@Star Wars (now at v0.6a)

[getter77]

http://www.caffeineoverdose.me/search/label/Star%20Wars%20RL
http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php/@Star_Wars

@Star Wars (alternatively, @Star Wars RL) is a roguelike set in the Star Wars galaxy. Windows downloads are regularly posted on the development blog. The source code is not currently publicly available. Development currently comes in large sweeps. Most version updates include over twenty significant changes.
Features

    -D6 system.
    -Diverse species.
    -Skills that integrate well into the D6 system.
    -Coming 0.3b: backgrounds, more skills, natural skill progression, and more!

   -New skills: Carbines, Rifles, Unarmed Combat, and Sneak. Note that Blasters and Melee no longer provide general support to all ranged and melee weapons, respectively. Blasters skill now supports blaster pistols and Melee skill now supports every melee weapon that isn't your fist or fist-type weapons.
    -Made the experience system less convoluted.
    -All of the weapon skills (Unarmed Combat included) have a special effect now. The chance of this occurring increases with your weapon skill.
    -Armor on items is now properly displayed in the D6 format.
    -Attributes are now considerably higher at the beginning of the game. An average attribute is now 3D+0. Enemies have had their stats raised for balance.
    -Strength once again reduces the armor penalty.
    -All attributes now increase maximum HP by 2 per pip. Base hit points have been reduced to compensate.
    -The damage of all ranged weapons has been roughly doubled to account for all characters having much higher Strength than before.
    -Stimpacks heal for more.
    -There are now starting backgrounds. These are not the same as classes from previous editions of the game. Backgrounds determine your starting items and give you between 2 and 4 pips worth of skills. For example: the Smuggler background might start you out with a pistol, a stimpack, and a skill setup like 0D+2 Blasters and 0D+1 Dodge. The purpose of backgrounds is two-fold: it makes the game a tiny bit more Star War-sy and also makes the beginning of the game less random.
    -Skills no longer go up when you level up. Instead they follow their own progression path. If you want to get a high Dodge skill, you are going to need to get hit. If you want to earn Rifle skill, you'll need to kill stuff with a rifle.
    -One new item.
    -One new enemy that has more than one special ability.
    -Fixed a bug that made it so "weak point" damage didn't properly show up if you have combat information enabled. Related: slightly increased the amount of excess required to trigger a "weak point" bonus.
    -Set the inventory back to 26 total items. This might change again in the future, but for now it will help reduce inventory management.
    -Added some color to the skills page.
    -Sneaking and detection are now on the D6 system.

Well, it is an Alpha project----but talk about one with an especially meaty skeleton in places out from seemingly nowhere!    The prior changelogs definitely sets the table for a great many things done thus far.

The dev also states:

All feedback is good feedback for the continued development of this project, but there's a couple things I'm really interested in right now:

    -Bugs! Please report any crashes and/or bugs ASAP!
    -How the D6 system "feels". How does it compare to the old "whatever the heck I felt like" system?
    -How the skill system "feels". It isn't done yet, but it is a good example of what you can expect future skills to be like. I'm also interested in ideas on how to make skill increasing feel "better" or more natural. I'm not a huge fan of it being based off of level-ups.
    -What does the balance feel like for you? Is there a species or item that is really overpowering? How about underpowered? The game is still in the alpha stage, so expect big balancing changes to come later on in beta. Still, if there's a few things that really stick out as problematic, I can adjust them now.

Definitely be interesting to see how this continues as apparently it was in planning and dev for over a year now and really began to hit a stride this past July---perhaps a Darkhorse candidate for ARRP 2012?

[roocey]

Hey - I've been lurking around here for a while. I figured a thread about my game is as good a reason as any to register.

I'm immensely pleased with the attention the game has already gotten just from being here and on the Basin. The 0.3b post has over twice as many views as the next most popular post on my blog and it happened in a pretty short time frame.

Feel free to get in touch with me on the blog, twitter, e-mail me, or make a thread somewhere in the temple. I'm keeping my eyes open for feedback from anywhere!

A couple of quick points:

Currently there's only a Windows executable available. If there's demand for it or when I feel like doing it, I'll investigate creating a Mac binary.

The current version shouldn't have any major bugs. Please let me know if you run into any, as I'm likely not aware of them.

Unless real life gets in the way, I'm planning to push 0.3c before ARRP and then have 0.3d ready for ARRP.

Thanks for this post and the tweets, Getter.

[getter77]

Welcome and thanks for posting---keep at the fine work!

One question that came to mind that didn't pop out at me after a quick scan of the blog, though to be fair there is quite a bit of meat therein, is what manner of Roadmap do you have for the game...ie Graphical doing?  Music/Sound?  Things yet to be incorporated/interpreted from the books, moves, various TV series, other games in the setting?

