Temple of The Roguelike Forums
Announcements => Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) => Topic started by: Slash on July 21, 2010, 02:50:27 PM
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Hello all!
Slashware Interactive commemorates *200 years of the Independence of Colombia* with a new release of Expedition!
Download from here: http://slashie.net/page.php?27
Youtube Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WdWnlJGyqc
Version 0.1.7 brings the following changes
* You can now have audiences with the Catholic Kings, and gain titles and maravedÃes from them
* Your ships now deteriorate in your trips, but you can also repair them using Carpenters
* Supplies from Spain shops have been increased to enable long term success.
* Many other small fixes!
Pictures:
About to embark: http://slashie.net/share/expedition017-1.png
Talking with the Kings: http://slashie.net/share/expedition017-2.png
Your comments are welcome!
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Holy hot damn, Slash! This looks really interesting. So this is like a Conquistador / Trading sim? What a wonderful idea. Dealing with the complex difficulties of sailing (taking measurements, tacking, buy a timepiece and check longitude) and ship maintenance (cleaning bottoms, materials used in construction, wanna sail at full speed / with all sails unfurled? hope you can afford some new spars!) would be exciting in itself, and when you add in the richness of the time period, I find myself getting really excited.
How far along with this are you?
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Yeah, this was my entry for 2009 7DRL Challenge... I haven't worked on it for a long time until this month, when I decided it was finally time to push on...
It won the Slashie.net March Powerpoll ( http://slashie.net/powerpoll/march2010.png ) so I'm technically about 5 months late :)
Yes, this is a roguelike based on the ancient game, seven cities of gold. It's more of a colonization thing right now, rather than trading, but it goes along nicely. I am looking forward to team up with a java developer to take this to where it belongs :)
Your ideas for sailing sound nice, some of these are intrinsically implemented, for instance: Dead Reckon measurements, longitude checking, and sailing speed (which depends on having a full crew to operate your ships).
I will also release a version with Oryx graphics next weekend, probably.
Would be nice to read your comments once you have played it.
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Indeed, nice progress is nice in terms of what's listed out and the general "flow" of the latest video. I'd reckon the Tileset version will draw some new people into it as well.
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I have downloaded and played it a few times at this point. I've got a few general impressions.
The music is neat, the concept is neat. The word to describe all I see so far is "potential." I see the potential for a vast sim that oscillates between "pirates" and "civilization" with a little DF thrown in for good measure. With the game at its current stage of development, I'm not going to tediously describe every this and that which could possibly be changed, and instead try and focus on the two main things that occurred to me as I played.
Firstly, maybe it's just because I've been reading the Aubrey-Maturin series, but the ship travel itself would have to be fleshed out a lot before I became interested in traveling by ship. At this point, I don't see a lot of difference between navigating the ship and exploring a giant blue room with very few walls. I'm no seafarer, but I do know that there's an incredible amount of work and tweaking that goes into successful sailing. Wind, tide (near shore), storms, and a host of Oregon-Trail type of situations crop up out of nowhere, out of the caprice of the sea.
I was a little confused that I could, for instance, just move my ship around by pressing the keys. That runs counter-intuitive for me. Inertia counts, the rigging counts, and so on. In general, it just feels weird to be moving around a ship with omnidirectional keystrokes. It's not like the Millenium Falcon -- it takes a TON of people to make the ship go. And we're dealing with three ships to start!
And all of this business implies a huge scale in terms of time -- at sea, weeks might go by without any particular change in activity, and then quite suddenly several pivotal decisions might have to be made in the space of an instant; say if you caught sight of an unfamiliar sail on the horizion when you were on the lee, for instance.
So to sum up this first thought/suggestion, I guess what I'm thinking is that neither the traditional temporal, nor visual, nor spatial roguelike system lends itself particular well to sea travel - that is: one click, one move, one turn, with a generic line of sight surrounding the @. So many worthwhile aspects of the adventure to be had at sea is messed up by this approach.
