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[qwertyuiopas]

Have hunger as a percentage?

Could go from -99 to 999 percent while only using 4 characters, and it's the kind of information you don't always want the player to know the exact value of. Plus, changing the capacity is fully suported by default. (100% is always going to be FULL)

[Outcast Orange]

I can send you my older versions of WorldJem if you'd like, they used special characters plenty,
even when I was using curses.

Sounds like the truncated wouldn't be that bad, but I don't really see the initial issue.
Then again, I'm not much familiar with rogue-likes.

SAT practice is silly.

[timmeh]

@Bricks - Okay, so I'm thinking hunger will remain on a scale of 0-1000, and I'll display it as either a percentage or a word.

As far as magic, I'd love to make a magic-centered character possible, but it's going to be a bit tricky to balance.  Here's what I'm thinking, higher level spells, rather than just being more expensive, will also be harder to learn, and maybe even have a minimum intelligence requirement.  That allow me to make the higher leveled spells really powerful, while restricting them to players that concentrate on magic/intelligence, save through scrolls and wands which could still be purchased by the money hogging warrior who needs a backup plan

@qwertyuiopas - Sounds like that's likely to be the plan.  I'll probably display it as a percentage (%73, rather than 73/100) since the max will never change.  That, or use a single word description, to make it a little less precise...

@Outcast Orange - I've figured out how to display them as part of the map, and it does look better.  (Sorry, no screenshot, the maps are completely random just to test drawing at the moment, loading and generation are my next target)  So thanks for the advice!

SATs are only really a pain because they take so long... I managed 85% overall on the practice test, which I'm okay with (suck at the reading sections...), it just takes forever.  I have to get up at 6AM or so just to get to the freaking building on time, and they don't start till about 8:30... I hate waiting, waste of time I could be better spending on school, with friends, or generally expelling energy in any way possible.

[Outcast Orange]

Sounds cool, I look forward to it.

Have you seen Alfie's random dungeons? They are wonky!
I wish more games had completely nonsense dungeons to get lost in.

These rogue-like pet projects of ours are getting interesting.

[timmeh]

I haven't seen them, but I'm downloading it now so I can while I'm at school today!  I've been wanting to redo the dungeons in mine, they're far to basic, and I'd prefer them to be a little more maze-like...

[Bricks]

OK, finally got a chance to play it.  I only got up to level 6 before it froze on them (u)se screen.  Otherwise, I like it so far.  Here are my opinions/ideas that you are totally free to ignore.

Spoiler: On level design (click to show/hide)

I think you should play up the tower theme more, windows and balconies would be cool.  You could also have multi-level foyers and things like that.  Handling z-levels like DF does would be a very lofty goal, but being able to jump down to the floor below is always nifty.  I don't know that I have ever really liked the "stop every five levels for a refresher" scheme - I'd much rather there be one "town" (whether it's an actual screen or just a menu) at the bottom of the tower, so much of the progression in the game would be actually becoming resourceful enough to reach the top of the tower without climbing back down.  Also, the whole climbing-back-down aspect could be a good way to make the game last a little longer and force the player to weigh their risks.  You could have totally random levels (i.e. the tower reorganizes itself every time someone visits), persistent levels, or semi-persistent levels that get randomized a little every time you visit, so you'd have to find a new route.

Spoiler: On character design (click to show/hide)

Nothing really to say here, other than I'm not really sure what the difference is between the classes and the statistics.  I can make some broad assumptions, though, which is good.  Jumping into the world with nary a thing was a bit of a shock, but fortunately I was able to run up to the 5th level and buy a ration and a sword.  (Then it froze... oh well.)  Having non-sentient enemies drop gold strikes me as a little funny, you could do something like WoW where animals drop various 'trash' items that don't do anything but sell well.  That's just a flavor thing, though, the only impact it would have is that the player would have to allocate inventory space for whatever random crap they find.

