KeeperRL (formerly Zagadka)

[miki151]

UPDATE: Zagadka is evolving into KeeperRL, a roguelike style Dungeon Keeper clone. Check out the link below for a demo video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRxxejoodzk



I've been writing this little game for about 3 months. The title is temporary, and I haven't decided what the story will be yet. So for now it's a generic Roguelike with a village and small dungeon. I think it's playable and I like playing it myself.

Some notable features:
- there is no HP as known from other games. You can be wounded more or less seriously, but there is also decapitation, cutting of arms, legs and wings, and other fun stuff.
- you can hide behind things and surprise attack
- there are rivers, bridges, rolling boulders and other fun things in the dungeon
- semi-intelligent monsters, that can use items and will chase you or run away if they are afraid
- a few weapons and armor
- no exp or skill system yet

Note that this is a dev version and there are many rough edges. It's not meant to be complete, but you can walk around, explore and bash monsters. There aren't any serious bugs, I think, and I haven't had a crash for weeks.

Here's the link. There are instructions in English and Polish inside.
http://students.mimuw.edu.pl/~makbet/zagadka-bin.zip

So, let's see what you think

[miki151]

There aren't any serious bugs, I think, and I haven't had a crash for weeks.

I should have known better than to write that, my friend has found a bunch of bugs in the game, and crashes too

[guest509]

It happens man. Don't let it dissuade you from making your game.

[miki151]

Of course I won't

Has any one tried playing yet? If your game crashes after throwing an item, please try to remember the circumstances, as I can't reproduce the bug.

[miki151]

Made many small and big changes to the game. The village is now surrounded by a 600x600 tile wilderness with mountains, lakes, animals, etc. There are roads that you can use to travel quickly. One of them will take you to the main dungeon.

You can get the game from the same link:
http://students.mimuw.edu.pl/~makbet/zagadka-bin.zip

The plan now is to fill the wilderness with lots of interesting random content, so the player enjoys wandering around and exploring. All terrain and dugeons are randomly generated, BTW.

[miki151]

Making quick progress...
- new location: cemetary with zombies and vampires - time to chop some more limbs 
- added a few nice looking unicode tiles
- randomly generated name for PC

The new executable is at the same link:
http://students.mimuw.edu.pl/~makbet/zagadka-bin.zip

Can anyone let me know how is the performance on Windows? I only have a virtual machine to test on, and I've just switched rendering libraries, I'm not sure it's working as it should.

I can also compile a Linux binary, if anyone wants. I'm still eagerly waiting for some feedback 

[TheCreator]

When the game window gets deactivated, it will never redraw itself and the program stops responding. Please fix this as soon as you can. I'll try to drop some feedback tomorrow, anyway.

[miki151]

Yay, thanks for trying 

I just fixed this yesterday, I will try to put up another version soon. Meanwhile, just press a direction key or other action key to refresh the screen if it was deactivated.

[miki151]

I've put up the new version under the same link. Changes:
- shops, money
- a few new creatures: bandits, sheep flocks
- auto travel in dungeon corridors
- displaying keybindings at the bottom of the screen, so you don't have to look at the manual
- proper window refreshing and resizing, fullscreen mode toggled by an 'f'

Plans:
- add a goblin city & dungeon, let the player switch sides and become an ally of goblins by killing elves or dwarves
- add more items to the game

Oh, and I'll start a contest for a name for the game

[TheCreator]

Oh, and I'll start a contest for a name for the game

You definitely should use another Polish word, it must sound weird to the rest of the world . What about "Oblężenie Szczebrzeszyna"?

[miki151]

That's a good one, although I'd like something people can at least pronounce 

Anyway, this gave me an idea to grab the list of roguelike titles from roguebasin and feed them into a markov chain randomizer, the results were weird to say the least... 

[TheCreator]

Anyway, this gave me an idea to grab the list of roguelike titles from roguebasin and feed them into a markov chain randomizer, the results were weird to say the least... 

I'm pretty sure it would be something like "Tales of Forbidden Rogue Dungeons" .

[miki151]

This would be among the more normal ones  - my favorite was "Bone Soup" 

[miki151]

Here comes another update. Besides a lot of small stuff, I've added an important mechanic that will later define much of the gameplay. You now maintain a relationship with each of the 3 races: elves, goblins and dwarves. You can be friends or enemies with any of them. Because they all hate each other, by chopping elven heads you can make goblins and dwarves love you, etc.

The plan is to have different skills, quests, and items available from each race, so by your choice you can develop a completely different character.

I'm still unsure what the world layout will look like; will there be many small and interconnected dungeons, one main dungeon or one huge underground level under the wilderness.

And I'm still unsure about the name, this week's idea is "Dwelgo: Friends and Foes". Anyway, maybe someone would like to play 

[Endorya]

Ok this is my feeback on your game.

First of all, congrats! I think it is damn awesome as I got easily hooked on it! The first thing I did this morning was turning the computer on to develop my own game, but once realized, I was myself playing another round of Zagadka instead.

Things I really enjoy about it:
- Straight forward and really easy to pick on.
- The quick legend of what you see is marvelous because it saves you so much time! I wish ADOM had this feature.
- Being able to pick up all the equipment a foe was carrying. This is something I always wanted. I really hate non-sense loot where a rat or a cow can drop a sword or a bag of gold.

The one thing I didn't like (I don't know if this is a missing feature or intended but...):
- Underground corridors and areas should be delimited with a '#' instead of invisible walls. Having invisible walls is very confusing to me as sometimes I have to revise certain areas to make sure they had been fully explored.

Bellow is a screen of some things that should be fixed, namely the space reserved for turn counting and the '5' number in the quick key mapping legend, which is suffering from a moderate legibility.



Anyway, I don't know what is planned for this game of yours and how badly you want to invest time developing it but I think it has potential and with more features it could become one of my favorite roguelike games. I can say for instance that even its current state of developing is far better than Crawl. And this is also prove that you don't need to chose races and roles to make something really neat.

Is there a skill tree planned for it in which you can create your character's role?