Temple of The Roguelike Forums
Game Discussion => Early Dev => Topic started by: pat on April 15, 2013, 09:37:41 AM
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The Burning Plague is the working title of a roguelike/CRPG game that I've started working on and will be blogging about as a way of keeping my coding motivation up and also as a way of documenting my progress - already my collection of screenshots is making me laugh as I look back at how it was all looking just a few weeks ago.
The basic idea for the game is that I wanted to focus on a no-frills RPG similar in style to the Spiderweb Software series of games - in particular the Exile and probably Avernum series.
Beyond the style inspiration of aiming for a Vogel-esque RPG, my initial content is loosely based on the Dungeons and Dragons module for low-level players - The Burning Plague. The initial goal is to release an alpha version of the game which fleshes out a short RPG covering an expanded adventure based on that module. Gameplay is intended to be based on roguelikes to a certain extent in that you will only control a single character and rely on providing orders to your companions to boss them around so that it becomes more of a party oriented experience.
Dev blog can be found at the following link: theburningplague.blogspot.com (http://theburningplague.blogspot.com)
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Latest screenshot:
(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HuMi3k4tCA0/UWffZqxrJfI/AAAAAAAAAAM/E2M0ezglY9Y/s1600/AkCxBAg.png)
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It loos very nice... Except the horrible font. Those spaces between characters make it looking very ugly and difficult to read. Also I think that the character size could be a bit smaller.
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The basic idea for the game is that I wanted to focus on a no-frills RPG similar in style to the Spiderweb Software series of games - in particular the Exile and probably Avernum series.
Sounds tight.
I think the font you chose looks fine. The grass is what looks strange to me. It's viewed from the side, while all other floor tiles are viewed from above.
Anyway, this looks like it'll be worth following. Good luck, man!
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The grass looks fine for me. I think it is okay for roguelikes to have some tiles viewed from above and some viewed from the side. This is the case of Fame, too, by the way.
Using a red % as a corpse tile is okay as well ;).
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Certainly seems promising----quite looking forward to seeing you tackle a fully fleshed out project on this scale considering your excellent 7DRL entrants. 8)
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Thanks for the early support.
To be honest, I already had some reservations about the issues you guys raise. The font itself hasn't really been of much concern to me at this stage because it's obviously not used in the game world itself which has been my focus. Readability always seems to be a problem when there is a square font used - obviously it makes the map look aesthetically better but causes problems when it comes to strings of text.
For example: http://xcomrl.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/tune-up.html
Problem is that libtcod doesn't support multiple font sizes and styles in a single window, and the only workaround I know of is a horrible one where you change from a 16x16 font to a 8x16 or something to increase the readability of ordinary characters but when you print a graphical character to the game window, you would in fact print two side by side to make up the representation of a single object. It's workable but doesn't really look like the most fun in the world to program from my perspective.
Of course I could always ditch libtcod for display purposes, but that decision won't be made anytime soon.
With respect to the grass, yeah I don't know if it's going to stay that way. I hated it more a while ago and it's slowly grown on me but something isn't right about it and it looks messy in a way. I'm still open to experimentation in that respect and I might in fact slot in a different character to replace the grass in due course but it's probably not a priority just yet. The only real criteria for a graphical tile is that I would like it to be mostly black so it doesn't contrast negatively with a character tile next to it which will almost always have a black background.
I'm currently working on implementing the complete set of stats and skills which involves reworking the simple combat system currently in place, and once that's done I'll have a character generator to play around with and hopefully something else to show.
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I actually kinda like the grass. It looks more like grass than your typical "green square with splotches of red and yellow for flowers". And it meshes well with the (also side-view) character icons.
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Here's the game with a different font and a different take on the grass.
(http://i.imgur.com/V1mJUUC.png)
I'm not all that sure about moving in this direction with the grass but the different font for the messages works a lot better in my view. I might switch back to the grass tiles...