Spoiler: On vision/LoS (click to show/hide)

I'm (slowly) working on my own roguelike, and since ranged combat is so important, I went straight for the vision algorithm.  I noticed that your algorithm makes unattractive (in my mind) "bumps" in the orthogonal directions, so you always see just one square poking out.  (Hopefully I'm describing that well.)  I have a nice little fix for that if you are interested.  I assume you are using some sort of Pythagorean formula to figure out if a square is in LoS.  Instead of:

Code: [Select]

dx**2 + dy**2 <= vision**2I used:

Code: [Select]

(2*dx-1)**2 +(2*dy-1)**2 <= 4*vision**2Note that "**" is python's silly exponentiation symbol.  The idea behind this is that the player is standing at (1/2+x,1/2+y) where (x,y) are the player's actual grid coords, and that the Pythagorean formula should check that the entire square is within "vision" distance of the player.  It's calibrated so that vision = 1 means the player can see up to one tile away in all directions, including diagonals.  I wrote that particular code so it uses integers instead of floats, something which I've been doing a lot of lately (my shadowcasting algorithm was being idiotic until I realized it wasn't handling equivalence with floats).

EDIT:  Fixed the code in the last spoiler.  Hopefully no one looked at it.

EDIT2:

Got a little further, no freezes this time.  Weird behavior: I found a block on the first floor that was displayed as floor, and permitted vision, but wouldn't let me walk through it.  Does hunger do anything?  I bought some rations to try to bring me back up to full, and was shocked when it only filled up one bit of the hunger bar.  Then I just kept playing while starving, and I didn't notice any detriments.  Overall, hunger seemed to build up rather quickly, and seems very difficult to keep up.  Enemies seem to drop arrows a hell of a lot of the time, especially on the first few levels.  I guess this is because they are cheap.  I also found a door that was lodged in the diagonals of a wall.

[alfie275]

My first idea, probably make it so mages are immune (ie set a flag in character creation):

The more magic you use, the more magic builds up in your body, at first it could be a good thing, but later it would get worse.
The buildup would disipate over time.

Certain creatures might be able to detect magic and seek it out.

As well as generic magic buildup you could have elemental build up such as if you use loads of fire magic, you generate more and more heat until you start to burn, perhaps you might be immune to the heat but your items wouldnt be.


My second idea:
When scrolls, wands or perhaps magic creatures are destroyed or killed their magic is released as raw magic in that element.

[timmeh]

Wow, thanks for all the input!  I didn't get a whole lot done today cause school was... long.  I started to tackle map generation, but didn't get too far.  I'm going to look into loading maps first I think, cause that shouldn't take very long, just opening a file full of single digit numbers and loading them into an array.

Onto the input though:

@Bricks (Level Design) - I'm going to be using a new method for map generation, so the widows, balconies and such are very much an option.  Saving levels below the player is certainly an option, although if I make them go all the way to the bottom to reach the shops I may have to add an item that allows them to teleport into the town and teleport back, cause at higher levels (say the 50th floor or something) coming down would be a serious pain to sell random junk...  Still, I'll definitely consider it! 

@Bricks (Character Design) - The classes (in the version you have) just determine your five primary stats, and then you get the left-over points to put into whatever you want.  In the next version they determine stats, health (which may or may not be separate from endurance now, still working on the numbers for that one...) and how much exp you get to spend on stats later.  Reading these comments reminded me that adding a shop during character creation would probably be a good idea, so they'll probably determine how much money you start with as well.  So you might have a fighter class that has high strength and endurance by default, just a little exp to spend, but enough money to buy some decent equipment.

@Bricks (LoS/Vision) - Awesome!  I was using Pythagorean theorem to determining distance, so I'll almost definitely use that once I get to vision again.  The actual line of sight is horribly ineffective though, so I'll probably need to touch up on that as well... (it checks each tile to see if there is a straight line between it and the player...)

@Bricks (EDIT2) - Hunger doesn't do anything yet, still working on that.  The rapid decrease is actually the reason I was hesitant to use 0-100 instead of 0-1000.  It decreases fast now, but it was even faster when I had to decrease it by at least 1 percent, and since you get a little hungrier each round...

