It's looking less and less likely I will have all of the functioning pieces in place before I am ready to start building a game, prior to August 24th when school starts. Not that I will have to stop coding by any means at that point. I was just hoping to get past the game engine stage/UI stage. I kind of want to have a well developed item game going as well. Potions will be easy. Scrolls I really haven't thought of much though.
In any event, I haven't much talked about plot, story line, or how the game will play. It's high time I share my vision. Now I know this will not appeal to everyone in the genre, but I figure it's best to make the kind of game I'd love. Considering most people have some sort of plot or theme set out when they start coding, you've probably already figured what kind of gamer I am.
Well, I'll spell it out. I'm a munchkin gamer. That probably sums it up best. I like finding the most obscene/crazy build and taking on the challenge presented with me. As this kind of gamer, the first thing I am developing is the combat system. I want fast game play, I want tough decisions in character building and I want unique game styles. Every build has to be able to compete, the less straight forward it is the more rewarding it should be. Game mechanics have to be interesting, complicated, and fair. I don't just want big damage, I want to control game around me.
Spells, skills, and combat aren't waiting around while I build towns and shops and an over world. They are in now and everything to use them with and against (AI) is going in first, before anything else. The UI to select the gear, to target the foes, and spell effects are in. Anything relating to game play is in first and foremost. I'm much more willing to see good game play with a bad 'game', then a 'well developed game' with boring and tedious game play.
Additionally, game play needs to be fast. No grinding, no starting town level. Low average life span for low level players. I don't want to spend 10 minutes picking out feats and buying/selling gear at the start. I want in, and I want to play. Also, there must be a sense of immediate danger at all times.
Quests and plot? A plot will be in the game. Heck I even plan on doing some form of quest when I eventually get to religion. But they are secondary. Atmosphere, plot, quests, and theme are secondary. I never cared a great deal for those things. Let's face it, 99.9% of games have terrible plots anyway. That's ok, a game isn't a book it's a game. I think my favorite game growing up was masterblaster for the NES, a game where you followed your radioactive pet frog down a tunnel and somehow ended up in a spacesuit and tank. It was weird and it didn't make any sense. Heck half the games back then had plots that were tacked on. "We have to have a plot?" ok um... how about fighting toads on a spaceship saving the world or something. What was the plot for tetris or pac man?
I want mind numbing action and addictive game play. Unfolding quest? Plot Twists? Exploring some vast world? Dialog? Not in this game. In this game you will kill stuff or be killed while getting the orbs of whatever. Why? Because you are in the dungeon and there is no way out otherwise. But why? I just told you.
You will be dropped in, given a few tools, and have a challenge set before you. I'm even thinking of eliminating resting/food and just setting hp/mp regen to a pace where it isn't needed.
Imagine if you could some how cross Dungeon Crawl SS with Final Fury or one of the other side scrolling NES games. A complex combat system and character development mixed with lots and lots of combat. The game will be short, once the game is fully laid out perhaps 2 hours tops to win. Now even though I want the game reasonable short, I do also want it to be very difficult.
My eventual layout will be around 15-20 main dungeon levels likely 75 by 75 tiles. With short side dungeons for each element themed appropriately. Each side dungeon should have a mini boss in a tiny room (much like master blaster). With a final boss accessible once 3 or so side dungeons have been completed.
I also want to sporadically include shops with a very small amount of items for sale where players can stock up on potions, scrolls of ID, ammo, wands and perhaps find a useful item.
Additionally, one of my final goals will be to include god quests that are only randomly available. God quests will either unlock something special for the player and all his characters (like short cuts in spelunky), or offer some godly bonus.
Hey, I just wanted to say this looks like it will be really cool. I look forward to a release.
ReplyDeleteHi, this game looks to be really good. The only thing I'll say right now is that the UI needs to be cleaned up a little, especially with the messages like, "You strike the fire ant." instead of "you strike the fire ant". Furthermore, getting the stats printed out nicely aligned, and fixing spelling mistakes are things I'd like to see.
