Legend of Angband

Stair Logic

2012-01-27T01:36:00.002-05:00

Previously I had implemented dungeon stairs as a portal to the next or previous level. My game engine just generated a new maze when you climbed the stairs. However that does not mimic real life stairs. When you climb down some stairs, the stairs leading back up are right behind you. Well today I implemented this in my roguelike game engine. I was surprised how easy this turned out to be.

I still have one problem when you climb up or down stairs. It takes a long time for me to generate the new dungeon level. After that long pause, the message that you climbed the stairs is displayed. This is very unresponsive. I tried to immediately display the message. However since my code is so busy with new level generation, the message does not get painted on the screen until after the long wait. Need to find a way around this.

In other news, the dates for the 2012 7DRL challenge have finally been posted. It will happen from March 10th to the 18th. I am all in. Although I still have to attend my college class that week, I have managed to get the week off from work. Hopefully this will give me time to produce a respectable 7DRL game. More on that later.

Return to Roguelikes

2012-01-26T02:09:00.002-05:00

I have been sick for a while. So work on my roguelike game engine had stopped. Today I felt really good. Got a long nap in after work and dinner. I fired up my IDE and took a look at what needed to be done in the engine.

At this point I have enough code that I need to start tracking down some bugs. One nasty one was that items would appear in the dungeon, but I could not pick them up. It was like they were not there. But they were displayed.

Today I went through the code where the player picks up the items. Then I tracked down how the items get put there in the first place. Finally I checked all the code where items get moved around. Finally I found the problem. At the beginning of the game I give the player a few low level items. I steal them from the dungeon, but don't erase them. Problem solved.

Next I tried to test out whether unique items dropped by unique monsters might get picked up by regular monsters. Was unable to set up a scenario to test this. However I did find that some unique monsters did not drop unique itesm when they should have. This is another bug to track down.

Xbox 360 Setup

2012-01-22T17:28:00.003-05:00

I have been sick for a few weeks. So my work on the roguelike game engine has been on hold. I need to get back to it. Finally I am feeling a little better. Perhaps tonight I shall fire up the IDE and knock out some action items.

Today I did put together my Xbox 360 gaming setup. The main TV is too busy for anyone to play our new Xbox 360 with Kinect. So I bought another big screen TV. Just been too sick to clear some space downstairs and set it up. Today I hooked up the Xbox 360. Played some Final Fantasy XIII too.

I am meeting the characters of FFXIII. There is a dude named Snow who seems tough and attacks by punching the opponent most of the time. Then there is some other chick who is scantily clad, and just leans back and sticks her crotch out most of the time. I don't complain too much. She heals other plays often during her turn.

Finally I saw some talk about scheduling the 7DRL Roguelike Challenge for this year. I plan to code up an entry in the Java programming language. With my newly learned skills, I should be a contender.

Final Fantasy XIII

2012-01-02T16:53:00.004-05:00

I was in Best Buy doing some shopping. Stopped by the XBox 360 aisles to see if there were any deals. A friend picked up a game for Kinect that was $40. I saw Final Fantasy XIII and had to get it. The thing only cost me $20.

I informed a friend that I got a great deal. Nope. Apparently you get get the game for $10 elsewhere. Oh well. I got through a few save points in the game. Still on Chapter 1. I actually died once. Your party dies if the leader dies.

I agree that so far the game seems very contrained. You must follow the path and punch through the enemies there. I am still too early in the game to tell. The graphics are hot. The game feels true to the Final Fantasy brand.

Every time I attack and hit, I see the numbers representing the amount of damage I did. Perhaps I should implement something like this in my roguelike game engine.

Unique Weapons

2012-01-01T02:24:00.002-05:00

I just added unique weapons to my roguelike game engine. There are only a handful of them now. You never run into these weapons by just wandering the dungeon. You must defeat specific unique monsters. That causes the unique weapons to appear.

The explanation is that the some unique monsters carry unique weapons. They drop them when they die. The power of some of the uniques I got requires you to find and wield the unique weapons. Now that I got this done, I should be able to easily add unique armor.

I still need to do some testing on the unique weapon generation code. The unique monsters that carry the weapons occupy the lower levels of the dungeon. I have yet to implement any dungeon levels other than 1.

Looks like I know what feature I need to implement next. Then I test.

Fighting Chance

2011-12-31T03:01:00.002-05:00

I have been trying to do some balancing with my roguelike game engine. It felt too hard at the start. If you could not locate a weapon before the monsters found you, death was a sure thing. I want players to be able to survive the first level in general. So I thought I would provide the player with some default items to start.

Now at the beginning of the game, I automatically equip the players with one weapon and one piece of armor. I choose these from the maze. And I pick the least desirable weapon and armor. However something is better than nothing.

I also added the ability to quit the game. I give the user the opportunity to confirm the exit. Then the game automatically ends.

Collapsing Unique Monsters

2011-12-30T01:39:00.003-05:00

I had previously hacked together some code that dealth with regular and unique monsters. The problem was that this code was separate. I had routines that dealth with regular monsters. And I had routines that dealt with uniques. This was cumbersome. So today I combined the two.

The breakthrough came when I decided that uniques act just like regular monsters in the dungeon. The real difference lies when you create them initially, or kill them. In both scenarios there is only one unique. If you kill it, you don't see that specific monster any more. That is unlike regular monsters such as an orc. You can kill an orc. But you might encounter other different orcs on the same level.

Next up I want to give the player a better chance at startup. Perhaps they could get a daggar and a cloak. It would give them a small fighting chance until they find better items in the dungeon.

Surrounded by Design

2011-12-26T22:27:00.002-05:00

I made some changes to the monster movement artificial intelligence. Previously monster would try to move toward the player in the most direct route. If blocked they might try to move vertically or horizontally to align with the player. However this resulted in monsters lining up, and only one attacked the player. That was not realistic. Today I implemented the first part of fixing that.

If the monster is lined up with the player, but prevented from moving toward the player, it will try to go around whatever is in the way. Currently it will only try to go left/right, or up/down. That means there are 3 lanes available to go toward the player: (1) the direct route, one that is left/up, or one that is right/down.

Ideally I would have the monsters keep moving around to get at the player. But I think I have hit the sweet spot for now. I also modified messages in version 0.05 of my roguelike game engine. The messages show up on the right side of the main screen. They also start the first message at the top.

Next I plan to implement unique monsters, weapons, and armor.

True Message History

2011-12-26T00:22:00.002-05:00

Previously I had added a scrolling list of messages on the main screen of my roguelike game. The list was 10 messages deep. What happens if you want to find a message older than the last 10? You are out of luck. Until now.

Today I implemented a true message history functionality. You must use the CTRL+P keyboard combination. This brings up another dialog with a history of the messages displayed. Currently I show the last 25 messages. But it should be trivial to provide some more.

I really should allow the player to scroll back really far in the message history. The history screen will need to be a little more complex. But I think I can do it. It is not a high priority. But it should be useful.

Next I want to relocate the location of the messages on the main game screen. The area it occurpies now is high priced real estate. I need that area for more important stats. I plan to move the messages over to the right side of the screen. That should not be that hard. I control all the screen locations with variables.

Message History

2011-12-24T12:59:00.002-05:00

Previously my roguelike game engine displayed one line of messages. This meant that when multiple messages were generated around the same time, you could only see the last one. That has been corrected in version 0,03 of my game engine. Now I provide a viewport on screen that shows the last 10 messages.

I also significantly upped the number of rooms in the maze from 60 to 200. Before you could travel the outskirts of the maze and not see too much scenery. The player would get the feeling that the movement keys were not working. Now there are so many rooms that you see them scroll by even when on the edge of the maze.

Finally I experimented with different colors to drzw the maze. My computer is old and is getting some screen burn in. The white on black background seemed to be contributing to the problem. I tried a gray color. But that was too hard to see. I have settled on a light gray color. However I might create and use a custom color that is a little brighter.

Symbology

2011-12-24T04:57:00.003-05:00

Initially I had simple symbols in my roguelike game engine. But now I have taken it to the next level. Instead of one display character for weapons, I have different characters depending on the weapon type. The same is true for armor. It took a while to try to classify the different types of weapons. But I think I have it down.

Weapons fall into one of three categories. They can be (1) pole-arms, (2) edged, or (3) hafted. Pole-arms include weapons such as spears, mauls, pikes, and scythes. They also include more esoteric weapons like halberds, fauchards, mauls, and morningstars.

Edged weapons themselves fall into sub-cagtegories likes knives and swords. They also include mechetes and scabbards. Finally hafted weapons are axes, clubs, hammers, whips, maces, and flails.

Next up is improvements to the messaging system. But that is a task for version 0.03.

Versioning and TO DO List

2011-12-23T20:39:00.002-05:00

I finally started versioning my roguelike game engine. I have declared what I got to be v0.01. This will allow me to track what changes I made in each version. It is nice to see some progress when looking back.

I also somewhat formalized the things I need done in a TO DO list. Here are the tasks that top the list. Currently weapons and armor all have the same character display. I want to make the on screen character representing the item be based on the kind of item it is. Then a staff weapon will look different than a daggar for instance.

