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Other Projects => Other Games => Topic started by: Lap on August 29, 2010, 12:53:36 pm

Title: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on August 29, 2010, 12:53:36 pm
Sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/crimelike/
Blogspot: http://crimelike.blogspot.com/
Forum: http://76.26.38.52/crimelike/ (http://76.26.38.52/crimelike/)



(http://imgur.com/F4HaV.png)


Alright, so we all watched in horror/amazement at the whole SK roguelike thread. Oddly enough, a lot of good gameplay suggestions did come up and I heard many people say that they were going to try and make it themselves. Please, let's not have like 6 unfinished versions by separate authors in the works. I'd really like for us to be able to work together and focus our efforts.

Anyways, this whole thing reminded me that I've had this old design document laying around my computer for a while, but I never really got to doing anything with it. It's a bit broader in scope than the serial killer focus so I think a lot more people would be able to enjoy and participate in it. Here's the basics of it:

Source of Inspirations - The Sting/The Clue, Crimefighters, Liberal Crime Squad

Setting - Modern day city or large town.

Atmosphere - Fairly normal. Definitely not crazy like HellMOO or extremely dark like Gotham.

Overall Player Goals - Most goals are greed based (money), but some specific characters might have more specific end game goals (ie. infamy, amassing X number of gang members, etc.).

Specific Character Types - Each type is based around a specific playstyle to keep everyone entertained.

Thug - Mostly violence based. Robberies, heists, and muggings. These characters are also likely to be members of gangs and have followers.

Dealer - Similar to thugs, but more focused on mercantile and smuggling then outright violence.

Thief - Stealth based and works mostly alone.

Scam Artist- Based on tricking others into giving money. Focuses on disguises, identity theft, and intelligence.

Hitman - Narrowly focused violence.

Serial Killer - I hesitate to add this in, but it does seem that he could be a viable variant. By adding "compulsions" or other mental sicknesses it would add a twist to the standard of just killing people. Something like each night a voice tells you to "Target X type of person with Y hair and then do weird ritual X". When you're forced to occasionally do very irrational things, it can get much more difficult than standard thug or hitman based gameplay and is less based on money.

These should satisfy just about every playstyle.

Of course, anyone can just play and do whatever they want. Player starting roles are there simply to provide a start or more direction for players who desire it.

Evidence/Heat System - The most important system in the game that is universal to everyone is the system that essentially manages how infamous you are. Things like leaving evidence and being seen are the primary ways to raise your heat. Doing things like laying low, having/forcing someone else to take the fall for you, hacking into police database, and wearing disguises are ways to reduce your heat.


[As far as the gruesome torture stuff, I couldn't care less. If there's some sort of valid gameplay mechanic it can be linked to then whatever, but I'd prefer this to not be made purely for shock value.]


That's the basic premise without getting into too many specifics. I'm just trying to gauge interest and to see if anyone wants to collaborate. Most likely would be using an existing RL engine to save time (probably TE4). If someone really feels up to being project lead, by all means take the reigns. I just don't want to see so much scattered effort.
Title: Re: Crime (Roguelike)
Post by: vagel7 on August 29, 2010, 01:08:00 pm
Sure, i would love to help you and the game seems fun, theres also an Estonian internet browser game called crime where you are a dealer. So, you might want to chance the name as Crime is a pretty successful game.
Title: Re: Crime (Roguelike)
Post by: Blaze on August 29, 2010, 01:09:48 pm
I believe the "Serial Killer" begins as a different "class" which would degrade into one depending on the player's actions. Stealing a lot, might cause you to develop kleptomania which will urge you to steal things even when you might be discovered. You could start with an urge like pyromania which starts as a small mental defect and eventually blossoms into a full-blown illness.

Say that you're a "brand new" thief, you break into homes and steal stuff for a living because you can't make any money otherwise. After pulling a few successful crimes you feel a bit confident in yourself; thus breaking into a more secure building. Then comes the unavoidable scene of you being discovered; you can't risk being identified and thus resort to silencing the witness. This can come in a variety of ways. You're no fighter after all, and have almost no combat expertise (as a thief), you might accidentally inflict a fatal wound or other intentionally/unintentionally kill him/her.

That acts kind of like a gateway drug, in the beginning you might experience remorse but it gets easier every time. And since there is no "return to a normal life" option for you just have to keep going. Eventually it becomes something "naturally done" and continues to degrade into an urge, eventually becoming insatiable. Similar to how the sexual criminal begins, peeping tom to molester to rapist, though they may skip/add a few phases.

Title: Re: Crime (Roguelike)
Post by: Muz on August 29, 2010, 01:12:45 pm
I've always wanted to make a proper robbery and escape from prison game. But too many other things on the list.
Title: Re: Crime (Roguelike)
Post by: Lap on August 29, 2010, 01:15:01 pm
There's actually a surprisingly large market for sims focusing purely on being a dealer. I'm always amazed at how popular Dope Farmer is/was. Any favorite mechanics from those that should be replicated?

I think most of them devolve into copies of any generic trading game so I'd probably choose to emphasize things like smuggling and secret production instead of leaving it as a simple "buy low,sell high" thing.

Blaze - The system you describe sounds extremely similar to World of Darkness's Humanity/Morality rating. The more you do these terrible things the worse the rating and the more likely you are to suffer psychotic attacks, compulsion, and rage. Eventually, you can barely interact with other people. It's not a bad system and it does a good job of preventing people from immediately killing every NPC that looks at them funny.

Muz - I actually have an entire document on trial, prison, escape/breakouts and how they could fit in here. It could definitely be done in it's own game if expanded on enough.
Title: Re: Crime (Roguelike)
Post by: Muz on August 29, 2010, 01:18:35 pm
I'll be happy to take it off your hands when you don't want it. For once, I'd like to make a game without having to design it first :P
Title: Re: Crime (Roguelike)
Post by: vagel7 on August 29, 2010, 01:18:59 pm
I will note that you should chance the name again but also you should have a court trial where you can have a lawyer and all that and also they should decide on what you did like a robbery without a weapon gets less(in Estonia it does anyway, don't now about america)
Title: Re: Crime (Roguelike)
Post by: Blaze on August 29, 2010, 01:21:28 pm
Blaze - The system you describe sounds extremely similar to World of Darkness's Humanity/Morality rating. The more you do these terrible things the worse the rating and the more likely you are to suffer psychotic attacks, compulsion, and rage. It's not a bad system and it does a good job of preventing people from immediately killing every NPC that looks at them funny.

Well in my case it would be both beneficial and hindering. Kleptomania like I mentioned above, may cause expensive items to be revealed more clearly, like appearing as a brighter symbol. At the same time, since your attention is focused on said items, you're not as aware of the possible defensive measures that might be around you. Eventually it turns into a "sense" that you just KNOW the item is expensive coupled with an decrease in your "stealth rating". People will notice you if you start acting strange, though your own self-control may factor into that.
Title: Re: Crime (Roguelike)
Post by: Lap on August 29, 2010, 01:23:10 pm
I'll be happy to take it off your hands when you don't want it. For once, I'd like to make a game without having to design it first :P

Half of the stuff I have is on actual paper so I'll have to see what form it's in, but I'm all for sharing information. I don't know how useful it would be though as most of it is based on the interactions and effects that prison has on the rest of the game and not surviving prison itself. I'd imagine that an item improvisation and crafting system would be very important in a solely prison based game and there's so much I skipped over about prison life.

Blaze - I love mechanics and traits that aren't entirely positive or entirely negative. Games need more of these.
Title: Re: Crime (Roguelike)
Post by: Blaze on August 29, 2010, 01:35:30 pm
Blaze - I love mechanics and traits that aren't entirely positive or entirely negative. Games need more of these.

To be honest, I wasn't really thinking like that :S, things like this help you develop a criminal profile. Are you one who hides and sneaks at night or a brazen person who prowls during the day? Do you go in and randomly tear through everything or neatly come in, steal your choice tidbits, and leave with barely a trace? Are you a madman who sadistically tortures and mutilates his/her victims or are the wounds you cause quick and businesslike?

If you commit your crimes in a way that is hard to trace to you, the detectives who are hunting you may think they're going after several different criminals. Your own motives like money, infamy, etc may go against this though.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Megaman on August 29, 2010, 01:42:00 pm
All I want is a reference to the SK RL hoax. oh and game-play's a good direction too.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: kholhaus on August 29, 2010, 01:51:54 pm
I'll be happy to collaborate with design and mechanics, but only because I have a feeling my earlier rage-inspired way into coding, that may take a while. Like, a long while. As in, I've never programmed before. :U

So why not contribute to the current efforts, I thought.
Title: Re: Crime (Roguelike)
Post by: commondragon on August 29, 2010, 02:04:57 pm
I'll be happy to take it off your hands when you don't want it. For once, I'd like to make a game without having to design it first :P
Shoot, you could just ask me at that point.  I have way too many unused ideas.


Anyways, the first thing I do when any part of this is released, is Im going to go into two peoples houses and swap their belongings.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: kholhaus on August 29, 2010, 02:09:59 pm
So, getting this out of the way;

Is there anyone here who can actually START this project, without much trouble or time consumed?