Now, I have a couple of speculative ideas about what might work better, but I would like to hear what you think about that first, if anything :P
And the second thought, much more mellow, is that I could use a more immersive and engaging online manual. I realize that this is version .1.7, or course! But for me, the process of learning the craft is a great deal of the fun. The more there is available for the player to learn *within* the game itself, the more they'll feel like a real explorer....
And if my feelings on the game seem a little, um, excitable, it's just because I love the idea and admire the work you've put in.
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Thank you for your feedback, it's very useful!
I will start off by saying that while I don't intent expedition to become a full fledged sailing simulator, I agree some additional things are needed for sea trips to be more interesting, here's a list I have compiled, based on your input and some external sources:
* Wind: Adding wind currents that propel/hinder your ships movement
* Landing: Should be more dangerous, there could be hidden rocks that severely damage your ship on shallow beach water. May be adding landing boats
* Tides: Random variations on the ship position, stronger when near land
* Storms: Huge random variations on the ship position, loss of control, loss of precision on the dead reckon measures, massive damage on the ships and possible man-loss (specially sailors). Those could be randomly generated and seen at a distance.
* Rigging: Simplified, you can deploy sails at the cost of time and thus be faster but more prone to damage and chaos on storms
* Ship groups: It's hard to command a group of ships as an unified unit, so there's a risk of the ships crashing between themselves on storms
* Telescope: Ability to look far away (Needs Captains)
Right now the following is implemented:
* Ship speed: If you have a full crew your ship will move much faster (IIRC 1 captain and 10 sailors per ship). This includes the crew being unarmed.
* Ship damage: Your ships will be randomly damaged while on the sea, and you have to make your crew repair it, using wood. Carpenters make much better use of wood (repairing more points for the ships)
I have discussed this issue with the roguelike cabal and they generally consider sea travel shouldn't be overly complex, you could use the "idle" travelling time to think your strategy while pressing the left or right arrow (That's how it worked in seven cities of gold :) ).
The key here is that I want the game to remain simple on the surface, with lots of unexpected events handled behind the scenes. I wouldn't like having the trips be so complicated that you prefer to stay in Spain :)
About the manual, I agree... there are a lot of mechanics which are just not documented, and it would be great to have a cool looking manual with illustrations and stuff too :) I guess it will come in time, for now I should start writing them out in a text file at least.
You may also want to check this out: http://slashie.net/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?1277
I'm glad you like the game and I hope you can stick around to see it develop further. Thanks.
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Honestly, I think this need....
Hold on, lemme get my asbestos underwear on real quick.
Okay. I think this needs to be made graphical.
Now, hold on, I'm not saying anything bad about text. You know I can tolerate text a lot. But there's so much going on in this game and it's seriously so good I think you need to widen the audience base. I want more people playing this. Honestly, the only way you're going to do that is pretty it up with a UI that folks are more used to looking at. This reminds me a lot of civilization. If others could see that I think this game has the potential for a wide audience.
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Slash can smell the wolf Fenrir, the destructor of graphics. He is approaching
I'm halfway into adding graphics, basically looking for the simplest way to reuse the presentation layer from CastlevaniaRL. Here's a mockup of how it may end up looking
edit: yes, there's an ugly 1px offset on the tiles
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An angry snarl echos down the halls of the temple. For several minutes, the sound of lupine paws galloping along stone floors gets louder and louder. Suddenly, the massive wolf bursts into the room. Fenrir glowers at Cymon with fire in his eyes and bellows.
Needs graphics? Tolerate text? Who are you to defile this sacred place with such talk? Your fireproof pantaloons will not spare you the terror of my jaws, heretic!
Fenrir's enraged visage suddenly relaxes into a smile, and the great wolf turns his head to Slash.
Love the game, Slashie!
In another instant, he snaps his head back toward Cymon with his features contorted in a vicious scowl.
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.... This reminds me a lot of civilization. If others could see that I think this game has the potential for a wide audience....
It looks more like "Colonisation" (the Sid Meier's original one) than Civilisation imho.
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It's a bit too similar to Colonisation I must say - makes me want to play it more than this game. Of course this is still early days, so there's plenty of scope for improvement and branching off into other areas (for which there are already plenty of bases).
