Temple of The Roguelike Forums
Game Discussion => 7DRLs => Topic started by: PTrefall on March 09, 2014, 02:58:27 PM
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http://7drl.org/2014/03/09/rogue-station-7drl-2014-startup-post/
(http://7drl.org/2014/03/09/rogue-station-7drl-2014-startup-post/)
This year I’m teaming up with Kenneth ‘sphair’ Gangstø for the 7DRL context making a game called Rogue Station. We are severely lacking time both of us this week, but we’ll give it a shot regardless.
You are awoken a clone on a space station wreckage drifting in space, falling apart. Systems fail and the hull breaches, energy is sparse and oxygen is leaking; the broken rescue beacon is your only hope! But who knows how long this old wreckage can stay together, or which scavengers it might attract…
Let the games begin!
EDIT:
Please go to the rogue basin page to get the latest version of Rogue Station:
Rogue Basin Page (http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Rogue_Station)
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http://7drl.org/2014/03/10/rogue-station-day-1/
Day 1 has come and gone.
We’re using Unity3D for this project, and had a lot of asset store packs and a basic framework set up prior to starting. Our current asset list include:
2D Toolkit
NGUI
2D Volumetric Lights
8 bit Retro Rampage SFX
Master Audio
Dialoguer
iTween
UnityVS
Unity Roguelike Kit (SquidLib port)
ProD Gold Edition
We’re also using Oryx’ low-fi scifi tileset and Game Icons.Net.
I contacted Mirko Ruckels and asked for permission to use his music, and we're lucky enough that we've been allowed to use his superb atmospheric ambient music as a backdrop to our game.
On the code front we set up a main menu, a win and lose condition, got a basic "dungeon" procedurally generated with theme-based rooms/decoration and some basic UI elements set up.
(http://i.minus.com/jXrKoivP9bOxY.png)
(http://i.minus.com/j0zbvph3eudSP.png)
New day, much can happen in 24 hours!
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http://7drl.org/2014/03/11/rogue-station-day-2/ (http://7drl.org/2014/03/11/rogue-station-day-2/)
Another day bites the dust, and we’re pushing full sails ahead!
Got in bump interaction, menu system for bumping into stationary equipment (turn on/off, repair) and things like cabinets (searching them for goods). You can find items laying about and pick them up, etc. The station now have a energy system run by power generators, and all stationary equipment you turn on will use power every turn. Merging into the first couple hours of day 3 we also got into oxygen generators that will fill corridors and rooms with oxygen from air ventilation grills mounted on the walls. All in all a super productive day!
(http://i.minus.com/jD5MAkxB4EF3J.png)
(http://i.minus.com/jIj85gBaJ6rKo.png)
(http://i.minus.com/jbk2pum9eCFXfI.png)
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The premise made me think of Knights of the Old Republic II. Not significant, just observing. ;D It's good to see a Unity 7DRL underway and making progress. I always feel a bit weird playing a game with Oryx tilesets but that's my own problem.
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http://7drl.org/2014/03/12/rogue-station-day-3/ (http://7drl.org/2014/03/12/rogue-station-day-3/)
Today’s topic of development has been oxygen. The game starts with rather sparse amounts of oxygen distributed about the space station, so you have to hurry up and get enough electric power going to start up an air generator, then open some air vents to allow oxygen to start flowing. The amount of air vents you open will evenly share the amount of generated air for that turn, so it becomes a system of managing where you want rich amount of oxygen and how much power you want to spend on generating oxygen (you can turn on multiple air generators to generate more oxygen each turn).
Spent a lot of time trying to improve the oxygen propagation algorithm, only to realize basic random order of adjacent cell propagation was more than sufficient!
Had to do a lot of cleanup and tweaking of this system and how it affected other things. We also introduced the Station Control Unit (SCU) panel, which the player has access to at all times. Since air is invisible, you have to do an oxygen sweep of the station through the SCU, which will overlay the game map with oxygen color masking (blue) until you spend another turn.
The player breaths air too now, so if you stay in a room without air for too long you’ll suffocate and die.
(http://i.minus.com/jGGWlmivJcn4x.png)
(http://i.minus.com/jbyHsi88LbdayS.png)
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Thank you Samildanach :) If it turns out fun, hopefully we're able to get a custom tileset going towards ARRP.