I won't be able to for a few months, prolly.
Title: Re: Crime (Roguelike)
Post by: Tilla on August 29, 2010, 02:14:31 pm
I will note that you should chance the name again but also you should have a court trial where you can have a lawyer and all that and also they should decide on what you did like a robbery without a weapon gets less(in Estonia it does anyway, don't now about america)

I doubt this is really a name yet, it's just a start to ideas of a project.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Tellemurius on August 29, 2010, 02:55:55 pm
WTF http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/08/29/after-murder-park-serial-killer-rogue-faked/ (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/08/29/after-murder-park-serial-killer-rogue-faked/)
ALL THAT TIME WAITING UNTIL SHOT DOWN I DUNNO WHICH FACE TO USE:  >:( or  :'(

major ninjad
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on August 29, 2010, 03:01:21 pm
Nobody cares anymore, and this is a completely different thread.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: janekk on August 29, 2010, 03:04:13 pm
All I want is a reference to the SK RL hoax. oh and game-play's a good direction too.
Make it selectable class but when you do all you get is message: "You want serial killer? You can't have one yada yada"

Begin serial killer, thief etc. shouldn't be some fixed class but something you become depending on your actions.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Tellemurius on August 29, 2010, 03:04:24 pm
ah shit major ninjad
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on August 29, 2010, 03:16:40 pm
Maybe just make it a skill-based thing?  You get such and such points and you allocate them to like

--Deviant Dexterity
Surreptitiousness
Sleight of Hand
Avoidance

--Deceit and Deception
Chicanery
Disguisery

--Aggressive Actions
Fisticuffs
Blunderbussery
Pistoliering
Swashbuckling
Machine Rifles
Repeater Rifles
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on August 29, 2010, 03:17:35 pm
Is anyone going to actually make this? Honestly a game that I would want to see is SKR. Exactly the format of the videos with all of our suggestions.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on August 29, 2010, 03:18:24 pm
It probably won't be the exact format.

I'm considering learning a bit of lua so I can contribute something.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Grishnak on August 29, 2010, 03:24:25 pm
May I suggest TE4 To use as an engine to speed things along, at least for a proof of concept. For those who dont know its ToME Engine 4. It might even make it easier to have multiple people work on it at the same time. Its pretty much just lua scripting written around a very nice roguelike engine.
Edit: Im an idiot, I should have finished reading the entire first post. If there is help needed, I can contribute. :)
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on August 29, 2010, 03:26:04 pm
Oh, that's the ToME engine?  Kickass, we know it's powerful.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on August 29, 2010, 03:27:35 pm
Quote from: Lap
Most likely would be using an existing RL engine to save time (probably TE4). If someone really feels up to being project lead, by all means take the reigns. I just don't want to see so much scattered effort.

That's my vote as well. Even those of you without any coding experience can easily make items, content, and levels for the T-Engine. Not to mention it has damn near every basic function you could ever imagine. It even supports cloud based saves and online achievements. Very impressive.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Grishnak on August 29, 2010, 03:33:39 pm
Ill definately help with some of the meat and potatoes coding, just dont ask me to be the lead, I already have a few things Im working on as it is. I also suggest using piratepad.net for some real time coding adventures that saves sessions. Its basicly Etherpad minus the google buy out and shut down. :)
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rickvoid on August 29, 2010, 03:34:31 pm
I kind of like the idea, but I'd love it if you weren't limited to being a "criminal". There is, for example, a lot of grey area in being a vigilante.It would be awesome if I could design a costume, wander the streets a night, bring my own special brand of justice. You could set of little hideouts all over town, like converted warehouses, where you could store equipment, extra costumes, torture chambers interrogation rooms, etc.

TL;DR - Batman simulator.

On another note, a game like this is practically screaming for a classless advancement system. You can use "classes" (or "archetypes", or whatever), but if you set them as starting packages (which grant you starting skills and distribute attributes), then we could be whoever we want (and whatever we're forced to become depending on in-game interactions).

Addiction would be a good thing to model in this game. You could even have it apply to things that aren't drugs. For example, if I mutilate the bodies of a couple victims (take a pinky or ear as a souvenir, for example), then maybe the next time I leave a corpse behind that I don't do that to I take a temporary stat hit, which gets increasingly worse until I do. Or if I go a long time without doing the behavior. Cannibalism would fall under that too. In fact, behavioral addiction would be a good way for someone that had a different archetype to end up becoming a Serial Killer. And if you have the Serial Killer Archetype, you would start with a behavioral addiction.

For inspiration, I second Liberal Crime Squad (I love its Skill system), and also suggest Demon's Souls.
Maybe just make it a skill-based thing?  You get such and such points and you allocate them to like

--Deviant Dexterity
Surreptitiousness
Sleight of Hand
Avoidance

--Deceit and Deception
Chicanery
Disguisery

--Aggressive Actions
Fisticuffs
Blunderbussery
Pistoliering
Swashbuckling
Machine Rifles
Repeater Rifles

^Yeah, a skill system like that, where using the skill gives you small upgrades over time, or you can pay to train them. (Though that could tie into the Heat system. If someone was obviously killed by an expert knife fighter, and you have a history of knife training, TA-DA! You're a potential suspect!!  :D )

Behavioral and Chemical addictions could have their own status screen, where they would appear when you get them, and have levels of their own. The more you feed the addiction, the more XP it gets, and the harder it is to feed, while the penalties for failing to feed them become worse. You lose XP on the addiction once you begin feeling the penalty, and the XP loss is greater the lower your addiction level. Ergo, the less addicted you are, the easier it is to quit.

As for the penalties, Chemical Addictions (such as Alcohol and other drugs, and maybe even Adrenaline (combat high from commiting muder)) would give you Stat penalties, and maybe HP loss (Temporary Max HP, Permanent Max HP, or current HP loss over time, depending on what you're addicted to and how bad it's fucking you up.). Behavioral Addictions could cause you to Pass Out, Increase Appetite (if we're implementing a Satiation system), make you occasionally go Berserk, or have Hallucinatory effects (the screen becomes full of enemies (disguised NPC's) that you think are trying to attack you).

Okay, I think that's enough. I'm not trying to turn this into an Addiction Rougelike, just had an idea that I liked and am running with it. I think it would make for a nice feature though.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Tellemurius on August 29, 2010, 03:35:01 pm
be cool to look at the code for lcs and see how that wounding system works.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on August 29, 2010, 03:38:00 pm
Ideally, I'd prefer freeform skills as well with all the character types I mention simply describe your starting situation skills and optional end game goals.

As far as addiction and drugs, considering I'm already tooling around with that to help some other guy with his TE4 engine mod it's a safe bet that I'll put them in if TE4 is the engine.

As for playing as a vigilante, I can't think of any reason why you couldn't play as one. You'd still have to worry about all the same stuff as the average criminal.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rickvoid on August 29, 2010, 03:45:54 pm
Ideally, I'd prefer freeform skills as well with all the character types I mention simply describe your starting situation skills and optional end game goals.

As far as addiction and drugs, considering I'm already tooling around with that to help some other guy with his TE4 engine mod it's a safe bet that I'll put them in if TE4 is the engine.

As for playing as a vigilante, I can't think of any reason why you couldn't play as one. You'd still have to worry about all the same stuff as the average criminal.

Weee!!

Looking foreward to this. Put me down as a beta tester, please.

Oh, and please use a numpad/arrowkey control scheme. Nethack's VI scheme, and Rogue's HYUBJKWhateverthefuck controls have never made a damn bit of sense to me, which is sad because it's popular control set with a lot of roguelikes.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on August 29, 2010, 03:49:14 pm
ALSO PUT ME AS A BETA TESTER UNNNHH YES.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Armok on August 29, 2010, 04:02:59 pm
So will this thing have "questionable" stuff like corpse mutilation, realistic child NPCs, torture, rape, doing drugs yourself, and jaywalking?
I vote it should.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on August 29, 2010, 04:04:16 pm
So will this thing have "questionable" stuff like corpse mutilation, realistic child NPCs, limitedtorture (And maybe not even that), rape, doing drugs yourself, and jaywalking?
I vote it should.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rickvoid on August 29, 2010, 04:07:28 pm
Oh good. Three pages in and Armok is being creepy already.

Well, creepier than usual, anyway.

So will this thing have "questionable" stuff like corpse mutilation, realistic child NPCs, limitedtorture (And maybe not even that), rape, doing drugs yourself, and jaywalking?
I vote it should.

Thank you, my good man, for fixing that.  :D
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: x2yzh9 on August 29, 2010, 04:12:47 pm
So will this thing have "questionable" stuff like corpse mutilation, realistic child NPCs, limitedtorture (And maybe not even that), rape, doing drugs yourself, and jaywalking?
I vote it should.
Also, I'd like to beta-test. Though I admit, deciding on a base engine/template to use, if we even do decide to do that, will be hard. We want to make a expandable game that has many features, and some engines/templates have limitations, and we want to know whether or not we want to live with those.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Servant Corps on August 29, 2010, 04:16:26 pm
The faster I beta-test this, the faster I don't have to worry about doing a "Pacifist" Serial Killer LP.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: ChairmanPoo on August 29, 2010, 04:16:52 pm
Meh, it's not like we can't do the stuff Armok commented on DF already. So what's the fuss?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: cappstv on August 29, 2010, 04:20:49 pm
I disagree with the whole character type thing. Hitmans are serial killers, they fall under comfort killer since they do it for profit.
It should just be skills that you can choose and you take the jobs you want.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on August 29, 2010, 04:22:27 pm
Some questions.

Graphical or ASCII?  Maybe semigraphical like the original video?

Also, how are we going to set up the game world?  Rendering the whole city at once is probably not doable, I was thinking it'd probably be easier to have an LCS-like interface, with a bunch of dialogues for various actions, organization, etc. and only getting to the nitty gritty once you've actually traveled to a location.

