Topics

1

Challenges / challenge: replicate pre-Rogue game D&D#1

« on: April 20, 2014, 10:18:55 PM »

D&D #1 was created on a teletype at Clear Creek High School in Houston Texas, connected via an acoustic modem to a PDP 11 type mini-computer. Richard typed the game on a separate terminal onto paper tape spools, then read the tape strips into the terminal connected to the offsite computer, and ran the resulting program. The resulting program would play a simple Dungeons and Dragons like role-playing game. The player had a character that would explore a dungeon in search of treasure while fighting monsters along the way.

No one has seen this game run since the retirement of the teletype in 1979, which is when Richard made the final printout of the game.

I bet somebody on these forums will win this challenge.  The original BASIC code is provided.

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?p=39149

2

Early Dev / Rogue State University

« on: April 03, 2014, 12:55:59 AM »

Hi all, I'm coding a new game using pieces from some of my unfinished older projects that weren't all open sourced.  It's going to be a pretty classic roguelike, nothing fancy, so I can use it as a base to build off of.  It will have a "university" theme, where the monsters are college mascots: wildcats, razorbacks, trojans, sun devils, etc, but be totally moddable by editing text info files.

Currently you can see a splash screen, a main menu, create a new game.  World generation just gives you a grassy field full of a few funny plants.  You can move the view around, or press TAB to get a "look/examine" cursor and see what's what.  No "@" sign on the screen yet, because I initially planned to use this code for a fortress simulator.  Nevertheless, I'd be happy to have you try to play it and let me know if it even works on your system.  Let me know what platform you're using, if you do!  And what version of Python.

I built this on Python 3.4.0.  It uses the pyglet library, but that's included in the download so you shouldn't need it on your system.

Source:  https://github.com/joeclark77net/roguestate
To Play:  python roguestate.py

3

Programming / any working pyglet roguelikes?

« on: April 01, 2014, 08:01:38 PM »

Anyone currently got a working roguelike built on the pyglet library (Python)?  I had one in development that worked fine on my old PC, but doesn't work on my new one.  I'd like to download someone else's game and run it -- to see if the problem is my code, or my computer.

Pyglet sprites simply aren't appearing in the window (or are appearing but they're all-black or all-transparent).  I have tested the code with simpler scripts and can't make it work with any sprite or any image (however, text labels work fine).  The game doesn't know it isn't working.  No error is thrown.  My code FYI: https://github.com/joeclark77net/roguestate

4

Programming / seeking entertaining game with hackable SQL database

« on: August 26, 2013, 06:59:50 PM »

Hi all,
I'm teaching a database course this semester, and will be teaching the students how to use SQL.  One of the things that I think would be fun for them is to show them how to use SQL to hack into a game and cheat -- give themselves more gold or something.  Can any of you recommend a game that is build on a SQL database (could be MySQL, or Access or something else), which is accessible (i.e. not encrypted or hidden on a remote server)?

I'm thinking that a lightweight and graphical RPG would be better for this than something complex, just because I'm not sure all of the students are "hard core" enough to enjoy an ASCII masterpiece like Nethack.  But a game of any genre could be useful as a class exercise.

5

Programming / how game developers are using stats + data mining

« on: June 19, 2013, 03:52:37 PM »

My academic work is in the area of business intelligence and big data.  I was browsing articles about the R language (at R-Bloggers.com) and came on this interesting link.  It's a presentation about the use of analytics the gaming industry called "Knowing How People are Playing Your Game Gives You the Winning Hand".

Obviously I don't have a game sophisticated enough for this, but there's some interesting ideas in it.  For example, you might try to build a model of user behavior to adapt the AI.  Or you might analyze where people have difficulties, or what interventions might prevent somebody from dropping the game.

