[Seventh Shade]

Hobbes
I'm mostly doing writing for it at the moment. I have two ideas on the graphics: 1) get a digital camera, take pics around my somewhat creepy small town, convert with bmp2mzx or 2) screw all of that and make it a text adventure game. I'll do the more fantastic graphics (the enemy pics for the battles, etc) by hand and convert them.

Still Untitled Roguelike
The project has changed a lot since I last mentioned it. It's now an action rpg roguelike and involves lots of futuristic or magical guns. I'm currently working on the main engine for the graphics and the projectiles featuring dynamically generated effects for each projectile. Does this one deal 10-15 acid damage, poison the target, or both?.

Instead of each enemy being represented by a robot each monsters attributes, abilities, and current status/position will be determined by a set of variables. This allows for easy modification of the monsters (for debugging, etc) and lets me put more than 256 on a board. That'll come in handy if, say, an enemy multiplies a lot or summons a horde of nasty beasties to thrash you.

The setting will still have the same surreal, alice in wonderland feel. You shoot the Gingerbread Demon with the Plasma Rifle Mk II -more- It dies (note: in game enemies and weapons will be more interesting than that, hopefully.)

Father Time
A joint project between Tecki, Micah, and me. Father Time sends you through the ages to collect broken shards of the great hourglass. Fight dinosaurs, cowboys, and robots. Don't run out of time.

This post has been edited by Seventh Shade: 19 August 2008 - 12:18 AM

[Ando]

What ever happened to Rebirth Machine?

Because I provided you with some class voice-overs for that one...

[Seventh Shade]

That roguelike is sort of the spiritual sucessor for part of what I was trying to do with Rebirth Machine (insane action with decent customization of your character). As far as the rest... the way I see it CJA, Guy, and Tecki make much funnier cameo games than I ever could (tons of them too). I may re-use Nadir's artwork since it was top notch (maybe for selectable character portraits).

[Micah]

By the way, I actually did stuff on father time today.

[ShloobeR]

good man!

Also looking forward to your roguelike dude!, and for the record I have never made a cameo game :D (although ABG will have cameo's in it for sure!)

[Seventh Shade]

Time to spit out some details on the character creation sytem for my roguelike. I've decided to use a character trait system similar to the doom roguelike or crimson land. What that means is that your characters abilities won't be determined by stats like strength, agility, or intelligence and instead will be determined by which trait you pick every time you level up. Most traits can be bought more than once for increased effect.

The reason I'm going with this system is because, in my opinion, it allows you to give you character whatever abilities you want yet still maintain a strong theme. A sniper character might buy stealth, three levels of ranged combat expertise, etc where a mage would buy abilities to improve their sorcerous powers.

Also, I've decided to release the roguelike in versions. This should make sure I get something released in a reasonable amount of time. The first version will have one dungeon, five or so possible themes for dungeon levels (mine, lava cave, etc) the basic character traits, a few weapons, and a handful of monsters. Later versions will have more of the same as well as some kind of magic system, a new epic game play mode with a world map and multiple dungeons, and the ability to select an overall theme for the game (traditional fantasy, fairy tale, horror, pure action, etc). It'll also have multiple difficulty levels so even people like paul can see the later parts of the game (and harder modes for maniacs like lancer-x and Mr. Apol).

I guess I should also link the old threads. Here's Hobbes and here's the old thread for the roguelike.

[Seventh Shade]

I'm working on the main dungeon generation for the roguelike. I'm using a maze algorithm to generate the overall shape of the level map. Each cell in the maze then becomes a room or hallway connection. To make things more interesting it'll then check for dead end sections and turn those into locked rooms, secret rooms, item vaults, monster lairs, etc. I've even come up with a way to have nested keys (in other words, you find the blue key to open the blue door which reveals the red key for the red door). It's a vast improvement over the dungeon generation method I was using earlier (luckily, only noah saw that one).

Dungeons will have the typical features as well as more interesting features that you don't find in most roguelikes. Levers that open new passageways, altars, fountains, portals, wandering merchants (and other interesting persons), traps, and anything else I can think of. I'd like to think of some way to generate randomized puzzles you have to beat in the dungeons. Maybe doors that only open if you win a fancy mini-game to open the lock, etc.

[Seventh Shade]

I'm finishing my doz game as a full featured game. Here are the changes I'm making:

• You can now only place new tiles adjacent to tiles already on the board.
  
• 4-way matches only increase the value by 50% (to 6), 5-way by 100% (to 10)
  
• You and the enemy can now see the next three tiles that each of you will be able to place. You both have your own set.
  