Or maybe instead of being strictly location-based you travel to various districts.  That would be a bit less limiting.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: cappstv on August 29, 2010, 04:23:55 pm
Districts would work out best, that way certain crime families can own certain districts.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on August 29, 2010, 04:24:06 pm
I disagree with the whole character type thing. Hitmans are serial killers, they fall under comfort killer since they do it for profit.
It should just be skills that you can choose and you take the jobs you want.


This isn't just an attempt at making a real SKR. It's a crime focused roguelike. So we're trying to make the game bigger and more crime-y.

Some questions.

Graphical or ASCII?  Maybe semigraphical like the original video?

Also, how are we going to set up the game world?  Rendering the whole city at once is probably not doable, I was thinking it'd probably be easier to have an LCS-like interface, with a bunch of dialogues for various actions, organization, etc. and only getting to the nitty gritty once you've actually traveled to a location.

Or maybe instead of being strictly location-based you travel to various districts.  That would be a bit less limiting.

I vote ASCII.

I vote the one town thing like CK claimed to be doing. That sounded cool. Maybe you could make your own maps and download them?

Districts sound good too.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: cappstv on August 29, 2010, 04:29:03 pm
There has to be crime families. And each crime family should have different advantages, like better firearms or judges and police cheifs in their pocket.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: x2yzh9 on August 29, 2010, 04:34:30 pm
Districts sound good, but maybe other crime-familys actions and stuff are simulated when your not in that district?
There should be Serial Killer possibilitys, but we shouldn't waste our whole time on it. I think maybe the whole urge to kill thing and stuff, and you might kill yourself out of guilt, etc. And the police should be able to track you, but not the whole dismemberment thing until later on.
I vote Semi-graphical.

I vote random generation of towns and crime mafias, etc.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on August 29, 2010, 04:34:46 pm
That sounds really artificial though.

Crime families should be procedurally generated, able to form and disperse based on game events and player actions (Including sufficiently powerful and influential players creating their own crime families)), and advantages should be entirely based on what the family has accomplished.

If the Martini family successfully establishes a stranglehold on a local weapons trade, they'd have better guns.  If the Stromboli family hires some cleaners (Including Leo Tortellini, the Player Character) to go in as a team and clear out the Martinis, they cease to exist.

At least, that's how I think it should be in the final version.  For early builds an artificial placeholder system where the Martinis, Stombolis, Yamaguchis, and the Midnight Crew are always in the game and they all have clear advantages and disadvantages just for the purpose of testing interactions is probably fine.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Mindmaker on August 29, 2010, 04:36:11 pm
Some questions.

Graphical or ASCII?  Maybe semigraphical like the original video?

Graphical or semigraphical please.
I can't play ASCII games and it would be a shame to miss out on it should it ever come out.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on August 29, 2010, 04:37:52 pm
Maybe just make it both.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on August 29, 2010, 04:43:02 pm
Graphics packs? I don't really care, I can play either. I just like ASCII.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on August 29, 2010, 04:45:08 pm
Oh, and please use a numpad/arrowkey control scheme. Nethack's VI scheme, and Rogue's HYUBJKWhateverthefuck controls have never made a damn bit of sense to me, which is sad because it's popular control set with a lot of roguelikes.

T-Engine allows in game remapping so you can have whatever you want.

Graphical vs. ascii... T-Engine allows both. Ascii peeps should be able to turn off graphical tiles.

Torture and other objectionable stuff - Probably should compartmentalize this stuff and allow users that don't want to have it to not even have to have it included in their version of the game.

Districts sounds like the most logical way to do things. Sizing them isn't a problem either as the user can change that in the options menu.

Beta testing? Anyone who wants to can probably just download the source off of googlecode or whatever gets used to host it. No compiling needed.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rickvoid on August 29, 2010, 04:52:01 pm
I vote graphical with an ASCII tileset. That way the programmers don't have to waste time rewriting the code later when the unwashed masses beloved community demand tilesets, and that'll make it easy for the community to produce their own tilesets that can be dropped right into the games. As far as I know, T4 should currently support that.

I don't really care either way about graphics vs ASCII, but I do care about the programmers focusing on content, world building, and making shit work. Give the community the framework to make shit pretty, and if they don't, they've got no one to complain to than themselves.

Quote
Crime Families

Yep. We need this too. In fact, we also need Gangs. And they honestly don't have to be all that different.

For example, a Crime Family is basically a large, old, and heavily entrenched Gang that uses legitimate business activities in order hide and fund criminal activity.

In the world, there should be a few Crime Families, that are feuding with each-other. Join one (which should be a long, difficult process more suited to a late game, established character), and you get a bunch of nice bonuses (which should either be unavailable elsewhere, or very, very difficult to procure outside of the family), some restrictions that you'll need to abide by (don't fuck over another member of the family, don't snitch on the family, don't do anything to piss off the Don, perhaps some Behavioral restrictions (like the Don can't stand criminals that hurt women, or kids, and he has your legs broken if you fuck up)), and some penalties (frosty relations with other Gangs and families, hostile relations with others, FBI more likely to know of you, even if they don't know your crimes, etc).

Below the families would be Gangs, the bigger/more successful/better established ones being more powerful and harder to join. There would be similar benefits and penalties to these.

And you should totally be able to start your own gang (vigilante group coughIamBatmancough), and lead your Brothas and Sistas to take over the streets from your rivals.

I imagine a deep, well built influence/relation system would make this awesome (example: Performing X crime gets you street cred with Gang A, pisses off Family B, attracts potential Gangbanger C, and alienates current Gang Member D). I'd recommend using an in-engine faction system, and define what each faction likes/dislikes. Then all you have to do is assign those factions to NPCs.

Edit: Jesus, six replys since I started writing this!? Fuck it, I'm posting this first, then I'll read 'em.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on August 29, 2010, 05:00:07 pm
Sounds like fun. I'm currently dicking around with TE4's example module, trying to get locational damage to work and to make a working inventory. Just mainly messing around with the actors and npc and player stuff, and trying to familiarize myself with all the functions. It's fairly complex, since I've never programmed anything before. I can pitch in some time to help with the project if someone can organize things to implement first. I can make tileset graphics, although I don't use them, haha. I figure we should start with the basics. Using the example module, make a workable inventory, then modify the map code so we have one single map instead of dungeon rooms and floors, and begin fleshing out the character generation stuff by modifying game.lua in the class folder, and then adding stuff to the descriptor.lua file in birth/data.

EDIT: Shouldn't this be in Creative Projects?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: x2yzh9 on August 29, 2010, 05:05:09 pm
I don't know about that. This game might start taking donations, and Creative Projects isn't exactly that. Creative Projects is usually just a rarely visited forum where single people work in their free-time on a project. This is supposed to be a rogue-like that would involve the entire community, if they so choose, and might become Über-Famous, like BrÜno.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rickvoid on August 29, 2010, 05:06:47 pm
Sounds like fun. I'm currently dicking around with TE4's example module, trying to get locational damage to work and to make a working inventory. Just mainly messing around with the actors and npc and player stuff, and trying to familiarize myself with all the functions. It's fairly complex, since I've never programmed anything before. I can pitch in some time to help with the project if someone can organize things to implement first. I can make tileset graphics, although I don't use them, haha. I figure we should start with the basics. Using the example module, make a workable inventory, then modify the map code so we have one single map instead of dungeon rooms and floors, and begin fleshing out the character generation stuff by modifying game.lua in the class folder, and then adding stuff to the descriptor.lua file in birth/data.

EDIT: Shouldn't this be in Creative Projects?

Let's wait until we actually have some code for the folks down there to look at/poke around with. We also need to flesh out the concept a bit, and come up with the core mechanics that should be built and implemented first.

But yeah, we should eventually move this to Creative Projects. A brand new thread might be a better idea.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on August 29, 2010, 05:07:26 pm
Anyone want to set up a pirate pad or something so we can get some ideas on paper in a single clear space?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on August 29, 2010, 05:10:13 pm
What's a pirate pad?

We should all talk in IRC.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on August 29, 2010, 05:17:25 pm
This (http://piratepad.net/).

IRC is nice but something like that would allow collaborative and organized writing of a design document, whereas IRC is just as disorganized as a forum thread, but not as slow.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on August 29, 2010, 05:20:27 pm
Look I have a pirate pad open :D...

...

http://piratepad.net/h9QML6qDDY

Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on August 29, 2010, 05:21:30 pm
Games in development can go under either forum, though really it'd be nice to get a specific game dev one. Anyways, since the massive SK thread was here it seems best to have this here for a while.

Kusgnos- It might also be helpful to download Viral Resistance on the modules forum. It is set in modern day. It has more than the example module, but far less than the full ToME module, so it's much easier to learn from.

For anyone that wants to tool around this is extremely helpful http://doku.t-o-m-e.net/t4modules:module_howto_guides as is http://te4.org/docs/t-engine4/1.0.0beta7/
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: tarsier on August 29, 2010, 05:37:31 pm
I think the tileset seen in the hoax videos looked fantastic - thematically fitting and nicely refined for a roguelike. Plus, it was original. I know I'm not involved, but I suggest it be replicated.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on August 29, 2010, 05:45:26 pm
I saw it replicated yesterday and I forgot to save the picture. Now I go to the link and it's been removed =(
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on August 29, 2010, 05:49:37 pm
I would participate in the pirate pad but alas, IRL calls.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on August 29, 2010, 06:11:17 pm
That's OK. All the important stuff get's reposted here anyways. Before too much coding gets figured out the core character stats need to be decided.

The two main contenders are

1. Standard D&D style str, dex, etc.

2. SPECIALesque (Fallout's system)

Though really, there's nothing limiting us to either if there are any better ideas.

