The Children of Hurin

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.

JSRL Version 1.2

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.

Stairways

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

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

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.

Arrival of the Maze

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.

Seven Day Roguelike

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.