2018 7 DAY ROGUELIKE CHALLENGE!
https://itch.io/jam/7drl-challenge-2018
If I'm going to write a book on how to make a roguelike using Construct 2, well then I should be able to make a Roguelike using Construct 2 in 7 days and succeed in the 7DRL challenge or else why would anyone want to read my book?
I have been heavily inspired by the game Golden Krone Hotel. One of the things that makes it fun is the idea of factions --Vampires vs Humans.
You can be attacked by a horde of vampires in the middle of bloody combat, then drink some vampire blood and suddenly they'll stop attacking you. Oh you're one of us! It's all good! No hard feelings! And they even talk to you saying things like:
"I killed a man once... Couldn't kill him twice!"
...but then humans will attack you because you're a vampire. I love that whole really simple factions angle and plan to really lean into it with my 7DRL.
What is glaringly missing in this is the fact that human and vampire npcs never attack each other! It's just you for some reason.
I figure NPC humans and vampires don't attack each other because of some pact... kind of like the Continental Hotel in John Wick movies.
This is where another one of my big influences comes in. A much older one:
CROSSROADS for the Commodore 64.
Now THESE enemies kill the hell out of each other! In fact the first minute of each round is mainly just staying out of the way until the enemies reach a sort of equilibrium leaving you to clean up what's left. The enemies are different colors and the different colors and types hate each other while others can get along. They all hate you, but sometimes it seems somewhat less.
You're not so much participant let alone instigator in the main battle, but more of a bystander trying to survive the harsh ecosystem among the combatants let loose in the maze.
This was a game released as pages and pages of hex data the would be player had to enter by hand into a commodore 64 from Compute magazine in the 1980s and it was absolutely genius.
Imagine if Robotron were in a maze and the robots all hated each other.
So my game will have factions based on color and the enemies will also fight each other like in Crossroads, but leave you alone if you were in their faction (by donning their color) like in Golden Krone Hotel.
There's something magical that happens when you see NPCs fighting each other. From the first time I saw a Berzerk Robot shoot another Robot in Berzerk, to the first time I played HALO and saw the Covenant in the distance fighting the Flood on the snow levels.
Here I am witnessing this battle in the distance that has nothing directly to do with me and I feel more immersed in the world than ever.
My first real encounter with factions outside a war strategy game was Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction.
This game has 4 factions that are always in varying states of hostility toward the player with one special faction, North Korea being always hostile.
This hostility varies based on what you do in the game and some missions, for example fighting Chinese soldiers on a mission from the Russian Mafia will increase how much China hates you, but also increase the friendliness of the Russian Mafia toward you. So you're always juggling the varying factions and their attitude toward you.
Another special faction is civilians, who don't hate anyone, but cost you money in fines if you accidentally harm them.
What seems to be missing, and I could be wrong about this is that the hostility of the factions toward each other is not variable in the same way.
They hate each other or not pretty much without your intervention.
COLORS
In my RL I want to have basically 6 factions:
GREY: The human faction
RED: Monsters
BLUE: Monsters
YELLOW: Monsters
GREEN: Monsters
BLACK: (Shadow/Undead)
Each color will have a corresponding dictionary containing floating point numbers indicating how much they hate each other color.
Magic in TT is heavily geared toward manipulating monsters and their factions. From slightly influencing how they feel about some or other monster faction to switching their faction altogether, joining their faction yourself, or utterly dominating them.
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