The current implementation has one line for status messages. When one action results in many messages, you just see the last message. I want to add a scrolling message area. I also want to allow the player to call up a screen showing lots of prior messages.

One problem I have when monsters are chasing the player is that the end up stuck in a line. Only one monster can attack at a time. That is not realistic. I need to modify the monster chase AI to go around other monsters in their way.

The final important task on the TO DO list is to add uniques. This includes unique monsters, weapons, and armor. Whew. That's a lot to do. I guess it is time to knock out TO DO list item number 1. Version 0.02, here we come.

Skyrimmed

2011-12-23T14:07:00.002-05:00

I have only heard about this Skyrim game second hand. My buddy says he sees the commercials on TV all the time. Another friend paid an extra $7 in priority shipping to get the game right away. The real surprise was when I heard people complaining about the game's performance.

Skyrim was written orignally for a console such as the Xbox 360. It was then ported the PC. Apparently some dude did a mod on the PC release to make it upwards of 40% faster. This mod took about a day to create. Customers think this shows either incompetance or negligence from software manufacturer Bethesda Games.

My game-crazy friend is a big fan of Bethesda. If anybody should know who is good, it would be him. I trust his opinion. Sure some hacker might have come out with a speedup. But did he break anything with the hack? And you got to realize that the PC market is just an afterthought. If you want the best performance from the manufacturer, get the console version. I have given up on high performance PC games a long time ago. You should too.

Level Up

2011-12-22T23:22:00.002-05:00

I implemented character levels today. The player starts out at level 25, a relatively high level. I did this so we can skip the boring low level character advancement. I also wanted to give the player a chance to surive the harsh dungeon environment. This does not mean the game will be an easy win. You will just have a chance.

Along with character levels comes the opportunity to advance levels. I let the character gain the first couple character levels with ease. You just need to kill a few monsters. It gets harder and harder to advance after a while. I generously add more hit points to your maximum hit points when you gain a level.

In other news, I have been fixing some bugs I found. For example, when a monster was close to death, I got some errors computing damage that the monster did when hitting the character. This was because the damage done is based on the amount of hit points the monster has. I guess the random number generator does not want the range of random numbers to be too small.

Pretty soon I will have to add some more dungeon levels. I will also finally need to add unique monsters. With them will come the need for unique treasures (such as weapons and armor). A lot has been done. But there is so much more to do. Onward.

Monster Fight

2011-12-22T01:47:00.002-05:00

Previously I had added the ability for the player to attack monsters in my roguelike engine. Today I let the monsters fight back. The monsters also pursue the player from the get go. There are a lot of monsters in the maze. So life is a challenge as soon as the game starts.

I gave and displayed the health of the player on the screen. I determined how much damage each monster does. There was a cheat involved - I let the monsters do damage according to how many hit points they have left. Now that the monsters attack the player, I need to check whether the player dies.

The monster movement continues to be a challenge. If there are no obstacles, the monster advance directly toward the player. I added the ability for the monsters to move just horizontally or just vertically if one direction is impeded. The problem is when multiple monsters are ganging up on the player. They don't know how to surround the player that well yet.

Battle Engine

2011-12-21T06:04:00.004-05:00

I have started implementing the battle portion of my roguelike game engine. There are a lot of variables involved. To determine whether you hit a monster, you must take the monster armor class into account. You must also factor in any bonus to hit with the weapon.

Once you do strike a monster, you must determine the damage inflicted. I check the weapon you are wielding. It will do some base damage, along with any bonus damage. And if we are doing damage, the monster must have some hit points.

So far I do not have the monsters fighting back. But that should be the reciprocal activities as when the player attacks the monsters. Of course if the player runs, the monsters will most likely follow. Not sure if I want to add regeneration to the player and monster hit points yet.

So far progress is pretty darn good. I don't know whether my battle system is the exact mechanics done with Dungeons and Dragons. But it is good enough for my game engine for now. The main thing I am testing for is whether the time it takes to kill certain monsters feels right.

Roguelike Next Steps

2011-12-20T23:55:00.002-05:00

I performed a redesign on the code for my roguelike game engine. Changed the way I stored items that were in the player's inventory or equipment list. This made a lot of the routines simpler and more generic. Now I have the power to implement additional items such as potions, rings, amulets, and wands.

But I think I might change directions. Implementing more items is just an extension of what I have already. I need something new. I think it is time to add monster opponents into the game engine.

Monsters have some different behavior. They fight you. That adds some real time battle code. Right now the controls are just the player moving around the dungeon and interacting with items. I got to consider monster movement now as well. Also need to implement the hit points system for both players and monsters. Let's see where this leads.

Wielding a Weapon

2011-12-19T23:47:00.002-05:00

I added the ability to wield weapons in my roguelike engine. This includes the ability to take off your weapon as well. There is not much tricky about this operation. If you already are wielding a weapon, and you wield another one, the first weapon needs to go back into your inventory.

Weapon wielding was much easier than dealing with armor. Right now I only have one slot for your weapon. You either are holding one weapon or you are not. I don't have to check different armor wielding locations such as your arm (shield) or your feet (boots).

Now that I got the basics of armor and weapons down, I am rethinking how I handle them. Currently I generate a random list of them to represent what is on a dungeon level. Then I change their state when you pick the up and wield them. However the items are still part of the dungeon level. This is fine if you only have one level. But I plan to have multiple levels. I don't want your inventory or equipment to disappear when you climb the stairs down to another level.

A better idea would be to move items from the dungeon to your inventory. Then you could moves items from your inventory to equipment you are wielding. The inventory and equipment list can persist past the dunegon level. This is going to require some refactoring.

Equipment

2011-12-19T01:13:00.002-05:00

Today I just about implemented equipment in my roguelike game engine. You can wield armor. When you wield another armor of the same type, your new choice replaces the old. The the old armor gets put back into your inventory. I can show what armor you have wielded.

One thing on the TO DO list is to handle the wielding of weapons. It should be easier than armor since I only allow 1 slow for weapon holding right now. I also need to complete the implementation of taking off an item your have worn. Got to deal with a full inventory, as well as presenting the user with a list of what you are wearing.

On a positive note, I got the armor class working. The AC gets updated when you wield something. This takes base armor plus armor bonus into account. I like that. Once I finished the TO DO items, I am really going to want to create some unique armor with really high AC.

Weaponry

2011-12-17T23:13:00.004-05:00

Previously I had implemented armor. You could find it in the dungeon and pick it up. Armor showed up in your inventory. You could drop the armor you picked up. Today I implemented weapons.

It turns out that weapons are similar to armor. They have a name. You can pick them up. They show up in your inventory. You can drop them if they are in your inventory. They have a symbol for display purposes.

In programming terms, I found that armor and weapons share properties and functionality. I was able to determine that these are two specific cases of the general idea of items. Once I got the item behavior down, making some weapons that are items was easy.

I hope this mean that other item types such as potions, rings, and amulets are also easy to add. I think I am getting the hang of this.

Inventory Control

2011-12-17T00:57:00.002-05:00

I implemented an inventory dialog for my roguelike game engine today. It shows all the items you hold. It also identifies each item by a unique letter. This made it easy to implement a drop dialog as well.

There are some things to think about for my drop dialog. For example, the user must press the letter to identify the item to drop. Fair enough. But I also make the user press the Enter key to complete the choice. I really should make the choice automatic upon the user pressing the letter key.

I have also glossed over the issue of the user dropping an item on top of another item. Right now it will stack the items on top of each other. But I have not implemented what happens when you move over a space that has items stacked on top of each other. Those are small details though.

Currently I only have armor in the dungeon. So the inventory and drop features only work with armor. If I can generalize this to include other items such as weapons, potions, scrolls, and rings, then I should be good.

Real Armor

2011-12-16T00:43:00.002-05:00

Previously I had drawn some armor on the roguelike screen. But it was just characters on the screen. When you walked over them, you could not pick them up. All that has changed now. I improved the armor system in my game.

Armor now has a name. It also has a base and bonus armor class. Both numbers are randomly generated. If you want over a piece of armor, you pick it up into your inventory. I also implemented a limit to the amount of items you can hold in your inventory.

Next immediate step is to be able to display your inventory. Then I should try getting the equipment subsystem running so you can wield your armor. Finally I should compute and display your total armor class. This game engine is coming along just fine I say.

Armor, Weapons, and Monsters. Oh My!

2011-12-15T00:43:00.003-05:00

There is good news and bad news about the progress of my roguelike game engine. The good news is that I added armor, weapons, and monsters. The bad news is that they don't do anything.

I just got the static symbology down on the maze. You can see the orcs. And you can see some armor and weapons. You just can grab any of the items. You also cannot attack any monsters. Neither will they attack you.

The interactivity is a task that is TBD. But it looks pretty good for now. I think I shall start with weaponry. If you can pick it up, I better implement the character inventory. And I guess you should be able to wield the weapon. So I should implement player equipnment management.

First things first. I need to determine the properties of a weapon. You would think I need number of hits, damage per hit, bonus for hit, and bonus for damage. To be flexible I might also want to record the symbol for the specific weapon. That will allow different weapons to be represented differently. That would be an awesome start.

