skell
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

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File: DyROD Project Pages.zip (3.5 MB)
Downloaded 63 times.
License: All Rights Reserved

I have always wanted to make a project inspired by DROD. I have tried to make DROS (Deadly Rooms of Skell-Hat which was made in Game Maker and failed to be finished because GM was too slow) then Metroid DROD (which failed because it was too complicated to make in GM) and both failed miserably.
Nevertheless I have, for a long time, thought about a mix of DROD with real RPG, not the logic one. Recently I have came up with a pretty solid idea and with lots of thought I wrote it up on paper.
DyROD (Dynamic RPG of DROD, which fully extends to Dynamic Role Playing Game of Deadly Rooms Of Death) is a mix of DROD, Rogue-like genre and other things which also includes my own ideas. I will quickly sum up what the thing is about, but the whole documentation can be found in the attachment.

Not unlike original DROD, here you control your protagonist in a top-down and grid based playfield. You have your faithful... No, not sword - weapon which moves in the same manner as in DROD, but it serves as an attack detector. The current idea is that depending on what moves you do with your sword that type of attach you attempt at enemy. Everything is more or less real time - you still can move at speed of one tile per move, but whenever any action is taken, you (or monsters) have to wait for a specified amount of time. Say, after you move you have to wait 20 steps (~0.333 second) before you can take any action. The faster you are the less you have to wait but the more concentration and reflex it requires from you~.

DyROD features collecting items, weapons, skills, levels, experience, stats etc. It will be inspired by the DROD's Hold-Level-Room architecture. Each level consists of rooms, which are more or less separate entities, with the difference being that enemies can walk through the rooms if awake and are chasing you. Damage cannot be dealt to entity sitting in different room though.

Aside from the RPG elements, puzzle stuff is also present - pushable crates, keys, doors, pits, jumping, water, boats, buttons, enemies which insta kill you, move when you move and are instakilled by you and so on.

This is going to be ambitious project, but in the last year I have learned quite a deal of stuff and I have already thought of the engine and, starting today, will proceed to writing and coding. It will be a flash (AS3.0) game so it can be, at some point, released on the web and distributed.

Why I wrote here about it? I want some input, especially about the weapon workings - is it too complicated? weird? did I aim for too realistic stuff? which sword behavior do you like the most? suggestions, ideas and all other things are greatly appreciated. I will be regularly updating this post as the coding will progress. I have lots of free time on my hands lately which explains why I decided to try my luck, wits, patience and dedication .

That is all for now. Thank you for reading.

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[Last edited by skell at 04-25-2010 04:45 PM]

Grizzly
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The idea with pushable crates, doors, boats etc. sounds good and I like it because it reminds me of Wonderquest and Chip's Challenge. It will open the possibility of more easier puzzles that do not need step-perfect solutions (what most DROD puzzles I recently played did need).

I am just not sure about the real time aspect. Maybe it's because I began playing the round-based DROD and only tried rogue-like games afterwards to find similar alternatives, but I was always disappointed by the aspect that I could not get an overview of the room because the monsters already move towards me (see: Kingdom of Kroz).
But maybe if the game helps DROD players to get used to the real time aspect then it can still work

Someone Else
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I like it! This seems like a great idea!

skell
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

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File: DyROD.jpg (75.1 KB)
Downloaded 60 times.
License: Public Domain

Grizzly wrote:
I am just not sure about the real time aspect. Maybe it's because I began playing the round-based DROD and only tried rogue-like games afterwards to find similar alternatives, but I was always disappointed by the aspect that I could not get an overview of the room because the monsters already move towards me (see: Kingdom of Kroz).

Ah, Kingdom of Kroz. Played and... Well, let's say it was really tough love .
Considering that the game mechanics are going to be a little bit complicated (Omega anyone?) one thing I will surely make will be a comprehensive tutorial built into the main story. This implies though that the game won't have the roguelike's random architecture, but I am hoping, should the project ever reach such stage of development, to implement user-made holds as quest in the main game. But first the whole game engine .

Development Day #1:
Today I started doing thorough thinking about the whole architecture of the project. I have a draft of it with completed diagram and now I am doing some documentation to it for self-reference. Next I will think about how the relation between object will look - tiles, objects, items, rooms, levels etc. The whole thing is going to be maintained by four main static objects (Engine, Level, State Manager, Graphics Manager) accompanied by three other, less important classes (Input Manager, Windows Manager and Network Manager). This is still a draft, and I am already thinking about adding more to it (Event Manager, Objects/Items/Tiles Databases, Generation Manager) but they can end up implemented into one of the main classes. All other classes, excluding the deep inside workings and graphics stuff, should be Room, Tile, Object, Item. Objects will be heavily object based - statuses, equipmen, flags, but even body parts are going to be object based (So player will for example have an array of body parts Torso, Head, Hands, Arms, Legs, Feet). That would be all information for now. I have also drew a mock-up of a mock-up of possible game screen - the only thing sure to stay are the proportions: 23x21 tiles of size 25x25 per room. Mock-up can be found in the attachment.