• Obviously, the enemy needs AI. This'll be the hard part. Basically, I want something much more strategic than Puzzle Quest. I want you to sweat out where you place each tile.
  
• Skulls and terror need to be much more dangerous. I'm not yet sure what to do about it. What I want is for you and the enemy to be able to use them as traps somehow. Maybe they'll consider other tiles between them to be honorary skulls or terror.
  
• Guns won't do extra damage. Instead, you'll be able to damage the target even if they're flying or far away.
  
• Ranged combat. You'll have a range meter toward the top of the screen that shows the distance between you and the target. When the range is greater than 0 your sword tile won't do damage. Instead, it'll reduce the range meter by 1 yard per sword tile.

I've still got my random dungeon maker from the roguelike so I'll probably put it in. I guess this could be a puzzle quest/roguelike.

Any suggestions or comments?

[KKairos]

some kind of tutorial. i played your entry and had no idea what the heck was happening.

[Seventh Shade]

Tutorial. Will do.

For techniques, I've decided to make it like a card game. The six techniques you see on the screen are your hand and you'll have a customizable deck to draw from. Any technique cards played are discarded after their effects resolve, drawing a new card into their slot. When your deck runs out the tile board is reset, your hand is discarded, the deck shuffled, and you redraw a new hand.

Some of the techniques will be ultra basic stuff like increasing one of your attribute pools by a certain amount (somewhat similar to lands in magic the gathering parlance). Most will alter the board in some way. People that played puzzle quest will know what this is all about.

Money. Money will be used to buy new technique cards and new equipment. Equipment will be like it is in puzzle quest, giving you certain passive bonuses when you perform certain actions or when you manipulate the board in some way. You'll have a sword slot, a gun slot, an armor slot, and an accessory slot.

[Seventh Shade]

The visual effects (such as they are) for matching tiles work now. Maybe I'll replace them with something more fancypantslancer-x but I don't want to get bogged down. I've also merged a few robots and eliminated a few instances of Stupid (this is a set up for a joke. Who's lame enough to make it?).

I'm going to put in a mouse engine at some point, maybe a pixel perfect one. Left click will do the usual, right click will display information on whatever you clicked. Right click a technique and you'll see what it does, right click your character portrait and you see any pertinent details about what you have equipped, etc.

The story is turning into something like Puzzle Gear Solid/Shadowrun/X-Files. Mercenary covert-ops, conspiracies, psychic powers, aliens of some kind, and bizarre technology. Can I pull off something that isn't completely derivative and uninspired? Well...

[Seventh Shade]

First off, I apologize for the terrible music in the DoZ version. As for the rest, I've altered the colors a little and fiddled with the interface. It's still very green, just milder/darker. Should it be something other than green?

I'm not going to enlarge the tiles because I need that space for other things (decoration, animations, icons for status effects, that sort of thing). I'm pretty sure the tutorial will get around the recognition problems the judges had.

The coins have been removed as they are unecessary and to cut down on the number of tile types. You'll get money for completing missions and finding/stealing it. Blocks are still in but are not randomly generated. They are generally only created by techniques.

Skull/Terror solution: Skulls and terror now transform adjacent occuppied tiles into skulls or terror. This is where you strategize. Let's say your opponents about to get enough agility to perform his ultimate technique of doom. You could place any skulls that show up next to any agility tiles to ruin his ability to gain enough. You can also use them for spite, say to keep your enemy from matching hearts if you don't have an opportunity to do it yourself. The enemy AI will definitely do these things to you. Of course, you both have to be more careful where you place them now.

Currently fixing pattern matching. It no longer clears a match until all matches are accounted for (for instance, a tile used in a horizontal match still works for a vertical match). It now allows for matches bigger than five (the bonus never exceeds 100%, however).

This post has been edited by Seventh Shade: 13 January 2010 - 01:31 AM

[Seventh Shade]

It's time for bulleted lists. Do you like bulleted lists? I like bulleted lists.

I'm starting the work on the AI. The AI starts at one corner and works it's way down to the other corner of the game board, checking each square along the way. For each square, it tests for various factors and increases or decreases the perceived value of each individual square depending on what it finds. Then it examines the value of each square in turn and sets the destination coordinates (where it'll place the tile) to whatever square has the highest value. Here's the plan for beneficial tiles:

• Checks to see if it can get a 3+ match at that square. If so, it increases the value by a high amount.
  
• Checks to see if collecting that match sets up a combo for another match that turn. If so, it increases the value by a high amount.
  
