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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: New Roguelike: "The Hunger Games" - May the odds be ever in your favor ;)

« on: December 14, 2023, 07:51:06 AM »

A new version of the Hunger Games Roguelike has been released! The new version 3.4 is described here and downloadable here.

This is a minor update, and the first change in several years. It aligns with the recent release of the movie "The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes". It introduces a stadium arena type which can be used to simulate the 10th Hunger Games from the movie, along with tribute names from it such as "Lucy Gray". (To play in this arena, press Shift+F2 and enter "9" for the arena type.)

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: New Roguelike: "The Hunger Games" - May the odds be ever in your favor ;)

« on: September 19, 2016, 10:56:38 AM »

A new version of the Hunger Games Roguelike has been released! The new version 3.2 is described here and downloadable here, and includes the following additions:

• New Effects: Sound effects added for everything from cannon firings to receiving a sponsor gift. More detailed textures for landscape features and items on the ground.
• New Actions: Display most recent events that scrolled off the top of the screen. Take or give leadership with respect to allies, so they tend to follow or not follow you around.
• New Behaviors: Tributes have different customizable heights (with Careers tending to be taller). Tributes occasionally backstab allies even before all enemies are dead, especially if the ally is weak and effectively dead weight, so beware!
• New Settings: More options for customizing the play environment, such as water depth, fog effects, Mutt behavior (whether they can swim or climb trees), and special scenarios like dead tributes automatically rising as Mutts to create a zombie apocalypse!

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: New Roguelike: "The Hunger Games" - May the odds be ever in your favor ;)

« on: June 26, 2016, 11:12:44 AM »

Latest video somebody made playing the latest version of "The Hunger Games" Roguelike. They play it 6 times in a row demoing a variety of arena environments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dddNpk09mwM

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: New Roguelike: "The Hunger Games" - May the odds be ever in your favor ;)

« on: October 06, 2015, 10:47:05 PM »

Newest video somebody made playing "The Hunger Games" Roguelike. From a design standpoint, it's interesting to see somebody's initial impressions of a semi-complex game, and how they get used to its interface: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Stqm4kZ-NHM

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: New Roguelike: "The Hunger Games" - May the odds be ever in your favor ;)

« on: June 09, 2015, 11:52:34 PM »

A new version of the Hunger Games Roguelike has been released! The new version 3.1 is described here and downloadable here, and includes the following additions:

• New Arenas: Play in tropical island arenas, ruined city arenas, and even compose your own custom arena bitmaps (sample arena of the 12 Districts seen above). Beware the moving firewall of lava that forces remaining tributes together.
• New Actions: New commands to propose an alliance (which may or may not be accepted), and free fellow tributes from Nets. New map which only shows other tribute locations. Net objects can be set on the ground as traps.
• New Visuals: Movie of each day's fallen tributes is projected into the sky at night. Your movement in game smoothly animates showing intermediate frames. Tribute graphics show item worn when looking at them. Nine times as many chat responses, depending on personality and relative strength.
• New Settings: 26 new options for customizing the play environment, such as number of Mutts and when they're released into the arena, difficulty levels that don't indicate who died when the cannon fires, and option to automatically give tributes random District appropriate names.

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: New Roguelike: "The Hunger Games" - May the odds be ever in your favor ;)

« on: April 25, 2015, 02:23:03 AM »

This is the first video I've made of actually playing "The Hunger Games" Roguelike myself. As the District 10 Male tribute, I ally with the "Career" pack at the beginning, grab the best gear from the Cornucopia, receive a bunch of gifts from sponsors, turn on my allies, and finally hunt down the remaining tributes to become victor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gvjfldW3A4

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: New Roguelike: "The Hunger Games" - May the odds be ever in your favor ;)

« on: February 01, 2015, 01:50:07 AM »

This video of "The Hunger Games" Roguelike is the longest one made to date, consisting of four parts and covering 13 game days or 2875 turns total. After all their effort, will they be able to become victor? Watch the first video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u4AlWeS-E8

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: New Roguelike: "The Hunger Games" - May the odds be ever in your favor ;)

« on: December 02, 2014, 04:30:56 AM »

This quality video of "The Hunger Games" Roguelike is in German, the first video of the game narrated in a non-English language. See the narrator demo a few arenas, before proceeding to win as the District 4 boy over the next 19 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUuS3bCEmXM

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Programming / Re: Mazes: Not just for Maze-related scenarios

« on: October 19, 2014, 08:16:32 AM »

For rivers, I think it's worthwhile to generate a topographic map first.

I actually do generate an initial topographic map first. My rivers (and lakes) are generated at the lowest elevation possible. That means rivers don't flow in any direction, since all parts are at equal elevation. I overlay the rivers on top of the terrain, having the river and its zero elevation cut through the hills. Rivers/lakes have an "invisible aura" which gradually pulls down nearby hills to the water level, to prevent "roadcut" type vertical drops into water. A similar concept is used to have make the starting flat area by the Cornucopia, which gradually rises into the surrounding hills. The universal water level means you can dig down anywhere, and will hit water when you reach that level. See the above picture for an example of a lake with a river intersecting it, and how they affect nearby terrain.

An alternative approach would be to "paint" the river on the surface of existing terrain, which indeed should mean always flowing downhill. However, random terrain would likely quickly result in a river ending in the first concave bowl area it reaches, or else that bowl area becoming a potentially large lake (until it fills up and overflowing water can keep flowing downhill somewhere).