The arrows are mostly just because they're cheap.  The drops basically pick to either just drop gold, or to try and drop an item of similar worth.  If they drop arrows they drop enough to make up the value that would otherwise have been dropped in gold.

@alfie - That would definitely be interesting, but it'll probably have to wait until I get elements in for magic in the first place... still, it's certainly a possibility once I do!  As for the second idea, what do you mean "released"?  Like you can walk over it and get more 'experience' in that element or more energy or something?  An explosion of magical force would be interesting too... knocks you back, maybe causes damage, but gives you exp or energy... we'll see.

[EDIT]:  I've apparently got a cold (figures it happens AFTER the last day of school...), so I'll probably be in bed early, but I've planned out the room generator, so I figured I'd at least give that update before I hit the hay...

I start with a single room, probably in the middle of the map, but maybe at a random position.  Then I add one of what what I'll call nodes to each side of the room.  Each node will contain a position and a direction to go out in.  So the map might start like this:

Code: [Select]

+---^---+
|.......|
<.......>
|.......|
+---V---+where the <, >, ^, and V are nodes in the designated direction.  Then I loop through the nodes, trying to add a room to each one, and new nodes to each new room, until it runs out of space.  At first it will only add the same, basic room, but once I've got that working I'm going to try adding hallways and rooms of different sizes.  Heck, I could get some really weird rooms, so long as I position the room and the it's nodes properly, it should work fine.

Basically, the nodes represent possible places for doors.  If there's room on the appropriate side of the door to add a new room (or any other map feature) it adds the door and adds the new room.  Simple enough in theory, but only time will tell if I can actually pull it off...

[Outcast Orange]

Argh! I can't stand it anymore! I need to make some dungeons.
I'm going to add a Citadel feature to my game soon,
 then I'll be able to have tons of fun mapping out rooms and hallways too.

Actually, that will wait until more important stuff, which I will undertake tomorrow.

Also, don't worry, I had most of today off, and I didn't touch my game at all.
I just needed a small break for other stuffs.

[timmeh]

  I've sorta got it working with a single, uniform room size/shape, but I'll wait to post it until I fix some bugs.

Don't blame you about the break though.  Work on ToA is likely to be slow tomorrow and Saturday for SATs.  After that I've got a semi-break for a week, then my real Christmas Break.  (I'm home-schooled but attend a co-op group.  They aren't meeting next week, so I don't attend any classes, but I still have homework that I'd rather get done now than cram during right before/after Christmas...)

[alfie275]

About the magic released on destruction of the scroll, have you read the terry pratchet books? The group of main characters stumble across a magical field that was created from when man was fighting the gods, where lots of spells where used it created magical fields that did stuff, like affecting the toss of a coin etc.

[timmeh]

I haven't but they sound interesting.  I don't have anything planned to read over the holidays yet, so I'll try to go by the library soon and see if I can find them...

The concept of magic having very small amounts of a sort of residual effect sounds awesome though... now that you've brought it up I'll have to look into the concept of magical fields soon.  I haven't put any thought into it from a programming point of view, but conceptually, here's what I'm thinking:

Spells, regardless of how they're cast, release magical energies into the air.  For example, if the player were being attacked by a large number of monsters, and he backed up to channel them through a doorway, he could cast a lot of fire spells and it would slowly generate a field of heat.  Eventually, the aura could get so hot it damaged monsters that so much as walked near him.  Depending on the player's familiarity with fire magic, he may be harmed by the aura as well.  Auras would fade over time, but any spell with the same element that was cast within it would build it back up.  Maybe spells of the opposing element would make it fade even faster.

Reading back, it would be interesting to have a similar effect following the player.  One that took longer to build up, but faded more slowly.  So a player that used too much fire magic without having some sort of resistance would end up hurting for it.  It could be balanced by casting the occasional ice/water based spell to counter the aura, defended against to let him use it against enemies, or even just ignored and put up with the damage...

