Temple of The Roguelike Forums
Game Discussion => 7DRLs => Topic started by: lyeeedar on March 05, 2017, 05:00:19 PM
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Hello all, I am once again participating in the 7drl with a game called The Abyss of Souls.
In this game you will be playing as a sinner who has died and gone to hell, and your objective is to cleanse your soul and ascend into heaven.
I'm starting from this codebase: https://github.com/infinity8/MHRL (https://github.com/infinity8/MHRL)
Hopefully it all goes well!
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Day 1
Well more like a half day, but I still got a fair amount done. First level is generating fine. Had to spend a while fixing the scene timeline code for the tutorial, it was deciding to play every part at once, which is not ideal.
The graph that generates the first level:
(http://i.imgur.com/hBBYQhN.png)
The tutorial area of the first level:
(http://i.imgur.com/6edQZ7p.png)
Tomorrow the plan is to get some monsters running around!
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Day 2
Today I spent a load of time on engine side work, which included optimisation for lighting (every water tile has a light, so it really needs to be fast), saving / loading support, ai fixes and other stuff. Sadly this has put me behind on the creating of levels schedule, so I'll be working extra hard over the next few days to make up for that.
We do however have monsters now! Currently they spawn in the swamp area in the first level. The first time I got them appearing they instantly sprinted for the left edge of the map, then started murdering each other in some sort of twisted battle royale. I have no idea what caused that at all. Was amusing though.
Glowy river
(http://i.imgur.com/hPp7f7q.png)
Monsters
(http://i.imgur.com/fvACQPS.png)
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Day 3
Today was mostly focused around the combat. Some vast improvements have been made, including the addition of locking the movement of things you hit when stepping forward. This stops the issue of things shooting off to one side when you attack them from the side.
Video of some combat:
http://i.imgur.com/1jT0EN2.mp4 (http://i.imgur.com/1jT0EN2.mp4)
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Day 4
Today I mostly completed the first 3 of my 7 planned levels, though each is a bit sparse on contents (only a couple of enemy types / environmental hazards each). Most of the time was spent working on saving / loading, a painfully difficult process. I does however now work (hopefully), so thats a plus. I also set up the ability to move between the levels.
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Day 5
Today I created the bare bones of the last few levels, and you can now game over / win too (though both just throw an exception and crash the game at the moment as theres now victory / defeat screen to switch too). Ive been mainly discovering the things my Generation Grammar currently lacks, and covering those. Luckily the system is flexible enough that doign so is fairly simple, but still it sinks time that is currently at an extreme premium.
Tomorrow I'll be looking to flesh out the content in each level, which includes more enemies, more weapons, just generally more stuff. Also ui work. But once that lots completed (tomorrow evening fingers crossed) the game should be playable from start to finish!
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Day 6
Finally the game is fully completetable, all the sins can be cleansed and all the levels traversed. Now its just a case of polishing, but there sure is a heck of a lot of that to be done. The game is also shorter than I would have liked, but the focus on hand crafted levels rather than large scale 'padded' generation means it takes way longer to make stuff. Hopefully that design decision was a good one.
Anyway, heres a gif:
(http://i.imgur.com/IgOncrl.gif)
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Day 7
And finally it is complete! This morning and yesterday was spent balancing and rebalancing everything, fixing a load of niggly bits and adding controller support. Sadly there wasn't enough time to build the ui for mouse support, but I included keybindings for WASD, arrow key, numpad and controller setups. That should hopefully cover most of the bases.
Another image:
(https://img.itch.io/aW1hZ2UvMTI2Njk0LzU4MzMyMi5wbmc=/original/TYmE3e.png)
You can download the game from the itch.io page, or look through the sources on github:
- itch.io (https://lyeeedar.itch.io/the-abyss-of-souls)
- github (https://github.com/infinity8/TheAbyssOfSouls)
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itch.io link returns 404 :( also I was unable to find TAoS on https://lyeeedar.itch.io/
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Oh ooops, I hadnt set the page to public. Done that now so you should be able to download the game.