[roocey]

Graphics aren't really on the list right now. Maybe some day in the (distant) future. My current graphical goal is experimenting with ASCII and how to best convey monster types to players. Overall I'm pretty happy with it right now, but even as soon as 0.3c I'm trying out some new colors and symbols.

Music & sound is an interesting one to ask because I had just stumbled upon the Rogue Bard! I don't want to guarantee music and sound, but I'd say they iare definitely more likely to make an appearance than true graphics are.

I'm definitely working on pulling more interesting stuff from the expanded universe. I've gone on a bit of Star Wars reading craze this year, including reading all of the Thrawn books. There are some really neat species in the EU that I think work great in an ASCII setting, because they don't really have a solid visual portrayal. Sure, there's been artistic interpretations of them, but nothing as rock solid as say, Wookies. Everybody knows what a Wookie looks like - not everybody knows what a Sluissi looks like, which I think is just fantastic for the imagination.

The current setting (Tatooine) either isn't permanent or isn't the only setting the game will ever know. I have two different ideas I'm considering for a real setting: invent a real dungeon with a Star Wars feel and just have an end goal. Or remove the singular dungeon and have the game flow (probably linearly) between different planets.

There's a distinct lack of a roadmap! My only true goal is to make a game I find fun and hope a few other people do too. I might consider writing up a roadmap after 0.3c/0.3d releases. The only issue I have with big roadmaps is, if you read the blog in full, you'll probably notice the game went from a bit of a dark fantasy setting to Star Wars, which is distinctively space opera. While I don't think I'll change the setting again, there's also mechanical things I like to change at seemingly random. For example, the move to a D6 system was largely unplanned but has been good for the game overall, I think.

[Ancient]

Currently there's only a Windows executable available. If there's demand for it or when I feel like doing it, I'll investigate creating a Mac binary.

More and more developers declare they are willing to support Mac besides Windows but do not leave any way for Linux players (who outnumber Mac players greatly) any way to play.

It baffles me because by the point you can create Mac binary you have learned how to create Linux binary too. Both are POSIX compliant systems.

[roocey]

Currently there's only a Windows executable available. If there's demand for it or when I feel like doing it, I'll investigate creating a Mac binary.

More and more developers declare they are willing to support Mac besides Windows but do not leave any way for Linux players (who outnumber Mac players greatly) any way to play.

It baffles me because by the point you can create Mac binary you have learned how to create Linux binary too. Both are POSIX compliant systems.

Seems I forgot that when I was writing that sentence. A Linux binary has already been investigated and will be created under the same conditions as the Mac variant: when I have a bit of free time to get it setup appropriately. Currently I'm knee deep into the development of 0.3c and already have an idea on what I want to have in it. If the binaries aren't included in 0.3c, they'll probably be a project for 0.3d or 0.4a.

Judging by the mere existence of your post, I'd certainly say there's some interest in (both) binaries, so I'll get them done!

EDIT: Before I decided to go fully public, there wasn't much point in creating the additional binaries. Not only myself, but most of my immediate family and friends use windows, so the purpose was limited at that stage. If anybody wants to volunteer to test out the binaries when I release them, I'll be glad to send you a prototype when I get started on them.

[getter77]

Graphics aren't really on the list right now. Maybe some day in the (distant) future. My current graphical goal is experimenting with ASCII and how to best convey monster types to players. Overall I'm pretty happy with it right now, but even as soon as 0.3c I'm trying out some new colors and symbols.

...

There's a distinct lack of a roadmap! My only true goal is to make a game I find fun and hope a few other people do too. I might consider writing up a roadmap after 0.3c/0.3d releases. The only issue I have with big roadmaps is, if you read the blog in full, you'll probably notice the game went from a bit of a dark fantasy setting to Star Wars, which is distinctively space opera. While I don't think I'll change the setting again, there's also mechanical things I like to change at seemingly random. For example, the move to a D6 system was largely unplanned but has been good for the game overall, I think.

-ASCII experimenting eh?  You....may want to dive into this thread a bit and perhaps even chat up the main poster in it:

http://roguetemple.com/forums/index.php?topic=2534.0

-A planet-to-planet affair would be pretty nifty, though a nicely wrought dungeon dive with plenty of variety would also do the trick nicely.  If you somehow find  yourself going mad with power, of course the greatest answer is a sprawling grand adventure across planets and dungeons like some manner of freaky ADOM In Spaace~ with all the trimmings.   

