Assault Fish; Airship Dragoon; RiftRL

Now that I finished my 7DRL entry, I want to check out what others have done this year. First up is Assault Fish. Hey. The splash screen looks good. However when I ran it, I got a "Java Exception Error" message. Then the program ends.

Next I tried out Airship Dragoon Rogue. The thing had a professional looking install. But then when I ran the program, I got an error stating that X3DAudio was missing from my computer. Maybe I don't have DirectX v9 on my computer. Too bad because I was looking forward to the 3D Rogue.

Next up is RiftRL. I downloaded the program and ran it. Got an error stating a folder was missing in the executable directory. I created the folder and tried again. It gave me the same error. I am starting to see a pattern here with the 7DRL entries.

We Present OL Rogue

This year's entry to the 7DRL may look a bit like my work from last year. That's because the major feature I implemented this year was the game save ability. I wrote this using the new PHP and MySQL database skills I gathered during the school year. It was nice to have something real to practice my skills on.

I do have some ideas for a second MySQL and PHP application. Might be teaming up with a friend to work on this together. It might not be a cool roguelike game. But it will be educational. Will keep you posted on that. For now, you should check out my 7DRL game entry OL Rogue.

7DRL Finished

I declared success late last night on my 7DRL entry OL Rogue. Published what I got. I accomplished most of what I set out to do. You can save your game. The saved data gets put into the MySQL database on my web host. While that sounds simple, I had to do a lot for that to happen.

During my coding of the game save feature, I learned a number of things. One is that the mysql_query function in PHP can return one of two types. Specifically it might return the value FALSE on error. Didn't see that coming. I should have. It is in the documentation.

The other realization was that my PHP code should handle everything. Previously I thought I would bounce the user from PHP script to PHP script. However PHP is controlling the whole show for my game delivery. So I rolled most of the intermediate PHP pages into one super smart page.

In the future I want to be able to save more of the user's game state to a database. That includes the location you are in the dungeon, the position and hit points of the monsters in the dungeon, and other stats regarding equipment/items.

Finishing Touches

Last night I knocked out half of my TO DO list. Today I completed most of the remaining items. I spruced up the previously boring login and game save pages. Most of that was stylying. Added a picture here or there. Then I changed the colors of the main game to improve visibility.

I changed the order in which the dungeon levels are drawn. Before I saved the more complex layouts for last. Why delay? I made the more complex layouts first. I tested out a winning run into the dungeon. Check. After renaming some of my source files, I uploaded the release candidate to my web host.

Since I redid the database schema, I had to fight with PHPMyAdmin once again to get the database to match my new game version. Once that was done, I logged in online and played the version uploaded to my web host. Not sure if I will make any more tweaks. Most likely not. Tomorrow was the last day I planned to work on my 7DRL. I might just publish this version to the world.

Game Save Feature

Today I implemented the Save feature in my 7DRL entry OL Rogue. Well it is not a full save of the game. It just saves the player statistics. When you reload the game, the dungeon level gets regenerated.

The good news is that I already have the Load feature implemented. So now you can play the game, save your progress, and load your character back some time in the future. This is pretty much what I set out to accomplish this year.

Next step is to fix a hack I got for page navigation. Need to eliminate a middle man PHP page that you currently go through during login. Then I might mix up some of the actual game mechanics, like switching around the look of the levels.

Just got to make sure I can push this local version of the game up to my web host so all can play.