Tag «7DRL»

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.

Day 6 – 7DRLC

Raise your halberd high for the last day. Although sometimes our motivation lies down deeply in the pit we start freshly (more or less) into fixes, polishing and tweaking. And Cola. Much of it.

The best thing is that you're able to play it through without dying because of too hard enemies. And level up to become stronger. BUT you will starve because there are not much food cards ... what a game! Like reality, or so.
Weapons now have different properties and you can use your bow to kill approaching foes.

I am so excited what we will have done after this day of work. The last day.

Day 5 – 7DRLC

Puh, what a day ... again just unwrapping so not much to tell. But while the thursday was in its last throes I did some pixely item cards that can be collected now.

In our dungeon are now more monsters than just trolls. We have magic that lets you rotate or destroy the cards you can walk on. Friedrich worked also on distance fight (bow and magic). You can change levels through ladders AND most importantly: You can die now and restart the game. Which is really essential for a roguelike - dying and reload, great fun!

If you like play yesterday's version in your webplayer!

Day 4 – 7DRLC

What I learned yesterday: Modeling 27 objects is a fine job for one day ... but remember, that somebody must someday do the rest of the realtime workflow: Unwrapping, arranging UVWs, collapsing, smoothing group assigning, texture baking, exporting as FBX-objects and texturing is also time you should never forget.

When I made my schedule for this challenge, I - of course - didn't expect this bits and pieces. Stupid, because this stuff I did the whole wednesday.
I hate unwrapping, really. I think I got mad somehow. Another day and I am a cave troll, too.

Friedrich managed to implement tons of stuff on the other side of our workstation/dungeon: We now have an interface, items to pick up and equip and the decoration items can now be seen in the level.