RogueLike in facebook

[Holloweye]

Hello Roguelike fans,

I was thinking about the idea of creating a roguelike that is multiplayer. As in multiplayer I mean that you each take turns. For example in a game with two players the first players does 10 turns with his character. When the first player completed his turns he got to wait for the second player to complete his. When the second player competed his turns the creeps moves on the map. And then it starts over to the player one again.

As you might imagine a game would probably take a while before it's over. Because of this you could have multiple games with different friends. And perhaps make all your turn for each game like 2-3 times a day or more if the other player is very active in the game.

This idea would result in some interesting gameplay as you play as a team through the dungeons. To understand what's going on before you start your turn the player can send some messages to the other player. These messages are presented as notifications on the screen. So the player can keep up what the plan is to do next. Also every move you make will be written in a log so the other player can read the moves you have done ex:
<Player 1> killed orc.
<Player 1> gave you meat.
<Player 1> went down stairs.
(as the players is down stairs and you don't see him you will not get any messages for these events)

When I was thinking about which would be the best way to present such a game. I found that there was no RogueLike game on facebook. And this would be a perfect fit on facebook in my opinion. As you already have all your friends there and it would be easy to invite someone for a game.

Problems I have been thinking about would be the storage. As a games grows in size as the players discover more areas. And in the end there would probably massive amount of data for each game.

What are you guys opinion on this idea? Would anyone be interested in helping developing such a game?

[requerent]

Multiplayer and roguelike are two ideas that aren't casually reconciled.


Turn-based facebook games are interesting, but they are likely to contradict the enjoyable parts of playing roguelikes.

In a roguelike, there is no distinction between salient actions and arbitrary ones. That is, which actions are significant?

In facebook games and other turn-based games, we divide turns into salient actions, those that effect gameplay significantly. In a roguelike, there isn't a clear measure as to when a player has performed enough actions that are satisfying- that is, each turn may or may not create incentives to continue playing.

If you can perform X such and such actions per turn, there is no assurance that those X actions will result in a satisfying game session or result in a significant amount of progress. Then you just have to wait until your friend takes his turns.

The question is- how do we break up the turns? A single level is a natural breaking point, but there isn't much room for multiplayer interaction turns are levels. A genre whose coherence depends heavily on discrete turn-taking isn't going to easily translate into the facebook arcade of games.

It's a challenging problem.

[kuniqs]

Anyone played Combat Mission? I think about giving each player 1 minute, 30 action points and simultaneous action. Move 1 tile - 2 points. Use a wand - 15 points. Hit somebody - 20 points etc.  A unused points pass to the next phase (with restriction of not having more than twice the normal). Your action queue is visible to everyone.
When everybody's ready, both players and monsters move in real time for few seconds maybe?

[Holloweye]

Each dungeon have to be generated in such way that the players don't have to experience 10 turns of nothing interesting. The way the dungeons are generated will be have to be tweaked to perfection. So that each dungeon have just the right size, amount of items, debris and monsters to make it interesting.

A game would be more like... if you imagine a newspaper magazine where they have a story of three sentences. And next day there will be three new sentences to continue the story.
You would only play when you have a tiny bit of free-time over to make your moves probably. So your expectations for the X number of moves might not be that high. But resulted X number of actually satisfying moves. If they were not extremely satisfying you can't really complain much that you just wasted 5 minutes of your life on these moves.

The problems I can see is to find a good balance in how a turn would actually work. As there could be problems with making x number of moves in a sequence. Example you go down a stair and hit a monster then go up again without the monster have time to react. This could probably be resolved with making it only possible to go up/down one stair each X number of turns. But there will probably be more similar problems that needs to be considered.

[Holloweye]

Anyone played Combat Mission? I think about giving each player 1 minute, 30 action points and simultaneous action. Move 1 tile - 2 points. Use a wand - 15 points. Hit somebody - 20 points etc.  A unused points pass to the next phase (with restriction of not having more than twice the normal). Your action queue is visible to everyone.
When everybody's ready, both players and monsters move in real time for few seconds maybe?

Sonuds like a pretty great concept. What if the players actions interfere with each other. Example: first player wants to move 10 steps north and second player want to make a "magic wall" infront of him. What would happens then?

Also if you queue up a certain amount of actions there could be monsters coming and attacking you without you knowing about it. If you decide to move 10 steps north, there could be a monster just outside the FOV at the north of you that will start attacking you under these 10 steps.

Maybe I understood it wrong?

[kuniqs]

Anyone played Combat Mission? I think about giving each player 1 minute, 30 action points and simultaneous action. Move 1 tile - 2 points. Use a wand - 15 points. Hit somebody - 20 points etc.  A unused points pass to the next phase (with restriction of not having more than twice the normal). Your action queue is visible to everyone.
When everybody's ready, both players and monsters move in real time for few seconds maybe?