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I think the new grass looks nicer. It reminds me of old school PC RPGs. Like the older Ultimas or whatever. It has a really "tiled" look right now with the black borders around each section of grass, but if you don't like that it shouldn't be too hard to fix.
The old grass looked like it was in a sidescrolling platformer.
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I think the new grass looks nicer. It reminds me of old school PC RPGs. Like the older Ultimas or whatever. It has a really "tiled" look right now with the black borders around each section of grass, but if you don't like that it shouldn't be too hard to fix.
Those are all things I was aiming for, so that's positive.
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That screenshot gives some sort of primal urge to play your game.
Like, I know that this game is brand new, not at all complete, and probably has next to no content. I know that. But I look at your screenshot, and it just HAS to be full of awesome puzzles and crazy monsters. That just how games that look that way are, you know?
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Ditto, Van.
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That's great guys, it's very motivating to hear that I haven't completely missed the mark in terms of the project's goal. That reaction is exactly what I'm aiming for from old-time players of ancient RPG's!
Development has been continuing. I've adopted the Dead Simple RPG Rules (http://thegamesshed.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/dead-simple-rpg-rules/) which have been almost completely implemented with respect to combat, minus a few things like armour, the negative effect of being 'wounded' in combat, and the combat bonus for swarming your enemy with allies. It seems like a pretty cool system, and of interest to me, has no HP or EXP mechanics!
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tDNqsOSozKQ/UW3-eLp6geI/AAAAAAAAABQ/FPASURL7cZA/s1600/1.png)
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QTRorL4PguU/UW3-d874RdI/AAAAAAAAABM/XNnoWXUNU1s/s1600/2.png)
I'm already hitting one of the problems with roguelike developers dipping their toes into the graphical world - I need more tiles for more monster types! My dwarves look like peasants for now, which is ok for a placeholder but pretty lousy for a proper game.
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I really like the dead simple mechanics. With that system in mind I developed my own very simple system for my games. I think I'll do a post about it. :-)
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A lot of progress is being made and the game is starting to have its "role-playing" implemented. I've now got unique customisable NPC's and plot messages being read from external and easy to mod data files so that the real writing of game content is very easy.
(http://i.imgur.com/vlUbAd1.png)
I'm hoping that I can keep as much of the game content as possible in the data files so that I can leave the game engine completely alone and focus on releasing modules with different settings and characters without touching a line of code. It's going to get tricky when I get into the nitty gritty of quests, ie. trying to define that a certain NPC desires an item which is located somewhere in the dungeon and the interactions which happen upon success/failure. It's not impossible but just a bit fiddly and I'm finding it achievable as long as I chip away at it gradually.
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I'm new to these forums. Just wanted to say that I really like your approach to the genre!
I've actually been thinking of designing a game of my own, with a similar focus. Less rules, more RPG that is.
I will also try to focus more on the graphical design and the game interface.
I'm not a developer, so my plan is to create a nice tileset and develop an intriguing world/story - and once that's done, perhaps find someone that can help me out making it into a game. ::) ...We'll see.
Anyways, I'll be following the development of your game, looks great so far.
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Cool, thanks for the feedback! It's pretty motivating to hear that people are into what I've been doing so far.
Working on a tileset is a good idea (and that's probably something I'll have to wade into shortly and which I have absolutely no experience in) and there's no problem with plugging away at a setting/story but I don't think there's any substitute for just giving it a crack when it comes to programming your own project.
It's a bit of a steep learning curve if you're starting out with coding, but I would suspect that the time you spend chasing up volunteer project members to code for you, you'd probably be able to give it a pretty good shake yourself! Just believe in yourself and you can acheive `~*anything*~,! Well probably not, but just try anyway is my advice.
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Thanks for the advice, but, I've been dabbling with programming before, and I really have zero talent (or patience for that matter).
I have however worked several years with design and works closely with developers on a daily basis.
If I can't find someone to to help me out, I might release the tileset as a free resource instead.
I've also been thinking of perhaps doing an ToME module instead of something from scratch.
