Topics

1

7DRLs / Orb Temple [7DRL 2017] Failure

« on: March 04, 2017, 09:28:57 PM »

Well, I've decided that I'm going to attempt another 7DRL this year. This will be my third time participating.

Orb Temple (name subject to change) is going to use some of the ideas from my previous 7DRLs, Rogue Space Marine (2015) and Helix (2016).

Like my previous games, this will be a boiled down game with heavy emphasis on one hit-point tactical combat.

The basic concept is that the player is limited to two actions: move, or throw an orb. There are several types of orbs that can be thrown, each of which has varying effects, such as damage, stun, slow, repel, or confuse. The catch is that the player doesn't have control over which orb is thrown - the orbs will be queued up in a random order, sort of like the way blocks are queued up randomly in Tetris.

Here are some things I'd like to keep from my previous games:
- Bullet dodging
- Turn based mechanics with a real-time "feel"
- Cool-down timers on abilities
- Densely packed levels that thrust the player into immediate combat
- Punishingly high difficulty but hopefully a high level of replayability

Things that I'd like to improve upon from my previous games:
- More "readable" game state so that it is clear to the player if their attack will hit or miss
- More "readable" game state so that it is clear to the player if they will be hit on the next turn
- No crashes on level loading! (Helix was prone to this...)

I will likely be collaborating with a coworker of mine (Blake Barrett). He showed interest in learning Unity so we decided to team up. In the past, I've done my 7DRLs solo, but I thought it would be fun to try one out in a small group.

Planning on starting maybe Sunday.

-Brett Gildersleeve

2

7DRLs / Helix [7DRL 2016 - Success]

« on: March 04, 2016, 07:30:30 PM »

[Success]

Well, I finished. I'd call this a partial success. The game is playable but not as polished as I'd like. If you somehow manage to beat the last level, level, the game might crash. But, at that point, the game is over anyway! Hopefully there aren't any other glaring bugs.

Here's a quick tutorial video: https://youtu.be/TwJN8a8Kymg

Here's the download link: https://thesleeve.itch.io/helix

What follows below is my original post:

-------------------------------------

Last year, I made Rogue Space Marine for the 2015 7DRL Challenge.

For this year's challenge, I'm planning on doing another game, tentatively called Helix. The general idea is that the player has a limited number of moves which are "jumps" that form a particular shape. To get an idea of what I'm talking about, think about the knight in a game of chess. The knight can move two squares forward and one to the side, for example. Similarly, Helix will feature a collection of randomly-generated multi-jump moves and attacks that can be rotated 90, 180, or 270 degrees.

A few other notes:

• I'm using this as an opportunity to learn Unity. I made my game in GameMaker last year and I thought it would be fun to try something new.
• I'm planning on using one-hit mechanics similar to my game from last year
• I will probably use the same tileset and artwork. Sorry! The focus here is really more about coming up with new and interesting game play.

3

7DRLs / Rogue Space Marine (7DRL 2015) (Success)

« on: March 06, 2015, 10:04:34 PM »

Rogue Space Marine is my first attempt at creating a game. I coded it for the 7DRL challenge over the course of 7 days in March 2015. It can be described as a fast-paced coffeebreak roguelike.

The game is now listed on RogueBasin.



[Download] The Windows version is available on itch.io at http://thesleeve.itch.io/rogue-space-marine. To play, just unzip the file to a folder on your computer and run the executable.
[Tutorial] Here is a video describing how to play the game (of course, there is also a help screen built into the game).

Summary
I wanted to create a game that emphasizes the aspects of Roguelikes that I enjoy (procedural level generation, permadeath, tactical turn-based combat) while specifically trying to avoid the aspects that I dislike (experience points, levels, stats, hit points, lighthouse vision, quaffing potions, unintuitive interfaces…).

With this goal in mind, I devised a pretty novel system of combat in which there are only two resources: Abilities and Time.

Graphics
The game uses a graphical tileset and the interface uses the mouse and keyboard hotkeys (although the game can be controlled entirely by the mouse, if you wish). The game uses Sci-Fi sprites that I purchased from the Oryx Design Lab. I am using these sprites in accordance with the Oryx Commercial License. I created some additional sprites myself to complement the Oryx sprites.

Engine
The game was developed in GameMaker Studio, which I had never used previously! The code was built entirely from scratch; no external code libraries were used.

Game play screenshots:












Update [Saturday, March 14]
The development of the game was successfully completed! Here's a gameplay video:
http://youtu.be/ApWPsuHMmVQ

Update [Thursday, March 12]
I made some tweaks to the level generator last night.
Update blog post is here: http://7drl.org/2015/03/12/rogue-space-marine-update-4/

Update [Tuesday, March 10, 23:30 EST]
Update blog posted on 7DRL.org! http://7drl.org/2015/03/11/rogue-space-marine-update-3/

Update [Monday, March 9, 23:30 EST]
I have made some major progress! Procedural level generation is now up and running! Here's a short video demo:
http://youtu.be/BxqCyZZGbKA

Update [Sunday, March 8, 23:30 EST]
Here are some updates!
Here's a simple gameplay video: http://youtu.be/k5oFJEQPZbI