Messages

46

Programming / Re: Map Generation / Tile definition?

« on: October 05, 2009, 09:52:31 AM »

I sometimes think it's not needed. The old roguelikes worked with one item per tile. It was a problems sometimes, but not too often. Lately I think the added development overhead for more then one item per tile is not worth the little gain in gameplay value.

Larn for example has this restriction. I found it so ridiculous that I started to reimplement it.
There some places in the Larn code where generated items get thrown away because no free place can be found. On the other hand it looks really funny when the loot dropped when a monster gets killed keeps flying around.

I needed an inventory for the player, thus I implemented it. The pile of items on the floor,  the monster inventories  and the player's inventory share 100% code. When I add a feature, all benefit. Thus I had no overhead by adding more advanced features.

47

Programming / Re: NLarn - a Larn remake

« on: October 05, 2009, 09:36:25 AM »

Another week is gone, and fortunately I've been able to make some progress:

• made the LoD deadly  
• improved town further: (see attached image)
  
  • added mountain tile type
  • changed dirt symbol
  • changed the elevator to match the dungeon entrance
• cleaned up spellcasting:
  
  • book get used up by reading
  • spell power is increased according to spell knowledge level
  • spell description can be viewed.
• it is now possible to examine a remote position
• containers can be used (taking things out and putting things in is possible
• ...and of course: fixed some nasty bugs

Proper time management seems to be so complicated that saving and loading the game looked easy compared to it. So I started with that and hope to it this week. If I manage to do so I will put out another release this weekend.

48

Programming / Re: NLarn - a Larn remake

« on: September 29, 2009, 03:08:59 PM »

Phil Cordier, who maintained ULarn for many years, chose to modify the Lance, too:

In Larn, the basic strategy was to get enough money to buy a Lance of Death, usually by getting to dungeon level 10, killing or getting around the demon lord, and getting and then selling the Eye of Larn. This would usually get you enough money to buy the Lance from the dnd store. You could then go into the volcano and kill everything in sight with one hit from the Lance.

Well, the Lance is still deadly to all monsters. Demons, on the other hand, are merely tickled. And there are a LOT more demons (and relatives) in Ularn than in Larn.

(see http://www.cordier.com/ularn/)

This helps to get rid of all the other annoyances in the deeper levels, but keeps the challenge.. This is appealing to me, as the umber hulk or other nasties are pretty annoying when they get near.

49

Programming / Re: NLarn - a Larn remake

« on: September 26, 2009, 09:01:42 AM »

Currently the lance of death is a simple wooden lance. In Larn  it's totally unbalanced and makes the game too easy once you can afford it (at least that's what I hear).

I think I will turn it into a "one hit wonder" which will instantly break after killing something. This way it will turn into an emergency solution.

50

Programming / Monsters & Weapons

« on: September 24, 2009, 09:13:56 PM »

Today monsters learned to pick up weapons, wield them and hit the player with them, if the are aware of armed combat. Simple monsters like the gnome and hobgoblin can be dangerous now, as they are able to damage the player when wielding a proper weapon. Unfortunately all slayed monsters leave a weapon and turn the caverns into a junkyard. Now all monsters need a strength attribute, and finally monsters and the player will fight with the same rules.

The next important step toward completion (is there such a thing?) will be time management. Currently NLarn suffers from a very simple player-centric time management inherited from Larn. I want to transform that into a world-centric time management, which deserves to bear the name. Unfortunately I'm pretty clueless how to do that, as everything I have done till now just turned the time by a certain number of turns.

This will turn into a big rewrite of almost everything, which will be pretty time-consuming. I hope this will allow me to fix all problems regarding time, e.g. knowing that a spell book can not be understood before reading it or to allow to abort actions which take multiple turns when under attack. Speed is another aspect connected to time. This has to be fixed, too.

51

Programming / Re: NLarn - a Larn remake

« on: September 20, 2009, 03:04:17 PM »

Thank you all for your interest!

For the next version I made the town level static and much nicer than the original bunch of capital letters. Attached is a screen shot of the new town.

How do you like it?

52

Programming / NLarn - a Larn remake

« on: September 11, 2009, 03:19:29 PM »

Hello everybody,

I am working on a remake of Larn.
I baptized it NLarn.
You can have a look at it.

It's already quite playable but still lacks some things,  thus I posted it here.

Some notable differences to Larn:

• There can be more than one item on the floor
• A friendlier interface with color
• FOV

Greetings.

53

Off-topic (Locked) / Re: Future of RogueBasin

« on: August 30, 2009, 07:54:54 PM »

I do like the style that Wikipedia uses: example.com/wiki/Page_title.

54

Off-topic (Locked) / Re: Future of RogueBasin

« on: August 26, 2009, 09:43:08 PM »

Another idea: enable mod_rewrite and have sexy urls.

If there is any help required regarding the web server I'd be glad to help. I've worked two and a half year as a full-time PHP & MySQL developer and web server administrator.   

55

Off-topic (Locked) / Re: Future of RogueBasin

« on: August 26, 2009, 06:50:31 AM »

It would be very nice if uploading images was possible.

Is there a reason why this is disabled? Ererybody likes screenshots and the main page looked much more interesting while Wayfarer was the featured roguelike.