-Gotcha on the roadmap, though even if thematic bits and bobs are still nicely fluid---some neutral technical ones could be nifty.  Things like,  Full-screen working like a champ/window resizing to whatever with all displaying proper, save/load done up nicely, easily configurable ingame controls with preferences remembered, mouse involved or not as an option, rudimentary animations, buttery smooth scrolling instead of the "chunk jerking"(Somehow...it just feels...right...that a Star Wars thing be an especially fluid experience/presentation of whatever style), any sort of module/addon support as both a testbed and community interaction hub down the line, and so on with just general good notions that will help bring a level of tightness to whatever the thematic wranglings end up settling on.

-Any current Roguelikes you'd be drawing any particular design cues/good times from?  We've a bounty of late doing nifty things on all fronts far beyond the days when Nethack or Angband and the like were the end all be all.

[roocey]

Graphics aren't really on the list right now. Maybe some day in the (distant) future. My current graphical goal is experimenting with ASCII and how to best convey monster types to players. Overall I'm pretty happy with it right now, but even as soon as 0.3c I'm trying out some new colors and symbols.

...

There's a distinct lack of a roadmap! My only true goal is to make a game I find fun and hope a few other people do too. I might consider writing up a roadmap after 0.3c/0.3d releases. The only issue I have with big roadmaps is, if you read the blog in full, you'll probably notice the game went from a bit of a dark fantasy setting to Star Wars, which is distinctively space opera. While I don't think I'll change the setting again, there's also mechanical things I like to change at seemingly random. For example, the move to a D6 system was largely unplanned but has been good for the game overall, I think.

-ASCII experimenting eh?  You....may want to dive into this thread a bit and perhaps even chat up the main poster in it:

http://roguetemple.com/forums/index.php?topic=2534.0

...

-Any current Roguelikes you'd be drawing any particular design cues/good times from?  We've a bounty of late doing nifty things on all fronts far beyond the days when Nethack or Angband and the like were the end all be all.

That's a very interesting thread. I'll have to read it over more thoroughly later.

To get "very current", my favorite Roguelike is probably Cataclysm.  It is a very good game, I think, especially for an Alpha stage game. I also like how interactive Whales is with the community around his game and his general design philosophy seems very solid. As far as more developed Roguelikes go, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is my favorite. The fact that "they" have been able to create such a mechanically fantastic game and still have it be fun is just about ideal, from my point of view.

For individual people, I think Andrew Doull is the most influential person on the Roguelike scene for me. While I don't personally play Angband or UnAngband, I find his articles, debates, and ideas very interesting. Actually he's part of the reason I decided to start a blog in the first place. It has proven to be a very good environment to write my thoughts down and just be able to compare new ideas to old ones.

Needless to say, I have a fascination with good skill systems, which is why I'm currently working to improve the skill system in @Star Wars.

[getter77]

v0.3c

    -New skills: 1h Melee and 2h Melee.
    -Fist wraps can now appear in the dungeon. You still get a pair when you start as a Brawler.
    -Attributes now determine your starting skills. Attributes no longer increase raw stats. The exceptions are HP and Strength damage.
    -Strength determines your skill with Unarmed Combat and 2h Melee, Reflexes determines your skill with Blasters, Dodge, and 1h Melee, and Perception determines your skill with Stealth, Carbines, and Rifles.
    -The skill page (shift+5) colors now match the attribute instead of the style. Blue covers all Perception skills, Green covers all Reflexes skills, and Red covers all Strength skills.
    -Slightly increased Stealth experience gain. It is probably still too slow.
    -Lowered the damage of all enemies across the board.
    -Redesigned all weapon special effects. The chance of them triggering was also reduced significantly to account for starting with much higher skill values than before.

Balance is even less stable than it was in 0.3b, but 0.3d will contain a nice balancing wash and new content.

[roocey]

Hi folks! I hope everyone is having a fruitful ARRP 2012.

I've updated @Star Wars to 0.4a. The changelog on this one is a little light, but some of the changes are fairly substantial. The biggest change is removing misses outright. I'm not sure how many of you played previous versions, but you may have noticed a large amount of misses. I felt like that was a complete waste of player time, which I simply cannot tolerate. I realize this is a bit like sacrificing a sacred cow (in terms of "traditional RPG"), but I think this change was ultimately for the best.

http://www.caffeineoverdose.me/2012/09/04a-change-log-download.html

Enjoy!

[getter77]

Ah, congrats on making the release party!   

Not much of a sacred cow sacrifice as I see it---just a nifty solution to keep the pace up and thinking engaged---fellow party goer Rogue's Souls also implemented some "unorthodox" notions to improve the flow in their ARRP entrant, that take on it being tied largely to prior actions taken.

