New Roguelike in development: Forge of the Elements

[getter77]

Always nice to see more depth, of any sort, given to unarmed combat.   

[justinhoffman]

Arrggh I need to move much faster with the spells.  It's not much fun, very very tedious.  I'm trying to use this thread to push myself into getting the basics in place, so might i'll probably keep spaming this thread if no one minds  .    3 1/2 weeks, must have all spells, spell books, wands, potions, stealth, magic item skill, full AI, and at least a game up to level 6-7 or so...

Ok, since last the last update.

1) added new attributes based on elemental focus.  They show up in the character sheet.  Basically each element has a few added benefits, a bit of resistance in the element and most add a additional bonus to melee/ranged combat.  Nothing huge.  My goal is to make other secondary skills just as useful to non-casters.

2) All of the negative status effects available to the player are now in game (missing drain, and I want to do rust for enemies).  Confusion was the most complicated, basically the AI now when confused no longer determines between friend and foe when confused and will cast/attack appropriately.  Added confusion, corrode (lowers AC/dex/atk), immobilize, poison (damage and duration based on spell level and wis mod), disease (prevents enemies from healing), burning (fire damage), slow (-25 speed and clears all ap they have stored), stop (-40 speed to a minimum of 5, for one turn and clears ap), weakness (lowers melee damage by 40%) and paralyze (can't move for 3 turns).  Stop is a really neat effect.  None of the speed debuffs stack now.

3) Most of the conjuration spells are now in.  Almost all of the enchantment spells are in.  The ones not yet implemented are a bit more difficult or require things not yet implemented such as asleep mobs ( i want to add lull and fade memories my two favorite spells from EQ1), stealth, and AI for debuffing and terrain alteration.  Also I need to figure out how I am going to do buffing.  Either the sloppy way or a nice way... but in any event transmutation is next.

4) I completely changed the mini map.  It's now a pop up mini map that is far more attractive than the previous one.  Just zooming out was ugly.

5) messed around with movement AI.  Broke movement AI.  Fixed movement AI.  Movement AI now better.  The retreat ai seems to work very nicely given my current map layouts even though I'm not using some search method or anything. 

must.. get.. all.. spells.. done...  But in the mean time I think I'll try and do the debuff AI 

[getter77]

Hang in there!   

[Vanguard]

This sounds like it's going to be impressive.

[justinhoffman]

Ok so I set up the debuff AI.

Basically how the AI works is I have the targeting type and range stored in each spell.  The AI then searches each turn for a target.

Then if it has a spell equiped and can cast, it passes the spell and target into the spell target function which passes back a 2D boolean array (i also use this array for spell effects).  The AI then searches the array, to see who it would hit.

For debuff spells, there is a debuff counter, just an arbitrary amount to help cycle between spells.  Then there is a shouldDebuff function which passes in the target and the spell sloted in the debuff slot.  The function checks all debuffs in the spell slot against the players current status and resistances.  If the player will be effected by a status effect, the AI cast the spell.  The AI will not debuff a target if the target is already effected.

It might be a bit much for the AI to just know what is resistant to what.  But this sets up the possibity of having debuff AI for a companion. 

How cool would it be to have a say mud elemental pet that flings mud and immobilizes a different enemy that comes into it's view, keeping multiple enemies debuffed.

I'm sure it will all require tweaking.  But in any event, it's kind of cool to see multiple enemies with the same debuff, wait until it wears off to recast keeping them from wasting mana and turns.

Oh and I was playing around with some of the temporal spells in transmutation.  Temporal will get a couple of high damage spells in transmutation by warping time and space.  I modified the pseudo knock back effect I had, which basically just triggers moveaway from target twice, to also have a pull effect that moves the enemy two spaces closer.  Oh and knock back and pull work against the player too.  Kinda weird if you hit yourself with it though.

I'm kind of thinking that temporal might do decent damage in the transmutation school, but it's damage spell until high level will pull enemies closer to the caster.

I dunno if that's good or bad or silly, but maybe people will find ways to use it.  Plus how cool is it to see "your enemy has been pulled through time and space" lol.  In the hands of a player it's probably a disadvantage, however the AI could make neat use of such a spell.

Oh and resistances to status effects beyond booleans from equipment will give you a negative amount now, however this amount will be chinked away by enemy debuffs.   So casting bravery might give me -50 turns of confusion and fear.  Not only will it cure the condition, but also add a buffer against future effects.

Anyway, I hope the game turns out decent but it's kind of just fun adding things.

[justinhoffman]

I now have a blog, so I won't be spamming this thread any more until I have something to release.

http://forgeoftheelements.blogspot.com/

[getter77]

Cool, but keep on posting the meaningful milestones as ya reach em---no harm in having a hopping place that people can visit to see what's shaking down across the board versus scouring lots of individual sites!   

Same as I want the Muert and HexRL folks to hopefully keep us posted on their respective projects that are in a similar place of growth as your own.

[justinhoffman]

Sure thing, I'm just moving at a breakneck speed before life takes up more of my time.

Heck last night I wrote the entire stealth system, based on noise/stealth rating/and perception in a way that let's both mobs and player's stealth.

Stealthy mobs will now follow your scent, sneak up, and stab you from the darkness.  I'm probably going to have to tweak the perception algorithm to have stealth scale from low levels, but everything else is in place and solid.  Which means it's time to put in some interesting state based spells such as lull (lowers chance of enemy becoming aggressive), sleep, and fade memories ( makes you invisible, and sets all enemies on the level from aggressive to passive )

[getter77]

Sounds equal parts excellent and nifty...keep at it!  We all know what it is like to fight against the clock.

[Ex]

I wish I worked on any of my projects this much! Great progress. Seems to be coming along really nicely. Good work!

[justinhoffman]

Every player castable spell is now in game.  I have a full write up on the spells.  I'm too tired to proof read tonight though.

I think I'm going to work on more of the casting AI, and then wands are next.

I didn't realize just how long it would take to enter all of those in.  I had them all planed out prior, but besides the damage spells there are a ton of unique effects, some with complex behavior.

The summoned pets I have in are pretty neat too, most of them even cast spells.  Take the blizzard elemental, for a debuff it has 'ambient drain' which is a short range cone that drains the mana of enemies.  I gave it another short range offensive spell as well, can't remember which though.  The pets mostly have limited amounts of mana though, and won't cast in melee.  But I figure this makes summoned companions more interesting.  I'll balance everything out later, in the mean time everything that seems cool goes in.

http://forgeoftheelements.blogspot.com/2009/08/game-mechanics-spell-casting.html

[getter77]

Awesome!  I've definitely always been a fan of summons that bring things to the table outside of bashing and meat shielding...especially since Triangle Wizard's implementation of it.  Keep at it!