Original Colors

2011-12-14T04:55:00.000-05:00

Now that I pretty much got my maze working, I turned the the issue of color. Currently I had the default colors which come with a Java component. Boring. And it does not feel like a roguelike. No. I want this thing to look like Angband.

So I painted the background black. And the walls are painted white. Yeah this looks like a monochrome game or Moria. But it is an improvement over the default colors I had before. Eventually I shall add some colorful colors. For now I am satisfied.

It is definitely time to fix the problems at the edges of the maze. Then perhaps I shall put weapons and armor in the maze. That shall be fun.

Connecting Corridors

2011-12-13T23:44:00.002-05:00

I got some hall connecting my rooms now. The vertical halls do not look great. But at least they work. I try to find rooms that are adjacent horizontally or vertically. Then I draw the hall between them at the centerpoint where they overlap.

Now I only consider rooms adjacent if they are truly next to each other, and a path between them does not cut through another room. That last part is important. If I did not check for that, there would be halls running everywhere. We don't want that.

With the connecting halls I can almost move around the whole maze. I still have a problem if I get too close to the edge of the whole maze. The viewport tries to display an area for which there are no underlying cells. I have two ideas to fix this problem. The simplest is to just fill up the maze with a huge border around all sides. Or I could detect when I get close to the edge, and simulate solid brick behind the outer walls.

The View Port

2011-12-12T23:56:00.002-05:00

I am busy working on my roguelike code library. Previously I had a "maze" which fit on the screen. Now I have expanded the maze so that it is bigger than what can be shown on the screen.

The size of the maze is not 800 x 250. You only see an 80 x 25 view port into the maze on the screen. The position of the player is always fixed. I added the ability for the player to move around the maze with the arrow keys. The maze moves around the player in the view port.

I still need to connect the rooms with passages. Then perhaps it will be time to put items on the map such as weapons and armor. I would love to get to the inventory management and player eqiupment modules if at all possible.

Library Code

2011-12-12T02:06:00.003-05:00

I just finished my college class for the semester. This time around I studied Advanced Java. Now I should have the skills to write a roguelike in Java. Last time I tried, I was still a bit lacking.

My plans are to put together a library that handles the mundane tasks for writing a roguelike. I just threw together some code to do maze building tonight. It is just the beginning. I can create rooms and draw them. Now I need to connect the rooms with passages/halls.

I figure that in a few months, I shall have a framework that will let me bang out a roguelike in no time (or about 1 week). That way I can concentrate on the important features of the game instead of wrote mechanics.

The Children of Hurin

2011-12-07T18:33:00.002-05:00

I purchased and finally read the book The Children of Hurin. This is a type of prequel to The Long of the Rings. The real prequel is The Hobbit. The Children of Hurin takes place thousands of years earlier. The good news is that I am getting a lot of ideas for a new roguelike game.

I am getting ideas for all kinds of unique enemies, as well as great weapons from the book. So I am reading the book a second time and am taking a lot of notes. Perhaps I shall create a game based on the book during the next Seven Day Roguelike (7DRL) competition.

Previously I did a Roguelike called JSRL. But that was limited by my experience with the JavaScript programming language. This time I will write the game in Java. And I plan to rock and roll with it.

Plight of the Halfling

2011-10-26T23:49:00.003-04:00

I spend a lot of time playing Angband these days. My name is Thread. I am a Hobbit Warrior. My super strength and dexterity allow me to swing my katana fast to chop down my enemies. These stats do not come naturally. I wield rings and gloves that boost my abilities.

I am a bit concerned about my health. Not that I am sick. But I do not have the reserves required to take many blows in battle. I search for the potions to cure this deficiency. But old Drago in the black market refuses to stock such items. I return time and time again to find other nick nacks for sale there.

I cannot fault Drago too much. He did find and sell me a wonderful chain mail that resists all kinds of attacks. Good stuff. Now if only I could locate an item to prevent the attacks that leave me blind, I shall be ready to dive into the dungeons fo Angband.

Notch Getting Busy

2011-09-22T15:21:00.005-04:00

Recently Notch, the creator of the game Minecraft, participated in a 48 hour game creation contest. He spent the two days coding up a game from scratch. Notch has a lot of fans. About 10,000 of them watched as he streamed his computer screen while developing a game. Apparently this was an epic experience.

Notch banged out Java code. He did not need to Google any specific topics. Damn. The guy must know his APIs. The result was a 3D game that wss running a few hours before the 48 hour deadline. We need this guy participating in some roguelike 7DRLs. He might create something revolutionary.

This guy does have a day job. He works on his Mincraft game, as well as some other new games coming out from his company. You got to give this developer credit. He know how to knock out code.

Creepy Girl

2011-07-20T10:05:00.004-04:00

I just stumbled upon this web site of a weird girl. On the web she is known as creepy girl. Her eyes track your mouse pointer. At first some thought this was a hot 3D rendering. However that theory has been debunked. It is really a bunch of photographs that are layered to look like 3D.

So So Rogue

2011-07-01T16:17:00.003-04:00

I got an iPhone this past year. The apps looked just too delicious to pass up. I downloaded some that my friends had. Then I searched for some myself. I also tried out some apps that were on the top of the popular lists. Finally I tried out Rogue for the iPhone.

Now all of the elements of a roguelike were in there. But the game did not keep my attention. I think the problem was the navigation. One of the fun things about roguelikes is the ability to control actions through the keyboard. The iPhone usually wants you to touch the screen to perform actions. This just did not translate well for the Rogue game.

I have since removed the app. Not sure if it was a free one, or a trial one that would require payment later. Either way I was not going to play it. Perhaps there will be an Angband port to the iPhone some time in the future. I would give it a try. But it needs to come strong.

False Advertising

2011-05-27T21:56:00.004-04:00

I was reading about a company taking developers to court. Then I saw an advertisement on the page that looked interesting. There was a hot chick on display. I was "game" for it. So I clicked through.

It turns out this was some sort of war game. I should have figured that out since the game was called Warflow. Still I wanted to cash in on the hot chicks. They were nowhere to be found. Thus, I got the heck out of there.

I understand that you want nice graphics to lure people to come play your game. But if you don't want people to bolt, choose advertising images that match your game please. Otherwise you fail.

Duke Nukem Returns

2011-05-24T15:31:00.003-04:00

It looks as if Duke Nukem Forever is finally being release next month. This thing has taken 14 years to come to fruition. It is due to the work of Gearbox Software, 2K Games, and apparently a host of many other.

I read through many comments of people responding to the news of the release. They were mostly cheering. Myself I am a bit skeptical. Haven't they promised release dates many times ago? We shall see next month if this thing can actually be ordered.

What the heck happened that it took so long for a release? Ouch. I guess modern commercial video games are a difficult beast to manage and develop.

JSRL Version 1.3

2011-03-28T23:29:00.005-04:00

Previously I had mentioned that my game JSRL did not work right under the Google Chrome browser. Yes it was true. But all that is a thing of the past. I just released JSRL version 1.3. And I fixed the Chrome bugs.

The layout of the game did not look well in the Chrome browser either. That got fixed as well. Functionally I added a bunch of different monsters in the game. I have not rebalanced the game as a result yet.

Here are some tough monsters I added to the game: basilisks, minotaurs, rocs, vampires, beholders, golems, liches, and nagas. There are also some other new monsters that are easy to beat like skeletons, orcs, and ogres. Next time I want to try to add a town level to the game.

Chromed

2011-03-22T13:40:00.003-04:00

I had a friend do some testing on the latest version of my roguelike JSRL. She said some of the new graphics looked good. But the functionality of the game was broken. That was strange.

I did a quick test using Internet Explorer. The game mechanics worked fine. Then I tried Firefox which gave me problem before. It worked good there. That's when I found out my friend was running Google Chrome.

After downloaded Google Chrome, I found my game was all messed up. I fixed some of the screen layout. However the JavaScript controlling play was just not functional. Great. I got some real work to do here. I will release an update in version 1.3 of the code soon.

JSRL Version 1.2

2011-03-20T18:52:00.003-04:00

A friend wanted to see the latest developments in my JSRL roguelike game. So here is version 1.2 of JSRL. The main addition is this version is better handling of messages to the user. I have a vertical scroller to handle that. You can see the last three lines of message on the screen. You can also scroll back to the last 10 messages.

I also redesigned the top potion of the screen. The dungeon level, gold amount, and hit points have been arranged vertically. They have also been lined up to look cleaner. All this work was for a secret new addition I am working on to put in the upper right hand corner of the screen. You will have to wait until version 1.3 to see what I have in store for you.

JSRL Version 1.1

2011-03-18T18:50:00.002-04:00

I have released version 1.1 of my roguelike game JSRL. You can now use your keyboard for player navigation. The screen now has full information on the commands you can use. I also added an intro screen graphic.

Now I plan to concentrate on making the game more playable. I need to add Angband-like features. Definitely need a whole lot more types of monsters. I also want to add different items you can find like weapons and armor.

For now I plan to continue improvement on my game. Let's see how far I can take this.