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You'd definitely be able to get a ToME prototype with a custom tileset running in less than an hour I'd say, particularly if you just re-used the example code and ignored gameplay to show off the look and feel of your graphics instead.
Of course if you're keen on making tiles, I know a certain game that's going to be needing some 16x16 tiles very shortly ;)
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Yeah my first project when I wanted to start learning to pixel was to build a custom tileset for a random roguelike I enjoyed. It turned out terribly and I never did anything with it, but now that I've been doing it for a while...I think I would like to give it another go.
Didn't cross my mind to use TOME.
I really like the look you have going by the way pat, I'm interested in how you will exploit the simple system you are
making while keeping replayability high.
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Replayability is probably going to be the weakness of this game definitely. Because everything is structured, it means that I'll be able to densely pack in content, with descriptors provided for every meaningful encounter you come across in a very non-roguelike fashion, and of course that means your second run through the same set of encounters is going to be a lot more boring.
Part of addressing that will be to try and make different classes play different and also try and sketch out a plot which means different choices end up affecting gameplay so that you can seek out a different experience. The other way in which I'll hopefully address that is to simply put out a new module with different quests and settings once I've got the game system in place. That's the long-term goal anyway and it remains to be seen just how easy that process is.
I've been playing around with the tileset and a few other minor things, but here's a screenshot for the day - the player scouting ahead to find a party of orc warriors led by an ogre. Knowing that this would probably prove too much for a single fighter, I led them backwards to a nearby neutral dwarf mining party hoping that they would be strong enough to take out my enemies for me.
And it turns out that they nearly were - apart from the ogre.
(http://i.imgur.com/dyP0B1W.png)
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Of course if you're keen on making tiles, I know a certain game that's going to be needing some 16x16 tiles very shortly ;)
You know, I've been meaning to get some practice with pixel art.
I can't promise a huge time investment or that I'll stick with the project long-term, but if you just want someone to do some sprites, I'm willing.
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Any help with tiles would be greatly appreciated. It's one of those areas where I've never really dabbled before and I just don't have the skills to do a good job of it.
Here's the tileset currently:
(http://i.imgur.com/peZ1Dig.png)
Anyone with a reasonable eye for it will notice the hack job I've done with recolouring different sprites in a fairly haphazard way. The dwarf tiles were lifted from a dwarf fortress set and coloured in pretty badly and I know they can be improved.
The collection of green men is supposed to represent different varieties of kobolds, goblins, orcs and orges. It doesn't really work as is and I need a bit more variety there and I've just tried to fudge it so far - kobolds shouldn't really be green. Likewise, the ordinary human sprites are ok but lacking a bit of variety.
The reality is though that I would be happy to include anything which you'd be willing to contribute - there's no pressure on you! As long as the style remains pretty consistent throughout, the more variety the better and I would be pretty inclined to include anything in terms of a new monster or other feature if the tile was inspiring enough!
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It's actually not that bad of a hack job!
But yeah, I think you will quickly run into problems requiring more variation much sooner than
later.
I like the sounds of releasing modules to continuously add content. How are you planning to make the classes play different? I'm running into some problems with that on my own project (also trying to keep things simple but in a different
way).
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The most obvious distinction is going to be the access to magic for wizards and the combat strength of the fighter classes. A bit trickier to convey is the skills of a thief and the support play of a cleric. Under the rules I'm using, thieves get a better bonus in combat when an enemy is surrounded and clerics are reasonable fighters but their value is in being able to heal and deal with undead.
The tricky bit really is that I am only allowing the player to choose one character to play and the rest comes down to writing. It's going to be a challenge to make the game as interesting for a thief player compared to a wizard, because the use of thief skills in an interesting way is going to have to flow from unusual scripted encounters because I don't think many people will jump at the chance to play a class which can open a locked chest better than anyone else.
And there's already allies included in the game to let you flesh out your party with other skillsets, so I'll have to put a lot of thought and attention into which allies are available for which classes so that becomes an interesting challenge in itself.
