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
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
Hi, and welcome to “The Adventures of a Newbie Roguelike Dev”, a weblog featuring articles from a beginning game designer. I call myself a newbie because my programming skills are very poor – I have no knowledge of pointers, file-handling or OOP and have yet to implement basic game mechanics like AI, pathfinding and items. However, I have released a game, and quite a fun one at that, in spite of its simplicity (or maybe because of that). It’s called Gruesome, and you can find it here. Give it a quick try – you might just like it.
This blog will sporadically feature update and development notices about this game and others I have planned, but more importantly I intend to write a few articles about my experiences in taking up programming and game design. Aspiring developers may find it a source of inspiration, or maybe even a warning of what not to do. Experienced developers may find it a fresh take on conventional ideas. Overall though I hope it’s simply enjoyable to read, as I try to tread lightly past the hazardous pitfalls every developer must face: bugs, procrastination and over-ambition.
development, gruesome, roguelike
