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Author Topic: Little Shepherd - crafting dung.crawl/roguelike (now with a word about design)  (Read 12913 times)

Mephansteras

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Re: Shepherd The Game - crafting dungeon crawl/roguelike
« Reply #15 on: November 12, 2013, 05:56:47 pm »

Having programmed random stuff like this before, I know how much another person playing it on a different computer can help.

And how much much having someone else interested helps with motivation. :)
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Mephansteras

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Re: Shepherd The Game - crafting dungeon crawl/roguelike
« Reply #16 on: November 13, 2013, 12:32:18 am »

Latest version crashes immediately now.

Looks like an Object reference to the Shield Recipe isn't loading properly.
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n9103

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Re: Shepherd The Game - crafting dungeon crawl/roguelike
« Reply #17 on: November 13, 2013, 01:51:31 am »

Latest version crashes immediately now.

Looks like an Object reference to the Shield Recipe isn't loading properly.

Yup.
Also, PTW.
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BlindKitty

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Re: Shepherd The Game - crafting dungeon crawl/roguelike
« Reply #18 on: November 13, 2013, 03:00:10 am »

Updated - this version should work. I forgot I was doing batch rename on data for consistency of English, and replaced only .exe, but not data files... ^^" Sorry about that!
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n9103

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Re: Shepherd The Game - crafting dungeon crawl/roguelike
« Reply #19 on: November 13, 2013, 04:55:59 am »

Spoiler: Hit a crash. (click to show/hide)
Had just won 3rd duel, and got message about loot. Crashed on Enter. Save crashed on load.
New game started fine though.

Got a level up and assigned my stat and skill points after the first duel.

The post-fight and leveling interfaces are somewhat ambiguous.
I'm not sure if it's a soft hang or what, until I go and press enter. (no prompt to press enter, other input still appears.)
The leveling screen needs a prompt, not just announcement. Also needs a point counter to show that you have points to put into your stats and skills.

At best, checking the stats of different equipment is very tedious, since there's only one screen that shows any stats, and it only shows equipped item's stats. Price is alright, but not overly useful, since it's best used in a merchant setting. (i.e. figuring out what items to hold onto to sell at a shop.)

Also crashes in some spots when giving unexpected input. (pressing b in class choice screen for instance)
The Warrior preset seems Quite well equipped compared to what you could afford to purchase yourself.

All crashes are hard hangs. Have to task manager kill it when it does crash.

Win7 64bit btw.

Will play/test some more tomorrow.

E: Been ages since I did image posts. Exercising my skillrust.
« Last Edit: November 14, 2013, 04:15:09 pm by n9103 »
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BlindKitty

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Re: Shepherd The Game - crafting dungeon crawl/roguelike
« Reply #20 on: November 14, 2013, 11:18:06 am »

Finally found out what caused those crashes - the ID of second material in the Dagger recipe was 8 instead of 2 (effect of recent reworking), which conflicted with loop. It is repaired, and I will soon upload the working version. I'd love to make it easier to check somehow, but I'm not sure how to do it, so for now I will just try to get consistent with data files...

Inventory/equipment screen (along with comparing various items) is on the top of to-do list, so this should be getting better soon. I'm actually building it by taping stuff together with duct tape and prayers, and when it seems to hold, building it into something more resembling actual code, and inventory screen is much closer to the duct tape phase still. But with the items more or less working for the moment it will be rebuild.

Class (well, it only gives equipment, so I call it set) choice screen has been repaired to catch exceptions thrown by wrong input; whenever you stumble upon any such place, please, let me know - it is one of the hardest bugs for me to find, since I know what to press. ^^" And it's true that the warrior's set of items is much better than other items right now, but balancing is hardly a priority, honestly. It was created before probability interface, which is the reason, and once I have some inspiration, I will rework it and a few more sets to choose from. The buying screen is actually a placeholder; it is intended to go away closer to the final version, leaving the set selection screen and maybe a craft-something-yourself screen.

I've finally found out how to mask the player input (so the letters you press won't show on the screen any more, barring name selection, of course), and replaced most of the ReadLine with ReadKey (it should be much more intuitive right now), and added prompts in some places, but I'm pretty sure I missed some; levelling screen should be reworked soon as well, as it doesn't seem all that much work.

