Messages

31

Early Dev / Re: Wanderers / open world RL

« on: September 25, 2014, 11:44:07 PM »

I'm trying a new cave dungeon style:



Also, in the previous update I removed the stun effect when you collide with a wall (when somebody hits you and smashes you into the wall, usually). This wall stun had too significant impact on the game in the past, it was the best way to disable and kill an enemy, but it was also very dangerous for the player. It also was not a programmed feature, but a consequence of other movement mechanics. So, I removed the effect, but then it turned out that it was a great feature actually. So I reimplemented this stun effect back, but this time it is much easier to tweak, so it is much weaker than it was before, significantly less dangerous, but still noticeable.

In the gif, the blue "%" notofications tell you that a unit is stunned.

32

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Neohack -- Not released yet, but now has a home page and a release timeframe.

« on: September 18, 2014, 07:27:25 AM »

Wow. The technical part is the biggest selling point for me. I'm shocked, in a good way. And it actually sounds like a system that can be sensibly moddable. Wow.

It's interesting what the time system is, and how everything is going to work together. You previously mentioned something about timers and event triggers, I'm looking forward to seeing it in action too.
 
Are you going to accept contributions from others, maybe with a repository on github, or you will be doing everything yourself? I'm just curious, because it can become a very important question in the future.

33

Programming / Re: Theory about popularity of languages

« on: September 18, 2014, 05:33:16 AM »

Modern graphical interfaces of OSX and Windows are simply not designed for developers, so they install IDEs <...> They try to hide the real paths of the files and substitute them with GUI dialogs and conceptual "Documents", "Pictures", etc.

It's true that Windows and OSX are designed for general use rather than development use, but even on linux a good IDE makes a huge difference to working on any non-trivial project.

I agree, complex programming systems like Java may be unwieldy without a good IDE. About a year ago, I thought about writing a game for Android, read about it, installed SDK. An IDE like Eclipse (or NetBeans) just ties all the pieces together, and it must be very convenient.

34

Programming / Re: Theory about popularity of languages

« on: September 16, 2014, 11:50:00 PM »

Modern graphical interfaces of OSX and Windows are simply not designed for developers, so they install IDEs <...> They try to hide the real paths of the files and substitute them with GUI dialogs and conceptual "Documents", "Pictures", etc.

Quite a few developers at our company use Macs. They say it combines the power of usual *nix environment with overall stability and comfort in occasional office tasks.

Well, OSX has a complete unix environment in the terminal. Like cp, rm, vi, awk, ed, bash, and other unix stuff. I was talking about the graphical interface, the way they handle windows, the dock, workspaces. When the windows you open are just text editors and terminals OSX is not that great. This is why many people like to install tmux on Mac, for example.

OSX is good at what it is doing, but I think it's GUI is just not designed for developers, and you need to install some extra soft, at least Sublime text editor, or tmux, or something to handle your projects. Choosing an OS is a matter of personal tastes.

35

Programming / Re: Theory about popularity of languages

« on: September 16, 2014, 10:40:59 PM »

Linux is a great OS, I switched from Windows about 7 years ago, first to Ubuntu, then to Arch Linux. Even 7 years ago in was a superb system. Never had real problems with it, installed it on 4 laptops and 2 desktops. I think, it is very convenient as a programming environment, especially if you choose a good desktop envoronment that does not get in the way (choose the one that works the best for you).

Modern graphical interfaces of OSX and Windows are simply not designed for developers, so they install IDEs, tmux or something similar to mitigate the issue. Linux on the other hand (especially with a good desktop environement) is already a development environment.

Another bad thing about modern Windows and OSX. They try to hide the real paths of the files and substitute them with GUI dialogs and conceptual "Documents", "Pictures", etc. In this respect, OSX's Finder is simply an insult to the user. I'm not an old unix hacker, but I value the simplicity of the system I am working on, and Linux fits my needs much better than Win or Mac.