Levels are a bit trickier. Should there be levels? If there are levels how do you get them? Do you get them by leveling up so many skills (Elder Scrolls) or by getting experience points?

How should skills improve? Through use or training? Through applying experience points?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Tilla on August 29, 2010, 06:15:25 pm
Skill based systems are always better to me than level based. But that's widely up to taste.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: cappstv on August 29, 2010, 06:18:37 pm
We are taking a realistic approach to this game, correct?
If so there should be no levels. You don't level up in real life.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: dbfuru on August 29, 2010, 06:23:56 pm
I want to wish you good luck with this project, I will keep an eye on this, I'm interested in seeing a crime based roguelike being made. I wish I could help, but all I could do is offer suggestions as I don't really have any programming experience outside Visual Basic.

Also, I would like it if you did a DF-esque body system, instead of HP. It could make the game more interesting, say you are running from a robbery and get shot in the leg, fall over and crawl away, and just barely escape. Or just roll over and shoot your pursuers in a last stand type thing.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Yodamaster on August 29, 2010, 06:27:44 pm
Another consideration to take into account with the realism is how proficient you can become at something.

No matter how skilled you are, you will always fail some of the time. With some more advanced forms of security, it's practically impossible for a single person to bypass directly.

You'll have to be able to manipulate people (like what was being discussed before) to be most effective. You won't really break into Mr.Richmansuperalarm's house in the middle of the night and murder him, or even UristMcPoorGuy who might have the common sense to dead-bolt his door.

It's much more practical for a killer to do something like pick up a girl (or guy) and take them behind some building to make out.

With knives and guns.

More than anything being proficient should come from better equipment. No matter how good you are with a pistol, you really can't beat 2 or more cops in a firefight. However, if they came in with pistol and you had, say, an assault rifle, that's another story.

What I would also suggest is that awesome Bourne-style hand to hand be added into the game. Just an option. To be totally badass. I've always wanted to be abl - play a game where you could beat people up like that.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on August 29, 2010, 06:44:55 pm
I kind of like D&D stats, but we could modify them a bit.

Muscle - determines physical damage, how much character could carry
Constitution - Resistance to illness, poison, fatigue
Coordination - determines accuracy, things like lockpicking
Intelligence - intelligence based skills, hiding your trails
Charisma - making people like you, all that
Willpower - whether your character could weather non-physical stress, especially if the game implements that status-type idea with concern/worry/fear
Perception - helps you notice things that you might normally miss (sounds and details)

I'd prefer no leveling. Using a skill to get better at it. For example, with sneaking, there has to be someone around before you'd gain practice with the skill.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on August 29, 2010, 06:56:22 pm
I agree, skills should go up by use but you shouldn't be able to reach any kind of superhuman levels with it.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: mikefictiti0us on August 29, 2010, 07:03:28 pm
For the love of Armok, don't use numbers to represent your stats in the game. The hoax interface looked unique because it ignored the usual RL conventions of placing numbered stats all over the place. Maybe it's just me, but I've passed on many a roguelike because the developer used an interface that looked interchangeable from the hordes of dungeon crawling clones that are out there.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: x2yzh9 on August 29, 2010, 07:09:34 pm
I think we should have a daily/weekly dev/coding session, at to prevent inactivity, and to make it easier to collaborate. I'm pretty sure Piratepad would work for this. What about 6 P.M. Central Standard Time(UTC -06)?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on August 29, 2010, 07:19:57 pm
I would also like to avoid using a lot of numbers, at least in the actual interface.  Obviously the stats would be represented by numbers, but maybe abstract them out for the player.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: cappstv on August 29, 2010, 07:26:30 pm
Also, we must be able to jump off roofs of buildings into a window of another building.
The randomly generated FBI agents would be all like "woah".
Which reminds me, is this just going to be the bad guys, or could we have the option of being law enforcement?
It be cool if you could play as a mole inside the mob.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Yodamaster on August 29, 2010, 07:30:56 pm
Which reminds me, is this just going to be the bad guys, or could we have the option of being law enforcement?
It be cool if you could play as a mole inside the mob.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves here xD
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: cappstv on August 29, 2010, 07:32:24 pm
Let's not get ahead of ourselves here xD
Not for the first version of course, just something to think about for later on.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Ringmaster on August 29, 2010, 07:42:29 pm
Alright, I don't know code but I was seriously intrigued by the SK RL and am already intrigued by this Roguelike.

I'm posting just to say you have a fan in me, and to offer some creative advice that has worked for me with other things in the past:

1. Don't burn yourself out thinking about features that you'll implement 'later on', think about what you're gonna do right now, figure out what things you want in straight away (character creation, a couple of basic locations, very simple AI/NPCs). If you keep brainstorming about what you want in the game you won't actually get any work done.

2. The idea about getting together at a certain time to work on the game is brilliant.

3. Ignore fan suggestions, you may end up making promises that you can't fulfill in the finished product.

4. Give yourself goals to work toward every month, like Toady makes a list of the features he's working on for the next update.

5. You've got a huge amount of support here, so maybe you should aim to release an alpha some time soon before the support starts to diminish?

(Alright, the last one was a thinly veiled 'I WANT TO TEST IT' request, but the rest were serious, honest)
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Itnetlolor on August 29, 2010, 07:50:47 pm
Putting in my 2˘.

I'd like to see some of the things I mentioned in the old thread get applied to this, like the jumping features and such (especially applied to rooftop jumping and other methods of escape); along with buildings with fire escapes (only taller than 4z or something).

I had other good ideas I think. I'll have to sniff them out, but I'll link them (or edit my post) when I find them. Spoilered for your convenience.

Spoiler: Alternate Modes (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Character Flaws (click to show/hide)

Disguises are a definite must (no need to fully quote). More charisma, better chances of working.







EDIT:
So many pages to thumb through. This could take awhile. Done.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on August 29, 2010, 08:01:39 pm
Maybe it's a bit too much for now, but I was thinking that there could be several descriptors for each 'level' of an attribute, so it isn't always the same description, and would automatically spice up character descriptions a bit. Example follows.

MUSCLE

Very low: Bob looks extremely feeble. // Bob looks pathetically weak.
low: Bob is scrawny, and his arms lack muscle. // Bob is thinly-built and looks feeble.
below average: Bob doesn't look very strong. // Bob looks somewhat weak.
average: Bob is of average strength.
above average: Bob looks kind of strong. // Bob seems to be somewhat strong.
high: Bob looks fairly strong. // Bob appears somewhat muscular.
very high: Bob has noticeably muscular arms. // Bob is well-built and looks tough.
extremely high: Bob looks extremely muscular. // Bob appears ridiculously tough.

Something like that.

How much are we in agreement with what type of attributes to use?

Quote
Muscle - determines physical damage, how much character could carry
Constitution - Resistance to illness, poison, fatigue
Coordination - determines accuracy, things like lockpicking
Intelligence - intelligence based skills, hiding your trails
Charisma - making people like you, all that
Willpower - whether your character could weather non-physical stress, especially if the game implements that status-type idea with concern/worry/fear
Perception - helps you notice things that you might normally miss (sounds and details)

Would these be alright, or should we remove some? Add some?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Funk on August 29, 2010, 08:03:11 pm
More than anything being proficient should come from better equipment. No matter how good you are with a pistol, you really can't beat 2 or more cops in a firefight.
well yes if you just fight in the open you die,but as thay say divide and conquer.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Yodamaster on August 29, 2010, 08:16:57 pm
More than anything being proficient should come from better equipment. No matter how good you are with a pistol, you really can't beat 2 or more cops in a firefight.
well yes if you just fight in the open you die,but as thay say divide and conquer.

By all means intelligence should be rewarded, but I'm talking about like in SC:C you could just shoot 5 guys with assault rifles in the head (not even using the execution feature) before they could do anything to stop you.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on August 29, 2010, 08:17:13 pm
I like Kusgnos' idea, but with more flavor.

Bob looks like a toothpick.

Bob appears to be wearing a cartoonish muscle suit... he's not.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: x2yzh9 on August 29, 2010, 08:18:39 pm
Yes, okay. So let's say we all get together tomorrow at say 7 P.M. Central Standard Time(UTC -06, GMT -05) and we decide who's going to program, who's going to work on art, and have a list of who's going to work on what for the first alpha and do it in a organized order. If no one sets up another piratepad we'll just use detrevini's. Sound good?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Itnetlolor on August 29, 2010, 08:19:18 pm
I like Kusgnos' idea, but with more flavor.

Bob looks like a toothpick.

Bob appears to be wearing a cartoonish muscle suit... he's not.
Those descriptions sound more entertaining. And it could suit the personality of the game too.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: cappstv on August 29, 2010, 08:21:54 pm
i want to work on getting the list of the drugs that are going to be in this game done. I will try everyone to see what effects they have on my body for realism when we code them in the game.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Yodamaster on August 29, 2010, 08:25:32 pm
i want to work on getting the list of the drugs that are going to be in this game done. I will try everyone to see what effects they have on my body for realism when we code them in the game.

Sounds good. I'll compile the list of actions we can perform upon corpses, animals, and babies.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Saint on August 29, 2010, 08:32:46 pm
  Saint is posting in this thread to bring you an important news update.
Too bad that important news update just got lost while I was eating this delicious taco I made for dinner.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on August 29, 2010, 08:36:42 pm
I'll be there... I think. Even though I'm not really doing anything :)

What time is that Pacific Standard Time?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on August 29, 2010, 08:37:04 pm
Adding to my previous post, if those seven stats are used, intelligence, coordination, perception, and willpower probably wouldn't be visible if you looked at someone. With the exception of coordination and perception, since if you yourself were perceptive enough you might be able to tell by someone's mannerisms how perceptive and coordinated they are? I'll continue with the stat descriptions in a spoiler, though if we end up not using them, it's also fine. I'm just not sure how to implement it into code, otherwise I'd do it. I'm guessing...add the stuff into game.lua and descriptors.lua, and optionally organize them into folders. And hm. I'll experiment around with that.

