Return to Roguelikes

I have been sick for a while. So work on my roguelike game engine had stopped. Today I felt really good. Got a long nap in after work and dinner. I fired up my IDE and took a look at what needed to be done in the engine.

At this point I have enough code that I need to start tracking down some bugs. One nasty one was that items would appear in the dungeon, but I could not pick them up. It was like they were not there. But they were displayed.

Today I went through the code where the player picks up the items. Then I tracked down how the items get put there in the first place. Finally I checked all the code where items get moved around. Finally I found the problem. At the beginning of the game I give the player a few low level items. I steal them from the dungeon, but don't erase them. Problem solved.

Next I tried to test out whether unique items dropped by unique monsters might get picked up by regular monsters. Was unable to set up a scenario to test this. However I did find that some unique monsters did not drop unique itesm when they should have. This is another bug to track down.

Xbox 360 Setup

I have been sick for a few weeks. So my work on the roguelike game engine has been on hold. I need to get back to it. Finally I am feeling a little better. Perhaps tonight I shall fire up the IDE and knock out some action items.

Today I did put together my Xbox 360 gaming setup. The main TV is too busy for anyone to play our new Xbox 360 with Kinect. So I bought another big screen TV. Just been too sick to clear some space downstairs and set it up. Today I hooked up the Xbox 360. Played some Final Fantasy XIII too.

I am meeting the characters of FFXIII. There is a dude named Snow who seems tough and attacks by punching the opponent most of the time. Then there is some other chick who is scantily clad, and just leans back and sticks her crotch out most of the time. I don't complain too much. She heals other plays often during her turn.

Finally I saw some talk about scheduling the 7DRL Roguelike Challenge for this year. I plan to code up an entry in the Java programming language. With my newly learned skills, I should be a contender.

Final Fantasy XIII

I was in Best Buy doing some shopping. Stopped by the XBox 360 aisles to see if there were any deals. A friend picked up a game for Kinect that was $40. I saw Final Fantasy XIII and had to get it. The thing only cost me $20.

I informed a friend that I got a great deal. Nope. Apparently you get get the game for $10 elsewhere. Oh well. I got through a few save points in the game. Still on Chapter 1. I actually died once. Your party dies if the leader dies.

I agree that so far the game seems very contrained. You must follow the path and punch through the enemies there. I am still too early in the game to tell. The graphics are hot. The game feels true to the Final Fantasy brand.

Every time I attack and hit, I see the numbers representing the amount of damage I did. Perhaps I should implement something like this in my roguelike game engine.

Unique Weapons

I just added unique weapons to my roguelike game engine. There are only a handful of them now. You never run into these weapons by just wandering the dungeon. You must defeat specific unique monsters. That causes the unique weapons to appear.

The explanation is that the some unique monsters carry unique weapons. They drop them when they die. The power of some of the uniques I got requires you to find and wield the unique weapons. Now that I got this done, I should be able to easily add unique armor.

I still need to do some testing on the unique weapon generation code. The unique monsters that carry the weapons occupy the lower levels of the dungeon. I have yet to implement any dungeon levels other than 1.

Looks like I know what feature I need to implement next. Then I test.

Fighting Chance

I have been trying to do some balancing with my roguelike game engine. It felt too hard at the start. If you could not locate a weapon before the monsters found you, death was a sure thing. I want players to be able to survive the first level in general. So I thought I would provide the player with some default items to start.

Now at the beginning of the game, I automatically equip the players with one weapon and one piece of armor. I choose these from the maze. And I pick the least desirable weapon and armor. However something is better than nothing.

I also added the ability to quit the game. I give the user the opportunity to confirm the exit. Then the game automatically ends.