ReplyDeleteThe pros however are excellent: The light / view radius is done well - people doing full colour roguelikes make the mistake of gradiating them too slowly and it ends up looking, well, weird, because it's a linear falloff and not an exponential one. The use of colour is also excellent, I love dungeons with variety and the cold, pastel colours in your palette are pleasing to the eye. The "crystal caves" shot is fitting, but I hope you have some more "straightforward" dungeon generation algorithm that creates something not so messy (see Crawl or Nethack's main dungeon).
I would advise that you try and keep dungeon levels small (i.e. 2-3 screens width/height max) because you'll get a featureless dungeon like Angband. Try and fit lots of interesting dungeon features into a reasonably short space.
Apart from that, amazing stuff, can't wait to see a release.
I know it sounds pedantic, but things like this really help polish things up and get people taking the project more seriously.
Thanks for the feedback. I completely agree with your criticism, a good deal could be done to clean up the in game messages. Right now I am working on getting most of the code and functionality in place before trying to mold it all into a game.
ReplyDeleteI just got back from vactaion, and have spent this last few days playing crawl. I think it's easy to underestimate just how important game messages and information display is in a game like this. I've been going back to the well for ideas.
I do have some very simple and generic levels at the moment, but I do not have many dungeon features. The generic dungeons look good, but adding unique rooms and vaults will add a lot. I have a system in place to allow for that, and currently have a couple of rooms. As it stands I have several themes, I think 8 or 9, but will generally use the straightforward layout.
Regarding layout size, I am using 75x75 tile levels, which is about 2 1/2 screens. So again, I think we are on the same page. I actually picked up rogue and played that for a bit on vacation. It's funny, I never played rogue but it's more the game play I want in my game than it's derivatives. I also dislike angbands dungeons as well as ToME's. Angbands are too featureless and ToME's are far too long.
Again, it's nice to see some feedback. Polishing messages, text, display, and interface will probably be the most challenging part for me. I do have some experience in design. I've developed a few business solutions for the university I work at. So something will be very wrong if I can't get the display and menus system polished and smooth.
Anyway, I'm still sloging away.
Great stuff. You're right about getting the core functionality and gameplay right; cosmetics can come later. I believe the guy doing the Incursion RL is currently rewriting 75% of the game's core mechanics and functionality to ensure he can expand and modify it with ease much later on. It's going to take him a year, but it's a necessary evil.
ReplyDeleteAs you know, the most popular roguelikes keep it like you stated in your design goals - hack and slash, dungeon focused, non-existent plot. I think roguelike players are more keen to have a tight, balanced and polished game where the goal is relatively simple, but the path there is full of tactical decisions, cool features, and solid gameplay.
There are some exceptions - I think ADOM managed to combine the whole overworld thing with a plot and lots of quests pretty well, but for the most part, Angband, Nethack and Crawl are the holy triumvirate due to their purity. Other attempts at heavy plot structure or massive, sprawling overworld (Dwarf Fortress, Legerdemain, ToME) have been met with less enthusiasm. It's mainly because there's no direct, simple goal to achieve or focused route for the player to take.
Although, having said that, Legerdemain is an amazing, polished roguelike and remains totally underrated; it just appeals to less people because it doesn't have that "pick up and roll a character" vibe of the most popular roguelikes.
You probably know all this I'm just glad to see a) results b) the right mentality to make an excellent RL.
Yep, that's the plan. There are a few things I want to add at a later date that might require some refactoring. I have this idea for god quests, that might end up causing some rewrites to some of the code.
ReplyDeleteI'm taking this computer linguistics course, granted I just started it, but I have this vague idea about how I can do something with the dump files as a project for the course. Perhaps when I get to the achievements I can parse them into nouns, adjectives, and verbs and build a 'story' about the character's life.
Maybe even some sort of quest generator, or god text. Achievements such as what potions you drink, how many turns you take, how much experience you have, any special mobs or items you've discovered, how many mobs you've killed of a type, in addition to your skills and stats.
I'm not sure exactly what might come of that though. But it might be neat to encounter a shrine on a fixed level, and see what god has taken interest in you in addition to presenting the player with the ability to worship the god and having the god give an interesting message regarding your progress so far.