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[Psyco Jelly]

~DOWNLAD~
This is still work in progress, though I have got the dungeon generator and movement down.

Right now I'm working on just getting a playable game. Currently, you can walk through a randomly generated but boring dungeon.

Press left and right arrow keys to turn 45 degrees, and up to move forward a space.

UPDATES:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

January 7, 20010: Good dungeon generation.

[jplur]

Hey great stuff!

The download link is a little funky by the way.

Pretty funny, we are both at the same place with our projects, a random dungeon you can walk around populated by one type of monster.

I really dig the old school feel to the game, and the 45 degree movement.

Looking forward to more updates!

[Psyco Jelly]

Updated, now with crisper graphics and a HUD.

For this game, I'm using four stats: Strength, agility, intelligence, and endurance. I'm implementing a crude version of the GURPS system, meaning that to hit, you don't roll a twenty-sided die and add modifiers, you roll three six-sided dice and try and get below a certain score. Lower is better, and the results are more average. You can roll really high or really low, but things tend to stay in the 8-13 range.

[Psyco Jelly]

BIG-ASS UPDATE

Just to show you guys I am serious about this project, I have programmed in an inventory system, more dungeon interaction (picking up things) and character generation. For every visible change there have been many invisible ones. I have put down the groundwork for the game. Next I'm going to add in equipment, and then combat. After that I will program in character advancement (though it won't be like your traditional roguelike.)

I'm going to opt for a crawl-esque progress system, where class stops mattering in the late game. You will be able to combine features of different 'classes'. I always like customization, and I want that to play a large part in the game.

[Bricks]

Yay customization!  Going to check this out as soon as I have an instant of free time, probably tonight.  You should make the d/l link bigger and shinier, might get a few more takers that way.  Cool that your game implements true facing, will there be a benefit to facing one direction, say, when being attacked?  Also, will the game be strictly a mouse/keyboard hybrid, or will you be able to play it with the keyboard alone?

[Psyco Jelly]

Yay customization!  Going to check this out as soon as I have an instant of free time, probably tonight.  You should make the d/l link bigger and shinier, might get a few more takers that way.  Cool that your game implements true facing, will there be a benefit to facing one direction, say, when being attacked?  Also, will the game be strictly a mouse/keyboard hybrid, or will you be able to play it with the keyboard alone?

I'll implement other (hopefully customizable) controls once I'm through with the other parts. I'll also implement full mouse control, though hybrid is easier for me. Also, about the facing, I'll try and implement monster facing. It's just hard to show which way monsters are facing in 3d. I don't plan on using models for the monsters, to get a little of that doom-ish feel.

[Outcast Orange]

That is so awesome...

I want more!

[Psyco Jelly]

Sorry, it'll be a while before the next update, but I think I can tell you how the combat system will work.

When you attempt to attack an enemy (or vice-versa), you roll 3 six-sided dice. If you roll lower than a certain score, you hit. The score you must beat is:

Your weapon's governing ability score + Your skill in that weapon + enchantment bonuses - (your enemies agility score - 10).

Let's say you have an agility score of 13,  a light blades skill of novice (or 1) and a mundane longsword, and are fighting an enemy with 11 agility. This will total to 13, you will usually hit.

Each weapon deals a certain amount of damage, a longsword deals 1 six-sided die + 1 damage. Weapons also get bonuses to damage equal to the governing ability score minus 10. Since you have an agility of 13, you deal between 5 and 10 damage.

When the enemy is hit, they try to score lower than a certain score equal to their armor skill level + their endurance. If they succeed, they reduce the damage by (endurance/5 + Armor Value). Let's assume the enemy has an armor score of 1, an endurance of 13, and leather armor (which has an armor value of 3). This means that if the enemy succeeds on a check of 14, they reduce the damage by 5, meaning you deal between 0 and 5 damage.

