Fathoms: barely a Submarine Roguelike

[jasonpickering]

alright guys. I have been cruising these forums for a while cause I decided I wanted to make a roguelike and I came her from RogueBasin.

so basically what I was doing was creating a Victorian Science Fiction one, which takes place aboard a small sub travelling through the ocean. Now this started like any other roguelike but has gone through many iterations and lost some of its "Roguelike"ish qualities. so here is a basic idea:

1. you pilot a sub around the ocean.
2. the game is room based instead of tile based.
3. the game is you as the captain and you can hire 2 other crew members.
3. each crew member including you has one perk that affects the game.

some major deviations from the norm though:
1. its flash based
2. games should be quick no more then 30 minutes
3. its all graphics and with limited stats.

now I guess the main question is does all this sound good and what cool things would you like to see whether it be features, monsters or treasure. the gameplay now is a combination of a roguelike and DungeonQuest boardgame.

and heres a picture to give you an idea.

[Slash]

Looks nice, is there any place where we can see it?

[jasonpickering]

Ask and you shall receive.

so its very simple at the moment. this build is just moving and battle.

Click here to test

so you can move around, fight some things, the ocean is still pretty empty. nothing to exciting, but its starting to take shape. next I need to add items and a town. Once I get that done. I should have the basic engine and then its just filling the world with stuff.

Z is select, X is cancel.

Edit: oh forgot to mention it. this is being programmed in flash.

[Slash]

Looking pretty nice, good luck on its development--- graphics are ultracool!

[Fenrir]

I like the way this looks, and I heartily approve. The best suggestions I can conceive at the moment is to avoid common creatures like sharks, as such could hardly challenge a submarine. I hope I can think of something rather more helpful in time.

[Krice]

the gameplay now is a combination of a roguelike and DungeonQuest boardgame.

What are the roguelike features? Didn't catch one.

[jasonpickering]

I guess not much at the moment. When I think of roguelike I always think of Randomized map generation, turn based gameplay, and resource managment (like hunger and stamina). so i tried to stick with those specific things. but going with board game dungeon quest it has the first two but not the third. Also I will be doing character where you build your captain. so you can choose face and perk. the other 2 crew will be randomly generated and you choose from a lineup.

Any thing I could do to bring in a more Roguelike feeling?

[Fenrir]

I'm not a developer, but I would suggest that you not concern yourself with making it a Roguelike. Don't call it a Roguelike if it isn't a Roguelike, but don't try to shoehorn your game into the genre either.

Any plans for submarine upgrades? They shouldn't be particularly varied options, because your game is supposed to be short, but a few independent purchases to customize the submarine would be fun.

I hope someone with some experience in such matters can help you. I'm no game developer, so I can give little advice that is of any value.

[Z]

"Randomized map generation" - IMO it is very important for the roguelike feel that the game world is separated into small squares (cells), where "small" means each of them can usually hold at most one creature, and the player (usually) sees many cells around him and creatures in them. It is also important that the arrangement of the cells is tactically significant (for that last reason I don't consider Decker a roguelike, where rooms are separated into cells, but this is just a way of showing things graphically, it does not matter for the gameplay). If the cell takes up whole screen, fits both the player and the monster, and after entering a room you have a chance of finding a creature which you could not see before (as is the current situation as far as I understand), that's not a roguelike, even if the structure is created randomly. It may still be a randomly generated tactical game and some people may like it.

But yeah, your goal is to create a fun game, not to follow a definition.

[MrMorley]

Looks interesting. Already I'm having visions of fighting Cthulhu in a submarine, but I'm weird like that xD

[jasonpickering]

cthulhu is from beyond space and time. you cant beat him.

[jasonpickering]

So I am still working on this. I added items to the game, but now I needed to add a way to get items. so i started working on the town structure. well this has been rather complicated and I decided that actual moving around the town from building to building would be better then just having one window with everything you can buy from town (this was my original idea). this caused a problem because now I had to build a system for when you are outside the sub, which I had originally planned but was waiting for later. so thats whats been going on recently just thought I would give an update. so once I finish this I can use the system to walk around towns and also walk around outside the sub.

[Fenrir]

Awesome. This holds promise.