Awesome work on the HG roguelike, btw.  It's a rare opportunity to engage audiences with something like an "arena combat" scenario that is familiar enough to them to not require explanation.

Indeed, this Roguelike is a single player vs. many combat game, which is close enough to the Hunger Games scenario that you can just say "Hunger Games", and most players know exactly the program is like.

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: New Roguelike: "The Hunger Games" - May the odds be ever in your favor ;)

« on: October 08, 2014, 02:01:21 AM »

This is my first video of the newest version of "The Hunger Games" Roguelike, demoing the updated computer tribute AI. The computer is controlling all tributes from start to finish of the Games, and I'm manually flying the camera around observing the action. In this game you can see the six member "Career" tribute alliance successfully gang up on and defeat everybody else, before turning on each other at the final 6, with the District 1 Boy the final winner: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJSQXIy6fsI

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Programming / Re: Mazes: Not just for Maze-related scenarios

« on: September 10, 2014, 08:35:53 PM »

The newest version of the Hunger Games Roguelike uses Mazes in a few new areas. They can be seen in the aerial view map of the arena in the first post, which has been updated. Maze solutions not only generate random lines for rivers, but also boundaries between terrain types. In the picture, green is grass/forest, and yellow is desert. Also, Maze generation not only generates irregular blob shapes for lakes, mountain footprints, and meadows, but also terrain exceptions (e.g. a few areas of desert in the forest, and a few areas of forest in the desert).

Finally, Maze generation can be used for actual Mazes! The screenshot above shows an obvious Maze with walls for the players, with Mazes also used behind the scenes for the river, mountains, etc. For actual Mazes in an arena game I've found a "braid" style of Maze without dead ends (with many passage loops instead) works best, because it prevents human and computer players from camping out in dead ends, meaning you always have to watch your back.

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Programming / Re: Testing Mazing algorithms

« on: September 10, 2014, 08:28:46 PM »

Hey everyone! I have 2 different mazing algorithms that I am trying out.
The first basically makes a random path until it hits a dead-end, then it will restart at the most recent terminus.
exilania.com/tests/maze1.html
The second starts a path then randomly switches to another path that branches from a random node on the currently generated paths.
exilania.com/tests/maze2.html
I think they both have their merits. What are your thoughts? I am leaning towards the 2nd algorithm because of all the false paths it will create.

The first algorithm is commonly called "recursive backtracking", because it's stack based and always carves forward until it can't anymore, and has to back up the visited location stack to check previous locations. Recursive backtracking produces long passages with fewer dead ends. The second algorithm which periodically switches to another location to carve from, is a version of the "growing tree" algorithm. Both algorithms produce "perfect" Mazes with no loops or inaccessible locations, that are minimum spanning trees. These Maze generation algorithms and others that might be of interest are described on this page.

The "best" algorithm of course depends on what you want to use the resulting Maze for, and what experience you want the player to have. For example, in a Roguelike dungeon, it's okay to have Mazes with passage loops (which may be obvious doors, secret doors, and such), or "sparseness" in which not every solid area has passages in it.

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: New Roguelike: "The Hunger Games" - May the odds be ever in your favor ;)

« on: September 09, 2014, 08:03:47 PM »

A new version of the Hunger Games Roguelike has been released! The new version 3.0 is described here and downloadable here, and includes the following additions:

• New Landscapes: Play in a "Catching Fire" style clock arena (seen above). Climb over rolling hills, and experience a gradual day/night cycle. Head downhill or dig deep enough and you can find water. Play in mixed terrain arenas, such as half sandy desert and half rocky wasteland.
• New Customizations: Set number of Districts (1-13), and number of tributes per District (e.g. play games with over 200 opponents). Assign names to tributes (e.g. "Katniss" instead of "District 12 Female"), and select hairstyles. Try out a special wraparound surface-of-torus arena that goes on forever.
• New Items: Blowtorch weapon can be used to dismantle the Cornucopia walls, burn down trees, or melt unwanted items. Guns and grenades are powerful weapons very rarely available from sponsors. Armor reduces damage from enemy hits, and nightvision goggles allow seeing in darkness. You can even use sponsor gift parachutes to glide through the air.
• New Enemies: Some trees contain "tracker jacker" wasp nests. Chop down the tree and they'll sting whoever's nearby making them hallucinate! Periodic "Feast" events draw remaining tributes back together to fight. You can even rebel against the Capitol, and escape from the arena (if you can figure out how. )

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: New Roguelike: "The Hunger Games" - May the odds be ever in your favor ;)

« on: July 18, 2014, 01:13:25 AM »

This is off topic but I love Daedalus. First downloaded it probably 10 or more years ago and that website transformed me into the maze obsessed lunatic I am today.

That's cool you were already aware of "Daedalus" before this thread. Daedalus is the engine which runs the Hunger Games Roguelike. Yes, Daedalus has been downloadable since 2001, although its programming language and the Roguelike games that use it (such as Dragonslayer) didn't appear until a couple years later. Daedalus actually comes with 26 different games (mostly Maze simulations since it's a Maze generation program), although the Hunger Games is its best Roguelike.

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: New Roguelike: "The Hunger Games" - May the odds be ever in your favor ;)

« on: June 26, 2014, 08:59:16 PM »

Here's the latest video of "The Hunger Games" Roguelike. GameBot reviews a first time playthrough in the longest video anybody's made of it so far (he plays it three times in a row): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot5UADZZRC4