Escape from lab 99b- 7DRL 2014

[Pickledtezcat]

I'm posting updates in my blog:
http://pickleddevblog.blogspot.kr/

but I'd like to get some feedback (almost no-one reads my blog and those who do never comment) so I'll post here too.

Here's a shot of the game with map and entities working:


I'm using the in game map from my current RPG roguelike project but modified.

All entities will be represented by symbols, just like a traditional roguelike. The game will be turn based.
One area I'm departing from tradition is in stacking. Most units can be stacked up to 4 in a single square. I'm going to allow stacked movement and maybe stacked attacks.
This is how I plan to deal with the multiple character aspect of the game.

You'll be controlling up to 4 drones, but it's possible to move them as a single group, though not in narrow corridors. Choke points like that will require you to advance one at a time, making you more vulnerable. You may also want to split your group for scouting (if you have a drone with a stealth module) or to remove a seriously damaged drone from the stack to avoid it taking damage.

Player movement and map reveal is working, entity population and placement is working, map generation is working, though I will probably add more room variations.

[Samildanach]

I'll be interested to see how this stacking idea works out. The ability to split characters out from the stack is going to being essential to making it work, I think. Good plan.

Visually, how will a stack be represented? How will you know whether you're facing one D or four Ds?

[Pickledtezcat]

After some playtesting I think the idea needs some extra work.

Some of the connecting corridors have to be wide because moving between rooms without stackable movement is a little hard work, and there's a lot of corridors. Maybe having some bigger room archetypes would help. Enemies don't generally spawn in corridors so it's not a big deal.

Maybe a follow AI for non stacked units would be good, but I don't have the time to implement that yet.

You can see in the screen shot that some squares have one D (drone) while others have 3 or 4. Where there's only one unit in a square it's placed in the center of the square, otherwise they are placed in a 2x2 grid.
It's not clear from the screenshot where the squares are but you get a idea of the layout very quickly when playing and moving your pieces about.

BTW, There will be other enemy types, and the game is written so that not all "D"s are equal.

It's been great entering the competition because it allowed me to try some ideas I have for my current big project. Stackable/group-able movement for multiple player characters being one of them.

Some things have worked well, others haven't.

Somethings have made me question whether code I'm using in my main project is working properly because it isn't working here.

I'm not sure I'm going to get finished on time but it's been useful anyhow.

[Samildanach]

I think that's one of the benefits of 7DRL. Like NaNoWriMo for writers, it pushes you to be creative and innovative, try things out and not worry too much about getting it perfect. You can at least emerge from it with some new ideas for future use. Nothing wrong with that.

[Pickledtezcat]

So close to being finished, but I don't think I'm going to beat the deadline.

I still have to do enemy attacks and put in the code for switching levels, but there's just not any time left.

I'd also have to do something about packaging it for people to play and getting people to test it to make sure it works.

Anyway, next year 'll give it a try again. I learned a lot and I'm sure I'll have a lot of useful stuff to put in to the mix next time, and so won't have to write so much from scratch.

The biggest drain on time has been testing everything and clearing bugs. It didn't leave much time for actual design, and like 70% of features didn't make it past the coding stage.

Stuff that i wanted to work on (parts of the code were there but not working):
Hacking, some drones have a hacking module making them able to activate repair booths or damage nearby enemies from a range.
Stealth, some enemies and player units should have stealth, making them invisible.
Weapon stats. Right now every weapon is 100% accurate and just blazes away at the enemy armour. I wanted so much more including hit location tables, ranged attacks and accuracy.
map nodes and AI nodes. Some computer booths where supposed to have a special effect if you activate them with a hacker, such as revealing the level map, or making every enemy drone inactive.

Here's a picture of the final result in all its not finished glory: