Adventures of a Newbie Roguelike Dev

You can find it here:

http://sites.google.com/site/darrenjohngrey/games/trapper.zip

Screenshots later – I’m mentally exhausted now  :P

7drl, toby the trapper

I have 42 hours remaining.  Right now I need sleep, and tomorrow I have a job to attend too.  Have scent-following working quite nicely, though the game did crash on me for no reason just now (and I don’t even know where to start looking for any bugs).  Hopefully it’ll be okay and I can start work on the traps tomorrow.  More from my devnotes:

   Update 21:29: Got the ogres moving randomly and the whole turn and time
      system as I'd like.  Also got messages for bumping into enemies
      (including some hints for bosses).  I'm still unsure of how to get the
      ogres to move in the right direction though.  Needs some hard thought!
   Update 00:47: Scent-tracker is working!  Dear Christ that took a long
      time...  Ended up far more tricksy than I expected.  Also not 100% sure
      it's working as well as I want - need more testing, though I don't really
      have the proper time.  It seems to do what it needs to do, and so now
      it's time for my chocolate reward  :)
      Also Trapper.pas now exceeds the source code length of Gruesome, which
      was previously the longer piece of code I had written (1900 lines or so).
      Still not a proper game though.

7drl, development, toby the trapper

   12th March 17:25: Back from work and ready for a hectic weekend of coding.
      I e-mailed myself some ideas for message text and such whilst on my
      lunch break.  I also designed a little incentive plan - for every
      remaining major milestone I complete I get to eat a chocolate bar.  I
      feel this will be a very powerful incentive.  Milestones:
       1. Scent-tracking monsters
       2. Flasher and Banger traps working
       3. All traps fully operational (maybe exception for ultra)
       4. Warlock abilities added (essentially making it a real game)
       5. Enemy blind-bump-killing and chaining trap explosions
       6. Other boss abilities, especially Jester jumping
       7. Multiple endings + undead level
      Last 3 are not necessary, but I think they'll really add to the game.
      I've also decided to give myself a whole packet of chocolate bars if I
      achieve the additional goal of adding an animation sequence to the intro
      splashscreen - utterly unnecessary, but it would be very nice to have.
      Anyway, on with the first milestone...

7drl, toby the trapper

Have monsters added, though they’re quite immobile at the moment.  Still, looking pretty good now – getting ever closer to it being a real game.  Big test tomorrow will be movement and the path-finding by smell (which I’ve never done before).  And of course getting the traps working properly, which are kinda the core of the game.  Development logs I’ve been taking:

   11th March 14:53: Right, time to start again, though I'm in work this
      evening (7DRL is hard to fit in when you have 2 jobs!)  Intend to get
      basic enemies working.  If I have enough time I can maybe even fit in
      their scent-trcking system (which I really hope I've thought through
      properly...)
   Update 16:17: I got message handling working 100%!  It now splits lines
      into separate words before looping them properly round the message bar
      with [more] prompts.  I couldn't get this problem out of my head from
      before and just had to work on it...  Took a lot of trial and error, with
      a little bit of learning about uninitiated ansistrings in Pascal, but
      good god I'm so happy to have that working now.
   Update 17:21: All trap-laying code is in and working easily.  Of course they
      don't actually do anything yet, but it's nice to have the fuller player
      interface worked out.  All that remains is putting in monsters and
      making them do things.  I've now changed the numbering 0.1.0 to
      signify my shift towards a real game.  The 0.1 line will involve getting
      ogres working.  0.2 and higher will signify getting bosses coded.  It's
      all very exciting  :)
   12th March 00:18: Back form my barshift, might do a little coding before
      I hit the hay.  Earlier I got creatures generated and randomly positioned
      - even did the bosses since it was so simple.  Need to give them
      movement and interaction, in particular with traps.  Also thought about
      adding a hardcore difficulty setting where Toby moves twice as slow -
      fairly trivial to add and could add fun.
   Update 00:43: Hardcore mode added.  Really was very simple.  Must get to bed
      now though...  Hopefully will have a decent amount of time available at
      the weekend.

