL»

Me Against The Mutants – Day ~3

This post is part of the PITMAN Birthday Sale Week - check it out HERE!

So, this is the follow-up to the first posting from Sunday. In it I explained that we're doing a roguelike in (less than) seven days, and what was the basic idea behind it: an infinity generator.
As we are also busy building our current game, TRI, we could not invest the time to make a full roguelike. We will try to make at least a game where you can walk around and hit some enemies and find some bling. :-) But currently, all that could be implemented is the procedural creation of the dungeon, the walking player and - tada! - the infinity device.
Yes, it is now possible to draw a rectangle inside the game via mouse. The character can be moved with the WASD keys, so he can simply walk into the rectangly area and be trapped in the INFINITY. Just click again to remove the rectangle. Try it out for yourself:

[kml_flashembed publishmethod="static" fversion="10.0.0" movie="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10650964/7drl2012/test_002/7DRLCE2012.swf" width="490" height="350" targetclass="flashmovie"]

[/kml_flashembed]

(Press R in order to generate a new world.)

So, this is kind of bland right now. With the rects you can trap yourself, have an interesting view on the screen, see yourself (and yourself, yourself and yourself), and get out of and into the building (as it has no doors to the outside). This doesn't do much for the gameplay, not yet. I want to have enemies which can get trapped inside the rects and beaten up thanks to them.

I had the infinity working pretty soon after my last post, but then I realized they wouldn't work with enemies. So I spent half a day with refactoring and rewriting some parts of the code, fixing bugs and introducing new ones, until it worked again exactly as before. ;-) At least I can now potentially add enemies, which will happen in the next days, because after Saturday, 13 o'clock, the game has to be finished in order to be a legit 7DRL.
Although we will try to do an all-nighter from Friday to Saturday, this probably won't suffice for a truly full game. The enemy AI will be very basic and there won't be that much interaction possibilities. Yet the potential for a bigger game is still there (we think), and if we're not going for the out-of-challenge 10DRL we will work on it later perhaps.

Tell us what you think! Is this a prototype worth turning into a full game?

Me Against The Mutants – Day 1

This post is part of the PITMAN Birthday Sale Week - check it out HERE!

As planned long before, we take part in the 7-Day-Roguelike-Challenge 2012, and currently are making a roguelike with AS3/Flashpunk. With less time at our hands, we wanted to have a smaller scope than last year (when we did "Pitman Krumb"), which basically means: no 3D (but pixel art instead), no big story or anything, only one dungeon and RPG elements next to zero. Think "3DRL" instead of "7DRL". Still, there should be at least one interesting gameplay mechanic, and this will be the INFINITY.

Before I explain this Infinity thing, here is the rough premise: In "Me Against The Mutants" you play a liquidator, trying to get rid of the radioactive material lying around everywhere and, which wasn't really part of the job, killing some mutants. You can walk around and hit enemies - simple as that.

But as you're pretty weak, mostly weaker than the mutants stumbling around, you get a device ... the Infinity Generator. With it you can create rectangles which extend to infinite space (think Portal, but top-down 2D). At least that is the plan, currently I don't know a) if I can implement this device and b) if it really works as main gameplay. But this was another goal of us - the game should be a little bit experimental. This is true for me (programming the Infinity device) as it is for Jana: we never did a (more or less) full 2D game together, so there is enough new material for both of us to learn.

Right now, after ~10 hours of developing (we started Saturday, 13:37 local time), the following things work:

A dungeon gets generated. As the world in itself always has the same elements - a big forest, with some kind of building in the middle - this is how it always looks, but slightly different every time you start the game. The shape of the building varies, and the number of rooms. I did a small test of the dungeon generation algorithm beforehand, you can have a look at it here.
Different graphics for forest, building, walls.
The main character (four directions) walks around - not finished.

And that's it. Not very much, I expected to be faster programming-wise, but using a middleware I'm still not 100% proficient in is always holding me back. And as I don't use the Entity system of Flashpunk as it was meant to be used, it feels much less high-level, and I have to rethink many things; I even get the feeling that I do some things for the first time, which isn't that much fun.

So, even though I wanted to have the (basically) working game after this weekend, I might want to put more work into it during the week.

And while you're here, check out the other 7DRLs in the making!

Day 7 – 7DRLC

The game is finished and we are, too.
We are totally astonished how much we could do in one week. You can walk through 6 levels that are randomly generated from prefabs. It's in 3D, yeah! You can use closed combat and missile weapons. Listen to dwarfs and read books. We have 11 enemies to face. The main character can be equipped with armour, helmet, shoes and trousers. And the best thing - you build the dungeon while playing.

But it's also a bit frustrating to leave this game so uncomplete. You can really play it, but it's full of little bugs. If a missile is equipped you are killing a neutral dwarf while talking to him, for example. And sometimes starving is the top death cause which is also not funny.

But we are going to finish the game. After GRUMPY JUMP this little roguelike will be our next iPhone game. If you like: Play it and tell us what you enjoyed and what sucked.