More work on JSRL

2011-03-16T23:46:00.003-04:00

After a short hiatus, I have started development on JSRL again. This is the roguelike I entered into the 2011 7DRL competition. Now it is time to complete version 1.1.

At first I am going to go after some low hanging fruit. I will start by allowing navigation with the number pad. That will involve new diagonal moves as well. Then I might internally redo how I draw the maze to the screen. Right now it is very inefficient. I redraw the whole darn thing when something changes. An incremental change will be to redraw the line that got changed.

If I get ambitious, I might try to add an intro screen. Sure I could put some lame text intro screen in there. But I hear you should really rock your user with a cool graphic intro. So let's see how far I get. I will post a link to the new version of the game as soon as I code and test it out.

Building a Roguelike

2011-03-14T03:49:00.002-04:00

I skimmed through a book on building your own roguelike game. It was free so I thought what the heck. The book covers programming in the BASIC programming language. It also goes into detail of the code for a specific game.

The book recommends you do a nice graphic intro screen. It also states you should use a graphic screen for your game, even if you are displaying ASCII symbols. Here is an idea. Put an easter egg or two in your game.

There are many methods for dungeon generation. You could start with one room, draw a corridor, then draw the next room. Or you could split the screen into quadrants, draw rooms in the quadrants, then connect the rooms with corridors. You could also use a perfect maze algorithm. Look it up.

I had some insights for my own roguelike game while reading the book. For line of sight issues, you can use Bresenham's algorithm. Once again look it up. You can also use the numeric keypad with Numlock turned on for character movement. That way you only need to detect the "1", "2", ... "9" keys for movement. I need to also implement monsters running away when they give up on battle.

Defender of the Deep

2011-03-13T12:00:00.000-04:00

I am checking out other early finishes in the 2011 7DRL contest. Next up is Defender of the Deep. The actual graphics for the dungeon maze are simple but good. I like that empty spaces in the dungeon are just plain black.

Looking at the scrolling messages at the bottom of the screen, I realized how I should have coded up messages in my game. It was nice that some messages were color coded too. I did notice a lot of attacks in the game came with the message that no damage was done. Dang.

One weird thing about the game is that a DOS style box comes up, but you play the game in a second DOS style window that is a bit bigger. The menu system in this game is top notch. It presents you with a list, you press one key, and the choice is made. I am used to Angband where I need to select an item, then press another key to confirm the selection,.

My first attempt at playing the game was somewhat successful. Nice game balance. I don't like games that are too hard. There were many healing potions on dungeon level 1. I picked up a club on dungeon level 2 briefly. It got quickly replaced with a glowing broad sword. Woo hoo. Have not died yet. Now back to the game.

Vicious Orcs

2011-03-12T23:32:00.007-05:00

There were a couple 7DRL entries done and posted to the announcement group before I completed my JSRL game. A nice one I tried was Vicious Orcs. Initially the game was very small in a DOS box style window. The maximize button on the window did not work. Later I found an option to toggle full screen which was better.

Some things in Vicious Orcs puzzled me a bit. At times, locations in the dungeon diagonal to you were not visible. I tried to go in those diagonal directions. But I was prevented. Every time I picked up gold, yellow squares would fall down the left side of the screen and pile like a Tetris.

There were also some cool effects in Vicious Orcs. The screen would slowly fade to black on your death. The app would also move in a direction it thought you might want to go. I would try to go left. It was blocked by a wall, but the app would move me left and down. Sweet.

Introducing my Roguelike JSRL

2011-03-12T03:51:00.005-05:00

I have completed development on my 7DRL entry JSRL. The game is actually not complete. But I have run out of time. The entry should be a win since it was done within 7 days, is similar to Rogue, and is playable.

Today I tested the game with Firefox. It did not work. However I kept at the code until it worked in Firefox. The colors actually look better in Firefox than in Internet Explorer. I also made the message box a horizontally scrolling one.

A major addition I put in tonight was the Big Boss on the bottom level. Well he is actually not that big. He is a giant beetle. But his has a lot of hit points, and can do as much damage as you.

The majority of drive for this game from entering the 7DRL contest. I would like to refine the game, improving it, and continuing to learn more JavaScript. We shall see how much time I can spare for this effort.

Monsters

2011-03-10T15:00:00.002-05:00

The last item I had to add to my JSRL roguelike game was monsters. This proved to be a challenging task. It was easy to randomly place monster characters in the dungeon. But then I needed to code the monsters to become aware of the player. Then the monster needed to chase the player.

The addition of monsters also required battles. I added the ability for the player to attack the monsters. The monsters needed to be able to attack the player as well. This required me to track the hit points of the player and all monsters. It also required me to start providing messages to the user based on the results of the fight.

There is not much functionality to add. I should test the game in browsers other than Internet Explorer such as Firefox. Then I would like to put a title screen in there. Finally I shall upload the game to a site where everyone can access it. Get ready for some fun.

Stairways

2011-03-09T10:47:00.005-05:00

One of the last features to add in my JSRL roguelike game is multiple levels. I implemented this feature today. You need stairs up and down. Of course the topmost level should not have a stairway leading up. And the lowest level should not have a stairway going down.

I wanted to make the stairway movement logical. That means if you go down a stairway to get to a lower level, then you should be right at the location in the lower level where the reverse stairway exists. It was a little tricky, but I got that right. You walk down the stairs to find yourself standing on the stairway that leads back up to the higher dungeon level.

The final major feature I need to add is monsters. I am saving that task for tomorrow.

Gold in the Hills

2011-03-08T13:17:00.006-05:00

I need something to give the players of my JSRL roguelike a score. One part will be how much gold they collect. Today I implemented placing random amounts of gold in the dungeon. Then I had to implement a gold display that shows how much you have collected so far. This display will be part of the main player stats line.

There are only two more ideas I want to implement before I call this 7DRL a success. They are multiple dungeon levels and monsters. I think I will tackle the multiple dungeon levels issue next. I want the whole game to be 10 levels. I just need to add some staircases up (and down if you are lower than dungeon level 1). Then I want to make sure the lower levels have more gold.

We Have a Player

2011-03-07T14:54:00.002-05:00

I sneaked in a little development on my JSRL roguelike today. Got the player character to display (the great "@" symbol). I even implemented character movement.

Unfortunately I do not have a keyboard with a number keypad. So I had to remap movement keys to alphabetic characters. I think that's how the original Rogue handled movement.

It should be trivial to map the movement back to a real keypad once I test with a standard keyboard. Now I am deliberating on what to add next? Some gold? Stairs to a lower level? Whatever I choose, I will do that work tomorrow.

The Competition

2011-03-06T22:27:00.003-05:00

I am keeping an eye on the roguelike development newsgroup to see what others are up to. There were a lot of other people starting up their 7DRL entries after I announced mine.

Some developers are making great progress. It looks as though Stygia has navigational directions implemented already. And I am not sure, but Gnomes might already be done.

Luckily you are only competing against yourself and the clock in this contest. Everyone has the ability to win if you can produce a playable game within the one week time period.

Arrival of the Maze

2011-03-06T21:27:00.001-05:00

Made some progress on the JSRL roguelike game. Now I have drawn some rooms in the dungeon. They are of random size and in random locations. Sometimes the rooms are not connected. But it is good enough for now.

Next step is to get the adventurer displayed using the "@" sign. Then I have to process commands from the user. Specifically I want to start with navigational commands. You know. If the user presses up, the symbol moves up one position on the screen unless there is some obstruction.

I am optimistic that the resulting game after a week will be marginally playable.

Pablo is Moving Forward

2011-03-06T01:00:00.002-05:00

I had previously played PabloQuest and had some problems with it. Turns out I did not fully understand how the game worked. Once I figured that out, the game did not seem to freeze.

I heard from the author of PabloQuest. Apparently he has a new version out. I downloaded and played this new version. Immediately I saw some new stuff. You start out a new game by stating how many levels you want to play.

This time around I paid more attention to your companion Quest. I guess he is a dog or something. Quest will go into a room and kill the monsters for you. Works for me.

There are still questions I have. For example my hit points don't seem to regenerate by themselves. I tried reading a scroll of heal, but got only 1HP of health back. Also I found it strange that I would walk right over top of gold. I got to press a key to grab it. Look here. I am always going to want to grab the gold. Why wouldn't I?

Finally I must have gained a character level, because I was asked what I want to increase. I answered "life". Not sure what that did. Maybe in the end, when the game is finished, I can read the manual.

The First Screen

2011-03-06T00:14:00.002-05:00

I started writing my Angband clone for the Seven Day Roguelike Challenge. It was a rough start. I had programming problems getting the screen to display. There were a lot of errors. I googled the web for some help. Found a technique that works.

Now I got a screen with all dungeon wall characters. However I got some code that backs a general dungeon in memory. That dungeon is being transposed onto the screen. I guess the next step would be to carve out rooms and corridors in the dungeon.

Yeah the screen does not look sexy. But it actually displays something. That is a start. I think I will call it quits for the night. A good night sleep should put me in position to knock out some more code tomorrow. It is still the weekend.