And making some more fun descriptions, then, too!


Spoiler (click to show/hide)

EDIT: I'll probably be there. I think it's either 5 or 6 PST. Either way, I'll probably be there.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: x2yzh9 on August 29, 2010, 08:39:20 pm
I'll be there... I think. Even though I'm not really doing anything :)

What time is that Pacific Standard Time?
5 P.M PST
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: cappstv on August 29, 2010, 09:01:41 pm
I was thinking there should be different city types
For Example:
Gambling
Government
Normal
Gambling cities would have more casinos, government would have more federal type buildings, and normal cities would just be normal.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on August 29, 2010, 09:02:31 pm
Hm, interesting. Someone else has been inspired!

http://skrogue.wordpress.com/

The above people are also trying to make one, though probably in different code, and with a different game concept.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: cappstv on August 29, 2010, 09:05:18 pm
Hm, interesting. Someone else has been inspired!

http://skrogue.wordpress.com/

The above people are also trying to make one, though probably in different code, and with a different game concept.
I am going to bet that they are aiming for more just serial killer type of stuff then just a general crime simulator.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on August 29, 2010, 09:09:24 pm
Got a question. How to make the module so that character generation gives you some points and you can customize your character's stats? Right now, it's doing the 'pick role' and 'pick class' sort of style of roguelike.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: mikefictiti0us on August 29, 2010, 09:14:14 pm
Have you considered using libtcod (http://doryen.eptalys.net/libtcod/) instead of T-engine? It seems to be a more flexible choice and each of the projects (http://doryen.eptalys.net/libtcod/projects/) have a unique look to them.

ed

This (http://doryen.eptalys.net/data/libtcod-projects/lastman_001-full.jpg) GUI looks kind of similar to SK.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on August 29, 2010, 09:21:16 pm
5 PM tomorrow. I'll be there.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Funk on August 29, 2010, 10:03:19 pm
i may miss(its 4 GMT here and i need sleep) the chat but just to let you all know i can help with the weapons and stuff.

i have never used  TE4 before but it looks alot easyer then Visual Basic. 
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Tilla on August 29, 2010, 10:04:47 pm
Have you considered using libtcod (http://doryen.eptalys.net/libtcod/) instead of T-engine? It seems to be a more flexible choice and each of the projects (http://doryen.eptalys.net/libtcod/projects/) have a unique look to them.

ed

This (http://doryen.eptalys.net/data/libtcod-projects/lastman_001-full.jpg) GUI looks kind of similar to SK.

Doryen is more flexible in that it's just a library, whereas T-Engine is an engine - therefor it has more things already laid out for you that you don't have to build from the ground up.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on August 29, 2010, 10:07:40 pm
Alright, I'm back home so I'm in the pirate pad. Anyone wants to chat about ideas and shit, I'm there.

HAHA JUST KIDDING I'M GOING TO SLEEP
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rickvoid on August 29, 2010, 10:43:53 pm
I won't be there. Work.

I'll write some stuff up on the laptop though, and post it on the thread when I wake up sometime tuesday afternoon.

It's gonna be a looooong two days.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on August 29, 2010, 10:55:48 pm
I would have worked but I'm not a coder and the stuff there made my brain go boom
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on August 29, 2010, 11:01:39 pm
I'm doing some Lua tutorials.  It's pretty easy, I'm picking it up fast.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on August 30, 2010, 12:01:11 am
I'm doing some Lua tutorials.  It's pretty easy, I'm picking it up fast.

Wish it were that way for me. I can nod along and follow the tutorials, but when I see the code, it takes me hours to wrap my brain around it. So far, I'm still figuring out how to make the character generation system. :| Also doing some playing around with maps.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: head on August 30, 2010, 04:26:53 am
I figure i can help.

Lua is quite easy to pickup if you got history in codeing.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: DarkGod on August 30, 2010, 08:10:28 am
Plop there :)

ToME4 interface is ToME4 interface, it does not impose on other games using the TE4 engine, you don't have to use the same screen layout, fonts, colors whatever.
It's like a metalibrary, it provides low level building blocks but also high levels ones (like maps, entities, ..) you can choose to not use some of them it's easy: you don't use them ;)
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Soadreqm on August 30, 2010, 08:27:57 am
Well, I've no programming experience, but I can still help by bombing you with impossible-to-implement ideas and pestering for a release to play. :P

So, looking at the thread, this seems to be the standing suggestion for stats:
Muscle - determines physical damage, how much character could carry
Constitution - Resistance to illness, poison, fatigue
Coordination - determines accuracy, things like lockpicking
Intelligence - intelligence based skills, hiding your trails
Charisma - making people like you, all that
Willpower - whether your character could weather non-physical stress, especially if the game implements that status-type idea with concern/worry/fear
Perception - helps you notice things that you might normally miss (sounds and details)

I think it's missing a stat to determing things like running speed and jumping height and your natural affinity with acrobatics. I suppose you could make them a function of Strength (how strong your legs are) and Coordination (how good you are at timing your movements), if additional stats would make things too complex. Also, something to determine reflexes would probably be necessary, to determine things like movement order in a gunfight and dodging ability.

Maybe break Coordination to two stats, Agility and Dexterity? Agility would be your affinity for moving, including things like running, climbing, jumping and rolling, while Dexterity would be your ability to perform small, precise movements such as picking a lock, performing surgery or aiming a sniper rifle. Most combat would use both. Perception could perhaps be combined with intelligence or willpower. Maybe make it a function of both. How smart you are combined with how much patience you have. Also, I don't like the word "constitution", and I think "health" would be better. Assuming they're even visible to the player. :)

I've also had this idea for a luck stat that wouldn't measure how lucky you are, but how much luck you have left. You start with a fixed amount and you can't normally increase it, and you can permanently sacrifice a point or two to do things like perfectly succeed at any single action or evade certain death. It'd make the game less realistic and more "Action Movie", but I think that's fine. I think the most irritating part of combat in Dwarf Fortress Adventure Mode is when a highly skilled character gets killed by a lucky shot. Would it be too much like a lives system?

As for character advancement, a problem I foresee is pacifism. Since stealth will apparently be a large part of the game, any system that requires you to kill people to get more powerful is right out. A skill based system with no concept of experience levels sounds fine, as long as there are enough opportunities to train them. LCS forces you to commit hundreds of practice murders to train up your combat skills, and that kind of kills the idea of staying hidden from the authorities. Yet on the other hand, if training skills is too easy, the flow of game gets broken. If you can safely level grind skills in your hideout with no risk, the skills become kind of pointless, as every character can get them without having to play the actual game. Make training require teachers and money? Automate the training and make it take lots of time, so that if you do it too much, you die of old age?

The kind of instanced city with areas separated by loading screens that LCS and the old Infinity Engine games have would work well here, yes. Possibly have random locations for chases and such, in addition to all the areas with interesting things in them? Back alleys, orbital motorways, stuff like that. Every time you reach an edge of an area, you have a chance to get away from your pursuers; depending on how many of them there are, how close they are, bonuses for knowing this area of the city well; and if you fail, you get tossed to a random street and get another shot at shaking them off. If there's some idea on how the persistent city areas are connected to each other, you could also get to pass through some of them while running away. Eh, maybe just go with the escape minigame LCS has.

Would a DF-style persistent city be too difficult to implement? It would make leaving your mark on the world mean something.

Okay, this post is getting kind of long, so I think I'll just click post and ramble more later.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: DarkGod on August 30, 2010, 08:46:59 am
TE4 supports a "world" savefile independant of player savefile, this can be used to save the levels if you wish, although I am not sure it would bring much to the game. Yes you could leave your mark on the world, but then you have problems like making sure the world can't be emptied by too many killers and so on.
I am not sure it's that neat, but anyway, the engine should allow it if you wish it ;)

As for splitting into zones, yes you most probably want to do it
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Soadreqm on August 30, 2010, 09:12:44 am
Yeah, you'd need a number of subfeatures. I expect some of them would be trickier than just making the game save the world separately. The city must rebuild and repopulate if it gets destroyed by, for example, the player. The game must react when you destroy factions, such as crime syndicates, probably by making other factions expand to fill the power vacuum or letting new factions emerge without the player. Ability to let the city run without an active player character, to let it regenerate extensive damage. Make NPCs die of old age, make non-player factions fight among themselves, let people (and buildings) be replaced without player interaction; otherwise the city will be utterly static despite several years passing. Some handwave explanation for why we still don't have flying cars. And getting any benefit out of this would need even more things, like newspaper articles and other ways to learn about past people; maps, notes and buried treasure; and copycat killers.

But, this is pie-in-the-sky stuff, and I think someone advocated against that earlier. Nice to know the engine theoretically supports it, at least.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on August 30, 2010, 10:15:19 am
Flying car handwave:  People get killed in the thousands every year on regular highways, can you imagine if they were doing it 30 or 40 feet up in the air?


Anyway, I like the idea of primary and secondary attributes, so we've got the basic stuff

Muscle
Constitution
Coordination
Intelligence
Charisma
Willpower
Perception

(Something minor.  Coordination is really similar-looking to constitution.  I think the attributes should be differentiated a bit more, and I'm not opposed to the default STR, CON, DEX, INT, CHA, WIL, PER)

And then secondary attributes that are based on the others.

