What the title says, basically. I also wrote a short "pitch" for the game, as seen below, back when I first had the idea of it. It's a sort of reminder and guideline for what I strive to achieve. I also have a development log and a "to be done" feature list - although for now they are mostly engine-centric.
"This project is conceived as an instrument for experimental purposes, and aims to provide a roguelike engine along with a playable piece of interactive entertainment.
Puckish Rogue is a roguelike game set in modern times, where the player shall have the role of a custom made character, or inherit an already existing NPC's role in the game's current world.
The game's world will be generated semi-randomly and will be persistently saved, which means that everything will influence the proceeding events of the world. Permadeath will ensure that players will have to deal with consequences, and that dying means losing a possibly valuable character. As only one character may remain active at a time, to play another role in the world the player will either have to get his character killed or "abandoned" temporarily for AI control.
The playable character's progression will occur as a combination of attributes, skills, work experience, education and life aspirations.
The player can assume the roles, for example, of a common worker striving for career and social success, a police officer tracking down crooks and criminals or a criminal trying to come up in the world through any means possible - although greater emphasis will be put upon the crime and law aspect of the game due to the primary concept.
Features such as melee weapons, guns, driveable vehicles ranging from skateboards to airplanes, travelling to other places, human and biological needs, social interactions, wants and fears and complex NPC behavior will be present during gameplay.
Inspiration was drawn from games such as Grand Theft Auto 5, Saints Row 2, The Sims 3, Hotline Miami, Dwarf Fortress, Caves of Qud, Rogue Survivor, Mercenaries: World in Flames, Cataclysm DDA, Yakuza 0 and other pieces of entertainment media."
As mentioned before, I'm still in the engine-centric phase of development. Pre-alpha if you will. Currently I have set up the whole data structures the game will make use of, as well as the many flags and identifiers to be used by the AI (goal oriented - based around tasks and how to perform them based on the current agent's many attributes and characteristics, as defined by flags). I also make use of a lot of summarized ID tags and boolean flags as a means of keeping the game easily customizable - since the point is to allow the player to insert custom items, weapons, creatures, NPCs, places, vehicles and other stuff on the go (which is also part of a future project I plan to work on, based on this one).
I do, however want to have missions and campaigns, as to give the game a streamlined experience, since I (and I believe most players) tend to get bored rather quickly when a game is too open ended. There will be challenges and goals, both in the open-ended and linear spheres.
So far I have been having a blast, although I keep it hobbyist and casual - both to fit my current student's schedule and to avoid mental fatigue - but it's coming along fine and according to my expectations. What is outside of my area of expertise is the whole marketing thing. My plan is to keep the game free, and only accept willful donations from people that believe I should get something for it (it is just a pet project and a stepping stone for some of my ideas after all). I wonder how should I go about divulging it for the roguelike enthusiast community, when it is in a playable state at least.
I still have to populate the default data files, code the AI and polish the UI as of now. Any questions or suggestions from you fellow roguelike game conoisseurs?
Also: Shout out if you get a reference contained within this post. You'll know what it is if you know it.
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Topic: Developing a Roguelike - Seeking Suggestions and AMA I Guess (Read 2286 times)