Let's Make a Roguelike!

Get The Human now available for Windows at uberdroidgames.com

Let's Make a Roguelike / With Construct 2

If you look at my post in September entitled, Bob's Discount Dungeon, I was working on a Roguelike game with procedurally generated dungeons.  I have since become obsessed with procedural generation and "the making of" Roguelike games, so much so that I made a simple tutorial about how to make a random maze with a guy walking around in it with a line-of-sight shroud and everything. It was linked to in RogueLike News.

https://www.scirra.com/tutorials/4831/rogue-like-random-maze-tutorial-pt-1

Making a Roguelike is, among other things, an exercise in procedural generation.  You're making something that MAKES things.  So I took it one step further than that.   I'm making a book that tells people how to make something that makes things.    I'm on about page 80 now well into my first step by step walkthrough.



Here's part of the introduction:

Then I go on to tell what those are:

1. Random level generation.
2. Permadeath.
3. RPG character advancement. Resource Management (see my later blog post)

To me it boils down to simply go to Steam, or itch.io, and type "Roguelike" in the search engine, then observe what the results tend to have in common. It's those 3 things.

Anyhow back to work...

GET THE HUMAN

GET THE HUMAN

New simple game we developed where dodging bullets is the primary game mechanic.  It's simple, fun and addictive.  My high score is 91, but I don't know since I added the multi-dodge bonus!



It will be available on https://itch.io GO GET IT!

Misconceptions Gamers have about Non-Gamers

1.  Non Gamers exist.

\

Every demographic plays games.  If you think there's a group of people who don't play games... please refer to that last sentence.  This is what those articles mean when they say "Gamers are dead." It means there's no special counter-culture that exclusively plays video games anymore.  We all play games.  EVERYBODY PLAYS GAMES.  Everybody isn't in some "gamer" subculture...but they play some or other games.

Yes, she grew up playing games too.  Just like you (and f%$ing everybody else). Get over yourselves.

2.  Gamers are not the "Main Stream"

I don't have to look far on the internet to find someone whining about the mainstream media "being mean to gamers..."   Since as everybody knows, games are the biggest selling form of entertainment, they're not some put-apon minority counter culture... they're the loud heavily funded majority.  

So much so that anyone who dares criticize anything about them can expect a crowd with the on-line equivalent of pitch forks and torches at his or her door overnight.

3.  People think gamers are sexist, violent assholes. (And we must correct them all the time)

Who are these people? 

Nobody thinks gamers are sexist violent assholes.  Some gamers are, some are not.  Just like plumbers, or golfers.  Nobody is running around persecuting gamers.   "Gamer" is not a race, sexuality or skin color.   It's a lifestyle choice for sure.  We're not an oppressed minority.  If anything, we are a coddled majority used to getting instant gratification on demand.

OK enough ranting.

Bob's Discount Dungeon!

OK deep in the catacombs of the graveyard of broken dreams that is my hard drive, there's a game I started a while back called March of the Bobs.  It's kind of a reverse turret defense game where you protect these black squares with eyes and legs marching from one side of the screen to the other.

I really like the character: Bob, and I always wanted to make a simple Rogue-like adventure game. Of course, it's never simple.   To make a Rogue-like you need to make a crap ton of items, monsters, random dungeon generation, combat, weapons, spells, potions, etc. But I've got 2 things going for me: 

1. The enemies are based on the "Bob" template.  A 32x32 basically black square with big eyes and a couple of stubby legs sticking out the bottom.  This means all the monsters are going to be based on this Bob-o-morphic pattern.  A Skeleton (a staple of rpg monsters)  becomes a Skelebob... There are BatBobs, MummyBobs... WareBobs and of course BobCats.

2. I've got the random dungeon code pretty much done (geon).   Heheh see what I did there?   To switch the dungeon theme all I have to do is switch the animation name the walls and floor use along with some parameters.  So "outdoor grass" uses the same code as "dark stone catacombs."