Reflexes - Ability to avoid danger and take advantage of momentary opportunities in combat, function of Coord and Perception

That's the only one I can think of at the moment.  Maybe not make them full-on attributes.  Also, while abstracting stats out is cool for NPCs and stuff, I'm a little leery of doing that for the player, and I think they should have a more detailed view of their character.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Tellemurius on August 30, 2010, 10:37:40 am
you forgot luck, everyone needs luck or has luck just at different levels.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Deon on August 30, 2010, 10:46:12 am
Luck should be a "hidden" stat :P. Like a hidden fun stuff. It should be affected by various stuff like amulets, praying and curses, but the player should not see it to avoid total metagaming. You can determine someone's reflexes, IQ, weight or strength but I doubt you can deteremine one's luck too easily, and let it be that way, it's more fun when a player carries some ear necklace around WITHOUT knowing if it adds something or not.

If you need a spritework, just ask. And I hope it does not end as a "spore roguelike".

Who's working on it again?

Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on August 30, 2010, 10:54:31 am
Luck should be a "hidden" stat :P. Like a hidden fun stuff. It should be affected by various stuff like amulets, praying and curses, but the player should not see it to avoid total metagaming. You can determine someone's reflexes, IQ, weight or strength but I doubt you can deteremine one's luck too easily, and let it be that way, it's more fun when a player carries some ear necklace around WITHOUT knowing if it adds something or not.

If you need a spritework, just ask. And I hope it does not end as a "spore roguelike".

Who's working on it again?

This is supposed to be a realistic RPG as far as I know, I highly doubt stuff like amulets, praying, and curses will be implemented.

I'm not sure we need luck at all.  Successful criminals make their own luck.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Soadreqm on August 30, 2010, 10:54:54 am
Also, while abstracting stats out is cool for NPCs and stuff, I'm a little leery of doing that for the player, and I think they should have a more detailed view of their character.

It'd definitely be helpful to see them as numbers during character generation, assuming you have control over that rather than just picking a pre-created job background out of a list. Which might be interesting, by the way. Make the character feel more like a part of the world.

But yeah, I don't really see a point in not displaying your own stats as numbers. It might help immersion, I guess. And numbers are clichéd, yes, but I don't really see why we should avoid that. Clichés become so because they work. There's enough novelty factor in the premise. As Mr. King's trolling efforts have proven, controversy is the best possible advertising. If the marketing department discovers that this looks too much like average roguelike #57 and nobody is interested, we can just add something horrible like eating fetuses. Add some concept art to the menu screen background of someone eating a fetus. Bam, instant fame.

Speaking of immersion, I'm not sure if the "developing psychological problems"-mechanic is a good idea. The various forms of madness are a cool feature, but they enforce this arbitrary barrier between the player and the character, and I don't think that should be a mandatory part of the game. I would suggest letting the player pick them at character generation, like CrimsonKing's mockup.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Ochita on August 30, 2010, 11:13:54 am
This seems interesting. Are you going to include things like hollow-point and such? (Bullets)
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Grendus on August 30, 2010, 11:28:47 am
The problem with "developing psychoses" is that it's unrealistic. Hit men don't become serial killers, serial killers are mostly made in childhood (number one common trait is inconsistent discipline, according to an FBI study - either the discipline was completely random or ridiculously harsh). They may be drawn to that particular career choice due to their own desires, but it doesn't make them suddenly want to start killing more. However, if we assume your character has the general background to develop these things, what would be more likely to trigger them would be a stressor. Generally speaking, any non-genetic mental disorder is almost always preceded by a period of high stress. So for example, if your character is a thief, he might become a kleptomaniac after the death of a loved one, or after being nearly beaten to death by cops or something. A hit man with a serial killer background might suddenly hit on his fantasy (which was hidden from the player) and start suffering from stress and desire to do... something to that NPC he just saw. Fulfilling the fantasy would remove the stress, which would be very difficult to calm otherwise.

I think the problem with this simulator being a general crime simulator trying to pick up fame in the wake of the SKRoguelike is that serial killers are not normal killers. They kill for a reason nobody can understand, they do strange things to satisfy an internal urge that even the killers themselves don't know the source of, and they are rarely interested in what normal people would be. They can't be reasoned with like a normal human, the link between them and their victims has more to do with their internal fantasy and random chance, and they are often unable to control their actions unlike a regular criminal who could stop, albeit with some danger. Treating them like a normal criminal works for a game, but if, as Cthulhu says, you want realism they have to be treated as a third classification of human being - law abiding, criminals, and serial killers. Trying to model them with the same motivations as normal criminals won't get you the depth of immersion you're hoping for.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on August 30, 2010, 11:32:16 am
I'm thinking we should just divorce entirely from the serial killer thing.

If you want to go be a serial killer, the framework would probably be able to handle it if we do the things we're planning on doing, but I don't see why we need to make it a full-on simulation seeing as we have all these other things we can do that aren't so alien to our normal non-crazy minds.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on August 30, 2010, 11:56:46 am
Amulets and magic? What?

Quote from: grendus
think the problem with this simulator being a general crime simulator trying to pick up fame in the wake of the SKRoguelike is that serial killers are not normal killers.

I think it's a nonissue because SK's aren't the focus of this game. If they're in the game they'll just be gimmick characters. It'd be like playing a zombie in Rogue Survivor. Yea, you could do it and it might be fun, but that's not what the game was built around. If someone wants to make it really detailed it's a framework so you can easily add in detailed SK stuff with all the correct motivations, psychology and whatever else you want.

I'm thinking we should just divorce entirely from the serial killer thing.

SK's are just a blurb in class selections right now. It effects nothing we do until we decide to throw em in or leave them out at the end. Way more basic stuff needs to get done.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Sir Pseudonymous on August 30, 2010, 12:13:09 pm
I'm intrigued by this, but I'm not entirely confident in my programming abilities. I suppose I'll poke around TE4, and see if it makes sense. If I find I have the time and motivation to contribute, I'll see if there's anything I can help with.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on August 30, 2010, 12:56:03 pm
It'll be a bit easier to play around with stuff when the basic foundation of our work is there. There's some things like inventory that aren't present in the example module.

Anyways, I've been tooling around and I implemented sprinting and sneaking as well as most of the stats we talked about. Haven't done anything with luck yet.

Location based damage is another thing that needs to be decided. Are people just blocks of HP's or can their limbs be targeted and mangled?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Soadreqm on August 30, 2010, 01:01:09 pm
On game terms, what would be the difference between a serial killer and a regular protagonist? They'll both be killing people, most of the time. Just the psychological thingamajigs that FORCE you to kill people in a particular way or suffer stat penalties? Yeah, that doesn't sound like it'd be too hard to do afterwards if someone feels like it.

As for the amulets and magic, well, there's a lot of settings you can pick for a crime-focused game. Assuming we want a modern time period, with guns but no robots, the sliding scale goes through:

Completely mundane: There is no God, magic isn't real, and you can die from stubbing your toe on an upright nail and getting a nasty infection which you can't get treated because the police are looking for you.
Action film: Presented as the previous, but really isn't. Some people can shrug off major injuries and perform superhuman feats of endurance and acrobatics. Some people might have unexplained, seemingly supernatural abilities, such as knowing when their loved ones are in danger, or winning at games of chance way more often than they statistically should. This is where a luck stat would start affecting something.
Somewhat plausible: Things like ghosts unambiguously exist, although more focused magic might still be an esoteric art left for NPC voodoo priests. Some people routinely cheat death. The Joker might have just been bleeding to death inside a burning building that exploded and then collapsed, but he's certainly going to come back.
Urban fantasy: The world only makes sense as long as you don't look at it too closely. In reality, there are secret societies of vampires and wizards and werewolves everywhere. Mythological creatures abound.

And of course anything between these, or any combination of any elements. Like a world where vampires rule the night but nothing else supernatural exists and plot-important people die in car accidents.

I don't think realism should be paramount. Nor should it be confused with detail. I think that for gameplay purposes, the protagonist should be more resilient than real humans are. And that having to deal with the vengeful dead would be cool. Actual charms and amulets and plus five vorpal handguns might very quickly become too silly, though. And getting the game to a point where you can attack an enemy and die should probably be a priority.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on August 30, 2010, 01:09:01 pm
I was thinking have a separate (invisible) HP value for each body part.  Maybe start with just head, torso, and limbs, but possibly eventually moving on to a more detailed set up.

Each body part would have a pretty high number for HP (To facilitate damage multipliers and stuff, which would get problematic if each limb only had 10 or 20 HP), and depending on the attack type and the body part being attacked bonuses, multipliers, etc. are added.

So, like, arms and legs would take more damage from slashing and blunt weapons because they're thin and easier to chop off.  The torso would take more damage from piercing weapons because it's full of organs, and the head should take high damage from anything.

Maybe at certain amounts of HP the performance of the limb degrades, or maybe certain attacks increase a value separate from the HP (Sort of like Deep Wounds in Lusternia.)  You do x hp damage, lowering the limb's HP; and y wound damage, increasing that value, and as y increases the risk of debilitating injury to the limb increases.

At 0 HP or certain wound effects the limb would be rendered useless, or the player killed if it were the head or torso, with various satisfyingly gory effects.

At least, that's what's been floating around in my head.

Ninja:  I say somewhere between mundane and action film.  Obviously no one wants to lose a character to something ridiculous like an infected toe stub, but otherwise realism.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Ochita on August 30, 2010, 01:10:39 pm
On game terms, what would be the difference between a serial killer and a regular protagonist? They'll both be killing people, most of the time. Just the psychological thingamajigs that FORCE you to kill people in a particular way or suffer stat penalties? Yeah, that doesn't sound like it'd be too hard to do afterwards if someone feels like it.

