Messages

1

Player's Plaza / Re: Looking for Overworld/Story/Theme!

« on: May 11, 2013, 01:04:05 PM »

Are you focusing mostly on roguelikes? Unfortunately most roguelikes tend to be purely dungeon crawling with little story, but there are plenty of games with roguelike elements, or even commercial roguelikes that could work.

The mystery dungeon series can be quite fun, and there is a wide variety to choose from. Shiren the Wanderer is generally the favourite of them, although there is also all the pokemon ones, if you're into that The mystery dungeon games are on plenty of platforms, including some easy to emulate, if you wish to try before actually investing in any. Similar to those is the two Izuna games for the NDS, which are the type of games that some people love and others hate.

The best other example of a game that could work is Zelda games, which tend to be open world adventure games focusing around dungeon crawling, but usually with a storyline. I recently reviewed two Zelda Classic quests, which are user made Zelda games using the Zelda Classic engine, for my site, both of which were quite fun. End of Time DX has little story, but Lost Isle has story to it as well as a massive overworld to explore, with secrets everywhere. There's hundreds of quests available for Zelda Classic, so you can always look to find some good ones. Another two popular quests with storylines are Light of the Heavens DX and it's sequel Darkness Within, although I haven't personally tried them yet.

2

Programming / Re: More Free Tiles!

« on: May 09, 2013, 10:33:02 PM »

Love them, remind me of a lofi version of zelda sprites. My main complaint is in the bottom middle. The hill should have a top edge, too, it looks very strange. In the same picture, are the grey things rocks? They almost look like decapitated heads, minus the blood Other small note, in the bottom left you have 2 different water tiles, you should pick one and stick with it.

Either way though, good job

3

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Yanotavar, formerly known as Iso-Angband (now at r002)

« on: May 09, 2013, 10:20:13 PM »

The silhouette sprites are awesome looking, good job. Are you planning to make similar for players, or just sticking with the @?

And suggestion when you get to the varying, maybe modify the town generator to be a bit more interesting? (a circle around the stairs, maybe a river going through the town with bridges over it, trees, etc )

Also, how big is that window, and will the top right box be hide-able? On the client I use, I have a lot more windows than that open which don't look like they'd fit (stats, inventory, equipment, seen items, seen monsters, monster info)

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Pixel Dungeon

« on: May 07, 2013, 07:39:32 PM »

If you have found the stairs down, you have a compass in the top left pointing to it

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Yanotavar, formerly known as Iso-Angband

« on: May 07, 2013, 01:36:40 PM »

Wrong section, sure getter or someone can fix that for you. Also, the image links don't work (you don't need quotes around the link url on this forum, just remove those)

Looks nice, though could use some improvements. by "stacked graphics" I'm assuming you mean similar to what isometric games usually do, stacking tiles to make walls/cliffs. Would be interesting, but be careful with the tops of walls blending with floors on the bottom walls. I'm assuming those graphics are just place holder, as they don't seem to fit your idea, though comments, in the actual sprites try to keep the doors and stairs more in scale with the rest of the dungeon, in those screens they are quite large and don't fit well (look at the stairs in the second image)

Don't have a working windows computer at the moment so can't try it, but good luck, and love the name

6

Programming / Re: Playing around with a new kind of program architecture: "component system"

« on: May 06, 2013, 01:27:50 AM »

It depends how your system is set up. Mine personally has the entities in the system, and it just pulls the components it needs itself. For a by entity approach when the system contains components, you could have the components keep a reference to the systems that use them, so that calling an update method on the entity would go through the components and call on the systems they have. Just remember to either keep track of which systems were already called, or have the system only add itself to one of the components it uses.

7

Programming / Re: Playing around with a new kind of program architecture: "component system"

« on: May 05, 2013, 01:37:41 AM »

That is the basic idea, you can add some basic access methods that would be used a lot.(for instance, there is a "move()" method in my PositionData class that adds a vector to the current position, and the command to modify health in HealthPointData won't allow it to go below 0 or above 'healthMax')

I think a good way of thinking of it, is to think of a component as a new type. It's there to store data. Some types have methods associated with them, but nothing far reaching.