36

Programming / Re: Theory about popularity of languages

« on: September 16, 2014, 10:08:01 AM »

As far as I know, all major programming languages with open source (i.e. GPL) implementations distribute their standard libraries under very permissive licenses: LGPL, MIT, or BSD. So, if your executable statically links the code of the standard library (which is probably the case when you build an executable), you are free to do anything you want with it

LGPL is not permissive. It was invented as a hack in the license, because GPL was simply impossible in some cases. LGPL allows distribution of executable without source code if you dynamically link it (which means LGPL licensed dll's are separate from the .exe). Not statically, as you wrongly say.

Great! Thanks for the correction. Both languages that I refered to as using LGPL, are in fact using LGPL with an exception allowing static linking.

37

Programming / Re: Theory about popularity of languages

« on: September 16, 2014, 08:41:20 AM »

Some (or more like most) languages have roots in hacky environments like unix/linux with complex setup rituals only few people are willing to withstand, and of course pesky GPL issues making developers not sure how they can release their programs (or even make profit).

As far as I know, all major programming languages with open source (e.g. GPL) implementations distribute their standard libraries under very permissive licenses: MIT, BSD, or LGPL (with an exception for static linking). So, if your executable statically links the code of the standard library (which is probably the case when you build an executable), you are free to do anything you want with it, particularly, you can sell it, and you don't have to give your code to anybody.

So, I've never heard of a well known open sourced language that has a bad restrictive license.

GCC - You are given a so called "GCC RUNTIME LIBRARY EXCEPTION" (https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gcc-exception-3.1-faq.html) to link GCC library code with your code and do whatever you want with it (unless you are doing really funny things). Yes, Stallman is a messy political guy, but the license basically lets you do anything you want.
From their FAQ:
Q: I am using a standard release of GCC (such as one provided by the FSF, or with my operating system) to compile GPL-incompatible software. How does this change affect me?
A: It should not affect you at all. Unless you've configured GCC to output intermediate representation—which is rare—the new exception is designed to ensure that you have no license obligations when you do this, just as the old exceptions were.
Rust - everything is under very permissive Apache / MIT license.
Go - evrything is under very permissive BSD-style license.
D - the standard library Phobos (as well as the DMD compiler) is released under BSD-style Boost license.
OCaml - the library is under LGPL (with an exception allowing static linking).
Haskell (GHC) - everything is under very permissive (2-clause BSD)-like license.
Haxe - the library is under 2-clause BSD license.
FreePascal - the library is under LGPL (with an exception allowing static linking).

(I am taking only compiled languages, so no Python, Ruby, Erlang)

Other libraries, particularly, ncurses, SDL, and OpenGL bindings are usually also under LGPL, BSD, or MIT license.

Edit: added Haxe to the list.
Edit 2: Thanks to Krice, updated the text. The LGPL-ed libraries I mention give an additional exception for static linking, even though it is not allowed by the vanilla LGPL.

38

Early Dev / Re: Wanderers / open world RL

« on: September 15, 2014, 05:10:37 AM »

1. Fixed a few mistakes in the map generation code.

2. Mobs are now picking up items. They do it in a relatively smart manner, evaluating all new equipment. The player has to be much more careful about the items lying on the ground. Also, killing a bunch of mobs in a row may become much harder, for obvious reasons. Say, you are killing the first mob, but the second takes its place, equipping some of the items dropped by the first and so on. However, the game does not feel harder, rather, I would say, it became more interactive and unpredictable. It also gives you more incentive to use doors.

An unrelated screenshot

39

Programming / Re: Writer needs Coder

« on: September 14, 2014, 09:46:36 PM »

I will give you a few ideas how to proceed in you project

1. Since you are probably a young game developer, you will learn a lot more if you start programming the game yourself. Without such experience, your design will always be weak and shallow. In general, unless it's a commercial project, be ready to do everything yourself.

2. C++ is an ok choice only if you already know this language well. Otherwise, I would suggest LOVE engine (LUA), or pygame (Python). Especially, if you don't know much about programming.