As for the amulets and magic, well, there's a lot of settings you can pick for a crime-focused game. Assuming we want a modern time period, with guns but no robots, the sliding scale goes through:

Completely mundane: There is no God, magic isn't real, and you can die from stubbing your toe on an upright nail and getting a nasty infection which you can't get treated because the police are looking for you.
Action film: Presented as the previous, but really isn't. Some people can shrug off major injuries and perform superhuman feats of endurance and acrobatics. Some people might have unexplained, seemingly supernatural abilities, such as knowing when their loved ones are in danger, or winning at games of chance way more often than they statistically should. This is where a luck stat would start affecting something.
Somewhat plausible: Things like ghosts unambiguously exist, although more focused magic might still be an esoteric art left for NPC voodoo priests. Some people routinely cheat death. The Joker might have just been bleeding to death inside a burning building that exploded and then collapsed, but he's certainly going to come back.
Urban fantasy: The world only makes sense as long as you don't look at it too closely. In reality, there are secret societies of vampires and wizards and werewolves everywhere. Mythological creatures abound.

And of course anything between these, or any combination of any elements. Like a world where vampires rule the night but nothing else supernatural exists and plot-important people die in car accidents.

I don't think realism should be paramount. Nor should it be confused with detail. I think that for gameplay purposes, the protagonist should be more resilient than real humans are. And that having to deal with the vengeful dead would be cool. Actual charms and amulets and plus five vorpal handguns might very quickly become too silly, though. And getting the game to a point where you can attack an enemy and die should probably be a priority.
If you could somehow make those go on a slider it would be amazing, however I will just say Action film to somewhat plausible
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Soadreqm on August 30, 2010, 01:14:07 pm
It'll be a bit easier to play around with stuff when the basic foundation of our work is there. There's some things like inventory that aren't present in the example module.

Anyways, I've been tooling around and I implemented sprinting and sneaking as well as most of the stats we talked about. Haven't done anything with luck yet.

Location based damage is another thing that needs to be decided. Are people just blocks of HP's or can their limbs be targeted and mangled?
Ah, yes, the inventory. Shall it be a simple list with no indication as to how you are carrying all this crap, or a hermetic inventory management puzzle with pockets and backpacks with specific volumes and gun holsters at specific locations in your body and needing your hands free to pick things up and hiding lockpicks in your mouth? :P

I think location based damage would be good, if the engine bends to it. Then again, I'm a sucker for unnecessary detail, and absolutely adore Toady's system of keeping track of every scar.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on August 30, 2010, 02:21:15 pm
Xegeth lent an idea on locational damage here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=64902.0

I go for locational damage. Make things a lot more interesting, and flavorful. As for an inventory, that's a neat idea to have the player organize the inventory, but I'm not sure how feasible it would be to code it up. Though, maybe it'd be neat to have an inventory, then you could have container objects that are set as hidden, so if you put something in it and someone searches you, they might not see that you have it. Or just have certain objects automatically be hidden, like small knives or such.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Sir Pseudonymous on August 30, 2010, 02:21:55 pm
On game terms, what would be the difference between a serial killer and a regular protagonist? They'll both be killing people, most of the time. Just the psychological thingamajigs that FORCE you to kill people in a particular way or suffer stat penalties? Yeah, that doesn't sound like it'd be too hard to do afterwards if someone feels like it.

As for the amulets and magic, well, there's a lot of settings you can pick for a crime-focused game. Assuming we want a modern time period, with guns but no robots, the sliding scale goes through:

Completely mundane: There is no God, magic isn't real, and you can die from stubbing your toe on an upright nail and getting a nasty infection which you can't get treated because the police are looking for you.
Action film: Presented as the previous, but really isn't. Some people can shrug off major injuries and perform superhuman feats of endurance and acrobatics. Some people might have unexplained, seemingly supernatural abilities, such as knowing when their loved ones are in danger, or winning at games of chance way more often than they statistically should. This is where a luck stat would start affecting something.
Somewhat plausible: Things like ghosts unambiguously exist, although more focused magic might still be an esoteric art left for NPC voodoo priests. Some people routinely cheat death. The Joker might have just been bleeding to death inside a burning building that exploded and then collapsed, but he's certainly going to come back.
Urban fantasy: The world only makes sense as long as you don't look at it too closely. In reality, there are secret societies of vampires and wizards and werewolves everywhere. Mythological creatures abound.

And of course anything between these, or any combination of any elements. Like a world where vampires rule the night but nothing else supernatural exists and plot-important people die in car accidents.

I don't think realism should be paramount. Nor should it be confused with detail. I think that for gameplay purposes, the protagonist should be more resilient than real humans are. And that having to deal with the vengeful dead would be cool. Actual charms and amulets and plus five vorpal handguns might very quickly become too silly, though. And getting the game to a point where you can attack an enemy and die should probably be a priority.
If you could somehow make those go on a slider it would be amazing, however I will just say Action film to somewhat plausible
That actually sounds pretty easy to do in and of itself, though of course agreeing on how to do all the supernatural shit (and actually implementing it) would add a lot more work, unless it was only trivially different from the mundane stuff, in which case there wouldn't be much point to it...

It occurs to me that it could trivially be done by having the base game having all the mechanics implemented, but drawing on different npc archetype/item lists, so that a Realism mode wouldn't have varying luck stats, or any kind of "burn luck/some other luck-related point to survive massive damage/retry a missed attack/whatever" ability, nor would supernatural beings spawn nor supernatural items drop, while Urban Fantasy mode could have all of the above.

Assuming you're not planning to hardcode all the items and npc's, that would just boil down to a menu option on starting a new game amounting to "Which data set would you like to populate the world from?"

And of course actually creating and implementing the mechanics for all that, which would take a good deal of effort and work.

I quite like that idea myself, and since I'm not actually too concerned with my ability to pick this up, I suppose I'll take a look at the engine once I've sorted things out with a friend of mine who's holding a grudge over a drunken fight (like a fucking child >:() since I need cigarettes and can't get out to get any when I'm not going out and doing shit.



I'm on the side of location based damage, and a more complex inventory layout. Thus, placing things in pockets, pouches, packs, but also an idea of straps/belts, like you'd get with some guns, or on packs, and needing one's hands free to use an item (perhaps a coordination check to accomplish simple tasks with your hands full?), perhaps even allowing for multiple items to be carried at once (think a bundle of something, or a precarious stack held between one's arms and one's chest), along with a fuzzier encumbrance system than "59.9 weight units and you're perfectly fine to run a marathon across the city! 60 weight units and you can't budge an inch, or have trouble walking across the room (lol STALKER),".

I suppose there are lots of little details that are very much irrelevant to getting it working in the first place, but these are things to keep in mind.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on August 30, 2010, 02:41:01 pm
How would you guys feel about using a skill system like this:

Thievery- X points
    Pickpocking - Y Points
    Lockpicking - Z Points

You can put points or train thievery which general helps all the sills in the subsection or you can specialize specifically in just lockpicking.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Funk on August 30, 2010, 03:01:11 pm
This seems interesting. Are you going to include things like hollow-point and such? (Bullets)
the T Engine will not have any trouble doing hollow-point,  full metal jacket bullets and plan lead bullets.

im thinking for haveing maybe 4 ammo types

HP(hollow-point)  higher odds of Critical wounds but worse vs bullet proof vests

FMJ( full metal jacket) your every day bullet and the base line

AP(Armor-piercing) the best vs bullet proof vests but only make small wounds

Explosive bullets,rare and prohibited but when thay work thay make large wounds.

For armor maybe two types melee and guns.

gun armor will have 6 levels based on RL's NIJ Standard-0101.06.


Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on August 30, 2010, 03:04:59 pm
I think we should stick with basic mechanics for now.  We've got plenty of time for all that once the foundation is laid.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Ochita on August 30, 2010, 03:06:37 pm
Sounds good.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on August 30, 2010, 03:14:52 pm
Regardless of subtypes or categorization we need to compile a list of skills so I'm just throwing out whatever comes to mind:

-Lockpicking
-Hotwiring
-Electronics (perhaps hotwiring goes into the electronics category)
-Smooth Talking
-Streetwise
-Firearms (with subtypes for every class)
-Explosives
-Leadership
-Haggling
-Pushing (getting people interested in things they normally wouldn't even buy at any price)
-Urban acrobatics/Parkour
-Martial Arts (maybe specific ones for nonlethal or submission holds)
-Melee Weapons (possibly subtypes for weird ones like chains)
-Driving
-Disguises
-Mechanics (subtypes for certain specialized modifications)
-Computers
-Sneaking
-Pickpocketing
-"Looking for something that essentially means being able to blend into a crowd"
-Fitness (climbing, running...)
-Throwing
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Ochita on August 30, 2010, 03:43:40 pm
Computers could go into electronics. Martial arts can be just that. Melee weapons are subtypes (Knives, clubs, pistol whipping (its all in the technique), whips and a possible home-made?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Soadreqm on August 30, 2010, 03:47:59 pm
How would you guys feel about using a skill system like this:

Thievery- X points
    Pickpocking - Y Points
    Lockpicking - Z Points

You can put points or train thievery which general helps all the sills in the subsection or you can specialize specifically in just lockpicking.
I can see that working if you're using points to buy skills rather than training them by use, but there's the problem of where you get the points. Just killing enemies to gain experience and levels doesn't really work because that would leave stealth-based characters forever stranded to the bottom of the experience ladder. For a train-by-use system, I think it'd be better to just have similar skills give bonuses to each other. Both require finger dexterity, so being an expert pickpocket also helps when opening locks? I'm not familiar enough with either to tell whether that makes sense. :P How about making training the skill also slowly train the associated attribute, so that becoming an expert pickpocket would also make you more dexterous, thus helping with locks?