I would also like to point out that weapons such as spears and warhammers fare better against armor, effectively reducing the armor value. Also, weapons that deal more damage such as greatswords and lances, will incur penalties on your attack roll, since they are heavier and thus harder to use. This will give weapons that normally deal only a little damage will have a tactical advantage, such as armor piercing or even to-hit bonuses. Heavy armor can restrict your evasiveness, giving the opponent bonuses to hit, and the armor skill helps against this.

Shields simply have a certain chance of blocking blows, dependent on the shield size and your armor skill level.

If you've read this far into this post, thank you for paying attention to this. I would like your criticism on this system, and ideas for possible improvements.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

I can tell you right away that agility will be an extremely powerful stat, perhaps more powerful than you intend. Having a very high agility (15+) will make you very hard to hit, and make you very accurate with agility-based weapons an the same time.

[Psyco Jelly]

I tried to put a little more weight on agility, since characters strong in agility over the other stats will most likely not have enough endurance to wear much armor effectively. In GURPS, dexterity and intelligence cost twice as much as the other stats to increase. To emulate this, I may make agility much harder to increase.

[3]

I tried to put a little more weight on agility, since characters strong in agility will not be able to wear very much armor effectively.

I'm sure you realise that this isn't the way things are usually done. Games often place an emphasis on responding to player choices by opening new character advancements, as opposed to inhibiting previous ones. Say, it's more common for a character with low strength not able to use certain armour types well rather than a character with high agility not being able to use said armour types well.

The reasoning behind this is twofold: one, inhibiting the player character based on the choices they make can be perceived as effectively pigeonholing potential character builds - you're limiting the scope the player his/herself has for playing the way they want to, which in a genre comprised of farily simply core gameplay mechanics is crucial.

Secondly, it makes no logical sense whatsoever that an agile character should be worse at anything than a non-agile character.

Your second idea has more merit as far as I see it, but making a stat overpowered and then retroactively compensating for it is likely just overcomplicating the system. When I look at a character creation page and realise that increasing my strength costs 1 point, but increasing agility costs 2 points, what happens to my preconceptions of the importance of agility in the game? Do I just pile points into it? (I notice that you've used the word "emulate" in your post; I haven't actually played the game yet, so forgive me if this isn't really applicable) What happens when I try to create a character with the emphasis I want? Are my mathematical conceptions the same as they would be, or is there some unconscious weighting going on? etc, etc.

As far as I see it, it's always better to try to design a balanced system from the start than create an imbalanced one and then try to compensate for it.

[Psyco Jelly]

You make a good point. How would you suggest I tone agility down? Perhaps agility should have no bearing on the weapons damage, and strength would grant bonuses to damage? That would make more sense. Using this, agile fighters would be better against non-armored opponents, and strong characters would be better against armored ones.

And I didn't mean that agile characters are worse than the others at using armor, just that armor should make it harder to dodge blows and be stealthy, which are agile character's strong points.

EDIT:

Oh, wait. I see you've been mislead by my previous post. I didn't mean to be vague. By high agility, I meant to imply that you most likely focus on it, making your other stats suffer. A character with low endurance should be worse at wearing armor than others. If you have a high agility low endurance build, armor is a bad idea, high endurance low agility, armor is extremely helpful. High agility and endurance, and you should be able to get the hand of dodging in heavy armor.

Let me edit my previous post for clarity.

[3]

Doing that should place nigh-equal emphasis on the importance of strength and agility, as long as wearing armour doesn't completely negate a significant enough dodge bonus (in the vast majority of cases). So it makes sense.

The other alternative is to make agility have a small (and I mean small) impact on weapon damage to simulate the player character landing good blows and such, or a critical hit system, or something. Otherwise players may get stuck in the dead-end situation of having to fight enemies they can't possibly even hurt.

Edit: Yes, this is more like the standard RPG way of doing things.

[Psyco Jelly]

Oh yes, there are criticals. Roll a 3 or 4 and you get a critical success, you just plain hit, and deal more damage. Roll a 17 or 18 and you get a critical failure, you automatically fail at what your doing (I may make critical failures FUN when they involve spells). So in addition to your critical hit, your target can critical fail on the armor check.

[chaoticag]

Any chance of you releasing a source code? It would be interesting to see it.