I am hoping to finish the overall draft tomorrow during my bus-tram rides and, once back home, start the coding.

Development Day #2:
The overall draft is pretty much finished. There will most likely be some minor and major changes (though hopefully the less of the latter the better) but I have some base to start and I already started some coding. I will rant about it tomorrow, as now I am going to sleep.

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[Last edited by skell at 03-26-2010 10:49 PM]

skell
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 3734
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For end-users it might not be something overly impressive, I consider it a great accomplishment in building pretty and clean source-code.

After around 8 hours of coding (and 303 logical lines of code) I accomplished... A moving red square . Please feel free to check the attachment if you are curious, the movement is QWE-AD-ZXC (no free USB port for Numpad in my notebook I am afraid, you will have to live with these controls for now). I am well aware of any errors and overall weirdness you might encounter here so please don't even bother pointing them .

Anyway! The overall skeleton of the engine is done, and it can now be freely extended and built upon and I hope the development will be, though slow paced, smooth. Now, that I have accomplished my first objective I now have a couple of options to pursuit - walls, turning, weapon holding. But my current nemesis is data. And to be more precise, finding the best way to handle and parse all the enormous data which will build everything and I thing I will go for XML.

My current plan is to do some dividing - there will be built-in 'classes' (stored in embedded XML files) that is enemies, items and tiles stored in a similar way as in Roguelikes, but there will also be a possibility to make your own enemies, items or tiles per hold (considering there will ever be user-made holds). Once the XML markup will be more or less done I will commence to writing a parser and then building databases AND then (finally) going with the more gameplay oriented things.

So yes, I AM working on the project actively even if I don't give updates (which will be more regular once the project gets bigger and more developed).

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skell
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

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File: DyROD.zip (182.4 KB)
Downloaded 48 times.
License: Creative Commons
NoncommercialNo Derivative Works 3.0 Unported

BEFORE! you run your mouse to click the attachment and engulf yourself in the amazement of the new release which offers basically nothing, please either read the whole post or skip to the second part, Version Notes.

After more hours of code than I can count (and a couple of CPU and RAM failures in my brain) I have successfully managed to implement a couple of really important feature... Wait, I haven't mentioned one very serious matter:

I moved the project to BlitzMax.

If anyone is actually concerned. Having this serious announcement behind me, I would like to commence with a list of stuff done:

# Changelog:
That is stuff that happened since last publication. Current version should be known as Pre-Alpha 0.02. Once we get to V1.00 it will automagically turn to Alpha 0.01 (which will happen most likely around the same time you will be able to walk around with your sword in hand smashing enemies you yourself could modify and running away from them between rooms... Or maybe sooner)

1. First of all I managed to successfully transliterate the whole code and structure (and improve it) to BlitzMax from Flex. Oh, how I just LOVE blitzmax (despite it having no Getters/Setters and private properties). Not to mention it is slick fast, better, handier, prettier, faster, cooler, nicer and faster. So with that I can safely believe that with my mediocre (but fanatical) optimization skills I can manage the whole project successfully.

2. Content is external - well, mostly. Right now Levels, Tiles and Objects are externally definable, but in the future I hope to make loads of stuff external (statuses, elements, effects, items, body parts, AI, scripted monsters and probably some world shaking things) but, though it might ONLY be because I am not that great of a programmer, thinks like that are dang problematic and difficult to make, especially that I still don't know how much cycles I will have left to use. So until some unspecific point in the future I am not promising ANYTHING about it. Unless you can, like, help then that's entirely different matter.

3. You can rotate all the way to the left and right, something which took around 2 minutes to code and yet gives so much fun!

4. Graphic manager which takes care of all the object graphics loaded and cleans them on the fly without any need for special, sort of Garbage Image Collector by Skell Industries to make sure memory is not cluttered with hundreds of sprites. Not to mention that most likely it won't be enough and WILL require some fine tuning, but hey! at least it's there, right?

5. *rummages through the code* Externalized enemies AI (that is, internally externalized, every object is hooked to a singleton TBrain instance which is obviously not singleton enough... not singleton AT ALL to be precise);

6. Strict documentation of every function, method, field, global and constant (but internal workings of functions are not yet commented properly which should change in the future);

7. A nifty (that is, just ONE function called Log) logger with lots of Conditionally Compiled calls in critical places. In the future it will be extended by more Logging options, like LogInitializationMessages, LogBattleMessages, LogStatisticsChanges, LogPlayerActions, LogEnemyActions and so on. Just a good starting point for now;

8. And all that with every property being (fictionally) private

EDIT: 9. And we shouldn't forget that the whole thing consists of roughly... 1714 lines of which 785 are actual code!

# Version Notes:
These are the notes you should know before playing the latest release. Some of the knowledge will pass on to next releases and it will be endlessly repeated until it is no longer needed.
# Controls are extended WSAD, that is QWE-AD-ZXC to move around, and OP to rotate;
# Please, Please PLEASE don't leave the screen. Moving between rooms doesn't yet work and trying to leave room will lead to array out of bound errors, memory overwriting and property of null object errors (all of which will of course NOT display but should crash nonetheless);
# PLEASE don't modify the data files as the only really working thing that you can do is change player graphic name (nothing else will work and any other changes, especially violating syntax, WILL lead to crashes);
# Don't get your hopes up, there is barely anything there;

# Questions:
If I have some questions or pleas to community (or just some general stuff) I will post them here.
1. Anyone interested in looking at the source? I am planning to release it at some later stage, right along the game itself, but if someone breaks the acceptable curiosity level I can save your life by releasing it sooner... but only if someone helps me choose License which is rather problematic stuff for me and I want to skip it for some later date.
2. Of course any bugs should be reported ASAP, please.
3. Feel free to comment.
4. If you can help me with externalizing the content as much as possible then I will be really glad to get some feedback!

# Future:
In other words what I am planning to include in next release.
# Finishing Level Parser;
# Walls and Force Arrows (Har, how can a game which has letters D, R, O and D not have Force Arrows and still be a game with letters D, R, O and D?);
# Moving between rooms;

That would be all for now! Feel free now to download the file if you haven't done so already. The file was scanned for viruses with latest version of AVG Anti Virus Free and probed to be clean .

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[Last edited by skell at 04-18-2010 11:06 PM]

Syntax
Level: Smitemaster
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skell wrote:
especially violating syntax

Yeah, please don't. Thanks.

skell
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 3734
Registered: 12-28-2004
IP: Logged

File: DyROD.zip (193 KB)
Downloaded 61 times.
License: Creative Commons
NoncommercialNo Derivative Works 3.0 Unported

Please read the Version Notes for a quick overview of what you need to know about this version.

It took me actually around 3 hours to make all the changes I did for this version. I started today (well, it was Monday but I barely did anything then) and finished just a few moments ago. I have decided that I will try to keep the updates to a weekly schedule (in some cases two-weeks schedule) and new version updates are to be expected on Sundays, though at times it might happen sooner

# Changelog:
V0.03 - 25 IV 2010 (25: 977 / 1964):
The numbers in parentheses are: (Total Source Files: Lines of actual code / Total Lines of Code)
01. Level parser has been finished and at the moment it actually reads the whole level data from the file. Character - Tile association is also read from the respective file. No dynamic, per-level changes YET, note that doubly hashed comments mean not working functions in Data files.
02. It is now perfectly possible to walk from one room to another. Yay, eh?
03. Force Arrows are done. They work in the same way as in DyROD, and the best thing is that they use simple flags and you can easily use these flags right now to create Ortho-Squares, or horizontal/vertical only passages, or Tile which can be only entered from Top but left in any direction you can imagine. Pretty purdy ain't it?

# Version Notes:
# Controls are extended WSAD, that is QWE-AD-ZXC to move around, and OP to rotate;
# Feel free to play with the data files. Please, as always, report any errors. Starting from next version I should make a much more advanced logger so in case of any error it will be possible for you to send ma an error log.

# Questions:
Nothing, really.

# Next Version:
# More advanced logger which logs to file;
# Monster AI, following player;
# Beginning of all the complex stuff involving interactive objects (initializing parameters);
# Battling enemies;

That is all now. Enjoy!

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Dischorran
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skell wrote:
# Controls are extended WSAD, that is QWE-AD-ZXC to move around, and OP to rotate;

Perhaps worth noting that this is the exact opposite of the laptop DROD standard (789-UO-JKL to move, QW to rotate), which is likely to give me a headache.

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skell
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 3734
Registered: 12-28-2004
IP: Logged

Dischorran wrote:
Perhaps worth noting that this is the exact opposite of the laptop DROD standard (789-UO-JKL to move, QW to rotate), which is likely to give me a headache.

Oh, if that's a problem I can change it to numpad in next version. I was actually planning to do it sometime but it kind of flew out of my mind .

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