3. > "animations should have a playtime of 2 or 1 milli seconds"
It would not work. Many screens update just 60 times per second, that is, they update once every 16 milliseconds. The human eye and brain are also not that quick either. Animating actions in turn-based games is actually rather tricky, if you think about it. Example. You are surrounded by 100 mobs (it's feasible, it's just a square 10 by 10), do you want to animate their actions one by one or do all the animations simultaneously? If you want to do them simultaneously, what if some mobs are faster than the other? You have to think about such details beforehand.

4. The idea of multi-screen cities is ok. But try to implement such city generation yourself to see what are the possible problems. Procedural generation of a city is significantly harder than making random caves with random monsters. This is why in the majority of roguelike games, the village maps are not random but predesigned. Of course, randomly generated cities is a great thing, but make sure that you can pull it off.

I did not read the rest of the document, it's too long.

40

Design / Re: Copied content?

« on: September 14, 2014, 04:03:26 AM »

Sorry I was offensive, I was mostly against a particular type of brainless copying. When a developer is mindlessly taking design elements from popular games, not really thinking why those elements are good, or whether they need them or not. Then, they end up with a bunch of very generic and half-baked features that don't really work together very well.

On the other hand, as long as the developer is thoughtful and conscious about thier choices, it's fine to copy good examples. For example the rock-paper-scissors meta-game principle is good for balancing games. And actually the dice rolls are very intuitive and familiar to the players, and this is great. And replicating other games as a project goal is awesome (I like this list: http://osgameclones.com/), if the game is not free, if it is buggy, if it is closed source, or if you don't like where the project is going and fork it.

Another thing, even if you copy the monster and item definitions from DCSS or some other source, your game still may be quite original and novel. Actually, I think that using a well balanced set of mobs is an interesting way to start a new project.. You may replace them at some later stage, or keep (as long as you comply with the license of the source and give credit to the original developers), but I don't see anything inherently wrong about it..  It's like a challenge, and maybe an interesting 7drl idea?

41

Design / Re: Copied content?

« on: September 13, 2014, 06:49:36 AM »

If the license permits reuse then you can use it yourself. Not everyone will be impressed by this of course. Tributes are great, but verbatim copying is generally a bad idea. Change it, adapt other game's content for your needs.

On the other hand, copying ideas is ubiquitous in video games, and in roguelikes in particular, it's like a stigma of the genre, in my opinion. Many developers don't think for themselves at all, and stick to copying, copying, copying. The resulting product is just a plain banality, an no one will enjoy it. Even in a famous game like ADOM, there was a useless charisma stat. Another example, DnD dice rolls are not the only way to do randomness in a computer games, but people don't want to be original, even htough computers can handle more complex and better models.

And, btw, copying ideas is worse than copying verbatim content. The worst is copying bad ideas  All of us are doing that though, to some extent.

42

Early Dev / Re: Wizard's Awakening

« on: September 13, 2014, 06:22:41 AM »

Yeah, to use a rod, you click the left button, then click the target to cast the spell

I agree that the dungeons are a bit too random and practically unsolvable, but the initial map has several dungeons to choose from, so you can choose a good dungeon with items close to the entrance.. At least in the beginning.

My complaint is that I don't know for how long exactly the effects ("sleep", "confuzed", etc) are going to work. Since the game is 1HP style, it would help if (at least some) effects were active for fixed time (and possibly, I would like to see the counter in the number of turns). So you can be sure that a sleeping mob is not going to kill you in the next turn. Probably, the effect durations are discoverable if you play for long enough, but the player need an incentive to play for long enough )

Another thing. I did not visit a lot of dungeons, but from what i've seen, it's better if the dungeons have cycles (that is, ther are multiple ways to get from one point ot another). Since the game is kind of a stealth game, you want to be able to lure a mob into one passage, and safely use another passage yourself. On the other hand, if the structure of a dungeon is a tree, you have to face all the mobs, zap them all somehow, or just have to be super lucky to survive.