As for the hard hangs, it is surprising for me - on my computer, it quits nicely after a hang. But I'm running Win8, maybe it has something to do with that? Hopefully some bug-squashing will lead to much smaller number of hangs anyway.

OK, I'm back to checking data for any more hang-inducing recipes (as there seems to be at least one buggy shield, too); I should put another version on-line as soon as I'm reasonably sure this particular crash won't occur again.

EDIT: I've generated a thousand shields, armours, and weapons, and all seems well, so I'm putting it up. I shall keep the more stable version for a while in the folder from now on.
« Last Edit: November 14, 2013, 11:23:58 am by BlindKitty »
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Mephansteras

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Re: Shepherd The Game - crafting dungeon crawl/roguelike
« Reply #21 on: November 14, 2013, 02:24:19 pm »

I'm on windows 7 64bit, so that may have something to do with the hanging after a crash on my system.

More error handling and an error log would probably be a good thing. That way we can cut/paste from the log here to make troubleshooting easier for you. And it's good coding practice to capture all exceptions yourself anyway.

Won't be able to do any more tests until this weekend, but I'll check out whatever the latest version is then.
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n9103

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Re: Shepherd The Game - crafting dungeon crawl/roguelike
« Reply #22 on: November 14, 2013, 04:10:47 pm »

Found another crash.
Pressed X while in combat. Got sheep. Try to load save, crash.
Spoiler: screencap (click to show/hide)


Also, Super weird behavior:
After getting a crash, ensuing hard hang, and clicking close program in dialog: If I click the taskbar button for the window, it tried to minimize, but doesn't. However, the 'hard hang layer' seems to minimize instead. Clicking on the program window will now allow close on keypress. Clicking the taskbar to restore the window brings the 'hard hang layer' back.
Never seen anything quite like that before in decades of Desktop use.
« Last Edit: November 14, 2013, 04:12:27 pm by n9103 »
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BlindKitty

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Re: Shepherd The Game - crafting dungeon crawl/roguelike
« Reply #23 on: November 15, 2013, 01:26:09 pm »

OK, so a new version is up for grabs. More exception handling thrown in, so it shouldn't hang when loading a non-existent save (that was a cause of the crash, n9103), and even print that it didn't find a save so you know what's going on. Also, it asks if you are sure you want to quit, as the game is unable to serialize data in the middle of a fight, so you can only save between them (this may or may not change in the future). There is a new inventory screen, should be easy to understand as it is - and hopefully won't go hanging in your face. Updated level up screen, too, so it should be more intuitive.

Now I will work a little on armours (they should have three different values of Protection - the hard parts, the soft parts and the non-armoured parts, with percentages of cover ranging from 1 to 100 and randomly placed hits; this way you could get lucky and sneak a hit in between armour plates). And probably Shields. And maybe Weapons, too - I've found out how to make creation process easier in-code and I will perhaps implement all the values I have already. So you can expect items getting more of a meaning soon. :)
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n9103

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Re: Shepherd The Game - crafting dungeon crawl/roguelike
« Reply #24 on: November 15, 2013, 04:11:01 pm »

Ah. Had no idea it wasn't saving. d'oh.

E:Played a bit more. few reports.
Prices seem pretty pointless at this point. Recommend removing them post initial setup (,unless a shop is in the near future?)
Many cases of weapons/armor/shield being priced completely different from effectiveness *or* RL value.

Character screen no longer displays shortcut keys.

Would be a good thing to add a forced pause/non-combat key press after battle is over. (Space or Enter would be fine, as would any key other than A or B.
I tried a build that was all armor but light attacks, so spamming A wasn't very risky during the fight. Resulted in levels being gained and spent before I had let go of A upon registering that I had finished the fight. (Yes, a convenience feature, but a good measure to take as it's a simple one.)

Didn't really notice any differences in the inventory other than some new sort of range representation when examining 'W'eapon in the character screen. (8 k8? never seen that format before.)
Still no less tedious to try and compare two or more items to each other. (That info should be on, or a subscreen of, the equip screen, where it's most needed.)