0.4a's nice assortment:

-Made melee combat a bit more interesting.
-Fixed bug that made rifle accuracy very, very low.
-Fixed bug that made it so players could not take off items if their inventory held ten or more items.
-Implemented saving and loading.
-Weapons now have a chance to come modified. Modifications will include things like scopes, weights, and vibro units. By design most modifications come with a trade-off or have a relatively small benefit.
-Improved grammarz!
-Changed the coloration of certain messages.
-Removed missing and replaced it with the "crit/fumble" system.

I anticipate your revenge on the crossed out items that didn't quite make it for this one.   

[getter77]

v0.4b

    -Increased the defensive capabilities of most enemies.
    -Two-handed melee weapons cannot critically strike, but counterattack fumbled attacks.
    -One-handed melee weapons apply a bleed on enemies when critically striking, but do not deal immediate bonus damage.
    -Unarmed weapons reduce enemy accuracy when critically striking.
    -Changed the generic "damage over time" effect to a Bleed. Bleeds last a maximum of 2 turns, but can be refreshed and stacked by applying another Bleed. Each stack of bleeding deals 2 damage per turn.
    -Added in Poison as a new damage over time effect. Poisons deal a maximum of 2 damage per turn, but can have their length refreshed and stacked by applying another Poison. Each stack of Poison adds 4 turns worth of Poison.
    -Some enemies can cause Bleeding or Poisoning. Some of these enemies may have other attributes (e.g., normal damage) tuned down as a trade-off.
    -Added in Rare weapons. They are currently appearing with decent frequency so they can be tested more thoroughly. Yes, that does mean every other weapon you pick up is a Rare weapon (for now).
    -Fixed a bug that prevented Sluissi characters from being made.
    -Increased the accuracy penalty of certain weapons.
    -Reduced the effectiveness of armor penalty reduction that Strength offers.
    -(Hopefully) fixed a bug that causes damage over time effects to grant Dodging experience.
    -Fixed some mob flags.
    -Removed the now outdated Design Sheet from the package.

 I'm trying to get a feel for balance and the like, so feedback would be greatly appreciated! All feedback is useful, but here's things that would be really useful:

What your species and primary weapon were in your best run;
Spelling and grammatical errors;
Crashes;
Other bugs;
If you make it to floor 7 (or beyond).

Good luck! Thank you to everyone who has been following this blog and to everyone who has tried the game.

[roocey]

Thanks for posting the update as always!

I figure I'd try to rush another update out the door while it was still party time. Mostly because I might have had a very boring day otherwise.

I try to watch for feedback from all angles. Feel free to shoot me an e-mail (roocey at gmail dot com), tweet (twitter.com/roocey), leave a comment on my blog, or post somewhere on the Temple.

[getter77]

v0.4c

 

   -Instead of gaining a random attribute every 3rd level, players are now prompted to pick a new trait. These traits are separate from racial traits. You can obtain a maximum of 3 traits.
    -Dungeon reworked slightly and expanded.
    -Added in an oversight from 0.4b: "Unarmed weapons reduce enemy accuracy when critically striking."
    -Ranged attackers (player included) suffer bonus difficulty in attacking a target that has just moved.
    -Reduced the AC value on most armors.
    -Several changes and expansions to the enemy pool. For the most part, you can expect to find less womp rats and other floor 1 foes after floor 2. In addition, you can expect to find new enemies entirely, including some special types.
    -Rares have been made slightly less common. They all seem to work fine, but I'd like them to appear somewhat frequently so they can be more easily tested for balancing issues and the like.
    -For now, every background starts with a weapon, stimpack, and +1 with the weapon skill (not a full die). I've also finally added in the one-handed melee background (fencer).
    -Your background varies your starting hit points by +9/-9. Brawlers have the biggest bonus (+9) and Snipers have the biggest penalty (-9). Fighters have the smallest bonus (+3) and Smugglers have the smallest penalty (-3). Fencers take the average bonus (+6) and Mercenaries take the average penalty (-6).
    -Reworked the experience system (again).
    -Fighters now actually start with an item that exists in the game (two-handed sword).
    -Melee was hitting a bit too hard, so I increased AC across the board for enemies and raised the damage of ranged weapons.
    -Ranged weapons can now critically strike.
    -Removed the character creation skill spam. You will still receive a skill notice based on your background of choice.
    -Trandoshans do not gain new levels of Regeneration beyond the first one now. The first rank is very good, the additional ranks are far too good.
    -You will earn experience with skills that are below 2D+0 twice as fast. This idea may be expanded upon in later versions. The basic idea is to keep attributes useful and important throughout a character's life, while making branching out slightly less painful.
    -Stimpacks now remove poisons.

[guest509]

  This one shows quite a bit of promise. Early stage, surely, but neat.

  I especially like how you press 'f' and shoot at the closest guy. At least I think that's what's happening. Very quick and smooth. I like it.