Ideally I am aiming for a game where picking to play a thief who chooses to hire an apprentice wizard and a cowardly bodyguard gives rise to an interesting challenge without the randomisation of procedural content.
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You'd definitely be able to get a ToME prototype with a custom tileset running in less than an hour I'd say, particularly if you just re-used the example code and ignored gameplay to show off the look and feel of your graphics instead.
Of course if you're keen on making tiles, I know a certain game that's going to be needing some 16x16 tiles very shortly ;)
He he... For my game I'm aiming for a tileset that is 128x128px (and maybe 64x64) and I'm going for vector graphics style rather than pixels. But if I would suddenly feel the urge to do some tiny pixels I'll let you now! ;D
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Alright, well I finally got around to doing a few sprites.
(http://i.imgur.com/ve5A5Kk.png)
There are a few variations on the last two because there were some things I wanted to try (the wing, the spear, and the fire breath) but I'm not sure if I like how they turned out.
I don't know if these will be useful at all, but there you go.
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hey, they look pretty good. The kobold ones are definitely along the lines of what I was thinking they should look like instead of being green men like everything else!
On the topic of my progress with the game, I don't have much to demonstrate new by way of screen shots because I've been playing around with character creation and things like that which don't have much of a visual impact.
Also made a few modifications with respect to the combat system which differ from the Dead Simple rules - firstly, every attack you perform a Speed check which if successful gives you an additional attack on the same target. Characters of the soldier class already attack twice per round so can potentially attack three times per round on a successful check which hopefully increases the importance of dexterity for fighting classes and makes it a bit more of a complicated decision where to invest your skill points.
Secondly, I decided to include a Stealth check for those of the thief class as a kind of backstab attack, but only in circumstances where there is more than one attacker around your enemy. Already this provides for a blanket +1 bonus for all classes when you surround a defender, with thieves getting a +2 bonus, but with a successful Stealth check I was thinking that I would add the amount you pass that check by onto the attack roll with a view to making a thief a poor class for up front solo fighting (because of the lack of shields and anything more than light armour) but a handy support class in that they excel at attacking as part of a group, with ideally your opponent focusing on another of your party to avoid soaking up too much damage yourself.
And here's a screenshot just for the heck of it, with the real development shown being the customised player name and avatar:
(http://i.imgur.com/vdSdu06.png)
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And those kobolds look pretty good in-game, I think:
(http://i.imgur.com/7dTiBSV.png)
Maybe I'll play around with the one I'm using as a kobold shaman to add some kind of magic effect so that it's a bit more obvious from just the sprite, but they're not bad!
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A bit late to the table here, but count me among the intrigued. I enjoy the Spiderweb games (the plots are pretty mature for RPGs), but always wanted a more robust combat system. Looks like you're headed there. I'd drop a fiver on this one if it ever ended up being for sale.
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thanks jim, it'll be interesting to see what people think about the combat system when they give it a go and whether it does end up better than any simple RPGs. At the moment, I think it's going to involve optimal tactics fighting until you're 'wounded' and then trying to flee for healing before re-engaging. The complexity is going to have to come from the positioning (or possibly even the presence) of healers, the tactical bonuses for positioning in combat and the bonuses/maluses provided by wizards/priests.
As it stands, two lucky (or very unlucky) hits can drop you from 'healthy' to 'unconscious', and that can happen in a single round from a single opponent if they have the 'swordsman' trait or successfully roll a speed check. Even then the victim would have to fail two toughness checks and have the damage penetrate through their armour twice to be knocked out, so in practice it's very unlikely. This is probably one aspect of the game which might need to be reassessed in light of future play-testing because currently the player can fight a reasonable amount before being 'wounded', but the frustration that will come from what is effectively a very unlucky insta-kill in a game without randomisation would definitely turn off a large number of players.
Of course, they should have made one of their expendable henchmen take the heat for them as they heroically fought from a safe position at the back of their party...
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If excessive randomness is a problem, an easy solution is increasing the number of hits needed to take someone down. I think one or two more levels of wounded state would be a better fit for a single player game anyway. Two hits to KO is fine when you've got a group of human players working together, but I'd like a bit more when it's just me and the AI.
Multiple wounded states also present opportunities to bring the thief and barbarian's lackluster combat abilities up to par with the others.
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Actually, I think I'll do that and make an 'injured' state which slots in between 'healthy' and 'wounded'.
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Another aspect to consider would be actually applicable results to all the various states of combatants as opposed to the old "safe" trope of monsters with 1HP are exactly the same as with 100HP---certain sorts of actions could have flavorful modifiers depending on the state/race in question, literal desperate attacks, special temporary states bases on a chain of successes or even failures, etc.
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The Dead Simple RPG rules already do that - you take a penalty of -3 to your skills for being wounded.
I think a great way to make the barbarian class stand out would be to either give them one more wounded state than everyone else, or to reduce/negate the skill penalty they take from being wounded.
As for thieves, a critical hit ability that applies two wounds instead of one would fit the archetype pretty well. One way to handle it would be to either give out criticals for beating an opponents defenses by a certain amount on an attack roll. You could also stick with your "team fighter" theme you were talking about earlier and give them critical hits for attacking an enemy alongside a large enough group of allies. Or maybe interrupting an opponent's next turn would be better than extra damage? I dunno. I'm just throwing ideas out there.
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yeah, that 'wounded' malus of -3 on all skill checks is already in. I might include a further one of -1 when you're 'injured' so it builds up over time.
Interesting thoughts re: distinguishing barbarians as well. I had already modified them slightly into being a 'hunter' class because I've actually been basing more content off the Busiris (http://deadsimplerpg.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/busiris-one-page-fantasy-rpg/) addendum rules just because I like the feel of them a little more, but you've got me interested in thinking about whether barbarian is a better fit and have them effectively be a bit more of a damage tank than a soldier, but less capable in dealing damage. Actually, I think I'll make it a state of damage more serious than 'wounded' and call it 'berserk' or 'frenzied' and have that near-death state actually give barbarians a bonus in combat, so that you go from a -3 when simply wounded, but once you're pushed to the limit in terms of damage then it turns around to a bonus of +3.
The way thieves work right now is as I said above with a stealth check during combat amounting to bonus damage in addition to the thieves natural bonus in group combat, and this was my version of a traditional backstab as well as making use of the otherwise unloved stealth stat. I think that if it applied two wounds instead of one, it might work out but it in effect means that you'll just be one-shotting monsters on a successful roll which is arguably fitting but since I haven't really finished play-testing the current implementation, I might keep that on the backburner.
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Berserking now makes you terrible at most things (-5) apart from fighting and toughness (+3):
(http://i.imgur.com/qqhbYuC.png)
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I saw that you are basing it on a ad&d module. Are you basing anything else like mechanics on the Ad&d system? Like the race/class combinations or the memorizing style of how spells/prayers work?
I've always wanted a RL that played similar to 2nd/3rd addition ad&d system like the older pc games in terms of memorizing/praying for spells and race/class combos (Eye of the beholder, ravenloft, curse of the azure bonds, etc).
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The short answer is: not really.
I'm not basing anything else off AD&D rules at this stage. I was keen on basing it around a module because they're a cool source of settings and I'm particularly interested in low-level D&D style adventurers as opposed to epic high level stuff which if fairly hard to conceptualise.
The magic system is unsettled currently. Dead Simple basically allows you to cast a known spell every round with a successful 'knowledge' check. Spells become known by essentially buying them as a means of character progression.
I think that's probably a bit overpowered, especially considering that one of the spells basically inflicts a free hit on an opponent. A better system I'm thinking about is that it might take 3 turns to cast a spell and you can't do so when there's an enemy in an adjacent square, and that should balance it out a bit better as well as making it so that you need companions to block approaching enemies so you can actually get a spell completed. Or you might be doing the guarding yourself as a magic-using ally tries to cast.