Seven Day Roguelike

2011-03-05T21:00:00.002-05:00

It is official. I am going to write an Angband like game in the next 7 days, or die trying. I posted my announcement as a reply in the rec games roguelike development USENET newgroup.

My game will be written in the JavaScript programming language. That means you will be able to run it in your web browser. It will be a challenge as I am learning JavaScript right now.

The goal will be to get anything running. I will be happy if I get some dungeons walls up, an "@" symbol running around, and some gold and monsters. The eventual goal is to have 10 dungeon levels and a big boss to fight at the end. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Time to start coding.

Going Rogue

2011-03-05T01:02:00.005-05:00

Normally I play a mage in Angband. I love the ability to identify things I find in the dungeon for profit. Magic missile and stinking cloud are great weapons. Once in a while I play a fighter. However the lack of any spell casting gets annoying.

Now I am trying out a rogue character. I just started out. The best thing I have so far is a lantern. I pretty much just duke it out with monsters like a fighter. I both a strength and dexterity of at least 18. That gives me some nice bonus to hit and damage.

I do not think this character will get far. But I bet it will be a whole lot of fun. As usual, I just need to resist the urge to dive too far.

Pablo Quest

2011-02-24T01:31:00.002-05:00

I just downloaded and tried out Pablo Quest. At first it seemed pretty slick. The dungeon walls were drawn nicely. The keyboard controls were intuitive. Things were looking good.

Then I attacked some monsters. And the game froze up on me. I run Windows 7. I restarted the application. As soon as I got into a fight, the game froze up again. Dang.

The Pablo Quest home page declares that the game is bad ass. I want to believe it. But I need to be able to get past the problems with the game first.

Useless Death

2011-02-16T16:43:00.002-05:00

I had a pretty good human fighter going in Angband. Just found Calris and had enchanted the hit up to +9. Then I went down into the dungeon. I felt sleepy and knew I needed to take a nap. But I was kicking butt in Angband.

Next thing I knew I fell asleep. When I woke up, my fighter was dead. What the heck happened? I had pressed the key to search for a door. Then I fell asleep. I guess my poor fighter kept searching.

Eventually the fighter got hungry, was not fed, and died due to starvation. Damn. Time to institute a new rule. If I ever had a good player and start to get tired, then it is time to end the game. Period.

The Trident of Wrath

2011-02-08T11:16:00.003-05:00

I've got a fighter that is coming along quite nicely in Angband. Been experimenting with different weapons to get the maximum damage per round. Just found a Trident of Wrath with +2 attack speed. It does over 300HP of damage per turn. Yes.

The fighter can automatically pseudo identify items. I hate when this detects an item being magical, but it is actually cursed. I have to waste a spell of identify to find out the magic worked in a negative way on the item.

My speed is up to +14 now. However it comes with me having to take off one of my items of resistance. So now I only have a shield of Elvenkind which resists cold, fire, etc. That means I take one third damage from those attacks. Might have to put back on a second item of resistance to shrink that to one ninth damage.

All of my stats are maxxed out except for wisdom and intelligence. I can see invisible creatures, as well as resist blindness. I got free action. Now I still am very careful around basilisks. However I am starting to be confident in even the lower levels of the dungeon. Will keep you posted on this characters progress. Oh yeah. His name is Fighter.

The Balrog of Moria

2011-02-03T18:01:00.002-05:00

I was wandering around deep in the dungeon. It was around dungeon level 50. Saw a huge number of demons and such congregating in a room. So I started attacking them. The problem was that they kept summoning their friends. I would kill until my HP got low. Then I would teleport out of there.

Eventually they burned up a lot of my spell books. The good books remained. But I lost the ability to teleport. Then I found out why there were so many demons in town. I was up against the Balrog of Moria. He was tough to kill. But I got the job done. I thought I would finish off all his minions before returning to town. No suck luck.

I was a bit handicapped by the loss of my spell books. Yes I should have been carrying multiple copies of each of them. I would get close to getting the demons under control. Then someone would summon a bunch more. The lesser balrogs were tough to beat. Eventually my HP got low. So I read a scroll of word of recall. It was too bad because I did not pick up any treasure from defeating all the demons. I did raise a couple character levels. That is significant because it takes a couple hundred thousand experience points for each level.

The Amulet of Sustenance

2011-02-02T16:51:00.003-05:00

As I get lower in the Angband dungeon, I carry around a bunch of Potions of Restore Life Levels. I don't want to waste time coming back up to town to buy them. And I want my kills to count towards my experience, even after somebody drain my life.

I was exited to buy an Amulet of Sustenance. It claims to sustain your life force. There is only just one problem. Monsters are draining my life force left and right. I guess I don't understand exactly what this amulet does. Might be time to switch it out for another more useful amulet.

Now I am back to carrying Potions of Restore Life Levels. There are too many opponents who are draining. I did hit the high score on the Angband Hall of Fame. And I am still alive ... for now.

Meeting Medusa

2011-02-01T19:24:00.002-05:00

For a very long time, I have been very conservative with my Angband character. Did not dive too deep into the dungeon. However to make it to the next couple character levels, I needed harder monsters to fight. So I decided to go down a few dungeon levels.

I was careful with the various evil hounds that attacked. Then I ran into Medusa in a corridor. This was lucky because she was summoning hydras a bit. I hasted myself, cast my shield spell, and also casted a resistance spell. You never know when extra resistance protection can save you.

My Lance of the Eorlings weapon smite Medusa quite a few times. I guess she counts as an evil creature, so I do a nice average 357 points of damage per round. It was disturbing that Medusa's hit points were not draining quick enough. However I kept up the attack until I had her head. Then I finished up, bumping off the hydras she summoned. The bummer was that she only dropped gold for me. No artifacts were found.

Leather Shield of the Haradrim

2011-01-30T17:17:00.003-05:00

I got my character level 35 human mage running pretty smoothly in Angband. Was worried for a while because I did not have the standard resistance for a while. Now I have at least one item which provides resistance to acid/lightning/fire/cold.

The most interesting item I wield is the Leather Shield of the Haradrim. It gives me +1 attacks. An extra swing each turn is quite delicious for hand to hand combat. I also wear two +5 constitution rings maxxing out my constitution to 18/*** and my hit points to 593.

I am trying to beef up my speed. Right now it is only +8. Would like to make it to at least +10 to be twice as fast as usual. Need another item of resistance to get take 1/9 the damage instead of the current 1/3 damage. I also would like something that speeds regeneration. You never know when you will be on the run and want to regain hit points and mana pronto. There is only one other character ahead of me in the Angband Hall of Fame. It will take many moons to catch him though.

Windows 7

2010-12-29T13:58:00.002-05:00

Previously I tried running Angband v3.0 on my laptop. The graphics would not scale correctly for my screen. Plus the thing kept aborting. So I decided to go on an Angband hiatus.

Recently I decided to give it another try. Version 3.2 has graphics that better suit my screen. The application still exits mysteriously from time to time. However I am able to restart my game where I left off.

Right now I am a human mage character level 4. I knocked off Farmer Maggot to get a shield. It has not been identified yet. But I am wielding it because I am pretty sure it is enchanted.

Pie in the Sky

2010-12-13T11:14:00.003-05:00

The game software business seems like an easy one. You code up a great game and get rich right? Well nothing it ever that easy. I gained a lot of insight by reading the history of Pie in the Sky Software. Check out their history starting with Comcob.

You need to time your advertising correctly. Otherwise you might sell a lot of copies before the thing is done. Then you might be forced to ship before the product is ready. That in turn will create a lot of unhappy customers.

How do you handle these unhappy customers? Well you can provide technical support. That is very labor intensive. And you still might have customer who are mad. You might also have to ship out a free upgrade, fixing bugs that have no right to be in a release. Did I mention that physical shipping of software is an expensive activity?

Full Sail University

2010-11-20T14:31:00.000-05:00

I saw an ad on my own web site for Full Sail University. It looked interesting. They seem to cater towards game development. The time it takes to graduate is normally half the time of a regular university. They are located down in Orlando, Florida (hello Disney World).

What caught my eye was the interesting and relevant classes they seem to teach. Some of these classes were Windows Programming, Direct X, Open GL, Engine Development, and Optimization. You can get a bachelors degree in either Game Development or Web Design. They also have a masters of Game Design.

Total cost for the masters is around $30k. This works out to $615 per credit. You can graduate in just 3 semesters. The total cost for the bachelors program is $76k. Ouch. It is around $535 per credit. This program takes a little over 5 semesters to graduate.

You can start any month. They have about 12k students attending now. Full Sail does offer campus tours. They also have an online program. In general I do not recommend online classes. And they offer individual courses on a case by case basis. Might be something to look into.

Call of Duty

2010-11-19T14:11:00.003-05:00

Activision released the latest version of Call of Duty this month. It has been breaking all sales records with ease. On the first day, it sold over 5 million copies for a revenue of $360M. In the first 5 days, it has raked in $650M in sales. Damn.

This is the seventh installment of the Call of Duty line. The game is titled Call of Duty - Black Ops. The game was previously announced back in April. It has some sketchy material like torture of prisoners and assassination of heads of state. Good stuff eh?