Worth a look?  Get any inspiration?

http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2013/06/how-big-data-and-statistical-modeling-are-changing-video-games.html

6

Programming / pedantic object oriented question

« on: March 30, 2013, 02:25:23 AM »

I'm trying to be a good object-oriented programmer, but I'm self taught and maybe some of you with more book-learnin' have a better grasp of the principles.  One thing that has me stumped is this question: is it OK, I mean according to good practice, to have an object contain a reference to the thing that holds it?  It seems like that would violate some key design principle, but I'm not sure how to do it better.

Here's the specific case:
I have a map object that keeps track of all the Critters (monsters/npcs) and Things (inanimate objects) by their locations.
Critter objects each have an inventory (a python list containing references to Thing objects they're carrying).

This is what I think I'm doing wrong:
Critter objects also have references back to the map that contains them (and to the location that is their index).
Each Thing object has a reference either to the map and location, or to the critter (if carried).

But sometimes you want to look at the map and see what is present in a given location; other times you want to start from the npc or object and find out where it is located.  What would be the proper object oriented way to do this?  I know that this is a pedantic and unnecessary question, but learning a thing or two about programming is indeed why I'm making a roguelike, so, I'm asking anyway!

 

7

Programming / info files

« on: March 27, 2013, 09:54:19 PM »

Do any of you have advice for using external info files to enable quick definition of monsters, items, etc?  (And also for users to set preferences and/or mod the game.)  Are there particular data formats that are easier to parse?  I figure XML is a bad idea because it's so hard to read, but, maybe JSON?  I'm using Python for what its worth.

8

Other Announcements / anybody remember Dungeon of Doom for mac?

« on: March 22, 2013, 09:16:44 PM »

I thought my first Roguelike was an Angband variant when I was in college (MacAngband) but I got to thinking about it and remembered a shareware game for the Mac called "Dungeon of Doom" (ca. 1987).  It was graphical but definitely a roguelike with all of the standard features: random dungeons, shuffled potion names + scroll names, need to identify bonuses or curses on weapons/armor, etc.

Well I finally got it up and running on an old mac emulator (an emulator of old macs, I mean) and played it again for the first time in... 25 years?

The graphics are lame, the dungeons are not very well-designed (basically wide, twisty hallways instead of rooms), and the feature set is limited.  Still, it's fun to revisit the memory.

Download it here: http://macintoshgarden.org/games/the-dungeon-revealed
Another fan site here: http://www.sidhia.com/shrine.html

9

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Warp Core Breach (7DRL 2013)

« on: March 16, 2013, 09:20:11 PM »

Announcing my entry for 7DRL 2013: Warp Core Breach

This is a little puzzle game written in Python with the pyglet library (no other dependencies).  Not very ambitious, but this is my first completed game since I was 10 years old and writing simple text adventures on the old Apple IIe.

The premise:  The warp core has been sabotaged and in a few seconds a stream of supercharged hyperquark particles are going to burst forth and annihilate anything they come into contact with.  Your only hope is to reconnect the hyperquark spigot to a negatively-charged antiplasma node (or whatever... it's the blue thing).  You do this by moving angled mirrors around to reflect the particle beam.  Press <TAB> to preview the course of the beam, and <R> to rotate the hyperquark spigot.  Try not to get vaporized.

I will try to figure out how to turn this into an EXE by the end of my 7 days, tomorrow, but for those who have Python and pyglet, here it is: https://github.com/joeclark77net/jc77rogue/tree/warp-core-breach

10

Programming / how do you organize code, versions, projects etc?

« on: March 07, 2013, 07:24:16 PM »

How do you guys keep track of your code as you write and revise programs?  I'm looking for something that allows me to keep track of versions, and access the older versions of the code.  I also am undecided about whether I want to open-source my stuff... perhaps with some programs I will, and others I'll want to keep private.

I know there are version-control systems but haven't used anything like that since I was doing website professionally more than ten years ago.  So what's the best tool to use now?

11

Programming / who has implemented a hex grid?

