Messages

91

Programming / Re: Spells data format

« on: December 09, 2011, 11:40:00 PM »

Dungeon Master seemed to solve this whole issue by separating the effects out into power words.

Rather than expecting players to program in json or the equivalent, wouldn't it be more fun for them to create spells from a basic word recipe book?

Then you could simply have: damage, area, slow

And then you'd be free to balance the engine without having to support legacy spell files full of magic numbers.

92

Temple of the Roguelike / Re: Tab posting

« on: December 08, 2011, 07:18:59 PM »

What is this "quick reply" wizardry thee speaketh of?

93

Early Dev / Re: Red Rogue (platformer roguelike)

« on: December 06, 2011, 01:06:52 PM »

Cheers, have another:



The underworld, from which the minion came.

94

Temple of the Roguelike / Tab posting

« on: December 05, 2011, 10:03:19 PM »

An odd effect here that I haven't noticed on other forums is that I can't enter a reply and then press tab and I can press Enter to post (because the post button is the next html element).

I'm suffering the irony of posting on a forum about games with often a purely keyboard interface and I can't operate the forum in the same manner.

Chrome OSX if that helps.

95

Programming / Re: ASCII vs 8-Bit

« on: December 05, 2011, 09:58:33 PM »

What's wrong with punctuation and other symbols?

Why not a fusion of isometric and ascii? Drawn ascii tiles laid out isometric. Has that ever been done?

96

Early Dev / Re: Red Rogue (platformer roguelike)

« on: November 24, 2011, 08:56:48 PM »

Just to update:

All of the races and items are in. Their special abilities have not all been installed but you can at least have a look at them with the debug menu. Their stats haven't been put in properly either, I'm going to try get extra spells in and round off each one at a time.

Decapitated heads can be crushed to produce "faces". Wearing a face turns you into that monster with its abilities and weaknesses (a sort of limited polymorph item). The disadvantage being that it counts as the armour you're wearing whilst you have it on.

Added a portal spell recently that can be eaten to open a permanent gateway to the surface to heal yourself, can enchant a weapon with random extra enchantments - but also sends it through a portal to a new mini dungeon where you have to retrieve it from, and it does other things too. So that's 10 spells out of 20 done!

I've also added menu enhancements such as guide arrows, menu movement speed settings, scrolling long names and a screenshot option.

Oh, and I've got creepy music and weird sliding walls called chaos walls that force you to explore more thoroughly. Later on the chaos walls will do nasty things like explode and spawn golems (I've yet to implement this but I'm looking forward to it).

97

Programming / Re: Damage Reflection: Melee or Missile

« on: November 20, 2011, 07:26:00 PM »

That's a great idea.

It reminds me of the "Diabolist" in the Palladium Role Playing Game whose ability was creating magic wards. Given enough time to prepare you could invent a lot of really interesting one shot traps. It even covered the practicality of warding weapons - you generally had to get in a lucky strike and make sure the materials used stayed on the weapon.

In my game you generally throw a rune at a monster to inflict an effect, it hadn't occurred to me to allow you to set traps as well!

98

Programming / Re: Damage Reflection: Melee or Missile

« on: November 20, 2011, 11:24:37 AM »

I checked Diablo's thorns mechanic after posting this and they also limit it to melee. I didn't know that till I looked.

I also have a protection spell that increases armour and reflects magic. So yeah - thorns does sound very much melee and thorned armour also sounds melee. I've even got a thorned race of cactus people.

It gives more value to the missile weapons and throwing weapons really doesn't it?

I still think it should reflect damage received though, because it's the sort of benefit you want when you go for a tank or high regen build.

99

Other Announcements / Re: Roguelike Radio podcast

« on: November 19, 2011, 10:52:21 AM »

Well done with this podcast. Got me to try out Brogue, which was a good game.

And the episode on prayer mechanics gave me an idea that helped me complete the list of spells and enchantments in my game:  A collectable Holy spell that fullfils the role of prayer - thus paying homage to the mechanic without making it a core element.

100

Programming / Damage Reflection: Melee or Missile

« on: November 18, 2011, 12:21:20 PM »

I've put a damage reflection mechanic in my game and I'm unsure how to roll with it. I've got "bees" armour and "flying knives" armour that reflect a percent of damage taken. I've also got a "thorns" spell that does pretty much the same when used to enchant armour (boosting or adding a thorns stat).

Originally I set it up as melee only. Then changed my mind and felt that it should offer some help against missile attacks. Then a play-tester piped up and found it odd that he was receiving damage reflection when using ranged weapons on a thorned monster.

Of course I could separate the armour effect and the magic effect - but aside from it being more work, it's also confusing for the player and inconsistent. The game is based around simplicity first and depth later, so this personally is my least favourite option.

Please vote and share your own opinion.

101

Programming / Re: Realtime or semi-realtime turns

« on: November 03, 2011, 01:13:34 PM »

You can give the player the option to pause the game and make decisions. Baldurs Gate worked in that fashion quite well - exhausting actions in the pause state and then letting it run to see what happened.

A good analogue of a real-time - yet grid based - dungeon experience would be the classic Dungeon Master. They handled turn-based-but-real-time really well.

102

Early Dev / Re: Red Rogue (platformer roguelike)

« on: November 03, 2011, 01:08:29 PM »

Aaand you can play it fullscreen now.

Been fixing a lot of bugs and adding features like infravision goggles and the leech spell.

Working on making the portal spell at the moment. Which requires a lot of work re-jigging the engine to buffer levels either side of the portal. It's a tough job, but it's going to add a whole new world of game play.

103

Early Dev / Re: Red Rogue (platformer roguelike)

« on: October 26, 2011, 11:13:23 PM »

Source code for the new build is up.

104

Early Dev / Re: Red Rogue (platformer roguelike)

« on: October 23, 2011, 08:36:01 PM »

Overworld finished. Exit upwards on level 1 to check it out.

Also added new rebuilt asset library. This means I can start adding new races, items and spells.

Next step: update github source code (it's vastly different to the current state of the engine).

105

Early Dev / Re: Red Rogue (platformer roguelike)

« on: October 22, 2011, 02:41:54 PM »

Update: default key bindings in - check the instructions link below the game. Also - ground work for throwable weapons is in. You can currently throw daggers. Also revamped the hot-key system.