You are going to need some serious hardware to run this game. A lot of people with decent gaming machines have complained of severe lagging. The stated system requirements are Windows XP/Vista/7, 2G RAM, Intel Duo Core2 processor, and Direct X 9. I don't think my weak laptop can run this thing. Man I need me a good gaming PC.

Hello World

2010-10-26T14:07:00.002-04:00

I just read a post about a veteran game developer. He shared his advice on how to break into gaming. And no, you should not start out trying to write a doom clone. Instead you need to take some baby steps. Your first program must be Hello World.

Well I decided to follow the steps exactly in the order that he recommends. I tried learning some Java in the past year. Now I am getting a little rusty. So I banged out a Hello World Java app in a little bit of time.

Now comes the next challenge. You got to write a Tic-Tac-Toe game. It don't need any fancy graphics. In fact, it does not need any graphics at all. It just has to work. So let me go off and code it. I had a hankering to write it up in HTML (my current college class), but I will stick with Java.

Don't worry. At the end of the 10 program journey, I will be rocking with a Pong clone. No it won't quite be Doom or Quake shattering 3D. But it will be a fun journey. I think that is what my guru is trying to teach me here.

Minecraft Hype

2010-09-26T22:12:00.004-04:00

I heard that there was some game developed by a dude that was earning $250k a day. WTF? How can a game make that much money every day? The thing only costs 13 or 14 bucks a pop. Looks like there is a lot of hype out there about the game. And that is a good thing for sales.

So I figured I would try out the game. Now I was not a out to go out and pay $13 for the thing. I wanted to play a free version of it. I went to the web site. The thing had some weird message at the top of the page about the servers being overloaded.

I downloaded an executable. It required Java. So I downloaded and installed Java. Then the game I downloaded said I needed a login. What the heck? I went back to the web page and tried to sign up. Got a user ID and password. Tried again and the game would not accept the credentials. Then I tried to play the game on the web page instead of the one I downloaded. The thing hung my browser. If I have all these problems, I doubt the thing is selling 20k copies a day. Must be a fluke some type of fake propaganda to get sheeple to buy the thing.

Reddit Game Jam

2010-06-25T11:12:00.003-04:00

I just heard about the Reddit Game Jam. This is a 48 hour period to write a game for a theme that is chosen at the start of the contest. It is sort of like a 2DRL with a lot more rules. In the end they use Reddit votes to determine who has the best game.

You cannot steal images for your game. They want you to make it cross platform. You cannot use any commercial libraries. If you use some personal libraries, you have to supply the source code to everyone.

Your game has to run on minimal hardware. When you are done, you must share all of your source code. That does not mean that you have to open source your code. But you must post it all out there. You get one extra day to package your code. This all sounds like a fun idea. Maybe I can unleash some kind of roguelike on them. It might be tough to get it all done in 48 hours though.

Writing in Elvish

2010-06-19T01:27:00.003-04:00

I just found out that it is not that hard to learn how to write in Elvish. Now there are many ways to translate English to Elvish. However one easy way is to use a mapping between the English and Elven alphabet. You combine this with some simple rules regarding the placement of vowels. The result is one simple way to do the translation.

Previously I imagined the written Elven language to be complex, like the Klingon language from Star Trek. However this need not be the case. If you want to learn how to write Elvish yourself, go check out Ned Gulley's tutorial on this. You will be glad you did.

Game Over

2010-03-12T23:19:00.002-05:00

I finally completed my new game Mazeband. It was completed in about siz days. So I can say that I met the 7DRL challenge.

Download a copy of Mazeband right now.

Make sure to click on "request download ticket". Then click on "download". Sorry I could not put this game on my hosting service. It is currently down at the moment. This was the best free alternative I could find.

Play the game by navigating with the number pad on your keyboard. Get all the gold in the least amount of turns. See how good a score you can achieve (lower scores are better). I hope to have a more exciting game next year. Peace out.

Mazeband Progress

2010-03-12T20:55:00.001-05:00

Now I have my Mazeband game drawing 5 distinct rooms. They never overlap. That was quite an achievement.

You got to make sure a new random room is not in any existing rooms. The trick is that you have to also make sure none of the existing rooms are in the new random room.

We now come to the crux of my project. Time to join the rooms with halls. I only have 1 day left in my 7 day roguelike challenge. Will I make it? I got a can of Mountain Dew. And I have some ideas for the hall drawing algorithm. Wish me luck.

Drawing Rooms in MazeBand

2010-03-11T20:45:00.002-05:00

I got it so that your character moves around when you press the movement keys. That seemed like good progress. Now it is time for the main part of my game - the maze.

Everything about programming the maze is math. Sure it is just 2D math. But you got to get the details right. I got some rooms being randomly drawn. However they are all clustered in the upper left hand corner of the screen. And they always overlap.

I think I just need to tweak some values being passed into my random number generator. Then I need to code the rules that throw out a random room if it overlaps another. Then I will be off to the races to connect the rooms. Will I be done? No. But I will have achieved my goal - which is the MazeBand.

Progress on my Game

2010-03-09T22:55:00.002-05:00

I finally figured out that I needed to use the WriteConsoleOutputCharacter function to get something drawn on the screen. Now I have the power. The rest is mechanics.

So I got a simple startup screen done. And I drew the outline of the maze. Finally I put character symbol on the screen too. I can retrieve keyboard presses. But they just don't do anything yet.

Now for the fun stuff. Time to experiment to figure out how to draw a good maze. That is the main goal of my 7DRL entry this year. I want there to be a bunch of interconnected rooms. The rooms should be random. Let's see if I can get this done by the end of the week.

7DRL Development

2010-03-08T17:44:00.002-05:00

To save time I decided to develop my roguelike entry this year in the C++ programming language. I downloaded Microsoft Visual Studio 2008. Normally this software costs around $600, especially since I got the professional version. Luckily I am a student at a community college. Microsoft gives the software for free to poor students like me.

I know Visual Studio can target a "console application". To me that means you get text output on an old DOS box style window. I got an app to come up and display the DOS box. However I can't get the thing to display text where I want it on the screen. I am calling the WriteConsoleOutput function. You would think that would be simple. But the darn thing keeps throwing an error.

The optimal development environment would be one where I could concentrate on the mechanics of the game. I feel like I am wasting time trying to figure out the mundane programming tasks now like just drawing anything on the screen. If this keeps up, I am going to be doomed and fail in producing anything that looks like a game. I need luck. If you know how to do ASCII output with Visual Studio easily, let me know.

New 7DRL Entry

2010-03-06T21:20:00.001-05:00

Last year I entered my first seven day roguelike contest. The problem was that I was just learning the Java programming language. Unfortunately I have not learned much more Java since then.

I still want to enter this year again. However I plan to fall back to using C++. That is the language I am most familiar with. I don't really know much about writing games. That's why this will be an adventure.

Wish me luck. Time to post my intentions on the roguelike development newsgroup. I will keep you posted here.

Mechanics

2009-12-09T19:35:00.002-05:00

I got the chance to peek at an excerpt from a game development book. This chapter covered the essential game mechanics of successful games. I thought I would rate Angband in terms of the necessary mechanics listed. The categories were points, collecting, feedback, exchanges, and customization.

Well Angband is definitely point driven. You see your score each time you save your game. Angband is also not just a game of collecting gold. It is a game where you must figure out which items to keep, and which to sell. So it goes beyond just simple collections.

There is a turn based feedback system in Angband. You constantly know what the effects are on your health, mana, location, etc. This makes Angband very interactive. You may need to play a multiplayer version of Angband to get into any meaningful exchanges. Otherwise vanilla Angband scores low in this category.

I know Angband has numerous settings that you can customize. I usually play with the same settings applied. However there are many other options available should I want to change them. Angband seems to fare well in all the game mechanic categories. That is probably part of the reason why this is a timeless great game.

Armor Up

2009-12-07T19:39:00.003-05:00

My latest Angband character is Cloud. He is a character level 27 Mage. And he has a new problem. The light hounds are blinding him all the time. That prevents spell casting ability, which may lead to death.

The solution was to get a helm of Seeing, which would prevent blindness. However that is easier said than done. I kept visiting the armory. But I had no luck. I started worrying that the old version of Vanilla Angband I was playing did not support helms of Seeing.

While visiting the armory about 100 times, I did purchase some other nice items. I got some gauntlets of Agility that do not inhibit spell casting. I also picked up some boots of Free Action. But there was never any helms of Seeing.

Finally I almost gave up. However I found the prize at the Black Market. There I found a crown of Seeing. Yes. I also got a cloak of Protection. Sure the black market charges a high overhead for items. When you are desperate, it is well worth it. Charge on Cloud.

Going Retro

2009-09-04T16:22:00.001-04:00

I was playing a high level mage in Angband. Then my computer operating system got corrupt. Had to reload my machine from scratch. I lost my game character. Note to self: backup my save files.

When it came to install Angband on my machine again, I decided to try an old version. This was just for memories sake. In fact I tried to start out with Moria. However that did not seem to run on Windows XP.

Instead I chose something like Angband Version 2.5. You might think that is not too ancient as we are only around version 3.1 currently. However it really has been a long time. My version might be 15 or more years old. The thing that impress me is that, although some things are different, even the old Angband is a very mature game.