Also, had a Halberd of Silver and Yew. Sounds like it should be a pretty good weapon, though not great.
AB:1 DB:1 k1 Pretty awful. Implies that precious metals are RL equivalents, and not Fantasy versions. (Gold is always worse than even Bronze.)
Yet there are tons of weapons being generated that are a soft metal. Doesn't follow form, and is a touch confusing, (adding to the price not matching function or value issue.)

Forgot to mention before:
Character gains levels Very quickly. Guessing there's no experience curve yet. Not a big deal for this testing, (maybe a good thing actually?) but definitely needs to be on the to-do down the line when you have more content.


As always, hope this all is helpful, and hope you're not hearing any of this as complaining, but rather the suggestions offered with no malice that they are. :D
« Last Edit: November 15, 2013, 06:35:36 pm by n9103 »
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BlindKitty

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Re: Shepherd The Game - crafting dungeon crawl/roguelike
« Reply #25 on: November 16, 2013, 04:32:34 am »

Quote
Ah. Had no idea it wasn't saving. d'oh.

All the more reason to put additional prompt. :) Should be a little safer to play now. :)

Quote
Prices seem pretty pointless at this point. Recommend removing them post initial setup (,unless a shop is in the near future?)
Many cases of weapons/armor/shield being priced completely different from effectiveness *or* RL value.
[...]
Also, had a Halberd of Silver and Yew. Sounds like it should be a pretty good weapon, though not great.
AB:1 DB:1 k1 Pretty awful. Implies that precious metals are RL equivalents, and not Fantasy versions. (Gold is always worse than even Bronze.)
Yet there are tons of weapons being generated that are a soft metal. Doesn't follow form, and is a touch confusing, (adding to the price not matching function or value issue.)

Yeah, I will probably hide prices for now. The shop is planned as a part of Exploration update (v. 0.6.x.x), but I don't really know how much time it's gonna take till I get there. I would like to have items that make more sense before plugging the shop in, and that requires not only programming (I have that part mostly done), but also a lot of data mining and calculations to set some guidelines. Effectiveness-to-value-to-RL-value ratios are the part of this. Gold and Silver aren't actually supposed to be materials for weapon-users in the final game (but they are supposed to have a lot of room for magical improvement) - those were implemented in the past as a way to check whether the values resulting from calculations make sense. And, as provided by silver halberd, they do - weapons made of silver are... Rather useless. This will be addressed in the future (somehow), and for now I will probably cut silver altogether and replace it with something else. Leaving gold weapons as, well, let's imagine for now that there are ceremonial ones, for sale only, OK? ;) Also, it's a little mistake, it should say '8+d8' not '8+k8'; fixed it already, and will put it up with the next version.

Quote
Would be a good thing to add a forced pause/non-combat key press after battle is over. (Space or Enter would be fine, as would any key other than A or B.
I tried a build that was all armor but light attacks, so spamming A wasn't very risky during the fight. Resulted in levels being gained and spent before I had let go of A upon registering that I had finished the fight. (Yes, a convenience feature, but a good measure to take as it's a simple one.)

Should be done soon. Good idea, actually, had run into that issue once or twice myself, just always had other ideas to follow at the moment.

Quote
Character screen no longer displays shortcut keys.
[...]
Didn't really notice any differences in the inventory other than some new sort of range representation when examining 'W'eapon in the character screen. (8 k8? never seen that format before.)
Still no less tedious to try and compare two or more items to each other. (That info should be on, or a subscreen of, the equip screen, where it's most needed.)

Well, the second problem is connected to the first problem. ^^" The new inventory screen is actually the inventory screen,  not weapon/shield/armour screen (that is, it is under {i}, not [w] or [r]), and it shows all the weapons on one screen, all the armours on another and so on (just don't go over 20 of each item yet; I'm not sure how it would work and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't work at all). I must have lost the menu printing method somewhere in the fray, but I don't know how I managed to not notice it... Will take a look at that soon.

Quote
Character gains levels Very quickly. Guessing there's no experience curve yet. Not a big deal for this testing, (maybe a good thing actually?) but definitely needs to be on the to-do down the line when you have more content.