« on: March 01, 2013, 05:45:36 AM »

Does anybody have any good code examples from implementing hex-grid game maps?  Or know of any games that feature hex grids?  I've been reading up on the different types of hex coordinate systems but they make my head hurt, and it would be nice to see them in practice.

I'd particularly like to see an implementation of the Generalized Balanced
Ternary approach.  I may have to set aside my dislike of Google for a while to sign in to that newsgroup and necro the thread at that link...

12

Programming / anyone know of a unicode character chart?

« on: February 28, 2013, 08:28:36 PM »

So I'm having fun creating ASCII character sprites out of a font chart i borrowed from Dwarf Fortress and it got me thinking about adding some of the more interesting characters from the Unicode world.  Internally to my project, they're just graphics, so there's no reason to be restricted to just 256 symbols.  The ethiopic characters, for example, have a lot of potential.  Has anyone drawn up a good bitmap character table of some unicode symbols (obviously not all!) that could be used in a roguelike?

I was able to find a website for browsing the characters (http://macchiato.com/unicode/chart/) and I found out about one free-software project to develop a bitmapped Unicode font (http://unifoundry.com/unifont.html), although that one's ugly and not monospaced.  Here's another free font that has a pretty good looking monospaced version, although it's not natively bitmapped (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeSerif).

13

Programming / game loops and information screens

« on: February 27, 2013, 04:35:50 PM »

Another newbie question here. I've been able to import a sprite-font, get a basic @ moving around the screen in response to key presses or automatic animation. 

As a complete newbie to game programming, I'm now trying to figure out the fine points of the game loop.  I'm using Python with the pyglet library and it implements its own game loop which you can attach event handlers to.  What I'm now scratching my head over is how to architect the program so that it can have alternate "screens" like an inventory screen.  When you guys do this in your games, do you implement each screen with its own game loop, and switch between them somehow?  Or do you use one game loop with "if/then" statements to correctly implement events/graphics for whichever screen is active?  Or is there some other way that's more sensible than either of these?  I don't need python-specific answers, just looking for the general idea.

14

Programming / emulating a terminal, and how to create a custom font?

« on: February 25, 2013, 08:07:31 PM »

I've decided that rather than deal with curses, I'm going to create a fake/emulated terminal.  For those who have done this, I have two questions:

(1) Do you generally display your map as a grid of "letters" or as a grid of "images" that look like letters?  Which would you expect to work better/faster in a roguelike?

(2) In python, how can I create a font from an image file (i.e. a graphic containing all the ASCII symbols in a grid)?  I know libtcod can do this, but it's written in C and the code is way too complicated for me to be able to figure out.  I want to use custom ascii characters to control my game's look, and perhaps enable modding.

15

Programming / some getting-started python questions

« on: February 23, 2013, 03:36:57 AM »

Hi all.  I've set out to create my first roguelike in Python, which I'm learning as I go.  I have many years of programming experience with web scripts, statistical stuff in R, etc, but never with stand-alone applications or graphics, so I'm not very familiar with game programming.  I'd like to pose a few questions to those who know something about this, in order to help me get started.

First: I don't want to use curses but would rather make a simulated-ascii game (i.e. use tiles that just look like ASCII characters).  This is because in the long run I want to use alternate tilesets, let the user resize the window, and do some funny stuff like arrange my map on a hexagonal grid. 

What librar(y/ies) should I use to implement this?  A "graphics" library like SDL or OpenGL?  Or a "GUI" library like tkinter?  I really have no idea about this stuff.
Bonus points: Can you get me started by showing me, in 3 or 4 lines of python, how to open a window and paint a tile to the screen with your recommended library?

Second: One problem I anticipate is that it might be difficult to print text to the screen, and to receive text input (eg. "enter a name for your character:") when I'm not really using text but actually a sequence of little graphical tiles.  Is this a major challenge, or is there an easy solution?

I guess those are my only questions to start with.  FYI, my vision is for a kind of settlement-simulator in the genre of Dwarf Fortress, but with a medieval theme.