I'll have to start a notebook of sorts to keep this kind of thing it, cause I'm not ready for it yet, but now I'm all hyped up over it

As for progress, I have it generating some a rather boring map.  A grid of identical rooms always connected the same way (albeit not in every direction like before):

It always has the same pattern of doors because when I loop through the nodes it does so in the same order each time.  I'm going to rewrite that loop after dinner, then I need to figure out how I'm going to create the different room types, cause the one I've got is a horrible mess of loops and if statements to assign the values to the 2D vector I use to hold the tile pattern... Once I've got that working I'll need to make it go through the possible room types in a random order, so it'll use different rooms.

[EDIT]:  Okay, nodes are checked in a random order now.  Took me less than 5 minutes, so once I get multiple room types in it shouldn't be any harder to access them in a random order... I hope...

[Outcast Orange]

Wow. You guys over complicate this whole room thing.
I think having a room class would only be useful if you made room specific effects or balances.
Otherwise it seems like a hindrance.
I would prefer to have the individual tiles as a class, then just have processes that effect them,
forming the dungeon.

I would probably write a process that started the whole thing filled in, then ate out a single tile square,
followed by a randomly sized rectangle, which would test against the tiles it was going to eat out,
 so it wouldn't cut into other rooms.
That just about does it. Random rooms, including basic hallways.
To get more elaborate hallways, make an embedded process that has a chance of triggering.
In this case, just make a corridor of random length, and if it doesn't run into a room,
 have it change direction every now and then.
Should get some crazy random room layouts, complete with random twisty passages.
You can even add a tendency for them to dig towards the middle,
 so they don't all end up dead-ending against the edges of the map.

If you can't tell, I really want to get around to dungeon creation.
There's a good place for it in my game, coming up in a couple of updates if things go as I plan.

[timmeh]

That's not a bad idea at all.

Thing is, I want my maps to look like the inside of a building, not a cave.  So random, twisting hallways and strangely shaped rooms might look kinda out of place.  That's my thinking behind the method I'm using (and it's just about done, just need to find an easier way to add room layouts and I'm ready to go).  It less like normal rogue-like map generation, and more like the old Diablo I and II generation, where it would put various pieces together.  It'll let me design some really cool pieces that show up from time to time, and maybe later have them influence treasure (and it is coming, eventually...) and enemy spawns.

I might also be able to stick descriptions on the rooms later.  The look function would be far more interesting if you got a description of the dimly lit dining hall, drenched in the blood of your enemies   I saw a game where the descriptions of items and certain other things was generated semi-randomly... it's something I'd love to see in Tower of Azari eventually, but it's also something that's way out of my league at the moment.  I'm all for trying things I know I'm not capable of, for the sake of learning from my mistakes, but that'd be like stopping work on ToA to try and write the next Halo or WoW killer...

Anyways, like I mentioned, I've got it working with different room layouts.  At the moment it's just one small room and one big room, but that's only really because they're hard coded at the moment, and because they're 2D vectors, initializing anything that isn't as straight-forward as a square would likely cause me intense physical pain... so, my next goal is to get them either loaded from some kind of file, or find a much, much, much easier way to set them up hard-coded...

(And a picture of a map with two room types, to hold you until I make further progress:)

[Outcast Orange]

I would recommend finding a better character for doors. I always wondered why they used + signs.
Here's a decent one: ∩ (239)
I like the variation, and regular patterns (not common in these games).
You could think of it as more of a castley place, with large ballrooms and halls, and hidden passages.
I'd love to see some scenery in a rogue-like for once.
How many bare stone rooms do you think there are in ADoM or Nethack?
I would love to see a grand piano, or some wall shackles or something.
Don't leave these details out of the question.

I am seriously thinking about not only putting dungeons in CScream,
but also making a side project for dungeons.
My only major restriction about doing that in CS is that items are hard to do,
and in a 3D land, they would be way out of place, as a graphic representation.
Ascii is much more consistent though.
I don't know.
The other main problem with doing that,
is I have no idea how to get text in my game right now.
I will find out how very soon though.
I think at that point, this game may become more cluttered,
and if I decide that is the direction of my game,
I will gladly embrace the clutters.