7drl, toby the trapper

Well, can’t say the game is half-finished, but in terms of real-time hours I’m around halfway through.  However I anticipate having more time than I’ve had so far on Friday/Saturday/Sunday, so hopefully all will go well.  Some notes I’ve been taking as I go along:

   9th March 18:58: Well, gave up on that message handler at around 2am.  I'm
      sure if I had more time I could get it running, but it was too much for
      my weary head and I don't have the time to sort it out properly.  For
      now I'll stick with the KISS philosophy (Keep It Simple, Stupid) which
      has always served me well.
   Update 19:42: Got my very bsic message looper worker perfectly.  I love it
      when I think up an idea and then I find it works exactly as I had
      planned... it's a rare event.  Next step - test out digging.  After that
      I'll finally get some ogres on the loose.
   10th March 01:27: Added diging and a bunch of other stuff.  Got rather
      sidetracked actually - added in the menu display for traps and the gems
      to be collected to open up new trap types.  Traps can't actually be laid
      yet though, and more importantly there's no enemies to use them on.  I
      will have zero time for coding till Thursday, and not much time even
      then, so I really hope I can get a lot of work done during the last hours
      of the weekend.  Implementing enemies may turn out to biting off more
      than I can chew...

7drl, development, roguelike, toby the trapper

I have a working cave explorer thingummy going.  I can’t get message handling working well, so I’m giving up on it.  Next up is adding monsters, which will turn it into a proper game.  In my lunch break at work I wrote the following background story:

Gadzooks!  Wuggy the Warlock and his gang of ugly ogres have attacked the
tiny gnomish town of Turgylton and stolen the Gems of Power!  Now it's up
to the town's hero Toby the Trapper to venture into the villain's
cavernous lair and retrieve the holy Gem of Life.  But this is no easy
stroll down the mine - the ogres aren't just ugly, they're also big and
tough, able to squash little Toby with a single swipe!  And deep
within the dark lair Wuggy the Warlock and his fiendish friends guard the
Gem of Life with foul sorceries and terrible powers!!

Still, it's not all doom and gloom.  Toby is much faster than the big
brutes and can see better underground too (the dumb ogres can only sniff
their way around, and it's hard for them to smell anything above the
stench of their own ugly bodies!)  He also still has some Gems of Power to
create traps to use against them, and may find more along the way.  So do
you feel up to helping Toby fight these dastardly villains?!  With
Flashers and Bangers and Boomers and Blinders and much more besides you'll
explore varied random dungeons filled with dread and excitement in your
quest to help Toby defeat the wicked warlock and save his tiny town!  Let
the adventure begin!!!!!

For the curious you may also wish to see my development notes so far:

7th March 23:44: 0.0.1.  Ported code from The Lion King and Gruesome.
Includes dungeon generation of a few cave types, LOS and moving
around.  LOS should work out of the box, rest must be properly
tested and tweaked.  Many worries.
Update 8th March 02:41:  Got everything working after a lot of fiddling
and silly sleep-deprived errors.  Need to make some code adjustment to
how the last level is generated, but otherwise extremely happy with
results.  Also may wish to tweak some colour schemes, but that's not
immediately important.  Next up is message management, wall-digging
and properly implementing enemies, none of which I've done thoroughly
before.  How exciting...
8th March 20:31: No time to work on it today.  Just spent a few minutes
tweaking the map generator so that the final level is more selective
about layouts that are too spartan.  Thinking of adding something to
encourage loops in levels, but no need for it now...  Will try and
find time to get stuck into the real mechanics of the game later.
I've now labelled it 0.0.2 - it's a stable cave explorer with different
level themes, essentially.
8th March 23:55: Gonna play a little with a message handler, but if I don't
get far then I'll just give up.  It's not important enough to waste
much time on.