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I know a custom tileset can be a big job. There's nothing wrong with the Oryx ones either, it just always feel odd about it because I knew them from HackSlashLoot. It's like playing a roguelike where everything is represented by sprites from old Nintendo games. :o Again, that's my own issue and I wouldn't criticise anyone for using Oryx tilesets.
The oxygen management element sounds interesting. Sounds like it will force some careful thought, which is always good.
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Hehe yeah, that's the downside to using generic tilesets :-/
We're hoping that oxygen management becomes an interesting challenge and not an exercise in frustration and micro-management. We won't know until there's enough interacting systems integrated...
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Yeah, I imagine it must be very difficult to gauge something like that. At the same time, it's forgivable to be a little off since the time constraint is so tight. I like the fact that (based on your description) it's not a straightforward 'hunger clock' substitute but something that, while limited, is also under your control to some extent. More interesting than just "my oxygen is low, better pick up some more".
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http://7drl.org/2014/03/13/rogue-station-day-4/ (http://7drl.org/2014/03/13/rogue-station-day-4/)
We’ve passed the half way mark, and due to Kenneth moving house this weekend, I’m pretty much all alone for the final half of this challenge.
Day Four has been spent first on integrating logs. It was a lot of fun getting this in there, because it gave the game more character immediately, and is also proving to be a tool for teaching and telling the player about/of the mechanics in the game. Secondly I integrated an inventory system. Currently the only item is the repair kit item. It is used to repair the condition of station equipment and the last new feature added today was working doors, which is quite an important feature when talking about oxygen propagation. I also went over my code and made sure the new game mechanics were all working properly, so that you don’t have to quit the game and start it up again every time you die.
(http://i.minus.com/jKlESfiNpQMSR.png)
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Yeah, I imagine it must be very difficult to gauge something like that. At the same time, it's forgivable to be a little off since the time constraint is so tight. I like the fact that (based on your description) it's not a straightforward 'hunger clock' substitute but something that, while limited, is also under your control to some extent. More interesting than just "my oxygen is low, better pick up some more".
It's interesting to see you read it at that level, because that was definitely the idea going into this. Desperation, but somewhat controllable if you make the right decisions. Of course, pulling that off won't be easy... we'll just have to wait and see how well we can get it to work within this short time frame.
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At the very least, you've got ideas for an interesting mechanic that can be used in future, even if you find you struggle to get the game done within the week. I mentioned this in another thread as well - I don't think a 'failed' 7DRL is inherently a bad thing. It can still be time well spent if you learn something from it.
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http://7drl.org/2014/03/15/rogue-station-day-5/ (http://7drl.org/2014/03/15/rogue-station-day-5/)
Report coming in half a day late, but wanted to update on the progress quickly.
Today was spent on a lot of different small things and small fixes over the board (didn’t want to save all of that for the last day). Actual working repair mechanics and equipment that would spawn with random conditions (some are working, some with defects, some broken and a few beyond repair). Ran over all descriptions for station equipment menus, and made the text more informative towards the mechanics. The cloning machine, which is your spawn point when you start a new game, is now in the game too. The last thing that went in was the transport ability, which allow you to “teleport” or “blink” short distances, with increasing power consumption costs. Quite useful, not the least because it makes my procedural placement of decoration/interior less game breaking if it blocks a path or something like that (yeah, we didn’t spend much time trying to get that placement look good). A lot of small issues with this Transport ability, because it’s a quite intrusive mechanic, disabling player movement, need to prevent teleporting onto invalid cells, need to give player enough information to use it, etc.
All in all a good day :)
(http://i.minus.com/jbeiZZIH95mvrZ.png)
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http://7drl.org/2014/03/15/rogue-station-day-6/ (http://7drl.org/2014/03/15/rogue-station-day-6/)
The final day is upon us, but here is the last report before the final success/fail posting!
Started the day fixing a lot of small issues with the new Transport ability, it now feels pretty tight! Started on the game event system, that will make things go horribly wrong at random turns throughout the game (not entirely random, so let’s call it procedurally). For now there’s only hull breaching, but I hope to get rescue/invade parties in too (but that will be a stretch at this point). Adding the hull breaching shed light on some issues in my propagation algorithm and the oxygen visualization was clearly not informative enough. I started interpolating a gradient map for visualizing oxygen values instead of just doing an alpha 0-1, and the improvements made to the propagation algorithm truly boosted that mechanic over the board!