3. I've got a theme:  "Discount."  It's going to be really really market based so shopping is important.. I can add many things that support that theme:  Coupons, Fire Sales, Dickering... etc.  Crazy Bob's is hacking and slashing (prices)!    

(more to come... still editing)

Random Maze Tutorial

In the interest of "Just going where the idea fairy takes me," I made a random maze tutorial for Construct 2 .

The tutorial is available here: RogueLike Maze Tutorial Pt 1  and here:  RogueLike Maze Tutorial Pt2

The demo is here:  RogueLike Maze Demo

Enjoy!

Update!

RogueLike News published a link to Pt one of the Tutorial.  Pretty cool!


http://paper.li/Kyogo/1325821804?edition_id=9fe490e0-d917-11e5-89c3-0cc47a0d15fd#!tag-roguelike

My Graveyard of Unfinished Projects... Is not a bad thing.

I've decided not to worry about "sticking to one project."  At all.  When a new idea hits me, I'm just going to run with it.

I used to, like TheMeatly here, think this was a problem; but it's really not.  Writers keep journals and switch projects mid-story all the time.  They don't always just work on one project until it's finished. The creative mind just doesn't work that way.

In Indie Game the Movie one developer (I don't remember if it's the guy who made Ted or Super Meat Boy, said something like "My hard drive is a graveyard..." of ideas that were never finished...

Well mine too.  Check this out...

Those screenshots represent about 1/10th the amount of gamedev projects I have started or mostly completed. These are just the ones I could easily find a screenshot for right now.

I could tell he felt the same way I did: like those unfinished projects were failures... a huge waste of time. But what great writer publishes everything he or she writes? What painter has every sketch in a show or museum (before he or she is dead I mean). They are journal entries.. sketches.. .and from every single one of them I learned something, I figured out something...I got something I could take and use elsewhere. Or I might just come back to it someday. Hell, I could have just as easily been watching a reality show on Netflix.

I was just reading On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King, and the stuff he says about writing seems eerily similar to what I've discovered about indie solo game development.

Check out these quotes, and replace "writing" with "game dev."

http://positivewriter.com/quotes-on-writing-stephen-king/

"Sometimes you have to go on when you don’t feel like it, and sometimes you’re doing good work when it feels like all you’re managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position."

"Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work."

"When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees. When you’re done, you have to step back and look at the forest. "

"Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s."

"Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference."

Once again it's been a while...

In the original Captain Zero, I had friendly ships.  Fighters or "wingman" ships, cruisers, and super cruisers (the Condor).

I just got the team ai working so ships will target and attack anybody not on their team.  All I have to do is plop a ship down --any ship-- and set its "team" variable to 0 and it's on your side.  If I wanted to get really fancy I'd have some sort of variable for each team of "faction" for how much the ship hates or likes that faction and have it target accordingly, but this isn't Mercinaries or Fallout.  It's got good guys and bad guys and really bad bad guys.

But your wingman fighters need to do more than just target and fight other team ships in ways indistinguishable from any enemy ship.  They need to form on your wing and take orders similar to ships in Wing Commander.

The old wingman ships could do the following:

• Form on my wing.
• Attack my target.
• Engage at will.

Not too fancy, but there is some work involved. 

There's something really satisfying about watching my guys dogfight each other.  It's almost more fun than playing.  If I could make a game where you just set up these space fights and let them go it would be great in itself.

Another thing I'm trying to incorporate in Captain Zero is something I've never seen in a spaceship shooter game before:  Magic.  I know spaceships and magic aren't entirely new, but you just don't see them very often.

There's a largely untapped area of possible fiction that combines sorcery and supernatural with science and space travel.  I've only seen it in a few movies:  Event Horizon, Ghosts of Mars, Hellraiser 3, Final Fantasy the Spirits Within seem to do this pretty seemlessly..  Not only are you on frigging MARS but there are ghosts!   In Final Fantasy the line that answers "How did they survive the journey across space?  ... They DIDN'T" (scary music here) gives me the creeps in a good way.  Space Ghost?  Haha well maybe not...