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Yup, now it works, thanks! :)
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Tried running this on Linux wit Java 8:
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Error compiling shader: Fragment shader:
0:21(16): error: no function with name 'lerp'
0:23(34): warning: `outCol' used uninitialized
at com.badlogic.gdx.graphics.g2d.HDRColourSpriteBatch$Companion.createDefaultShader(HDRColourSpriteBatch.kt:586)
at com.badlogic.gdx.graphics.g2d.HDRColourSpriteBatch.<init>(HDRColourSpriteBatch.kt:128)
at com.badlogic.gdx.graphics.g2d.HDRColourSpriteBatch.<init>(HDRColourSpriteBatch.kt:47)
at com.lyeeedar.Systems.RenderSystem.<init>(RenderSystem.kt:29)
at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.java:62)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.java:45)
at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Constructor.java:423)
at java.lang.Class.newInstance(Class.java:442)
at com.badlogic.gdx.utils.reflect.ClassReflection.newInstance(ClassReflection.java:93)
at com.lyeeedar.Systems.SystemExtensionsKt.createEngine(SystemExtensions.kt:28)
at com.lyeeedar.Global$Companion.setup(Global.kt:83)
at com.lyeeedar.MainGame.create(MainGame.kt:25)
at com.badlogic.gdx.backends.lwjgl.LwjglApplication.mainLoop(LwjglApplication.java:149)
at com.badlogic.gdx.backends.lwjgl.LwjglApplication$1.run(LwjglApplication.java:126)
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Oh darn, it should be mix (seems lerp is an nvidia driver supported one only). I'll fix this when I get back home. Is it okay to upload a new build even after the deadline?
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I'm not sure my man, sorry :D I've seen people post "bugfix" releases so maybe you should just add a new link as one of those?
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Good idea, I'll do that. In say 5 hours or so.
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Okay a bugfix build is up on itch. Could you try it and tell me if it works now?
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It works now though to be honest I didn't enjoy it all that much. I didn't get too far but the levels feel too big and empty, requiring that you move through hundreds of tiles (and all that key pressing or holding) before you find anything. The game looks OK but not good enough to make all that idle exploration worthy just by enjoying the environment.
The combo system isn't really enticing. It feels arbitrary, like you have to memorize those key sequences just because they're there. I would prefer something that creates combos dynamically - for example, if you have a quick weapon like a dagger then doing more defensive moves will add to your evasion up to a certain point. The same for heavy weapons having bonuses for strong attacks, etc. The way it is now does nothing for me, but maybe I just didn't get it.
Games like Axu or Roguelike One (both listed on Rogue Basin) have pretty interesting "dynamic" combat maneuvers. I think it would be cooler to implement things like that around certain weapons. For example, a defensive move with a long sword has a % chance of having your hero take a free step backwards; or fighting with a staff allowing you to jump over the enemy with a special move for extra damage as you hit it in the back.
Although I don't like the combos, the idea of having different attack modes is pretty interesting. The UI isn't very good though. For starters, you shouldn't have to sacrifice diagonal movement for that (though I understand that's a problem for gamepads). I would rather have it so instead of a combination of buttons, you should change modes by pressing a key. You start on "normal attack" and you're able to go to "defensive' by pressing d or "special" by pressing s and then just attack by normal movement. Having to press a combination of buttons to do a simple attack is really awkward for a roguelike.
Anyway, I was able to defeat all monster I encountered without combos or paying too much attention to modes or stamina - but that's probably because I didn't get too far that enemies require more careful combat. Anyway, i feel that if that is a core gameplay feature, players should be required to use that from the first level in order to advance.
As a final tip I think you'd be better off by having the text scroll from top to bottom, instead of it "raising' as new lines are shown. This way the eye can follow the text as it appears without it "jumping" upwards and you needing to adjust your sight as the text moves.
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I tried the bugfix build and I like the look of the UI, but the combos are a bit arbitrary indeed. At least the first level should make me use them intelligently, maybe with some tips showing 'hey you, you're about to use a defensive action' or 'combine this with another blow to get a combo!'. As the things stands, it's a pretty game with a great premise but boils down to bashing buttons hoping I get the right one for a combo.