• Checks to see if collecting that match sets up a possible match for the player. If so, it decreases the value by a high amount.
  
• Checks to see if there are any of the same tile adjacent to that square. If so, it increases the value by a small amount.
  
• Checks to see putting the tile there sets up a 3+ match for the player. If so, it decreases the value by a moderate amount.
  
• If it can't get a match and there are none of the same tile nearby it checks to see if placing the tile there will interfere with the player. If so, it increases the value by a small amount.
  
• If not, it checks how many unoccupied squares are around it. It increases the value by a tiny amount (more empty space prefered to less because it's less likely for the tile to get boxed in and become useless).
  
• Checks to see if placing the tile there interferes with any of it's own future matches. If so, decreases the value by a small amount.

For negative tiles, it skips right to checking to see where it can cause the most annoyance (avoiding any squares that would harm itself). The AI for technique use will come later once techniques are actually funtional. The AI will be scalable, allowing some enemies to be smarter or dumber and for the game to have multiple difficulty levels. Less intelligent AI will skip some of the fine tuning, mostly choosing to grab any matches for better or worse. Really dumb AI will increase or decrease the final value of a square by a random amount.

The Setting
A near future science fiction set on an earthlike world in a major city. It's semi-cyberpunk so you can expect many of the usual tropes. Corporate malfeasance, wide social gaps, cybernetics, technology changing society in odd ways, that sort of thing. I'm going to try to put a little more nuance than you'd normally expect, however. The big monolithic corporations won't automatically be villainous, just really human. The whole game will be set in a particular city and the surrounding areas. As much as I'm tempted, I'm avoiding most of the Blade Runner type cybernoir (even though your character is a detective). More CSI meets psychological horror than anything else.

Psychological horror, you say? If you read the doznotes file in my DoZ game you probably already know a little of what I was planning (although I'm changing some of it).

Your Character
You are a freelance detective working for private clients (whether they represent corporate interests or only themselves). You are not Sam Spade or Sherlock Holmes, you are not super-human (yet), and you are not a Dirty Harry maverick that gets the job done. You are, however, a little cracked from some of the things you've witnessed on the job. For my own amusement, your character prefers therapy and self-absorbed blogging to hard drinking. They're modern that way. You set the gender, appearance, etc.

The Story
I've got vague ideas on what I want to accomplish but I need to work on filling in the details. I know how it ends and several of the middle events. Basically, odd occurences and seemingly paranormal events start to plague the city. Some people begin manifesting psychic powers (or something) and what might be aliens keep popping in and out, scaring the shit out of people, attacking them, performing weird alterations to the city, spouting strange messages, or doing nothing in particular before vanishing back where they came. If you read the doznotes, you probably think you know where this is going. I'm going to try to tell a semi-original story and thwart some of your expectations.

This post has been edited by Seventh Shade: 15 January 2010 - 07:18 PM

[Seventh Shade]

Baby's First Chess Algorith is done! The numbers need to be tweaked until it starts behaving itself but it's completely funtional. After that I'll work on the tutorial. Once that's done, I'll make a few simple techniques and release an engine/demo so you can see what this thing was supposed to do.

Now, for some details on character creation and abilities.

Characters have 7 main stats:
Strength - Affects your maximum strength points and how many items you can carry.
Agility - Affects your maximum agility points, whether or not you get first turn, a few non-combat things.
Intellect - Affects your maximum intellect points and many non-combat things.
Vitality - Affects your maximum health and your resistance to physical status effects.
Willpower - Affects your maximum sanity and your resistance to mental status effects.
Charisma - Affects some non-combat things and gives you a discount when buying things.
Luck - Affects how likely good tiles show up and the quality of items and other things you find.

Techniques will have attribute requirments before you are even allowed to equip them. Normal techniques will use points from strength, agility, and/or intellect depending on their nature. Psychic powers are the same except that they consume a certain amount of sanity as well. When you run out of sanity (either from overuse of psychic powers or being freaked out by whatever thing you're fighting) you panic and start making bad decisions. This is represented by your attribute points being halved each turn and the next few tiles you place being randomized.

In case some of you couldn't tell what all the different symbols were supposed to represent:

Strength/Agility/Intellect - Your natural abilities and energy levels. When you run out, you are "exhausted" and can't think clearly, can't move very fast, etc.
Hearts - Getting your second wind and having your adrenaline counter the pain from all your wounds.
Eyes - Calming yourself down.
Skulls - Enviromental hazards, hurting yourself through clumsiness, that kind of thing.
Terror - The stress of combat, the sheer awfulness of whatever thing you're fighting, etc.
Blocks - Being hindered by the terrain or the enemy.