As for the component code you linked, I think it misses the point. The idea for a component system is that the System contains all the logic code, and uses data from components. There shouldn't be an update method in the components. Your "BaseComponent" looks more like "BaseSystem" to me, but missing the methods to associate entities/components to it(I associate entities, the article on the first page associated nodes full of the components)

8

Programming / Re: Playing around with a new kind of program architecture: "component system"

« on: May 05, 2013, 12:56:47 AM »

I think it comes to how it's structured, though the component system does seem better geared to real-time / tick based games than turned based. My framework has the ability to disable systems, or even entire engines. That is probably how I would do it, disable all logic except an "InputEngine", and the rendering ones. Once that input has been obtained, enable the other systems again and let them act until they can't (the player entity sets a flag saying it needs input) and then repeat.

9

Programming / Re: Playing around with a new kind of program architecture: "component system"

« on: May 04, 2013, 06:18:18 PM »

I have been working on a framework of my own, and will probably have more questions eventually as I get my head around the idea, but thought I'd chip in with an idea related to events.

Instead of making an event system as a whole, you could make an event component for specific systems to communicate. The first system evaluates that something is happening, so it adds the data about it to a component. Other systems check the same component, and act upon it.

I also agree though that this seems more like a mapping problem. You should have some form of map state access for all entities, so they can inquire to what is around them. You could go and ask the map "is this tile on fire?" and if it returns true, then the entity will act accordingly.


As for my own question, how would you suggest dividing up the code in a component based framework? Mine is similar to the article posted earlier, without the nodes. Engines store entities and systems, entities store components, and systems reference entities they work with, making it someone key-shaped I suppose. I was originally planning to make a LogicEngine and a RenderEngine, but I'm starting to realize that I should probably split it up even more than that, such as having a separate GUIEngine from the game's RenderEngine.

10

Programming / Re: Alternatives to Mana/MP?

« on: May 03, 2013, 10:14:14 PM »

I usually find ideas like this by plugging the word I want through El Goog's translator:

Magia : "Magic"
Anima : "Spirit" / "Soul"

A lot of the terms I put in either came out sounding strange or sounding like normal english words you wouldn't associate with magic (like "vigor"). I quite like anima though

11

Temple of the Roguelike / Re: Profile Pictures

« on: May 02, 2013, 03:29:23 PM »

Would external ones be fine, or same issues? I have mine sitting in my dropbox

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Temple of the Roguelike / Profile Pictures

« on: May 02, 2013, 12:08:07 PM »

I was wondering if there are supposed to not work now, or what. A while ago mine disappeared, and the page to change it gives me 2 options, none or choose from gallery, which is empty. No more uploading or using an external one. I still see a few people with the error images though, and one person with a working picture.

Just curious Not the most important feature of a forum, but seeing one person with one makes you want one too

13

Other Announcements / Re: [POLL] What are your biggest possible turn-offs in a roguelike?

« on: May 01, 2013, 10:09:45 PM »

My connection is 30 kb/s, sometimes higher. It also stalls and drops a lot.

He he, if that's in kilobits, then it's awfully close to the speed of my internet connection, if kilobytes, that's like high speed internet to me. =P

On the poll, kind of surprised that I'm the only one turned off (so far, of course) by not having an ASCII option...maybe I should give tiles more of a chance? I just love the simplicity of ASCII compared to graphics.

The thing is, a lot more games these days have graphics, many people avoid ASCII/character graphics now, and sure there's bad games with graphics, but there's also quite a lot of good ones. Avoiding graphics really cuts off some good games.

And sheesh, I couldn't imagine such a slow internet connection x.x I may hate being in bigger cities, but service is definitely something I enjoy having.

14

Other Announcements / Re: Nethack vs. Angband article

« on: May 01, 2013, 10:06:50 PM »

It's funny, because I felt the opposite way. With Angband's multiple windows it was easy to see the info I needed, I always found it more casual. I think the main reason though was I never read that the scroll would return you to the dungeon, so I always went from town, which ended up helping me stay well ahead of the difficulty curve. The curve is definitely faster than nethack's though, I remember around floors 20-30 it got much tougher very suddenly.

The difference with nethack is that it was fun to die, and try fixing your mistake. Especially if it was from something stupid you did. Angband though took much longer, and there was much more loss when you died after a relatively fun and simple run.

I think the two reviews hit the nail(s) on the head, though. A lot of it is polar though, you can't attract all gamers with a game unfortunately, it's a good display of the differences between players.

15

Programming / Re: The Ultimate Roguelike Tileset

« on: May 01, 2013, 12:01:54 PM »

It's kind of what Oryx does, I guess. I mean, look around and you'll see his tiles in dozens of games, so I'd say his method is working fine

Quite like these tiles, may give them a try in the future when I have the money to spare. Of all the tiles though, those sci-fi ones are begging for a first person dungeon crawl, with the way you did the directions