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Non Traditional Roguelikes (Action / Real-time) / Wide Expiration Space (Wesmaze)

« on: October 23, 2016, 06:48:23 PM »

Wesmaze is an arcade-roguelite I developed back in 2009 after I finished Rogue Planets.

Prologue:
The end of the universe has come. More and more suns are turning into supernovae, obliterating all their planets. Perhaps, as some scientists theorized, the universe will soon reset as time loops back to the start after reaching its end. But the fact is that no human will be able to survive much longer. Most of us already died when the Earth was destroyed. There were a few survivors, crews on space ships in deep empty space; I'm one of them. I command my own small space ship with no crew except me. However, the other remaining humans eventually gave up hope when they accepted their situation, committing suicide. But I'm different. Of course I realize that it will be impossible to live on much longer, but if I collect resources from the remains of the planets flying though space I believe I can prolong my life -- perhaps even so long that I die of old age. That is the goal of my remaining life.

In other words, Wesmaze is a game only about surviving as long as possible and consequently gaining a high score.

You can download the game here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1VapDGffCdPMms5d2ZhdnNCVHc

Developer's Note:
During the development of Rogue Planets I added a real time aspect to the game that affects the score and I found that the time aspect made the game much faster-paced and requiring a lot more playing skill. I wanted to put this into a new game, making speed not only affect your score but also how long you survive. A fast-paced game that's easy to learn but very hard to master. Also, there was a person called Wes who kinda liked my games but always complained about the field of vision being to small and I always argued that it is important to have a small field of vision as that makes you require more playing skill. In Wesmaze, the discussions with him actually made me have this game idea: I allow people to set their field of vision themselves, but strongly punish them for making it big. So in Wesmaze, there are suns (supernovae), but you should not only not touch them, alone having them in your field of vision strongly damages your ship. This is the core idea of the game.

So flying as fast as possible, avoiding asteroids and never revealing suns is the core aspect of the game that's easy to learn. There are tons of ways to earn points in the game. Being fast, never taking any damage, flying close past asteroids. But the real complexity comes with its "extras". The first extras are simple S=Shield+ and T=Time+, but after that, each stage, another extra is assigned to a letter. You will know the name of the extra but what exactly it does you have to find out yourself (the name might give a clue, though). The letter assignment is different each game and you only see the last 4 letter assignments, the other letters you need to keep memorized in your head. All the extras can be good or bad, depending on the situation, so learning what each does and quickly deciding whether and extra should be taken or not, can have a huge impact on how far you get and how many points you get.

I strongly recommend reading the included readme.txt before playing as it gives a lot of valuable hints.

I played this game for many years and still managed to get constantly better at it and gaining higher scores. I really like how the game ended up. But I only ever released it in one community so far. Well now you can play it too. :-)

Just in case you want to challenge the developer... here are my "1 Life" scores I gathered from 2009 to 2013:

2

Other Announcements / Looking for Wizardry-like roguelike

« on: June 30, 2013, 09:29:46 AM »

Hi guys, I recently got to love Wizardry and played through each part one-by-one, I especially liked the ones that are mainly about dungeon exploration. However I'm always sad that there are only a limited amount of floors and when you did all that, there's nothing else to do other than grind for rare loot (which is pointless because there is no challenge left). So I thought, man wouldn't it be cool if there was something exactly like Wizardry, same gameplay, same ruleset, but where the dungeons are created randomly and have an endless amount of floors that get continously harder?
So I wondered if anybody had this idea before and made something like that.

Some notable mechanics I'm looking for:
- 3D grid-based dungeon view (with minimap through spell)
- play with a party (3 front, 3 rear - or similar)
- once a floor has been generated, it should never change anymore (but you can generate a new dungeon)
- players can leave the dungeon and go back to town, identify items, heal up, etc. (later easy with emergency exit spell)
- if a character dies, he can be dead for good, but can be replaced with a new level 1 character, if the party is wiped, the main character will awake in town again and all others are dead
- possibility to shortcut in the dungeon to get to deeper floors faster once progressed enough (in Wizardry this is done by teleportation spells as well as elevators)
- random encounters that all have chances on dropping various different equips including some very rare ones
- possibility to change class: character restarts at level 1, but keeps part of his previous stats and abilities
- doors, locked doors (require thief or key to open), hidden doors, traps, dark fields (can't see), anti-magic fields (can't use magic), anti-warp fields (can't warp to with teleportation), treasure chests, maybe some hidden secrets and story-bits

Even if it only fulfills some of these points, I'd be interested in it. Any ideas?

