Red Rogue

[rachoac]

Ah, I really dig your artwork. I got incredibly nostalgic just looking at the stills.

[st33d]

Cheers, have another:



The underworld, from which the minion came.

[st33d]

There's an Underworld now (albeit sans Death right now), there's also all the music in, new traps, abilities for some items have been added and I've mucked about with dungeon generation. There are going to be 4 zones in the dungeon (Dungeons, Sewers, Caves and Chaos). All will have a different feel and their own critter population.

I'm also planning on turning the Overworld into a Shiren the Wanderer style storehouse. The explanation being that the Rogue has cast a time loop spell on the dungeon entrance - hence she relives entering the dungeon until her quest is complete. But outside the dungeon she can place items that will not be destroyed when the groundhog day loop resets itself upon her death.

[st33d]

The identify rune is now in. As well as having the ability to name things, reveal the map and unlock Lore, it can also prompt your minion to send you on quests.

Here's you and the minion searching for quest gems:



A lot of UI changes have been made, as well as various tweaks and bug fixes.

New sounds have been installed as well as ambient tracks for the Overworld and Underworld.

Also I've added a weird one:

Dogmatic Mode

It occurred to me early on that perhaps I could try making the game turn-based, but I dismissed it as something that would be there to take the piss out of the roguelike definition, rather than improve the gameplay.

But the game's mature enough to add this as an optional extra, so I tried something out. It's... interesting.

In dogmatic mode, time only passes when you are engaged in an action. When stunned or searching, etc. time will pass normally. Otherwise you must hold down a key or move.

For those who would argue that you don't have the time to think things through in standard mode, well, this solves that.

It's certainly not unit-turn-based. I know what that means and what's required to do it. But I think the finished game could technically have a mod done to it because of how everything is tile based - all monsters fit inside tiles. There are also discrete transactions taking place that fit into a unit-turn-based model. All I've done is spread them out across cpu frames.

[st33d]

Haste, slow and protection spells are in.

The number of rooms the level generator creates has been reduced from 2 onwards (they were slowing the pace of the early game too much I felt).

Thrown spells now bounce off walls a few times and then fall to the floor if they don't hit anything. They can also be caught by the player if they get in the way. This should make throwing spells a lot safer.

I've also discussed in my dev-log the option of having offhand throwing weapons to make throwing weapons require less menu-dancing to use (at the cost of having a more complicated equip-menu). Everyone seems keen on the idea of wielding a sword whilst chucking knives, so that will be going in soon.

[st33d]

Offhand throwing weapons!

Changed it so a character can equip a throwing weapon as well as a melee weapon. The thrown weapon auto-equips when you pick it up after a throw.

There's something really satisfying about punching through one baddie and then lobbing a knife that decapitates the next one a few titles away.

[Legend]

This is pretty interesting and fun. I would call it more "side-scrolling" than "platforming" though since there doesn't appear to be any jumping involved.

Any chance of getting a stand alone downloadable version? preferably with fullscreen support. To my knowledge, it's possible to make flash games a stand alone exe. I think Cardinal quest is an example of this. I'm not a coder though so I very well may be completely wrong.

[st33d]

Providing an exe or app is possible, but it slows down updating the source code to git. I will provide links to them in the game when it is finished. But you can run the game.swf from a standalone Flash Player on your desktop if you wish.

Fullscreen is selectable from options in the menu. You can play fullscreen in the browser but with Flash's keyboard restrictions.

You can't jump until you get the Amulet of Yendor.

[st33d]

Finished a major milestone today.

20 weapons, 20 armour, 20 races and 20 spells across 20 levels.

All of the special case code for all of the core 20 of each is now done.

Here's a screenshot of the wraith wall-walking ability:



Now I'll be able to focus on level design and UI. As well as think about the intro and ending.

[Paul Jeffries]

Nice.  I played this a while ago from the thread on Tigsource and it seems to have come on a lot since then.  I may be being rediculously stupid but I can't seem to get past the teleport traps, however.  I got stuck on the second level down because I couldn't get to the stairs down due to a teleporter in the way...

[st33d]

You can disarm traps from the actions menu.

Also, click the Instructions below the game. It will tell you the hot-key bindings for useful actions.

[st33d]

Bloody hell, done loads really.

Since the last update I've added:

fixes to a shit-load of bugs
sleeping, dreams and nightmares
writing on the walls
locks and keys, then fixed the code for them (locks and keys are sodding difficult and took weeks to figure out, if you don't like 'em, tough tits)
mushroom gas traps
visible dart traps (quite like that you can barely spot them now, plus some players like to make use of the traps - I've even added a heal trap in the chaos zone to troll players who use gas traps as a combat option)
new sounds
drop-kick-smite (when falling and attacking a character now rolls to smite based on their experience level - very difficult to pull off, it's a late game combat skill since it's only guaranteed to happen every time at level 20)
whirlwind attack (when surrounded and dual wielding or holding a weapon in their throwing hand a character will attack back and forth at twice their attack speed, switching between main weapon and throwing weapon. Letting go of a direction halts the whirlwind attack - useful when dropped into a pit of monsters. Again, another late game skill for veterans who want to dive into the fray)
randomised content progression (the order of content is now randomised within the zones, waaaay better for replay value)
less levels per zone (content is spread across a zone and the remainder is added to the pool for the next zone, still 20 levels of content, but the game gets to the point quicker - and denies you content unless you dare to go deeper)

Currently coding a tutorial-nanny-thing that gives you curt context sensitive training when you first play the game. I'll have to leave it turned off till saving progress is in.

[Legend]

Is there still any chance for a stand alone downloadeable version?

[st33d]

If you want to play on desktop, here's what to do:

Download this page:

http://redrogue.net/game.swf

Download the desktop projector:

http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/updaters/11/flashplayer_11_sa.exe
http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/updaters/11/flashplayer_11_sa.app.zip
http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/updaters/11/flashplayer_11_sa.i386.tar.gz

(links are all from this page: http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html)

Drag the swf to the projector application and it will run on your desktop. Want to create a standalone executable of Red Rogue? Go to the menu on the projector, look under file, "create projector". Click on it.

Stupid easy right? So why aren't I providing standalone executables? Bug tracking. Recently I had a catastrophic bug that locked a player in the second level of the game. He provided me the random seed to recreate the dungeon and I was able to track down a tiny typo that was breaking the game on and off for many people - except me. When I'm satisfied the game is stable I will provide exes for as many OS' as Flash supports.

Oh, and if you play on desktop you get full keyboard support when you enter fullscreen mode from the in game menu under options.

I also added basic multiplayer (a la sonic and tails - on the same keyboard) recently because I'm insane. Seems to work well with gamepads:

OSX: http://abstractable.net/enjoy/
Win & Linux: there are links to JoyToKey at the bottom of the link above.

[Darren Grey]

Ooh, multiplayer sounds very cool.... but I have no one to play with