I LOVE the graphical mock-up! Don't get me wrong, I'm a staunch defender of ASCII, but those are some seriously awesome tiles. The normal game looks a bit too arid in ASCII, with little going on in the centre screen at times and a lot of time spent in menus or reading details. The pretty tiles help take this in more I think, and they'd go very nicely with the music.
Of course, removing the ASCII would bring the game even further away from links to the roguelike genre, but ultimately that's not as important as making a good game.
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I'd say it differs a bit from colonisation in that in that one you control multiple units, and colony management is much more detailed. Also, do you directly exploit the natives on Colonisation? I haven't played it a lot (have played much more civ).
If this game makes you want to play another game, then it must be Seven Cities of Gold, not Colonisation :)
About walking away from the roguelike genre, I think the main roguelike feature would be the "single expedition" factor (similar to the lonely adventurer), as well as the possible interactions and the random world generation*. I dont care much about adding graphics because, in the end, I will always support ASCII as an alternative, and, as you say, the most important is to have a good game :)
* The random world generation feature is not available in the current version of Expedition and it was even present at 7cog and thus is not to be considered a novelty
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Slash can smell the wolf Fenrir, the destructor of graphics. He is approaching
I'm halfway into adding graphics, basically looking for the simplest way to reuse the presentation layer from CastlevaniaRL. Here's a mockup of how it may end up looking
edit: yes, there's an ugly 1px offset on the tiles
Very nice! Great work yet again, Slashie. I love the tileset, seems just about perfect for expedition. Can't wait for the next version! The current version is pretty awesome, but tiles will be really cool :D
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Most of the Colonization game is basically from a "gringo" perspective, or rather an imperialist western headset, and mostly based on historical events as seen from a Northern American WASP/colonial descendant. For example no mention of the slave trade, though there are "indentured servants".
I think with your South American cultural and historical perspective you could offer something unique, interesting, informative and fun, rather than the usual "Veni Vici Vidi" attitude.
It would also be great if it would be possible to pursue "alternative timelines", maybe a pan southern american Bolivian empire that never was. Or maybe the natives never suffered the "small pox epidemic" and could fight off Cortez and the spanish conquerers. etc etc
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Very interesting game idea :) I also like the tile preview.
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@yodhe: Let's see what emerges! I'm not very pretentious about communicating a cultural viewpoint using the game, but I guess something will impregnate, and a game that teaches is worth a lot.
My main concern is producing a fun and challenging game though, and being a roguelike it will rely on lots of native groups (a.k.a. "monsters") being slaughtered by the expedition in order to become more powerful and rich (trading and coexisting being alternate possibilities)
About the alternative timelines: sounds pretty neat, introducing different scenarios which modify the geopolitical landscape of the new world... they could also introduce different technology improvement (for example adding Marine Chronometers to the ships, cannons, special sails). Also, the idea is that conquering the world won't be easy, with lots of powerful tribes in your way (comparable to a non-smallpox scenario)
I am also thinking on adding some landmark historical cities on the Europe map, mainly for fun :)
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Also, the Aubrey-Maturin series look like a must-read
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As yodhe mentioned, I too would like to see alternate options for interacting with the natives. For example, different groups such as the Mayans, Aztec, Inca, and Taino natives may be located in different areas, may be more/less likely to be hostile, and may have different resources to trade.
I would also like to see the integration of such groups into colonies, with different groups having different strengths or character classes. For example, the Mayans may have more Warriors, and the Aztec more Engineers (off the cuff, needs a bit more research ;)
You encounter a group of Aztec natives. {a}ttack, {b}arter, {r}ecruit
Looks great so far! I would personally like to see more screen-space used for the main game view, and also the ability to fast-travel by the sea to already known locations (the quality of the crew on fast travel would determine the likelihood of negative/positive random events).
Cheers!
Ebyan "Nolithius" Alvarez-Buylla
http://www.nolithius.com
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Yeah.... the "natives" part really lacks a lot as for the current version. those ideas sounds nice!