Sonuds like a pretty great concept. What if the players actions interfere with each other. Example: first player wants to move 10 steps north and second player want to make a "magic wall" infront of him. What would happens then?

Then others gang up on the mason and kill the idiot. Couldn't simillar scenarios occur in typicall MMO? Besides, you know action queue of everyone, so..

Also if you queue up a certain amount of actions there could be monsters coming and attacking you without you knowing about it. If you decide to move 10 steps north, there could be a monster just outside the FOV at the north of you that will start attacking you under these 10 steps.

Maybe I understood it wrong?

Since it's a multiplayer roguelike, I think somebody should be covering you there.

[Holloweye]

The basic idea what the server/client parts would contain.

Server Side (Any language):
- Network communication with clients.
- Actual database (game data).
- Game Logic (to check that all the moves the clients sends to the servers are valid this prevents cheating).
- Facebook integration (Should work with facebook accounts).
- Algorithms to generate the maps.

Client Side (JavaScript/HTML5):
- Network communication to server.
- Media (Images and sounds. But no data about items/monsters/races/classes/nps/.. these are sent through the network from the server).
- Database Structure as classes.
- Game Logic (Decrease the number of requests to the server).
- Facebook integration (Invite friends).
- Rendering
- Event handling

[Shaggy]

Edit : Whoops, wrong thread  sorry

[Holloweye]

In most cases the most "difficult" part is getting started with a new environment. That's why I thought I would come a long way just by creating a facebook app and make a simple javascript to be able to login to authenticate to facebook. Well that being said that's what I did. Now I'm able to authenticate to facebook. This is needed to save the progress of the user.

Second step is to find a good way to render my graphics in Javascript. I herd about the power of WebGL but not sure about the pros/cons. If anyone knows a good graphical engine for JS I would like to hear it.

[konijn_]

In most cases the most "difficult" part is getting started with a new environment. That's why I thought I would come a long way just by creating a facebook app and make a simple javascript to be able to login to authenticate to facebook. Well that being said that's what I did. Now I'm able to authenticate to facebook. This is needed to save the progress of the user.

Second step is to find a good way to render my graphics in Javascript. I herd about the power of WebGL but not sure about the pros/cons. If anyone knows a good graphical engine for JS I would like to hear it.

If I were to find time, I would use this : http://demo.greweb.fr/illuminated.js

T.

[Holloweye]

In most cases the most "difficult" part is getting started with a new environment. That's why I thought I would come a long way just by creating a facebook app and make a simple javascript to be able to login to authenticate to facebook. Well that being said that's what I did. Now I'm able to authenticate to facebook. This is needed to save the progress of the user.

Second step is to find a good way to render my graphics in Javascript. I herd about the power of WebGL but not sure about the pros/cons. If anyone knows a good graphical engine for JS I would like to hear it.

If I were to find time, I would use this : http://demo.greweb.fr/illuminated.js

T.

Looks pretty cool but a bit slow on my pc though. I tried just to use a simple canvas and it works pretty great. So far I have been able to create a facebook application which can do the following:
1) Render a circle on a canvas.
2) Move around it with the keyboard arrow keys on the "screen".
3) Login to facebook by pressing the enter key.
4) When you're authenticated with facebook the background turns green and it will display the facebook id of the user.

Now I solved 2 technical issues out of 3. The last one in my opinion is the communication with the server side. This what I will have to figure out next.

[requerent]

HaXe NME includes an AS3 binding of JavaScript and a number of other useful libraries.

[konijn_]

HaXe NME includes an AS3 binding of JavaScript and a number of other useful libraries.

Do they have a 'lightbox' / 'box2dlights' library ?

T.

[Holloweye]

For now I will go with a basic canvas for drawing. If I in the future to decide to add lightning effects I could change to graphical library for this. As for now only the basics is important to get the project started.

So I decided to run PHP on the server side because it will be simple for the Javascript to access the server. It could be done with just a http request from the client. So now I have all my technical issues resolved.
Though this means I have to convert all game logic code to PHP but it should not be a big deal. Only problem is to keep the both versions up-to-date.

Next objective on my to-do list is to start with the designing of the data structure. Also the basic algorithms on the server side for the dungeon generation. But I have a pretty good idea of how I want my dungeons to looks like. Basically many tiny rooms that is connected with each other. That would be a simple recursive function to make so I could start with the actual in-game logic such as movement.

Something like this:

##########################
#         #    #    #    #
#    #    #         #    #
#    #    #    #         #
###  ############## ### ##
#    #    #    #         #
# <       #    #         #
#    #         #    #    #
#  #####  #############  #
#    #    #    #    #    #
#         #    #         #
#    #         #    #    #
###  ################## ##
#    #    #    #    #    #
#                        #
#    #    #    #    #  > #
##########################

[Omnomnom]

Looks like your dungeon has suffered an earthquake