For now I am playing a Half-Troll Warrior. That's an easy one to not get killed with. Lots of strength and constitution. Thus I have high HP. We shall see how this goes.

Hack and Slash

2009-07-20T23:58:00.003-04:00

Previously I had been using my magic spells to combat the enemy in Angband. However I found the Beaked Axe of Hurin. Initially I wielded this weapon for the CON +2 advantage. But I found that once I wielded this axe, and got up to 2 hits per turn, it was time to use the weapon for combat.

I kept finding treasure and selling it in town. That allowed me to buy strength and dexterity potions. I am strong and agile enough to get 2 hits per turn with Hurin. One long awaited item I was able to buy in town was some gauntlets of Free Action.

My only disappointment was finding the Cloak of Thingol. It has a nice +3 to both DEX and CHR. However that cannot compare to my current Cloak Colluin which provides resist poison. So for now, Thingol stays in the closet. I have not sold the cloak though. If I can find another source for resist poison, I shall be putting it back on.

Equipment Choices

2009-07-19T22:04:00.003-04:00

Right now I'm playing Angband 3.0.6. This character is Puff the Mage. I had prepared for paralysis by wielding some Boots of Free Action. Then I put Rings of Intelligence (+5) on both hands to up my MP over 200. Things were looking good.

Then I came upon the Boots of Speed (+6). You know I was going to wear them for the speed bonus. However I was now concerned. I no longer had a defense against paralysis. Former characters have discovered the hard way that you normally die when you get paralyzed.

It would have been optimal to have some Gloves of Free Action. Currently I wield no gloves to avoid an MP penalty. I ended up wearing a Ring of Free Action. The tough part of that decision was that my MP dropped about 100 points after removing on Ring of Intelligence. Ouch. I will keep you posted on the further adventures of Puff.

The Gaming Industry

2009-07-06T01:10:00.003-04:00

I attended Anthrocon 2009 this week. One session at the conference was a question and answer period with some game developers. It was a good time. I learned a lot of details there which I want to share here.

Many game developers code in the C++ programming language. But there is some Java and C# development going on as well. Although there is still custom coding to solve game problems, there is also a heavy use of game specific middleware.

There is still crunch time in the game development industry. You should beware companies that court fresh college grads and provide free Coke to programmers. Some game shops have instituted policies where you cannot work more than 55 hours a week. It is criminal that there even has to be such rules in place.

Software process is often lacking in the game development arena. However some shops are trying to go agile and/or use Scrum. That being said, there continues to be sloppy or non-existent processes at some companies. This probably mimics the state of software development across other domains as well. Thanks to the panel of guests at Anthrocon for sharing their experiences.

The Power of Java

2009-05-04T22:56:00.002-04:00

This week I finish up a college class on the Java programming language. That is going to do two things: (1) give me some more free time for programming, and (2) provide me with the the basic skills to code some wicked rogue-like features in a game.

Earlier this year I wrote Dungeon Level 1 (dL1), a seven day rogue-like creation. It was pretty weak compared to polished Rogue-like games. However I coded it up in seven days. And I was a real newbie Java programmer.

Now I plan to release a new version that improve playability. I also want to use the game and my new programming knowledge to experiment with some common rogue operations. You know? I want to put some speed in the game. And I want to add cool weapons. But I will start with baby steps. I need to put more than one dungeon level in the game. I wonder whether I will still call it Dungeon Level 1.

In Memory Of

2009-04-11T00:14:00.002-04:00

This weekend Dave Arnesson, co creator of Dungeons and Dragons, passed away. The other creator Gary Gygax died last year. They created D and D back in the 1970's. It spawned a generation of games.

Much of the rules and mechanics of Angband trace back to the D and D board games. I purchased an original D and D game back in the 1980s. However I never learned how to truly play the game.

I knew a few people who were in to D and D back in the day. Sadly I never joined them for their adventures. I think I caught up to them through my many exploits with Roguelike games over the years on the computer.

This post is for you Dave. Thank you for your great creation which lives on today in many computer and console games.

cLevel 50 Ranger

2009-03-30T20:46:00.003-04:00

After my last character in Angband died, I was a bit depressed. It had taken a long time to build up that character. I can no longer remember how he died. It was probably some double poison breath from some monster. Whatever the case, I was not in the mood to play Angband for a while.

Then I got a good idea. What not let the Borg build up the next character for me? Then I could choose a race and class which cause a high experience penalty. That's no problem for the Borg. It has unlimited time to knock out experience points galore.

Now the Borg is not perfect. There are times when it causes my characters to die. I have found that the deaths happen quickly. But once a character is a bit established, the Borg is more conservative in the long run. So I let the Borg run for a few times each night. Before long, I had myself a character level 50 High-Elf Ranger with a bunch of goodies to show.

Here is the equipment my character is wearing:

The Lance of Eorlingas (3d8) (+14,+21) (+2)
The Long Bow of Bard (x3) (+17,+19) (+2)
a Malachite Ring of Speed (+5)
a Malachite Ring of Speed (+6)
a Ruby Amulet of Wisdom (+2)
The Star of Elendil
The Full Plate Armour of Isildur [25,+25] (+1)
The Cloak 'Holcolleth' [1,+8] (+2)
The Small Metal Shield of Thorin [3,+25] (+4)
The Hard Leather Cap of Thranduil [2,+15] (+2) {BlndESP}
The Set of Cesti of Fingolfin (+10,+10) [5,+20] (+4)
The Pair of Soft Leather Boots 'Dal-i-thalion' [2,+15] (+5)

A Review of dL1

2009-03-24T00:30:00.002-04:00

I was reading the development USENET newsgroup for the 7 day roguelike competition. There was a link to a review site for the games entered. I was curious as to what would be said about my game. So I read the review on dL1.

Here are the things listed that I need to improve:

1. Provide batch file to launch game
2. Prevent inaccessible locations on map
3. Have monsters attack you if you go near
4. Give some progression if you clear the map
5. Make the game winnable

In essence, the reviewer wanted the game improved from the viewpoint of a player. That sounds like a reasonable request. The goal of my entry was to get something that worked. On that I succeeded.

So let's call the version I entered v1. Now it is time to produce some incremental releases that address the concerns of the reviewer that I want to correct.

7DRL Winner's Circle

2009-03-17T15:50:00.003-04:00

The results of the Seven Day Roguelike Challenge for this year have been announced. There were a total of 45 challengers (myself included). Of those, 25 were winners. My entry dL1 was listed in the winner's circle. To the left is the challenge medal for this years winners.

It is not impossible to win the 7DRL challenge. You only have one week to code up a game. That part is difficult. But to win you just need to produce a rogue-like game that works and is playable within the week long time period. Don't get me wrong. That is no trivial task. However if you set realistic goals, you can achieve success.

I wonder if I will be around next year to enter again. It is my hope that I would have gained more Java programming skills. Perhaps it is time to study up on different things like level generators, lighting, and monster AI to be prepared. It is all good fun.

Roguelike Challenge Completed

2009-03-14T19:42:00.002-04:00

I figured out how to distribute my game including the libraries and run time files it requires. Since I was in the 7 Day Roguelike Challenge, I posted the following declaration on Usenet group rec.games.roguelike.announce:

I completed my 7DRL entry dL1. It was written in Java and made use of libjcsi for input/output. It requires Java 1.6. You can get it at http://h1.ripway.com/gifcom/dL1/dL1.zip

Launch the game by typing "java dL1". Move around with the keypad. Numlock must be on to move diagonally. Press "q" to quit. Grab some gold. Attack young dragons. That's about it.

This is only my second real Java program. I am in a Java programming class at college. Read all about my 7DRL week on my blog http://legend-angband.blogspot.com/

- Legend of Angband

Adding the Credits

2009-03-13T22:57:00.003-04:00

I just finished adding the credits to my 7 Day Roguelike "dL1". There was so much more I wanted to implement. But there comes a time you need to turn in your work.

Now I need to figure out how to distribute this application. Being a Java novice, I am not so sure about what you send out. It is not like the Windows world where you ship an EXE and maybe some DLLs.

I will figure this out, post it out there for the world to see, and declare it a success. If nothing else, I learned a lot of Java programming skills. And I think I learned a little of the basic game mechanics at a coding level.

Multi Hued Dragons

2009-03-13T02:53:00.002-04:00

I got a little bored always fighting young red dragons. So I decided to add a little color to the mix. It was not hard of a change. Now every monster has a different color. They are all still young dragons. Perhaps I will also try to sneak in some other monster types. Dragons are a bit hard for a first level player.

Another change I recently added was one where the monsters (in my case the dragons) pick up gold. Before they would refuse to even touch the gold. They treated all gold locations as wall. But that is no more. After a dragon moves over some gold, the gold goes away. And unlike other Roguelikes, my monsters do not drop treasures yet. So much to do. So little time.

Monster Movement

2009-03-12T23:36:00.002-04:00

Previously my game dL1 had some problems. You could hit monsters and they would hit back. But if you ran away, the monsters would just sit there. That's not too realistic. Now I implemented monster behavior where the hunt you down if you start up a battle with them. I still need to put in some checks to randomly wake up monsters so they engage you.

