Fida'i - 2014 7DRL

[pat]

Fida'i is a game of stealth, subterfuge and murder. You take the role of an assassin sent to kill on a series of ever more dangerous missions which will require careful planning and intelligence for you to be successful.

http://sites.google.com/site/fidairl/



Fida'i is unlike other roguelike games in that you are much physically weaker than most of the game's enemies and if you decide to challenge them on an even playing field then you're going to have a very brief game.

Sneaking up on unaware opponents, running and hiding, throwing stones to distract your foes and making use of the other tools at your disposal are all tactics you'll have to exploit to reach your goal. The game utilises a directional field-of-view which means that enemies can't see you coming as you loom up behind them to dispatch them, but you need to be vigilant to avoid being caught unaware with the sound of an approaching threat being your only warning.

[LazyCat]

Doesn't work, WinXP:

Code: [Select]

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "main.pyw", line 2, in <module>
  File "libtcodpy.pyc", line 60, in <module>
  File "ctypes\__init__.pyc", line 440, in __getitem__
  File "ctypes\__init__.pyc", line 435, in __getattr__
  File "ctypes\__init__.pyc", line 365, in __init__
WindowsError: [Error 126] The specified module could not be found

[pat]

thanks for letting me know that - I tried to fix it and hopefully it works now!

[LazyCat]

Yeah, it works now.

[koiwai]

Played a little bit. In the best attampt, I reached mission 3. I wish that my FOV was larger, maybe 180 at least. Finding the target is hard sometimes.

For a stealth-like game, I would like to see the map better, maybe even to have some supernatural perception for seeing/hearing through walls and smoke (by drinking/smoking something?). So the game would become a puzzle. Also, it would be great if the guards were patrolling  routes, not just walking randomly, and maybe the map was a bit more regular. Currently, the game feels a bit chaotic, and I feel half-blind. I see the merits of this design, but I want to be more in control of the situation. 

[pat]

Played a little bit. In the best attampt, I reached mission 3. I wish that my FOV was larger, maybe 180 at least. Finding the target is hard sometimes.

For a stealth-like game, I would like to see the map better, maybe even to have some supernatural perception for seeing/hearing through walls and smoke (by drinking/smoking something?). So the game would become a puzzle. Also, it would be great if the guards were patrolling  routes, not just walking randomly, and maybe the map was a bit more regular. Currently, the game feels a bit chaotic, and I feel half-blind. I see the merits of this design, but I want to be more in control of the situation. 

hey thanks for the feedback. Definitely take your point about the AI. It really ought to be more puzzlelike rather than a bit of a gamble as to when your potential unaware victim is about to turn around and bust you. Obviously that level of randomness is undesirable. The field of view was meant to be deliberately claustrophobic so you were making decisions with less than perfect information, but I'll take a look at that as well.

I was already planning on doing a post-7DRL AI-fix to look at a few issues, and you raise some good points. I think I'll add a random patrol route for each guard which they'll follow unless they see something untoward, along with other AI efficiency improvements. It's a bit clunky at times, but in the midst of the 7DRL, near enough is good enough!

[Vanguard]

I like the NPC's chaotic behavior just because it's different.  Every stealth game in the universe already has patrol routes.

[koiwai]

Hahaha, Vanguard, I like your point. Still, outsmarting some regular-ish behavior feels more rewarding, I think, than outsmarting random( 8 ). Although I agree that AI blindly following a route is a pretty dumb behavior too.

As an idea:
Consider the following approach, you can call it "Flow map". For all walkable tiles, you define the preferred direction of motion (not necessarily 8-directional). To generate such a map, you start with a single closed non-intersecting path, then perturb the map little by little, making so that eventually, following the map, when far away from the original path, you gradually converge to it, or move along that path. [Something resembling this] The unit using this map still moves randomly, but its movement is biased to following this flow map rather than being completely random.

I'm just thinking what can be done, probably, this is not a good idea at all.

[Samildanach]

I like the NPC's chaotic behavior just because it's different.  Every stealth game in the universe already has patrol routes.

I agree. I also felt like I had to be more careful because the NPCs weren't predictable.

I like it. Interesting concept done well, especially considering it was put together in a week.

[pat]

Thanks for the couple of reviews that have already been put up on http://7drl.roguetemple.com/Reviews

One consistent thing seems to be the love/hate relationship with the cone field of view. That's something that I'm happy with and I try and write games that I would enjoy so I don't think I'll change it but it's cool to see just how polarising that one feature is.

One reviewer said it would be a better game if it included backstabbing. I can't comprehend how they played the game without backstabbing because that's almost the only way to kill anyone.

Other criticisms about sloppy vi-key implementation are valid and probably unsurprising that I didn't properly test that because I don't use vi-keys. That same reviewer suggested turning should take time so there is an opportunity cost for looking around to accurately observe your surroundings - that's another thing that's already included! Turning takes one-third of a normal turn (I think without checking the source).

I guess the lesson from that is that bug testing is so vital because lazy bugs drive away players and documentation is should be thorough and helpful so these things are explained. It's really my fault if essential game mechanics are misunderstood because it wouldn't have been hard to explain those things.

Still, all feedback is good feedback. I'll know what to do better next time (if there is a next time).