It quickly became apparent though that with hull breaching in, I would have to add the space suit. The space suit will spend station power to generate oxygen. Since station power is the most precious resource (well, beyond oxygen of course) in the game, hopefully we can manage to balance this gear so that you only want to wear it when you go to repair a hull breach. I also did another pass on doors to make sure oxygen, or lack there of, wouldn’t propagate through closed doors.
Further, I properly integrated the repair mechanics for the hull breach, so that oxygen absorption stops and the hull breach effect disappears when you’ve fixed the breach.
Another thing I spent an hour or two on today was adding details/decoration to the different room types, to strengthen the room themes and to tell them apart more easily, which is very handy when the “Hull breached in the Living Quarters!” message starts flashing on your screen. I added search mechanics to the different decorational pieces, so you can search them for repair kits and other loot. I also added a blaster rifle, but it doesn’t give you the shoot ability just yet.
The last thing I started before the clock entered the final 24 hours of this entry, was to add an Invader event (similar to the hull breach event in mechanics), that spawns a group of invaders. They can kill you if they bump into you, and you can kill them if you bump into them, but their drunken walk is awful at best. We’ll see if I can find more time to add the blaster rifle’s shoot ability so that you can shoot these green invaders! The idea is also that they will degrade the condition of station equipment if they bump into those… we’ll see what I can find time for, because I really need to spend some serious time on the game’s multiple numbers to make the game feel a bit more complete… at this point there are some interesting mechanics in here I think, but the numbers needs to be tweaked right for it to come out strongly. Crossing fingers 24 hours with sleep, food and family life in between will be enough!
(http://i.minus.com/jJcgEqwNKJXtL.png)
(http://i.minus.com/jbrfAEvwOe8tT9.png)
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At the very least, you've got ideas for an interesting mechanic that can be used in future, even if you find you struggle to get the game done within the week. I mentioned this in another thread as well - I don't think a 'failed' 7DRL is inherently a bad thing. It can still be time well spent if you learn something from it.
Oh yeah, you're going to learn something during a seven day grind like this, no matter what the result of the game :)
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http://7drl.org/2014/03/16/rogue-station-success/ (http://7drl.org/2014/03/16/rogue-station-success/)
The 7 days of development is over! What a grind!
I spent way too much time on the invaders this final day, when I should have spent those hours tweaking/balancings and just polishing the “product”, but I decided to go a little crazy and try to grind them in. The idea in my head was that they would add this cool extra dimension to the experience where you’re not as “in control” over the situation as you might be with a hull breach that just stand still. After a few failed attempts at an AI, I came up with a solution that worked, and the invaders will now hunt you down and eat you alive! They will also degrade any station equipment they bump into on the way, as well as eagerly consume your precious oxygen! Thus I think the invaders added some interesting dynamics to the gameplay that was really needed.
I did also find time to add the shoot ability, even if it’s super simple it’s a little fun to be able to shoot these things at a distance. They probably won’t outsmart you anyway.
I did some touch-ups to the UI as well. Initially we had the Station Power displayed as a percentage of the max power the station could hold at the time, but since every decision you make with respect to station equipment and gear affects power consumption, we really had to show the raw number, so now we do. I also added an instruction screen at the main menu that both gives the short version of the story/scenario, but also tells the player which buttons are in effect as far as user interface goes (keyboard-only).
One of the technical mistakes we did (which is a bit Unity specific), was that the entire game was set up in a single scene, instead of letting the UI and Global things sit in one scene, and the game specifics that needs to be reset with every new game sit in another… so there are sure to be bugs in there now related to just that. When you die (or win) and start a new game, strange things may happen!
All in all though, a great experience. We actually managed to get some gameplay going this year, as opposed to last year’s entry (Han Yolo)!
Thank you Kenneth Gangstø for joining me in this challenge! A big thanks to Bill Lowe and Petur Agust for providing some artistic input and suggestions, even when our focus and time wasn’t spent there at all. A huge thank you to Mirko Ruckels for allowing us to use his superb music in our game, check him out at http://www.last.fm/music/Deepspace (http://www.last.fm/music/Deepspace)!