It is getting about time to wrap up my development. The week long Seven Day Roguelike Challenge is almost over. I really should stop development of the game mechanics, put on a little polish, and package my game for release. But you always want to add a little more. My worry is that if I add something, I might break the working game have have nothing to show.

Here Come the Monsters

2009-03-11T23:16:00.006-04:00

I stared implementing monster opponents in my game dL1. They are all young red dragons. When you attack them, the take damage and attack you back. However they do nothing if you leave them alone (even after engaging them in a battle).

The next logical step is to get these monsters to fight back once they are disturbed. They should also follow you if you flee from them. If I were to really get cocky, I guess I could let them breath fire on you. However I need to take it one step at a time.

I figure I will need to start wrapping up my week long 7 Day Roguelike development. I need to ensure I know how to deploy this application so others can enjoy it. There needs to be a little more fluff like a splash screen on startup. Maybe I could put an easter egg in there before I release it as well.

Subtle Tweaks

2009-03-11T01:16:00.003-04:00

Sometimes a couple small changes can make a big difference. The dungeon maze in my game dL1 shows a lot of walls. That was a little hard on the eyes. I softened that by changing the wall color to gray.

The maze is randomly generated each time. That is normally a good thing. However sometimes that meant the character started out stuck in a wall. This seemed uncivilized. So I made sure to choose a random starting position for the user that was not in a wall.

Finally I had quickly coded up a gold counter on the right of the screen. However it only displayed an amount as soon as you first grabbed some gold. Now at game start I show you have 0 zero pieces. It was not a big deal. But I like to add polish. Time to stop with these baby steps, and figure out how to add monsters that are "smart".

Maze Technology

2009-03-10T23:27:00.002-04:00

My new game dL1 is progressing slowly but surely. I was stumped for a while about how to make a maze. Even a simple one seemed difficult to implement. I think my problem was that I was trying to do too much all at once.

So I retreated to a room with just a pad of paper and a pencil. I went through the steps of an algorithm to draw a maze. Then I started implementing the algorithm. I did it one step at a time. And before I even finished, the maze looked good enough to declare that some progress was made.

If I had unlimited time, I would fully implement the complicated maze algorithm that I envisioned. However there are only a couple more days to get this program completed. So I think I had better move on to creating some monster opponents for you to do battle with. That also seems very complicated. Now it is time to start breaking that task down to smaller pieces.

There's Gold in This Dungeon

2009-03-09T22:56:00.002-04:00

Now that I am no longer struggling with the user interface, I am adding basic features to my dL1 game. Here is a big one. When you press the directional keys, your guy moves on the screen. And he does not walk through walls. That's a good thing.

I decided to add some gold in the dungeon. It needed something. There really isn't a maze set up yet. Guess what? I colored the gold yellow. Yeah I know. That is just plain crazy. There is even a counter that shows how much gold you have amassed.

The next decision is pretty simple. Do I add some monster enemies first? Or do I try to draw a better maze for the dungeon. The sky is the limit now. There are about 5 days left in the 7 Day Roguelike Challenge. Things are lining up for me to get a game that at least runs.

User Interface Progress

2009-03-09T16:31:00.003-04:00

There is some good news. I read a comment or two from my previous blog. The poster recommended I not use an applet to display my dungeon. A recommendation was made to use libjcsi to do my output. In 10 minutes I got a sample demo running.

An hour later, I have my Angband town like perimeter. I also have the user symbol (@) displayed in the middle. It might not look like much progress. However my previous user interface had some subtle problems. There were spacing issues when drawing the user symbol. Now everything is lining up.

The next step is to figure out how to capture input from the keyboard. If I can do that, perhaps I can get the user to actually move. Yeah I know that does not seem impressive. But it is a giant step forward for us beginning Java programmers. Props to "SZDev - Slash" for the helpful hints. Some day I will return the favor.

dL1 Screen Shot

2009-03-08T23:51:00.002-04:00

I have started writing some code for my 7 Day Roguelike entry dL1. The outline of the first level of the dungeon is visible. I might have a slight vertical spacing issue to deal with. And I tried making the user appear in the dungeon as an "@", but I had trouble erasing the character. There was also some trouble aligning the symbol at the correct location.

But this is at least a start. Now if I can just solve my spacing issues, and figure out how to erase a character on the screen, we might have a character moving around a little bit. For now I am think I am going to call it a day. I have about 5 days left before the contest is over. That seems a long way to go. At this rate, I will be happy if I get a character running around the dungeon and picking up things.

Challenge Accepted

2009-03-08T21:02:00.002-04:00

Good news. I have decided to enter a 7 Day Roguelike game development contest. That means I have 7 days to program a game like Rogue. To make matters more difficult, I am going to write it in the Java programming language, which I am just starting to learn.

This should be good fun. My game is going to be called "dL1". It will be a 1 level dungeon. If I get the basics working, I shall try to get a dungeon level which extends indefinitely in each direction. I also plan to give the player a lot of great artifacts early.

I posted my intention to compete in this contest. You just need to add a post in Usenet group rec.games.roguelike.development. My post is there. The journey now begins. I will post screen shots of my progress here on my blog. Good luck to me. I will need it.

RogueLike Challenge

2009-03-05T23:15:00.002-05:00

This Saturday marks the beginning of the 2009 seven day roguelike challenge. This is a contest for programmers to develop a usable Rogue like game in a total of seven days.

That sounds like quite a challenge. It might take junior programmers more than sever days to get the town level working. Forget about a complete game.

Here is the real crazy part. I am thinking about entering this challenge. I love Angband. And I have often thought about writing a version myself. This might be just the spur I need to get things going.

This is a busy week coming up for me. However every week is busy. To add to the insanity, I thought I might try coding the program in Java. I am in the middle of learning the Java programming language through a college class. Good luck to me. I will know whether I will enter this contest by the weekend.

Xero to the Rescue

2008-11-18T02:12:00.002-05:00

I have had a number of characters that have died in Angband recently. It was very depressing. I tried a number of different races. None of them seemed to help. So now I have returned to my staple. I am running a human mage.

There have been two early developments that make me thing this character may be around for a while. The first was that I found the magic book "Tenser's Transformations". I hurried up to get to character level 32. Now I can cast the Elemental Brand spell.

This is a money making operation. I guy arrows from the shops. After branding them, I sell them back to the sops. With the proceeds from my elemental branding business, I have purchased all kinds of gain stats potions. My intelligence is maxed out. That comes in real handy for a mage.

The second reason I think this character might make it for a while is that I just found the boots of speed +8. That is enough said about that.

Human Priest

2008-10-20T18:37:00.001-04:00

Once the character played by the Borg was dead, I decided to grow a new character from scratch manually. Normally I choose a human mage. Human is chosen to ensure I can advance quickly. And mage is chosen so I can get the identify spell at character level 11. However this time I wanted to try something different. I still chose to be a human. But I opted to be a priest instead. Thus Holyman was born.

Raising an early priest requires a different tactic. The magic is only supplemental. Battles must be fought like any warrior with hand to hand combat. Luckily you start out with a mace if you chose the priest class. So far I have been using this mace to apply the beat down to opponents. I save up enough gold to enchant the weapon to +10 to hit and damage. A ring of damage +11 helps as well. I find myself using the Bless prayer to gain a +10 to hit when in battle.

There were two discoveries that propelled Holyman into the big leagues. I bought an Amulet of Wisdom +4. Then I found some holy avenger weapon that was also +4 to Wisdom. So now I have a massive 18/80 Wisdom. There is a lot of mana for prayers there. I also have been able to learn all the spells in my spell book that my character level allows. If I could find some more spell books, I have more prayers that I can learn.

I have only found one artifact so far. They are some gloves that speed my regeneration. That comes in handy since my amulet slot is dedicated to the Amulet of Wisdom. I cannot afford to wield an Amulet of Regeneration right now. May the force be with you Holyman. My next goal is to find that spell book that contains the identify spell for priests.

Borg Unleashed

2008-10-18T23:45:00.003-04:00

I was so distraught with my last character Bizz dying, that I decided to let the computer play for me. Therefore I fired up the Angband Borg. I decided to let the Borg be a Dunedan Mage. The idea was that the Borg would do all the boring work. Then I would take over the character later.

The Borg quickly brought my character up through the character levels. Every once in a while I would stop the Borg and check on the progress. I was most interested in any artifacts the Borg had discovered. At first there were few. Then the Borg started diving down, getting nice treasures.

By the time the Borg reached character level 50, it had great items to spare. Normally I go for the items that give me the highest speed. The Borg chose otherwise. For example, it kept a Ring of Speed +14 at home. I would be wielding that on my finger immediately. The Borg also found at left Ringil at home. Come on. It gives you +10 speed!

In the end, I just let Borg do most of the playing. It dived down to dungeons levels 81 through 99. It strangely spent a lot of time at levels 80 and 81, even when it had gone much deeper previously. Eventually the Borg character died too. I did not feel that bad. The computer did all the work. Now it is time for me to start up another character. Maybe I will not choose human mage this time.