Poachers Will Be Decapitated: 7DRL progress reports

[Quendus]

Poachers Will Be Decapitated!

Decades of exploitation by "adventurers" have left many species such as Orcs, Kobolds, and Trolls in danger of extinction. The monstrous dragon Uozeni, who once burnt your family and your village to cinders, lurks at the bottom of a previously undiscovered cave.

Populations here are much stronger than elsewhere, and the Society for Conservation and Ecology of Dungeons are protecting the inhabitants in the hope that they can later be reintroduced to other locations. Adventuring is restricted by strict limits on killing and looting, which are enforced by the Rangers, Inspectors, and Castigators of SCED.

These kill limits aren't nearly enough to sustain a traditional approach to dungeon adventuring. To avenge yourself on Uozeni, will you work within the rules, subvert them with stealth, or publicly flout them?

Remember: SCEDRIC decapitates poachers!

I'll cross-post updates here, on my blog (kleinroguelikes.blogspot.com), and at 7drl.org.

I'll be writing in C++, using BearLibTerminal for display and my own library Griddle for back-end tasks like map topology, actor management, FoV, and pathfinding. I've written some experiments in map generation and general use of BearLibTerminal and Griddle, and a lot of their code will probably be used in the 7DRL. Source for the game will be released as usual.

Griddle is intended to be reusable in a wide variety of grid-based games. It makes heavy use of template metaprogramming and is currently a header-only library. Once it has a more stable and well-organised API I'll try to release it as a compiled library that can be used from other languages. That way it can usher in a new golden age of ridiculously disorienting maps cobbled together from rectangles and glue. With a side order of smoke and mirrors.

[guest509]

I too am working on a generic and reusable turn based RL engine, based on what I did for last year's 7DRL.

I think everyone does after awhile. :-)

[Quendus]

I'm trying to do some things I haven't seen in many roguelikes - letting the player's perspective get flipped and rotated around like in KleinRL, and glueing chunks of the map together seamlessly like in Jeff Lait's 7DRLs. I'm trying to make it viable for hex games too.

[Quendus]

Eh, so much for cross-posting.
Summary of the first 25 hours of development (http://7drl.org/author/srd/):

• Got Crawl tiles
• Made @-on-a-map in tiles using BearLibTerminal and Griddle
• Smooth scrolling and FoV
• Made JSON configuration file using picojson
• Made a random walker enemy to test how the game handles more than one actor
• Made an event/trait system to implement the bulk of game mechanics
• Made traits that let actors walk, attack, die, and spawn new actors after death.

Currently I'm using a totally random map (33% chance of wall in each square) and navigating it is really annoying (especially with 4-directional movement). Real map generation has to be the next priority, I think. I might try copying the cellular automaton cave algorithm from roguebasin and feed the results through my python script to make a biconnected hybrid natural/artificial environment. Once that's done I can make connections between dungeon levels. No stairs here, I plan to have seamless transitions in the style of Vicious Orcs.

[Nekoninja]

Is it done? I am interesting to learn from you.

[DanielleFredericksn]

Hi I too am working on a generic and reusable turn based RL engine, based on what I did for last year's 7DRL.I think everyone does after awhile.