I’ll provide the download links to the game itself in a follow-up post to this one (without all the development report stuff).
Thank you all for following our progress, for participating in the 7DRL Challenge and good luck surviving the Rogue Station!
(http://i.minus.com/jb2aqxAmKMgVgC.png)
(http://i.minus.com/jfmxz1xAFjxrk.png)
(http://i.minus.com/jXiwLL5ClFCeC.png)
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http://7drl.org/2014/03/16/rogue-station-release/ (http://7drl.org/2014/03/16/rogue-station-release/)
Please go to the rogue basin page to get the latest version of Rogue Station:
Rogue Basin Page (http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Rogue_Station)
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It works on Linux, did not play a lot. When pressing Shift+direction, the guy walks way too fast for some reason. Is it a bug?
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It works on Linux, did not play a lot. When pressing Shift+direction, the guy walks way too fast for some reason. Is it a bug?
That is most definitely a bug that sneaked in there last minute! Thank you for trying, and great to hear it plays on Linux! We'll work on a patch release, but due to other deadlines it might take a week or two.
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It's really aggravating being in the dark. I've been wandering around for about 15 minutes and I still can't see anything. Am I missing something obvious?
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Literally in the dark? Or dark as in don't understand what to do? In the last case, I would suggest reading the Instructions, they hint at the goal :-)
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Literally in the dark. HUD and messages but no visibility. That's not a design choice then?
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Now it doesn't run at all, dark or otherwise (without me having changed anything since I last played). Any ideas, techy types?
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Hm, very strange. Which build are you running, what operating system are you on and which graphics card do you have? This sounds more like a technical issue. First thing I'd think about is to make sure you're on the latest graphics driver version, or if you're running via web player, make sure you have the latest unity web player running.
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Yeah, everything's up to date including Unity web player. Very mysterious. Rogue Station runs on my laptop, which is old and feeble, but not on my desktop. Hmm.
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Hm, could you take a screenshot, please? Or is it just a completely black screen? Ah, you mentioned it didn't run at all... very very strange, because we don't store any data for the game between runs. It's a stretch, but maybe you have a unity install that's somehow corrupted? This sounds very specific to that one computer, but then again there's not been enough computers running this game yet to be sure.
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Not sure if this is the same issue (doesn't sound like it) but here's a screenshot of what I see:
(http://i.imgur.com/eFnrCD2.png)
It's really weird, because I also do development in Unity, and have never had any problem with any Unity game before. I'd posted in your success thread on 7drl that I'm on Windows 8; there IS a special Windows 8 you can build for 'Windows Store Apps' (aka Metro) but that isn't the issue here. The build you posted should work. Shrug.
Windows 8 / Surface Pro 2 (which has some kind of integrated Intel graphics). I'll try again if/when you get a web version up.
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Wow, yeah. That looks very very strange! I've put up two web versions now, so please try one of them and see if that changes anything. We're not doing anything special, tech wise with this game... but there "might" be an issue with post-processing, since we're running some image effects / fullscreen filters from the pro version of unity. That wouldn't explain the text completely failing to render though, so this is a very interesting problem you're seeing! Hopefully the web version will work for you.
http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Rogue_Station (http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Rogue_Station)
Thank you for posting the screenshot and sticking with this :)
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Hm, could you take a screenshot, please? Or is it just a completely black screen? Ah, you mentioned it didn't run at all... very very strange, because we don't store any data for the game between runs. It's a stretch, but maybe you have a unity install that's somehow corrupted? This sounds very specific to that one computer, but then again there's not been enough computers running this game yet to be sure.
I've reinstalled Unity and whatnot. It's weird that it just stopped running between before and after dinner. I'm sure that's a problem with my computer rather than the game, just hoped someone might have an idea.
As to what happened before, I could see the HUD but not the actual play area - so I could see the energy bar, room name, message log ("you've searched this table before" etc), the key prompts in the top left corner but not a character sprite, objects, rooms, any of the play area at all. This was the case every time I played, up until it stopped running altogether. If it happens again I'll take a screenshot.