3

Off-topic (Locked) / Game Design question regarding movement in text RPG

« on: December 21, 2011, 06:52:08 PM »

(copying my post from another forum, posting in off-topic section because it's NOT a roguelike, I ask here because I think roguelike players might be most familiar with movement in text based environments)

The situation is the following:
 
I made an RPG that is played text based. Basically you get a descriptions of what is happening and then you can choose actions. In movement mode it tells you the directions (north/east/south/west). Now you can enter n/e/s/w and press enter to move into that direction or a number (1, 2, 3, ...) and then enter to do one of the listed actions. I originally planned that every single "map tile" is unique, so I designed the game originally quite narrow (basically every step a battle and every two steps a scene).
 
When I first released a demo of it, many people suggested to get a minimap and they also wanted to use u/d/l/r (up, down, left, right) for walking into directions because some keep mixing up east and west. So I did.
 
However after I did there were bothered about every step a combat and asked me to make the design so that the regions are much larger but that there is only a battle every few steps. I didn't want to re-design the original regions, but I found that they got a point, because the exploration feeling gets better like that. So for later regions I did that partly. But if there isn't a combat every tile it has the weird affect that you walk around a lot which basically mean: "n + enter + n + enter + e + enter + ..." I think you get what I mean.
 
So I'm not trying to implement an optional "direct" mode, where you press the arrow keys in order to move directly (without pressing enter). You can also press NESW/UDLR and the number for actions directly in this mode. For arrow keys it's pretty clear, they are not used anyway. But now it occured to me that some people might want to use WASD instead so they can play the game one-handed (when I developed coffeebreak roguelikes it was quite important for the players to be able to play with one hand optionally).
 
The problem now is that WASD would be conflicting to NESW/UDLR. So I wonder which one I should take. Should it be NESW/UDLR in confirm mode and WASD in direct mode? I think that's pretty confusing. I'm already used to NESW so much and I really don't want to change confirm mode...
 
So my question is: Do you think movement with WASD is required or would arrow keys / NESW / UDLR suffice?
 

Basically the options I see are:
 
1.
 Confirm Mode - NESW/UDLR
 Direct Mode - NESW/UDLR/Arrow Keys
 
2.
 Confirm Mode - NESW/UDLR
 Direct Mode - WASD/Arrow Keys
 
3.
 Confirm Mode - WASD
 Direct Mode - WASD/Arrow Keys

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Temple of the Roguelike / View Counter

« on: October 26, 2009, 10:26:03 AM »

Is the view counter really working? The numbers seem really high. Like one of my thread stayed completely unanswered but has >400 views. Either we have hundreds of lurkers or you guys check out the same threads daily. xD

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn-based) / Rogue Planets

« on: August 11, 2009, 06:42:35 PM »

This thread is for discussing my own game (Rogue Planets). For more information read the announcement here: http://www.roguetemple.com/forums/index.php?topic=439.0
Version 1.2 will probably remain the final version unless some critical bug is found.

Either way, I'd really like to get some feedback.

Also can someone maybe add it to the database or even write a review on it?

I know it's really 'minimalistic' but if you give it some time you'll realize that it's much more skill-dependent and complex than it seems. It only got like 15 downloads so far and I know that 2 people got addicted (3 if I include myself), that's not too bad I guess. Nobody managed to clear it completely except me yet, though.

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn-based) / Looking for a roguelike like this

« on: August 07, 2009, 07:29:06 AM »

I have a very specific taste when it comes to roguelikes, I only really like very few of them, but some I really love a lot and I wondered if I can find more games that fulfill the follow criteria:
- they are easy to get into, that means you don't need to learn a hundred keys, preferably they only require moving and two buttons (confirm/attack and cancel/menu), but up to 6 keys is still fine; they can be hard to master, but I'd prefer if they aren't "too hard"
- they have 2D sprite graphics, even if the quality isn't really high, I neither can get used to ascii graphics (which usually also means they don't feature a well-designed menu) nor do I like 3D graphics too much
- length doesn't really matter, preferably they are longer and include a save feature, but shorter than one hour without a save feature is fine too
- either free to download or at least still available in some shop (I don't mind paying money but I hate ordering online directly from the creator, buying on amazon/similar is fine)

Some roguelikes I really loved so far are:
- Fatal Labyrinth
- Dragon Crystal
- Lufia 2 Ancient Cave (it's a minigame inside Lufia 2, but it's pretty awesome)
- Shiren the Wanderer
- Rogue Planets (yeah I got addicted to my own game, poor me)

7

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Rogue Planets v1.3

« on: August 06, 2009, 06:51:06 AM »

Here's a game I made lately and I thought it might be liked here, that's why I registered to tell you about it and maybe I'm lucky and get some discussion going on about it. An arcade roguelike puzzle hybrid you could call it. It puts an emphasis on easy controls "You only need one button" and a simple idea "roguelike with the least possible features" but also on an arcade-like feeling with a complex point system and high score tables.