Yes, this is intentional for now, to make level-checking easier. But there is actually an experience... Well, it's not curve, as it is flat; the amount of XP needed to level up is actually Level * 100. The trick is, player start on level 0, meaning that first level up is pretty much free, which makes few more follow closely. After level 4 - 5 you should notice a slow-down in level gain. Still, this is all early, debuggy and non-balanced. :)

Quote
As always, hope this all is helpful, and hope you're not hearing any of this as complaining, but rather the suggestions offered with no malice that they are.

Actually, it's very, very helpful. :) It's good to have some advice, and user feedback is very important. For example, I've never noticed problems with difficulty to compare weapons, as I made up their stats myself I never had the need to do that. :) I just hope that the game actually gets better with time. ;)
« Last Edit: November 16, 2013, 05:02:32 am by BlindKitty »
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BlindKitty

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Re: Shepherd The Game - crafting dungeon crawl/roguelike
« Reply #26 on: November 16, 2013, 08:47:16 am »

New version is up - some under-the-hood changes, some exception catching (hopefully lowering number of crashes even further), prices hidden (and stats exposed wherever possible), after-fight keys limited to Enter and Space (it can also get used wherever else you would feel necessary - please report if there is any such place), and the character sheet menu should be back up and updated. This is one of final iterations of 0.5 version, probably. I want to do a little more data mining, to get materials and items working better before heading off to 0.6 land. If I can get around to making a fully functional system of speed, it will be done too, but no promises here. And I want to get rid of all orange flags (that denote spaghetti code in my comments) after that.

The older version should still float around my SkyDrive folder for a while, if necessary.
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n9103

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Re: Shepherd The Game - crafting dungeon crawl/roguelike
« Reply #27 on: November 16, 2013, 02:29:15 pm »

Meant to mention that last night was the first time I couldn't find a crash, so Woot! :D
Next playtest will be either late tonight, or sometime this weekend.
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Mephansteras

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Re: Shepherd The Game - crafting dungeon crawl/roguelike
« Reply #28 on: November 16, 2013, 02:40:00 pm »

Played with it a little bit today. Much more stable! :)

Would be nice to know what the various numbers next to equipment mean. Also, it'd be nice to see what we looted from monsters BEFORE leveling up, so if we get something we want to use we can put points into that.

Overall, though, it's getting better.

Also, Strength is misspelled. ;)
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BlindKitty

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Re: Shepherd The Game - crafting dungeon crawl/roguelike
« Reply #29 on: November 17, 2013, 07:59:42 am »

I've decided to take a little detour in the process of making the game; that's because I'm standing in front of a major quest, which will be data mining/item calculations, and this quest is not only major in scope, but also programming-unrelated. And as such, I would like to put it aside for workdays (I can data-mine with pencil, paper and whatever has Internet access - and I can't write on the phone, for example), and spend Sunday on something that would make data manipulation somewhat easier. I'm making a Windows Form Application for easier creation (and further down the road, modification) of various data. Right now, I have metal creation form, and I'm moving to Wood and Leather soon. After that, possibly monsters, but it depends on how much time it will take me to make material - focused ones. :) But don't worry - I won't take more than a day at a time to work on this, as this is much less interesting for me than actual game. It is more of an investment - it really should cut on time spent making some new data entries, specifically item recipes, as those are very complicated. :)

Strength is easy to repair - just enter data/data.xml, open GameData/Attributes/Attribute (the first one)/Name. :) I've already did it on my copy, but I've already started to make some changes, so I won't be uploading it just yet; only after a little debugging. Actually, almost all data in game is there, and you can freely edit it. :)

You can check what a monster has on itself during the fight - just view the monster, it should say what is it carrying. But it is a nice idea, I will keep it mind when working on duels.

As for the numbers next to equipment, I intend to add some help/tutorial later on, and more detailed view of an item much sooner. For now, the weapon shows damage in square brackets (constant part + variable part; the variable part might be from 1 to whatever it shows) and attack bonus in round brackets. Shields show armour in square brackets (it doesn't play a role now, but in future, strong enough hits will be able to penetrate the shield and hit you anyway) and defence bonus in round brackets. And armour for now only shows the armour value. This is all a rather temporary measure, as the semi-final item iteration is only beginning right now.

I'm glad that I managed to improve stability. :) I'm pretty sure that there's at least a couple more known bugs, but they shouldn't produce crashes.
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