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Wow, yeah. That looks very very strange! I've put up two web versions now, so please try one of them and see if that changes anything. We're not doing anything special, tech wise with this game... but there "might" be an issue with post-processing, since we're running some image effects / fullscreen filters from the pro version of unity. That wouldn't explain the text completely failing to render though, so this is a very interesting problem you're seeing! Hopefully the web version will work for you.
http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Rogue_Station (http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Rogue_Station)
Thank you for posting the screenshot and sticking with this :)
Sadly, neither of the web links worked for me. I'll have to try on a different machine. Thanks for trying it though, I appreciate it :)
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Game Hunter has let's played the game now:
Rogue Station, by Pål Trefall & Kenneth Gangstø (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzuZndRAwWE)
Overall Thoughts:
Completely different approach this time around, and I think it paid off handsomely. While there could be some bits and pieces added, making a really nice 15-30min game overall, Rogue Station performs the various tasks of building a roguelike admirably, and it plays well to boot! Ultimately the gameplay is pretty simple, but you have to be constantly aware of your semi-invisible surroundings and approach each area with caution and restraint. The "countdown timer" seems awfully long, though, especially given what's available to throw things off after it begins, but it's a good idea with the right combination of additional obstacles. I hope to see this fleshed out over time!
From YouTube:
Space roguelikes are great because you already feel cramped, and this game takes it to the next level. A lot of the core gameplay is here and it plays really well! I'd hope for a little more to do with a couple of patches, but I think I could entertain myself with this for a good while as-is.
Ideally, scavenging could be a little more intelligently-plannable, like being able to access consoles from all over the station that show, roughly, the location and name of each room. Naturally more items/electronics to interact with will pump things up, and making the station a bit bigger could address the somewhat-shortness of the game. The pace is fine, so only take it to its natural progression, but I could stand for maybe five more minutess of "interesting to-dos" after activating the end-game countdown.
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Rogue Station wins Procedural Death Jam award for
Best Berlin-Interpretation roguelike!
http://proceduraldeathjam.com/content/pdj-results (http://proceduraldeathjam.com/content/pdj-results)
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Congratulations! I need to spend more time with this game -- the judging window was too small to do it justice.
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Samildanach and slothwerks, I'll look into NPOT textures and texture sizes that might not be supported by your hardware for the patch release, hopefully that will fix these issues you guys are experiencing.
Adam Perry, and thank you! We are very happy with how well Rogue Station has been received. I'm glad you've enjoyed it. Hopefully the patch release can make the game more fair in repair/destruction distribution, and thus less frustrating when playing optimally on a bad seed!
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Rogue Station Patch 1 released.
http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Rogue_Station (http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Rogue_Station)
Patch 1 Changelist:
- Shift to walk diagonally doesn't have the same time-out as numkey diagonal movement.
- Room in room placement don't account for rooms placing things on top of each other, so in such situations you might get station equipment under other station equipment, or hidden under other things.
- There's been one report of trouble playing the game on Windows 8. Hopefully the new web player version will work, but this remain untested.
- There's some issues related to starting a new game after game over / game won. Shutting down the game and starting it again is the only solution for now.
- There's only a 5% chance for an air generator to spawn in a room, so on a lot of levels there's not even a single spawn of air generators.
- There should be a choking sound when you start getting into orange levels of choking due to lack of air. It's hard noticing the messages in the log when there's no sound attached to it.
- Doesn't support hjkl-yubn keymapping yet.
- Pressing Escape while in a station equipment menu or ability menu should exit that menu, not take you to the main menu.
- The introduction text says 'wrack', when it should say 'wreckage'.
- One should be able to 'look' at stuff without actually bumping into it to find out what it is.
- Shooting could do with some improvements.
- Need to take more control over how weapons, repair kits and broken equipment is distributed, so that all games are winnable and all games share a similar difficulty level. Right now it's too random, and no guarantee that a game is winnable.
- There should be a chance that a dead invader could hold a repair kit (searchable), to prevent no-win situations.
- Need to tweak the Transport cost a bit.
- There should be a rescue beacon counter.
- Many minor fixes.
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Just discovered there's a french let's play video on youtube playing the patched version of Rogue Station:
Rogue Station Patch 1 LP (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDdmQ-KFTsQ&feature=share&list=PL6worq9Z68ToY59abL4z-0H4f_LBfUxmR)
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Yet another Let's Play of Rogue Station surfaces.
http://youtu.be/6Kuw9aJABys
It's so rewarding watching other people play your games, even when they're just frustrated and don't quite figure out the mechanics. Learning so much from it!