Microgue (Updated 9/7)

[jasonpickering]

Spent the morning adding a new trap called the lock. It was a lock and the player needed to kill an enemy on it to unlock the up stairs. while being a cool idea. It was incredibly hard to accomplish. so a wasted morning.  well Back to working on the message and unlock system.

[Paul Jeffries]

Spent the morning adding a new trap called the lock. It was a lock and the player needed to kill an enemy on it to unlock the up stairs. while being a cool idea. It was incredibly hard to accomplish. so a wasted morning.  well Back to working on the message and unlock system.

Rather than unlocking the stairs, perhaps you could repurpose them as sacrificial altars.  If you kill something on it, that works as a sacrifice to the goddess Microgia and you get something in return - perhaps (depending on how hard it is to do) it could act as a smart bomb and clear the current floor of monsters or something.

[jasonpickering]

I like that idea. Especially since the current art for it is a big skull tile, that turns red when activated. Not sure what the player could get though. Its a pretty simple game with not a lot of lee-way.

[jasonpickering]

So here is a question. Currently rooms are prebuilt by me then randomly selected. Would it be better if I prebuilt the rooms with set traps. I think that would give me more control over making traps a bit more interesting.

[Vanguard]

Both options have merit.  The random generator probably isn't capable of creating the kinds of situations you could come up with, but hand-made levels also make the game more of a memorizer instead of a pure test of tactical analysis.

If you're willing to put in the extra work, you could always do both.

[jasonpickering]

Well right now all the levels are hand built, and the only thing that would be pre-placed are the traps, so Monsters would still be random. Most likely what I will do is build a Room, then create multiple trap layouts for that room.

[jasonpickering]

Added in the new Trap I wanted. Its a large block that is Up for three turns and then down for three turns. Its basically Wall,Wall,Wall, Space,Space,Space.

[Vanguard]

You get crushed if you stand on it as it rises, right?

[jasonpickering]

Of course!

I also added in a wolf. It takes two turns for each one of yours. It can be pretty cruel. Also thinking about adding a second tier dragon, that will always move toward the player and will just steamroll any monsters in its way.

[jasonpickering]

More work more work.

Actually thinking about trying something different with the unlocks. As I currently have it designed each time you win the game changes subtly. I can actually use that system to just set all monsters and traps. So I could in theory give the player a couple "quests" and have the game be completely different. So this time could be in the woods with rats and wolves, next time it's in a tomb with skeletons and liches. Next time it's dragons and demons.

Might be something to consider and solves the problem of to much stuff being thrown at the player at one time.

[jasonpickering]

Mostly redoing a lot of the enemy code, to make it a bit easier to create enemies. I also had a code error that created a new trap. I had a mistake where an enemy stood in place until you got next to them, then they attacked. I played like this for a few rounds and decided to keep it. So "Statues" are going to be another trap added to the game.

I am going to be redoing the level creation the rest of this week, then hopefully I can get some people beta testing and trying out the difficulty curve I have coded in. then I can start adding polish. Also game works really well on my iPad. The controls are really good, and the sprites don't look as large and abstract as they did with the first version I made with the tiny levels.

[jasonpickering]

Redid the level creation system. I hope to have a new build up this weekend. And then getting some testers to really try it out. I really need to flesh out the difficulty curve.

Added slimes in. The player can only move one square after killing them. And here is an enemy and trap list

Traps:
Spikes
Walls
Statues

Monsters:
Rats
Skeletons
Eyes
Demons
Yetis
Ninjas
Giant eyes
Wolves
Dragons
Liches
Snails
Slimes
Golems.

[jasonpickering]

So big update to the game. A started doing the unlocks. if you want you can hit clear to erase all data and then refresh to start from the beginning. Each time you retrieve the Artifact a small change is made. Now I can start working on the difficulty curve and also the whole presentation. I will also be keeping track of how many hero it takes to retrieve an artifact. So you will be able to see how many times you dies trying to get to the next level of unlocks. if someone wants me to post the full list of unlocks in order let me know. I am moving them all around trying to get a nice gradual curve.

There are a lot of bugs still. and a few enemies that still need to be added because they dont really work at the moment. and sometimes traps are invisible. I think that's an engine thing, but I am looking into it.

[jasonpickering]

Found the bug about the invisible trap. Its something to do with the engine and not my code. The fix is suppose to be in this week, so we will see.

I swapped the Evil lord sprite for a actual face portrait. So that should be in now. drawing out artifacts now. I am thinking about writing a small story for each artifact. describing what it is, because why not.

[jasonpickering]

working on the title page



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