And with respect to race/class combinations, I wasn't planning on enforcing any kind of restrictions or particular benefits. I think a free-for-all is my approach at this stage, but we'll see.
Incursion is probably the biggest and best D&D conversion that I know of and it's pretty much a great game as long as you can get past the crippling bugs.
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collection of screenshots is making me laugh as I look back at how it was all looking just a few weeks ago.
;) And after year or two. ::)
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This will be a success if I'm still going after a year or two!
The Dungeon Crawl tournament got in the way of recent programming, so now that I'm completely burnt out on actually playing games looks like I'd better get back into it. I'm probably about halfway through finishing a basic character generation set of menus to start a new game and then it's on to magic and priest powers before moving on to plot, plot and more plot as I write the actual game content beyond having placeholder monsters.
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After a bit of a hiatus, I'm back and here's a bit of tangible development with me twisting libtcod around to put in multiple sized tiles so you don't need to squint at the map to make it out anymore.
(http://i.imgur.com/E3THlaO.png)
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Nice. Aiming to have anything afoot for ARRP 2013 in about 9-10 days time from now? 8)
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Well, at the moment it's a working map with a number of different encounters and a 95% complete combat system. There's a vast empty gulf where the plot content, magic, and leveling systems should be, but I suppose I could try and get an alpha version out there so people can try out the combat and get a feel for what I've done.
It probably wouldn't be the most exciting release in the world because there's no procedural content and there's not much fun in replaying set piece battles time and time again without the context of a story or any kind of plot choices, but let's see how I go.
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I've been playing around with combat to make sure that it all works reasonably well so I can move onto other aspects of the game:
http://theburningplague.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/combat-testing-and-balancing.html
I'm still up in the air about whether it's worth doing a pre-alpha release for the ARRP because there's definitely some content there and it's somewhat playable in the state that it's in, but on the other hand I don't want to release a fairly lame skeleton of a game which doesn't do enough to capture people's interest and might in fact deflate people's expectations because they'll feel like they've tried the game out and didn't find a whole lot to it, which is probably right in the state it's in.
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Release early, release often.
ARRP is the perfect opportunity to start doing it.
It won't be a huge audience that notices your game at first anyway, just the people who probably would've been interested in the first place. In my experience unless you somehow get HUGE exposure (which you won't at first), indie devs benefit far more from releasing whatever they have. If your game eventually gets good enough that more people start playing it and talking about it, it will naturally attract a greater following. On the other hand, if the game is never developed into a truly "fun" state, then having initially turned a few people off is meaningless, anyway.
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You've convinced me. I'll put together a release today.
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Yay! Then my duty here is done ;p
Found your thread at just the right time, too, and only because this morning I saw a clickthrough to one of my blogs from the first page, and read through more because this project does look appealing.
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Ok, here's a first release of the game, and I'll write up a short post for the announcement section as well. Windows only executible with no source code for the moment.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zlw8ns0x4eluoel/The%20Burning%20Plague%20v1.zip
What you'll find is a demonstration of the combat systems with a fully working companion, neutral and hostile AI's along with a fully moddable world loading from the files in the /data directory which you're more than welcome to play around with. Creating an entirely new map and series of monster encounters should be really obvious and easy to do.
You might find that there's less point in picking a sorcerer or a priest at this stage because their special abilities aren't included just yet, but then again if you like to look at a picture of a cool looking wizard man instead of a boring fighter man then you can go ahead and do so.
Because there's no randomised content, a lot of the plot I have written so far has been stripped out for this release because I want to save that for a proper release in the future, but there's a few bits and pieces left in so you can see how the system is supposed to work.
Commands are keypad (no vi-keys) and that's about it right now. Press 'c' for character info. There's a few more things like a look command and a targetting system for ordering your allies into battle which I've removed for now because they're a bit buggy with the recently graphics update.
EDIT: oops, vi-keys actually do work, I just forgot that I put them in!
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Wandered around for a bit and while there wasn't a whole lot to do right now except get allies following me and killing the few enemies I ran into (*lots* of misses), I can see how this could be pretty fun with some story and more complex interactions. Nice atmosphere to it.