Anyway, on with the coding…

7drl, development, roguelike, toby the trapper

So, um, I’ve not been very attentive to my little creation of over a year ago – Gruesome has alas been without any development whatsoever, and my time-deprived lifestyle means that it’s likely to stay that way, alas.  However it’s time for the 7 Day Roguelike competition again and I have what I think is a neat little idea to try out.  Hopefully I’ll have more time to complete it than last year’s effort… but, well, I still have a busy week otherwise so my hopes aren’t too high.

My idea is called “Toby the Trapper”, about a little gnome who must fight some ugly ogres and a wacky warlock.  Unable to harm the ogres he must rely on his superior speed and magical traps.  Like Gruesome this is a one-hit-kill game with little stats and extreme emphasis on careful movement.  With a bit of luck it’ll also be fun.

So, time for me to get dug in – see you in 7 days!

7drl, toby the trapper

Well, I’ve failed the 7DRL competition – I simply didn’t have enough time to get a working title out.  Maybe with just a few more hours…  But alas, the hours have been scant this week, and I could only devote around 14 hours to the project (about 5 last sunday and 8 or 9 today).  I managed to get Simba wandering around randomly generated jungles with inert hyenas for him to claw or bite at.  If anyone wants to see you’re welcome to check out the Windows exe and source here – perhaps of use to people learning Pascal, as it has many of the basics of a simple roguelike engine.  Anyone who’d like a simple gander at the failed results can check out this pic:

Many many things missing, but oh well – or Hakuna Matata, I should say.  Will hopefully spend a bit of time getting it finished in future…

7drl, lion king

As soon as I publish this post I’m going to begin work on my second roguelike title, and hopefully within 168 hours I’ll finish it.  It should help me learn quite a few things, much of which will feed back into Gruesome.  The following are new things I shall be implementing:

• multiple enemy types
• basic pathfinding and AI
• combat system
• tactics/stances
• character stats
• experience levels and progression choices
• forest and ravine generation
• proper message handling (with [more] prompt etc)
• highscore
• character logs upon win/lose

Nothing particularly complex, but still all foreign to me.  From Gruesome I’ll be ripping the FOV algorithm, a bit of display stuff and maybe the cave generator, though it’ll all need reworking.

The inspiration for the game was quite simple – when considering what I wanted to do for a 7DRL I thought it would be great to have a combat system whereby single enemies were little threat, but together they could defeat you even at high levels, like wolves tearing down a lion (as the expression goes).  Lion, I thought… doesn’t an ‘@’ symbol look a little like a lion’s head with a mane of fur around it…?  And doesn’t it also look a bit like the old monkey’s lion symbol on the tree in the Disney movie…?  And the idea came flooding in.

For those who haven’t heard of the Disney classic “The Lion King”, go watch it – it’s quite a good film, and Jeremy Irons plays a loveable Scar.  If I knew how I’d throw some voice samples into the game.  The gameplay should be fairly basic – explore randomly generated forests and ravines, then battle it out with Scar on Pride Rock.  Hopefully it’ll be fun enough.

I’ll post here with progress updates and maybe some screenshots as the week goes on – stay tuned!

7drl, lion king

This Saturday begins the fifth annual 7 day roguelike competition, when developers try the daunting task of making a complete game in 168 hours.  In spite of very little time and even less programming knowledge I intend to compete.  Anyone who has played Gruesome will know just how basic my skills are so far, so don’t expect much from me in comparison to previous awesome 7DRLs (and fresh ones like jice’s beautiful Pyromancer and kaw’s nifty Emperor Engine).  However I intend to use it as an important learning experience to try out something new, and in particular try out something that Gruesome will never possess: combat.

To be perfectly honest this is one of the things that really pushed me to start developing roguelikes.  I knew for a while I’d like to make my own, but reading about the annual 7DRL competition really put some imperative on me last year to learn enough coding to be able to participate.  Cool inventive games like Jeff Lait’s You Only Live Once and Fatherhood are nothing short of inspirational.  I wish I had a bit more programming experience by now, but I’m happy to be able to even consider joining in.  It’s a good opportunity to try out new things, develop my skills a little, and of course it should hopefully be fun!  On top of that there’ll be a host of cool games to try out next week, so keep your eyes peeled!

7drl