7DRL Day 4 - Mechanics

I did not make many visual changes to the game today. Moved the gold and hit points stats to the right of the maze. This is to make room for a scrolling message area below the maze. My goal this time around was to concentrate on making the game challenging through a sense of balance.

I decided to bump up the number of monsters in the maze. I made sure when choosing an initial position, that I did not choose a space on a wall. I also ensured I did not put a monster on top of another monster. Had to update the monster movement routine to also make sure the monsters did not step on top of each other.

I implemented regeneration of player hit points per turn. Tomorrow I shall try to add more smarts to the monster movement. They get stuck way too often in the maze. Monsters don't need supreme intelligence. But they need to know how to get out of a bind and attack the player.

7DRL Day 3 - Monsters

Today I implemented monsters in my dungeon. They are all nameless. Their symbology is a red "p". I gave them each hit points. For battle purposes, I also gave the player hit points as well. The player's hit points are now displayed on the bottom of the screen next to the gold amount.

The monster do try to move towards the player. Based on the nature of the dungeon walls, the monsters do not move smartly. Therefore they can get lodged in assorted walls. I need the monsters to get a little smarter. They should detect that they are stuck, and choose another path to get to the player.

Battle is currently working. Monsters and the player do a set number of hit points damage per attack. Both always score a hit. There is detection for when a monster dies. Upon death they disappear from the screen. I have not implemented death for the player character yet. I probably will tomorrow.

I did fix some prior bugs in the game. Now gold will not be placed on top of a wall. Also the player can collect gold and move onto the space previously occupied by the hold in a single turn. I also made sure that monsters cannot be initially placed on top of a wall. The game is progressing slowly. But I am pleased with the overall progress.

7DRL Day 2 - Dungeon Walls

This is the end of day 2 for my Seven Day Roguelike (7DRL) entry. I did some color changes on the game screen. Background is now black. Maze walls are turquoise. The player is white.

I have added random interior maze generation. Also sprinkled in some gold in the maze. The player can hold down an arrow key, and the player can automatically move in that direction. I implemented checks so that you cannot walk through walls. There is a gold counter. When you move over top of a gold stack, you get +10 gold.

Next I will need to add some enemy monsters. They will need to follow the player to do battle. I will then need to implement battles. This will require the player having hit points which decrease when they are hit. The monsters will need their own hit points to see if they die due to battle. That might be enough for tomorrow.

7DRL 2021 Begins

The annual Seven Day Rougelike (7DRL) tournament has begun. I have been out of the game for a few years. However I recently decided to learn python programming. What better way to get some hands on practice than to code up a roguelike game?

I confess I did not know how to do graphics in python. No problem though. There is a pygame module with a simple API that I can make use of. So now I have a 2D maze in a python structure (a list of lists). And I can draw that maze onto the screen. The maze is not impressive. It is just an outline of a rectangular big room. Baby steps.

I also have drawn the player character in the center of the screen. Pygame let's you accept and process keyboard inputs. So I have coded handling of the arrow keys. The player can now move around the screen. The player can also walk through walls currently. So that might be the next thing I code in there. Might also revisit the screen colors. That should be easy.

Tips for Releasing a Game for Sale on Steam

I read this article today on how to market a game this year. At first I thought it was about making the game. But no. We are talking about selling it on Steam. A lot of the advice was new to me and counterintuitive.

For starters, you should price your game higher. One would think that would scare away buyers. But you do this to plan for large percentage sales in the future that might lure a lot of buyers. You also should not release your game on itch.io. Also seems counterintuitive. But hey. Got to listen to the pros.

You are gong to have to spend some money. Professional art for the cover and for in-game graphics are a must. Man. I guess novice pixelart does not go far in the professional game market. All right. Step 1: build game. Step 2: market game.