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This is pretty nice so far. The presentation is great - it maintains the old-school feel but is still quite clear and inviting. I definitely see a lot of potential here.
Some crits/suggestions:
- In the 'narration' messageboxes, the fact that the characters have black backgrounds but the spaces are transparent makes it a bit visually confusing. I would say either give the message box a black background or the characters transparent backgrounds.
- The message log is quite verbose and during combat it can be difficult to find the result of your own attack in amongst everything else going on. I would suggest either making your own actions a different colour to make them easier to spot or drawing a line in the messagebox to denote the start of the current turn.
- Slight AI bug: after the first combat my companions stopped following me and instead decided to hang around next to the pile of Kobold corpses we'd just created. I had to go and swap places with one of them to get them to 'unstick' and start following me again. At a guess I'd say this is because enemies don't get unmarked as obstacles when killed for your pathfinding routine.
- The 'Orc Warrior swaps places with Ogre' etc. messages seem to happen if I'm anywhere near them regardless of whether or not I can actually see them, which gives me unfair advance warning of what kinds of enemies are around. Ideally you should only display this information when I can already see the enemy.
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Thanks for the feedback.
I've noticed that with the message boxes as I put up big walls of text, it definitely gets cluttered. I'll fix it.
The combat messages will definitely need to be cleaned up. Admittedly they're at their simplest for debugging reasons, but cleaning them up and consolidating as many messages into a single as possible is on the agenda. And the swaps places messages will probably go in their entirety and again are still in for debugging reasons. The reason they pop up like that is because AI's are switched off unless you reach a certain distance from them and that's when the messages start appearing. They will certainly be removed.
That AI bug was something I made tonight. The companion AI was broken previously in a slightly different way in that every companion followed the player automatically which wasn't quite right - one of them is supposed to be a follower of the other and that one then follows the player. So I fixed that and obviously stuffed something else up where they don't properly move on from their recently deceased target. I did the same thing with shifting them around a pile of dead kobolds to get them moving again.
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That AI bug was so annoying. It was one of those things which I had made a mess of ages ago but for some inexplicable reason I had made a second error in my AI code which covered up the bug. So the AI was supposed to check for blocking objects (being living creatures, amongst other things) before looking to move or swap places, but I stupidly forgot to ever check to see if the object we were checking actually blocked the space. And to compound the error, my AI code never actually went down that branch due to an unrelated error so the bug never showed up until I changed something else and then I was wondering why my companions would never walk over the non-blocking body of their fallen enemies, argh.
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Yep, that sounds like roguelike development to me!
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Is there a way to get healed in this?
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Not yet. Healing is going to be a priest class power, perhaps implemented as a spell which takes three turns to cast so it can't be spammed in combat. I think I might also have it require some kind of skill check (probably knowledge) if an enemy is in line of sight so that healing in combat isn't overpowered. Out of combat it should always succeed so it isn't annoying.
I expect there'll also be npc characters who heal as well, but I've got to write the framework for that and write the ability to link that to plot points, ie. the village mystic will only heal you after you have recovered the farmer's scythe from the rat infested abandoned barn and returned it to his widow. There's a kind of hidden journal already implemented which will have key words added to it to record your progress with things like this and I'll be trying make all those aspects of the game fully transparent and editable through the plain text data files.
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After a bit of a hiatus, I returned to work and finished the character creation process with attributes and skill customisation.
(http://i.imgur.com/ASl8Nn2.png)
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Character creation complete and priests can now heal and also cause weird bugs where the newly-healed still look like a pile of bones even though they're back on their feet.
(http://i.imgur.com/yx0AH2u.png)
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Looking really good, man! I'm excited.
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thanks, it's a bit slow going with work priorities taking precedence but I'm back in the routine of doing what I can on a regular basis. Now we have magic and fire bolts and the player shooting their loyal hireling in the back:
(http://i.imgur.com/y4vinFu.png)