Roguelike Challenge Completed

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

Subtle Tweaks

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

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.

dL1 Screen Shot

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

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.