1. Further on Towers

    April 23, 2010 by Stone

    Of course, this won’t be a true Roguelike. Since MT was a strategy game primarily, the map layouts are integral. This is actually really helpful for beginning development because if I design the map creator now to grab pre-made maps, once the game is working, it won’t be so bad to implement the same methods to instead make the random maps needed for more rogue-like roguelikes I might make.

    Another thing to consider in MysticRogue(tm) is doors. In the game, they had no thickness. One tile is in one room, the next is the first in the next room. I either need to create walls that can fit between tiles (also non-roguelike), or change the dynamics of the game by allowing one-tile thick doorways. Further, there was no interaction between rooms. I could flip a switch that affected another room, but I couldn’t drag an item through a door. On that note, standing in the doorway (on the tile where the door was) with the monster on the other side was a surefire way to keep it from hurting you. You couldn’t shoot through the door either, so you would have to move eventually, but it was the perfect place to use a heal spell, because you had no urgent need to move most of the time.

    Ultimately, I plan to make this more roguelike anyways, since there should be 8 (not 4) directional movement, and the ability for monsters to chase you between rooms. Ultimately, it would be sort of fun to generate the tower as a series of random rooms, that only have to meet basic standards for inclusion. Then I could have more than 15 monsters per tower, more than one in a room at any given time, and turn this less into a recreation of Mystic Towers in roguelike form, and more like a tribute to it. This would give me a lot more leeway to rearrange the towers, add monsters, add or change spells, remove levitate, and more. I could use the rules of the towers as guidelines (ie: There still must be at least one teleport pad per floor, generator must be on floor 3, at least one bomb must exist to destroy it), and possibly still make a fun game. Of course, writing a map generator adds at least weeks if not months to the development time, so we will see. I may start with Rimm Tower as a recreation to be sure I can handle it, then abstract and change it from there.

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  2. On Mystic Towers

    April 22, 2010 by Stone

    Of the early PC games I played, Mystic Towers remains one of my favorites still. Likely it is for the same reason some people still play Doom, or the first Unreal. Back in 1994, games really didn’t have the fancy processor power and graphics they have now. They had to rely on the graphics they had, and the mediocre sound they had, and decent gameplay if they wanted to impress their audience. To create an atmosphere back then was difficult, but like Doom, I think Mystic Towers pulled it off.

    There are systems they had that won’t work so well in a roguelike without careful consideration. Because the game was in isometric 3D (tiles looked at from a corner) there were gameplay elements that won’t work from top-down, such as items being hidden (from the screen) by taller items in front of them. Because you could pick up items next to you rather than on top of them, sometimes items were off the map (such as a fireball spell in a fireplace). I have to ensure I have rules for that. Then of course, there is the levitate spell, which is probably going to be my biggest challenge for this game. In Mystic Towers, everything had a height. When walking around, you could go under some high objects, fit through doors, jump over low objects, and reach the floor to pick up flat items like coins. ect. By levitating, he raised himself up one tile (up to 4 with repeated casts). At one tile, you were off the floor, so tiles with effects were not triggered. At two tiles, the lowest monsters couldn’t attack you, and you can glide straight over short objects, but you can no longer reach the floor to pick things up that were on it. At heights 3 and 4, you could not fit through ground-level doors. Non flying monsters were easy to pick off, since they couldn’t touch you also couldn’t interact with much unless it was high up as well. If there was an item on a high shelf or on top of a pillar, or a high button, you could get to it, but since the levitate spell was fairly rare, you had to be smart about when to use it. Many of the high buttons had a crate nearby you could push over and jump onto to hit it.

    Another interesting item is the attack spells. There were 5 spells, and the only difference was the name, graphic, and damage. The spells firef from you and went up or down first (if the monster was higher or lower than you), then straight along a path. This meant that a) The monster had time, and might move away from the line of fire or closer to you, and b) That items on the ground might block your shot, but you could shoot over items if the enemy would be hit.

    Personally, I would love to see the attack spells have more of a strategy to them, not only doing higher or lower damage, but having other effects. Ice could slow an enemy down. Being strange demonic monsters, maybe one of them could speed up from ice. Lightning could arc, or move faster than a shot of sulfur for example. Overall, there is some creative room here.

    The tough part will be the atmosphere. If you have never played DoomRL, you should. There is a game that captures the atmosphere of the game it emulates. I feel great when playing DoomRL, like it’s an actiony, shooty game. Good times. With MT, I’m going to try to get the creepy atmosphere going. It was mostly the sound, but it was always interesting to walk into a room and realize that it was very dark, and some unseen monster was already gnawing on you. I think I can pull that off.

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  3. I’m getting it.

    by Stone

    I think I’m getting the hang of Java. It just took some research to understand what a few of the words I didn’t understand were. For some reason, the book i was using just never explained things like why you start a main class with “public static void main (String[] args) {” (Or whatever it is. I’m typing from memory).

    My new approach is better: I picked a book that wasn’t as dry (I always have luck with O’reilly, and probably should have started with them), and I ask a lot of questions. I’m only now at the beginning of actually creating and using objects, but unlike with the last book, I get it, and I feel compelled to keep going. That is awesome!

    I was asked the other day why I feel compelled to write a roguelike. Honestly, I don’t know. I’m into them to some degree, but I’m not a hardcore player or a fanatic. I don’t know the differences between Angband variants, nor have I ever beaten the more heavy number crunching ones (Nethack).

