Turambar Day 2

Things are looking much better today for Turambar. I got some monsters up in there. They do not move too smart. They get blocked when more than one wants to come get you. But they move. You can try to hit them. However you don't really do much damage for now. You essentially die in battle all the time.

I started putting in the structure for items such as weapons. But I still need some user interaction for wieldiing the weapons. I got stuck a bit there because I want some easy to user keyboard entries to pick from lists. Did some research on that today. Will hopefully finish that up tomorrow. Then you should be able to find and wield good weapons to attack monsters with.

To be complete, I should also attend to the monster movement AI. They just try to make a straight line toward the player. If another monster is in the way, they are trapped. If the dungeon maze prohibits a direct path to the player, they get stuck. Some of these monsters should be start enough to walk around walls to get to the player. Just how to I implement that though? It is a nice problem to solve I bet.

Turambar Begins

I have started the actual coding of my 2012 7DRL entry Turambar. Luckily I used a dungeon generator I had previously prototyped. So now I got a dungeon displayed and a character on the scren represeting the player. Everything else is stubbed out. But that's okay. I got a start.

Now I am trying to research how to do dialogs in the Java programming language. I tried a JOptionPane. But you have to press enter after you make a selection in that. If only I could choose an setting that allows that thing to return back as soon as the user presses a key, I would be good. I suspect I will need to roll my own customer dialog. This is one of my goals this year in the 7DRL. So I guess I can spend a day (or a night) trying to figure this out.

Roguebasin Registation

I saw a post in rec games roguelike development, requesting that participants in the 2012 7DRL register at Roguebasin. They said it would only take 30 seconds. So I thought I would do so. I went to the Roguebasin page. The page itself did not seems to have a way to edit it to add my entry. Then I saw a tab that looked interesting. Unfortunately I needed a Roguebasin account to modify the page.

Okay. I createrd an account. Then I was able to edit the page. However it was some kind of markup I did not recognize. I tried to use other examples as a template. But when I saved the changes and viewed them, they did not seem to work as expected. I decided to just add a simple text addition to the list of 7DRL entries on Roguebasin. So now I should be good to go. I just need to start my darn game already. Still procrastinating here.

Lack of Progress

Today was the day I was supposed to start my 2012 7DRL entry Turambar. I had company over all afternoon and evening. Then I got a tired so I took a nap. When I woke up, I was still tired. Grabbed a bite to eat. Did I get to work coding out my 7DRL entry? Nope. I guess I am just goofing off. I played Angband instead.

I am playing a level 49 mage named Lasher in Angband. He has a decent 558 HP average damage per round. If enemies are not resistant to lightning or acid, the average damage goes way up to 932 HP per round. This is all thanks in part to my newly found Glaive of Pain (9d6) (+9,+30). My rings of lightning and acid help with the massive damage. They also contribute to my 200++ armor class.

One problem my character has is that he cannot see invisible creates. He can get blinded and confused as well. That is no fun. I have some helmets that prevent blindness and allow see invisible. But I gave all that up to wield the Steel Helm of Hammerhand (+9,+9) [9,20] +3. You got to love that plus to hit and damage bonus.

Well I hope to at least start my 7DRL entry tomorrow. But I have so many other things to do. I feel the procrastination kicking in so hard.

7DRL 2012

I have posted my intentions to enter this year's 7 Day Roguelike game competition. It will be called Turambar. You play the role of Turambar, whose father is missing in action from going after Morgoth. Now your sister and mother have been abducted by an evil dragon. You must descend into the dungeon, find the evil dragon, and slay him to reclaim your family.

I do have a simple dungeon generator that I am starting with. The main goal of my development is to add unique weapons and monsters in the game. That might be a tall order as I have never done that before. I am writing the game in Java, with heavy use of the Java Collections Framework. If I have time, I want to try some innovative windows for user input.