[Seventh Shade]

I have two enterprising gentlemen doing some music for me and I've cleaned out a few bugs, filled in some story details, and started the tutorial. I'm considering doing something unusual for moving around the main map. Details to come.

I finalized details on character creation and character stats. When you create a new character you have 70 points to divide amoung your main attributes. You can put up to 15 in one attribute and must put at least five in each. Your maximum health, sanity, and spendable attribute points (the kind you get from matching tiles) are equal to the attribute divided by 2 plus five. You can increase attributes up to 50.

Your starting attributes will determine your starting techniques. I'm giving you more techniques than you'd start out with in most games to mitigate some of the randomness when placing tiles. If your luck sucks and you get a bunch of attribute tiles instead of swords or guns you can spend those points on techniques and still do something.

[Seventh Shade]

A screen shot.

This post has been edited by Seventh Shade: 23 January 2010 - 01:19 AM

[Seventh Shade]

Tired from work, excuses, excuses. The tutorial is done enough for the demo and I've finally gotten rid of the rest of the bugs. I've made a setup similar to one in the starflight combat demo so you can tweak the player and enemy stats before each fight. I'm making a dozen techniques to give a decent sampling of what will be available. Hopefully, I can release the demo by the end of this weekend.

[Seventh Shade]

Consider my earlier ideas for the setting and the story scrapped. I'm going to finish all the engines first before I even worry about anything else. Maybe I'll think of something better by then.

[T-Bone]

That looks interesting

[Seventh Shade]

The game's story will still involve investigation and scary shit of some kind, mostly because the music people are making songs for that kind of thing.

I fixed the AI's problem with using high cost techniques and simplified a few bits of code here and there. I've decided to scrap the cards/deck building idea. I know exactly how to do it, it's just that it'd be pain to implement. I'd have to make decks for all the enemies as well as the actual deck building system. Instead, I upped your technique slots to 10. The highlighted technique's cost and its picture will be displayed over the main board.

Also started the work on status effects and equipment. That blank spot under your name is where these icons are displayed. The first row contains your gun, sword, armor, accessory, and up to three allies. The second row shows the current status effects you have on you. You can have up to seven at once. Adding more just clears the oldest status effect and moves all the others one spot to the left, meaning you can technically get rid of unwanted status effects by inflicted a bunch on yourself at once. In practice, this is impractical as most techniques will rarely add more than one status effect at a time.

The display and the equipment/status slots are working. I'm implementing the actual effects now. Note: status effects and the effects of equipment stack.

I still need to add some tweaks to the AI. It still doesn't set up 4-way and 5-way matches when it can and it has trouble using skulls and terror. I also want it to use techniques more intelligently but I'm not yet sure how to go about that.

[Seventh Shade]

Implemented 134 status/equipment effects because I'm an OCD motherfucker (technically 402 since each effect has 3 levels). I'm sure I'll add more equipment effects later but that's more than enough to get started on making the rest of the techniques. I'm making some utilities to write all the text for technique and status/equipment effects faster.

[Seventh Shade]

I was sick for most of last week, sick enough to get acute bronchitis. Now they have me on 4 pills (including a steroid), some liquid medicine, and an inhaler for the rest of this week. I'm pretty out of it and I haven't gotten anything done. I'm going to try to get the technique pic/text editor done by the end of this week.

[Seventh Shade]

Would you prefer 1,2, or 3?

[Lachesis]

Seventh Shade, on 29 August 2010 - 06:01 PM, said:

Would you prefer 1,2, or 3?

I think I like 3 the most, but I think 2 would work also

[djtiesto]

I like 1 the best. Looks most similar to your overhead 2D RPG layout. #2 looks too PC game and #3's perspective looks weird on the door on the right.

[Hoof]

#1 is most 'classic' mzx. I like it. Although it might be easier to design for #3 (zelda 3).

[Dr Lancer-X]

I prefer #1. #2 looks a bit off and #3 mixes perspectives which is not a good look.

[Old-Sckool]

The only thing I don't like about #1 is that the doorway isn't as obvious as having an actual visual door.

[KKairos]

#1 or #3.

[T-Bone]

1 looks best in terms of perspectives. 2 reminds me of Shadowrun. But I feel this one may limit you on character designs since all your enemies, players will be designed from a birds eyeview and look all very similar (head and shoulders). I prefer 1 over the other two.

This post has been edited by T-Bone: 02 September 2010 - 07:10 PM