Also, btw, mobs interacting with each other and with the dungeon would be great. Say, when a dwarf and an elf mobs meet, they start arguing insted of pursuing you. Or you drop a pile of coins, and a greedy mob runs to pick up it. Or a group of bandits starts fighting for those coins. Such conflicts between mobs don't have to be the only way to deal with them, moreover, such strategies can be unreliable or somehow hard to pull off, but it would be interesting and more fun to play. Of course, it makes the behavior of the mobs harder to program.

43

Early Dev / Re: Wanderers / open world RL

« on: September 09, 2014, 08:03:18 PM »

1. I rewrote the inventory to handle stacks of identical items. As an example, added coins. Then, there is a special slot for money, so all CPU-controlled units will automatically keep their money there, and will be able to buy stuff from merchants. It seems that now nothing stops me from adding merchant actors and more advanced economical interactions (blacksmiths and craftsmen would be great to have, for example).

2. Added headgear. The game was definitely missing the medieval hats like these 

44

Early Dev / Re: The Temple of Torment

« on: September 07, 2014, 06:42:36 AM »

Just played the game about a week ago, and it felt very solid. Did not play the whole thing, but I cleared the bandits cave, and finished the first section of the main dungeon. Also, I only played as a simple warrior, and probably might miss some cool features. The game felt well balanced.

I liked the bandits' cave generator, but not that much the Temple's dungeon generator, which has a lot of unnecessary doors and duplicating hallways. Maybe, it can be improved.

1. Since there are many character classes, it may be intersting to see mobs who belong to those classes. They may be enemies, or allies. It makes the player become intersted in trying those other classes. You free a paladin from a prison or cage, and you together find the way from the dungeon. Or you have to defeat a sorcerer, and to do so you may seek help from another sorcerer sitting somewhere in a hut in the overworld map. Alternatively, you may find sorcerer's family member or his loved one, who will convince the sorcerer to give up his evil ways.

2. New characters may be unlocked gradualy. You may have to defeat such a character, or find an ally who belongs to this class, or do a quest that, for example, makes a druids sect move to the town, etc.

3. Some other random thoughts: It may be intersting to see mechanisms in the dungeons. Levers opening doors, lava rivers, a mob-producing factory (making iron golems, for example).

4. Collective mobs behavior (for example, when mobs run away if you kill one of them - the type of thing the Fallen Ones do in Diablo II).

The game's quest system is great, you don't see such things very often in RLs and other indie/free games, but it's a great thing. The game is very Diablo influenced.  Not sure is it good or bad, but it is quite amuzing that you can finally save the guy who is dying at the Temple's entrance.. )

A few more ideas:

5. Maybe, you may try to give the player more choice. Playing as a warrior class, my only tactical decisions were about trying to face only one enemy at a time. And always go to corridors to dispatch them one by one if they are in a group.

6. The time system can be improved. It feels that at the moment, all mobs have speed either 100%, or 200% (hounds). Some variety may make the game more tactical. It also gives more choice in picking your equipment.

Still, very solid game. I don't want to sound like I'm criticising it. It is immersive and you really get the atmosphere thanks to the dialogs and the quests, it's a huge plus. I think, it's good to add a new quest immediately after finishing the first section of the main dungeon, so the player gets a new big incentive for going deeper into the dungeon.

45

Early Dev / Re: Wanderers / open world RL

« on: September 03, 2014, 01:00:48 AM »

Update:
1. Fully functional doors, although CPU-controlled units are still not able to open/close them. I had to add the whole new idea of "positional objects" to the code. They will represent things like doors, levers, etc. And any unit can intaract with them (if their AI can handle it, of course ).

2. The melee damage of "dual wielding" units is now subadditive (the biggest weapon gives its 100%, the other(s) only 65%). It makes more sense. Also, I was trying to balance spears (polearms) - how strong/heavy they must be, and particularly, how to discourage dual wielding spears together with somethin else.. cannot say that I really succeded, but may be they are a bit better now.

3. Two more templates for dungeon generation. One of them features large circular rooms, promoting quicker exploration and maybe more intense combat.