You can download the final version of the game here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1VapDGffCdPbEJxckI4LUYtdm8 (version 1.3)

Everything is explained in the readme file. But I'll explain it with some screenshots.

First of you can select a planet. Each planet will have different characteristics. While one has many unwalkable places, another one has very little food and another one is crowded with monsters. At first you can only select two planets, but you can unlock many more.


After having selected a planet you can start the game and will find yourself on a random location on the planet (you are free to randomize your location again at the start point but all points and food will be reset).

Now your objective is to reach the bottom floor and find the treasure there (or just walk around and aim for the high score). You can pickup food, fight monsters and go stairs down and up. Yes you are also able to go stairs up again, in fact some planets require you to go up a lot if you want to get to the treasure eventually. When you find the treasure on a planet the first time you'll get a key item and points. If you beat the planet continuously you'll just get points from the treasure (but those points are important when aiming for a good high score).
Monsters are all immobile and you can just walk over them, but each time you step on their tile they'll damage you. If you are on their tile you are free to kill them for a little energy and then they're gone and you can walk on their tile without taking damage again (deciding whether to kill a monster or not is very important on harder planets).


The main challenge in the game is to find the correct path on the huge maze-like planets, without running out of food or dieing from a monster (running out of food won't kill you but it will make your energy reduce every step). You have the possibility to check up on a map which shows you the area around you, but only will show you the places you've already explored. On some planets you can distinguish explored tiles from walls while on others you can't.


If you die or leave the planet (you can do so after picking up the treasure), your score will be added to the high score list. The high score list itself can be accessed from the planet selection screen and you can even sort it by planet names or parts of planet names (if you enter "r" it will display all planets that have an "r" in their name).
You get points through 4 different ways:
- Exploring tiles
- Killing monsters (with combo chain bonus)
- Using stairs down the first time on a specific floor aka clearing the floor
- Finding the treasure
The speed of your actions will also affect the amount of points you get, so if you play really fast and never lose the orientation (thus don't need to open the map which costs time) you'll get a lot points.

Here are my high scores of the first two planets, try to beat them!



A friend of me who loves roguelikes said it's addicting and I got quite a bit addicted to it as well. Wish I could fight with someone over the best high score.

Oh and the game itself has intentionally no music, as most people I know never listen to game music to begin with. Most prefer to listen to a CD or some MP3s on Winamp while playing, I do so too. So just put on the songs you like to listen to while playing it.


Version 1.1 adds two more features that I got inspired to add thanks to the feedback here.
One is that you are able to mark one tile. So if you have a bad memory you can for example mark the stairs from which you came or a narrow path that leads to a dead end. The marked tile will be displayed yellow. If you mark a new tile the old mark will get removed.
The other feature is that the combo counter is now displayed on the right sight below the speed (the combo counter affects how much points killing a monster gives you).
Also the version number will now be displayed in the planet selection window.


Version 1.2 adds some more features that got suggested.
Here's the list of the changes:
- You can now additionally move with the WASD keys similar to the arrow keys. This got added so it's possible to play the game with one hand.
- You can now mark a tile by right clicking on it; same rules apply as when you press Ctrl; this also allows you to mark tiles that you can't reach by walking. This got added so you can use your keyboard for moving only and do all actions with the mouse (pressing the button, opening the map and placing the marker is now all possible with the mouse).
- Greatly reduced the chance of an unreachable treasure to occur; it never happens on most planets now. If the algorithm doesn't manage to make a beatable stage after a certain amount of time it will tell the player that the treasure is unreachable; you are then free to change your position.
- "Dead" will now be called "Leave Planet" as you keep your items when you do it. If your energy runs out it basically means that you can't go on and have to return to the ship and not that you actually die (but I'll call it dying here anyways).
- The square indicating your current position will now be orange as long as you can step on a monster and survive. If you still have food you can even step on a monster and kill it. This makes it easier to see when you can actually hunt monsters without dieing. Be aware that if you have no food left you might not be able to kill a monster even when you're still orange because you might die from the hunger.
- Added a fixed world multiplayer feature that allows playing on the same world as a friend. One computer is required per player. You can also play alone on a fixed world, however your score and progress will not be saved in this case.


Version 1.3 adds a few more mainly cosmetical improvements.
On the planet selection screen the planets will be connected with each other, so you can see which coordinates / items lead you where.
The values on the game screen are now shown in categories. This makes it easier to find the value you're looking for easier.
Also it's now possible to close the map with a double click just like you open it.

As the changes from version 1.0 to version 1.3 don't directly change the gameplay or point system all versions are compatible with each other. You can use the same *.dat files for all. If you just want to update your game just overwrite the RoguePlanets.exe file and readme.txt and keep your *.dat files.

Enjoy!