I thought a lot about "fast-travel" (with the rationale of the "empty blue room of nothingness and bore"), but went against it and instead try to: a. make sea travel more interesting b. you can use this "brain-idle" time to think your strategy. If implemented, it would be too risky to lose your expedition just because of a random roll of unluck.
Also, what do people think about implementing battles in a zoomed in map?
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As far as sea travel you could have a "mythic-historical" thing going on.
Apart from pirate ships (or maybe you want to liberate some ship on your way!), and other nations navies, you could also have sea monsters and beasts to battle...
Magical mystical islands, that rise up out of the ocean and vanish..
Even Atlantis to find...
The Bermuda triangle to navigate.
Would be really important to model a "wind system", so players have to find the "trade" routes, and go with the flow, and not get caught in the doldrums.
Mutinies would be very important too, more than one captain/officer went overboard on a long voyage.
Fog that stop you seeing anything, and if you hit land you damage you ship.
Storm that blow you off course would be good.
Also there are a string of small island between america and europe on various routes, which became as important trading stations as both continents themselves. Canary islands etc. In terms of the map, they would be more prominant than their real geophysical size.
Also remember that it was a time of speculation etc, and in the months between journeys prices of commodities can change etc, as well as the relative wealth of nations, or their need for quick cash due to wars etc. At these trading posts you could perhaps find out rumours of Europe and the New world.
It shouldn't be about "killing off expeditions", but shaping the strategies of the players to make a rewarding game, where they get rewarded for adapting to new situations.
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Slashie,
You should still make sea travel more interesting, but allow the player to opt out of it, delegating the risk to the ships' captains. Further, you may want to allow for several fleets or groups rather than just one, that way you can control some manually and let the others run their course by means of fast travel.
I fear that, no matter how interesting it becomes, it will still be very tedious to travel to and fro the same exact locations dozens/hundreds of times.
Since the game is turn-based, you can choose to have "brain-idle" time at any point. If you look at Mass Effect 2's probe/mining system, it is somewhat fun to do once or twice, but after a dozen times you wonder if, with all of the fancy technology on the ship, sweeping a mouse back and forward can't be automated! It really felt like a chore after a while.
Anno 1404 - Dawn of Discovery, for example, allows you to automate your trade routes after you have discovered/settled a location. For Expedition, though, I would suggest something a bit simpler: being able to give one-off instructions to ships/fleets for fast travel, rather than setting up condition-based waypoints as in Anno.
I'm not too crazy about the more fantasy/mythical approach that yodhe brings up, since I'm certain there is enough richness in this period to have no need of supplementing the theme. However, some sort of wind system or currents is definitely a must in a game where sailing is a major part.
Esc should exit menus/shops as Space already does. I would also like to be able to start the game with preset expedition loadouts, rather than having to go to the stores every single time!
Finally, in the main menu, you may want to hide or gray out the "Resume Expedition" option if there are no resumable expeditions.
That's it for now! ;) Very excited to see how the game develops.
Ebyan "Nolithius" Alvarez-Buylla
http://www.nolithius.com
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Also, the Aubrey-Maturin series look like a must-read
It really is. I do not generally read war novels or sea novels, but this series is genuinely amazing. O'Brian is just some kind of strange genius - he apparently published his first novel when he was 12. The series will expand your knowledge of sea travel, sea "life", ship maintenance, and various disciplines of the natural philosophy during the late 1700s-early 1800s, even if you already know a great deal about any of the given subjects (which I do not.) Aside from the books being an immensely enjoyable reading experience, I truly believe that checking out the series will a) make designing Expedition more enjoyable for you, and b) allow you to create a better product in the long run.
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I will try to fetch and read them!
Also, i'm open to your suggestions to make ship travel more interesting. thanks!
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Needs graphics? Tolerate text? Who are you to defile this sacred place with such talk? Your fireproof pantaloons will not spare you the terror of my jaws, heretic!
Fireproof pantaloons. heh.
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Advancement: It's working now
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Some discussion here: http://slashie.net/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?1277.last