    I think what I like about playing them though, is that they work for casual and hardcore gamers. If I play World of Warcraft casually, I’m always behind the hardcore players. Even if they have a character at (or lower than) my level, they have heirlooms and gold from the higher level characters that I don’t. This is ok, but it does discourage casual play, since I know that as long as I have a sex-life, I will not have all that cool gear. If I play ADOM casually, I’m part of the general crowd who might have a lucky win or two, but generally isn’t getting their 1000th lawful crown, or slaying the ElDeR ChAoS GoD for the bazillionth time. The random nature of this game means that even those hardcore players won’t have a huge lead over anyone playing as long as them, and the short lifespan of characters coupled with no meta-game or interaction between your other characters means two players at the same level are not severely mismatched.

    I also like the relative freedom. In Crawl, you have tons of options, and the game does have only one ultimate path, but so much of it isn’t linear (I can clear the hive now for the XP, or wait until I need the food and have more poison resistance later). This is why I explored every nook and cranny in Oblivion (I think): because I could. On the other hand, I’m under no delusion that an hour of horse-riding between towns might be considered an hour of gameplay.

    Back on topic though, I still have a lot to do before I can even begin any sort of development. I have to decide how this is going to work, for example: Is the screen just an object that calls a drawScreen() function? That might be best, but that isn’t the only possible way to handle displaying events on screen. Maybe the screen is drawn once, and the entities show up on top of it, only moving themselves when neccessary. I’m like a little kid looking at a huge blank paper, holding a huge box of thousands of differently colored crayons. I can make anything, but the hardest part is drawing that first line. Ruining the perfect cleanness and clarity of that paper in a way that I can only hope makes it better.

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  4. So much to do… no time to do it…

    April 14, 2010 by Stone

    Ah, the classic argument. Where will I find the time to do the things I know need to be done? The things that one has to do in life will invariably fall into one of four categories: Things that are both urgent, and important, things that are either one of those, and not the other, and things which are neither urgent nor important.

    This presents a good deal of difficulty in planning.

    On the one hand, some things are urgent. Showing up to work on time. Bathing. Eating. These are things which must be done, and done at or by a specified time.

    Some things are important, but not urgent. Dental Care, for example, would fall into this category for many people. How many of you regularly go to the dentist? How many of you know that you should? See.

    Some things are urgent, but not important. Cleaning my place is like that. If I wait until Saturday, I might get a few bugs, but it won’t ultimately make a difference unless I go a while without doing it.

    The things that are neither urgent or important though, are the problems. This is usually things like dating, like video games, like drinking beer or playing pool. basically, the fun stuff, that sometimes manages to take priority over important things. How many times have I said to myself, “I SHOULD go outside and jog. Maybe after this dungeon.”

    Bah!

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  5. Why are video games so addicting?

    April 5, 2010 by Stone

    I started playing Torchlight. Bye-bye development time. My Vanquisher and her pet mimic (a living treasure chest with teeth) are damn sexy. The chest can summon an army of skeletons (I sort of like to think they’re the reassembled bones of enemies he has eaten), and the Vanq has two pistols that she can fire at the speed of a machine-gun. It’s wicked.

    Anyways, that’s the story this week. Development is on hold because I’m an addict. If you like dungeon crawls or action-RPGs, check out Torchlight if you haven’t already.

    To describe it (for those who aren’t familiar with the type of game), it’s a Hack ‘n Slash. The core gameplay involves running around a randomly generated map, battling hordes of easily defeated enemies (and occasionally some harder to defeat ones) with one type of attack, and all other actions (spells, attacks, ect) taking both time and mana), while you collect gold and item drops, and try to manage your very limited inventory space until you can go back to town and sell the junk (items you can’t use), then it’s back to the dungeon to do it all over again. It’s an RPG, so as you kill enemies, you will eventually level up. You can then spend skill points on additional attributes and abilities, turning you into (eventually) a paragon of your chosen profession. In this case, the professions are: 1) the Destroyer, who is basically your melee powerhouse with limited range, incredible damage, and the ability to charge headfirst into combat. 2) The Vanquisher, who has an affinity with ranged weapons (guns, bows), and is good at setting traps and stealthy/sneaky attacks. and 3) The Alchemist, who I don’t have much experience with. The Alchemist is your pure caster class, able to use the best spells and summoning powers in order to fight by proxy. Each of these characters has access to a wide variety of unique powers, but also can share some of the same talents, and can build up the same attributes. For example, it would be possible to take my destroyer, equip some magic enhancing items, some spells, and some magic skill, and turn him into a caster. He’ll just never be quite as natural at it as an Alchemist.

    Then there is the pet system. You can start with a cat or a dog, and they aren’t bad. Early on, they have more hp than you, and serve well as a distraction for enemies, or additional damage. Each pet can wear two rings and a necklace, so you might find some good enchanted ones to help them out. The pet can also learn two spells (my destroyer had a fireball shooting dog. quite fun). They can also be temporarily transformed by eating fish. The fishing minigame is not too hard, and thankfully, not a skill you can directly rank up (stupid WoW). Different fish will turn the pet into different creatures for either two minutes (normal) an hour (big version of the fish, rare), or permanently (giant version of the fish, quite rare). different pets have varying stats and abilities, but also retain what they had before. for example, if my fireball shooting dog eats a fish that makes him an ice-elemental, he will still have the fireball spell, but he’ll also have the ice-elemental’s ice powers, resistance to ice damage, etc.

    Still, the pet’s primary function for me has been as a packmule. Your pet has the same number of inventory slots as you do, and can be ordered to pick up items (or you can grab em and put them in the pet’s inventory). The pet can then return to town (not helping you during that time), and sell his entire inventory to clear room. This is great for times when there are a lot of junk items lying around (and there are plenty of times).

    For a while, the game’s creators had talked about their plan to make an MMO set in the Torchlight universe. If they do, and they keep the current gameplay’s pace and style, I think they could do what I was hoping Champions Online would do: blow World of Warcraft out of the water.

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