That actually sounds pretty easy to do in and of itself, though of course agreeing on how to do all the supernatural shit (and actually implementing it) would add a lot more work, unless it was only trivially different from the mundane stuff, in which case there wouldn't be much point to it...

A setting slider in the game options would be just super if it's feasible. Yeah, I guess most of the hard work would go into implementing the vampires in the first place, and making the game not use them if the option isn't set would be easy.

I'm on the side of location based damage, and a more complex inventory layout. Thus, placing things in pockets, pouches, packs, but also an idea of straps/belts, like you'd get with some guns, or on packs, and needing one's hands free to use an item (perhaps a coordination check to accomplish simple tasks with your hands full?), perhaps even allowing for multiple items to be carried at once (think a bundle of something, or a precarious stack held between one's arms and one's chest), along with a fuzzier encumbrance system than "59.9 weight units and you're perfectly fine to run a marathon across the city! 60 weight units and you can't budge an inch, or have trouble walking across the room (lol STALKER),".

A really complex inventory layout could both help with immersion (I have this knife in my right jacket pocket and I can take it out this quickly), and hurt it. (What do you mean, "no free grasp"? Just pick up the fucking knife!) The inventory should be easy to manage so that it doesn't ACTUALLY become an annoying puzzle you must wrestle with every time you pick something up. Try playing a game of DF Adventure Mode without a backpack. It's terrible. There should be plenty of ways to carry items (like bags, backpacks, tool belts, pockets, holsters etc.) and the item size and volume restrictions should be fairly lenient. And maybe letting you carry an unrealistic amount of things in your hands, so that if you just want to grab a shitton of stuff and haul it to the other side of the room without worrying of things like stealth and acrobatics penalties, you can do that easily. Giving a lot of really small movement penalties for carrying everything might be good. Having any amount of weight on you starts slowing your running speed, but you can still walk normally with a heavy load. And if you're carrying something weird where it's visible, people should get suspicious.

Speaking of taking knives out quickly, what're we planning to do with time? It might be cool to have things like western-style gunfights where the winner is the guy who draws faster. Would it be worthwhile to separate the actions of drawing, aiming and firing a weapon, so that spraying a magazine of bullets vaguely to the right direction would take next to no time, and pointing the bloody thing at the target would be the involving part?

Quote from: Lap
skills
Would "explosives" be, like, operating explosives or making them? It could be split to "electronics" for knowing how detonators are put together and how you defuse them, and "chemistry" for mixing together your own bombs. Chemistry could also be used for making and identifying poisons and drugs and such. Also, some kind of medicine skill, for basic first aid and generally treating yourself when injured.

(Oh no another wall of text I'm sorry I'm just excited about this)
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Ochita on August 30, 2010, 04:01:20 pm
(Oh no another wall of text I'm sorry I'm just excited about this)
We all are.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on August 30, 2010, 04:46:12 pm
A good point was brought up about skill progression and the general feel of the game.

Item based<------------------------------->Character Based

Roguelikes fall somewhere on this spectrum.

The item based side says that skills are extremely hard to improve and the most important determining factor in the firefight is going to be who's got the bigger gun. These types of games tend to have a "live fast, die hard" approach. Your starting character can usually take out plenty of cops if he finds an assault rifle early. However, you're far more likely to die yourself and every encounter has a potential for great danger.

Character based games will have the newbie character firing like a stormtrooper while the experienced gunman will snipe off your eyeball. Most commercial games are extremely heavy on the character side. Roguelikes tend to have a bit more item focus.


So for one....how far can skills progress? Are they mostly static from creation? How much more relatively powerful is an endgame character from a starting one?

We've also got the choice of action hero style vs. a more realistic approach so throw in your votes.


If an experience point system would be used we wouldn't be leaving the stealthers in the dust. Exp would just be provided for completing goals instead of just killing someone. So if you were assigned a job to get some piece of art, it doesn't matter if you kill everyone in the museum, sweet talk your way in, or just break in at night, you'd get the same EXP. Also probably would need a way to get XP from minor milestones throughout the game to keep it from being 100% mission based.

If we do a skill based approach where skills improve with repeated use I don't want it to devolve into sitting in a corner picking and relocking a box to improve skills. Grinding up skills is something for MMO's. This is supposed to be fun. Paying a trainer seems fine, but what are the limits? Is it just money? Time? Some artificial level limits? Rarity of trainers?

Unless we can find a really good way to prevent boring skill grinding I'm leaning more towards applying XP from goals.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on August 30, 2010, 05:08:41 pm
Trainers can only get you so far.  I can see meeting a professional locksmith and getting up to 40-60% (Assuming a percentile skill system for the sake of an example), but after that you're going to have to go out and practice on real locks.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Strange guy on August 30, 2010, 05:14:07 pm
I think the distinction in character power should mainly exist in the lower skill levels- which means you'll often be able to make do with what you start with, but if you want to do something new you'll have to practice a bit. This allows a bit of flexibility but also makes how you start important. While better items should be nice they should only become important when you have decent skills- no point using a more powerful gun when you can barely handle the recoil of your current one, but with some more skills it will become a straight upgrade. So basically skills first early game and items (as well as information, allies and other such stuff) late game, though you'll still want to improve your skills later and get decent equipment in the beginning.

From a realism point of view I prefer skill based, though as you mentioned it created some issues. Skill should be trainable up to a low level with nothing but the appropriate equipment- trainers and a training command. But later on you should need to do the skills in a dangerous context. For example if you are aiming to improve lock picking you could set your character to train with a box and wire for say 2 hours so you get a basic level of understanding. You could then try to pick someones locks to learn under pressure. If you did it the other way round you'll be panicking and not know what to do in the real situation and then have nothing left to learn with the box. One thing you'll need to do is make different tasks equal and not encourage grinding. For example giving someone a weak gun so gun fights last longer and they gain more xp could be an issue. Also sneaking, talking and the like should give enough xp to compete with combat.

Sorry for rambling on here.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on August 30, 2010, 05:16:42 pm
Trainers can only get you so far.  I can see meeting a professional locksmith and getting up to 40-60% (Assuming a percentile skill system for the sake of an example), but after that you're going to have to go out and practice on real locks.

How does this stop me from having to grind away somewhere safe just picking locks to improve skill. It also makes some skills absolute nightmares to level up. We also get a situation where with things like sneaking where the player just turns on sneaking and sneaks absolutely everywhere. Then to counteract this the skill improvement rates need to be lowered, forcing legitimate players to have to grind their sneaking skill.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on August 30, 2010, 05:24:12 pm
A couple of games that just came to mind might help with some inspiration.


Rogue survivor
- No matter how you survive you'll get a point at the end of the day. You're not forced to kill anyone or play a specific way. Unfortunately, survival simply isn't a viable milestone for our game.

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup - EXP from killing monsters goes into a pool. When you use skills it will put a portion of that EXP towards the skill. It's a mixed system that prevents players from having to train skills instead of just letting the player play. It also prevents someone from just getting a lot of EXP and leveling up totally unrelated skills they've never used before. I like the balance. If applied to our game, EXP would be obtained from goals and not just killing.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on August 30, 2010, 05:28:52 pm
Throwing my vote in for complex inventory, as it sounds fucking awesome.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on August 30, 2010, 05:33:08 pm
Assuming you have a collection of quality practice locks of varying difficulty, grinding is totally a legitimate way to practice lockpicking.

Maybe each milestone (Be that a mission, successful heist, or simply a period of time) skills used are marked somehow and when the mission or whatever is completed, experience is distributed to marked skills.

That seems like a good compromise.  You can't just sit doing the same thing over and over again for a significant gain while also preventing you from getting better at automatic rifles by stealing a car.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Sir Pseudonymous on August 30, 2010, 05:36:11 pm
That actually sounds pretty easy to do in and of itself, though of course agreeing on how to do all the supernatural shit (and actually implementing it) would add a lot more work, unless it was only trivially different from the mundane stuff, in which case there wouldn't be much point to it...

A setting slider in the game options would be just super if it's feasible. Yeah, I guess most of the hard work would go into implementing the vampires in the first place, and making the game not use them if the option isn't set would be easy.
Perhaps not a slider per se, but a few different options would probably be easy, if each used a different list of what to spawn/drop. So long as all the item and npc type definitions (and basic PC template(s)) were stored in special files, like df's raws.

So, say, a "Realism mode" list would have mundane items and regular humans, with the luck stat set to whatever level wouldn't give a bonus or penalty in whatever it does, specifically, while an "Action movie" one would also have mundane items and regular humans, but luck would exist, and there may be some ability that allows you to burn/temporarily deplete luck (or some other stat based on luck and modified in various ways by one's actions, like being increased by pulling off something difficult without using/with minimal use of the points) to survive/avoid grievous injury, or retry an attack/skill check (I'm inspired specifically by Dark Heresy's fate points here, though I seem to recall other RPG systems having comparable points). A "Light fantasy" list would have minor supernatural things, as very rare and unexpected encounters, along with (optionally?) what was found in "Action Movie" mode, perhaps even to a stronger extent (more extreme luck stats, more powerful options for "fate manipulation" stuff). And "Urban Fantasy" might have vampire crime families a la VtM, zombies in the sewers, mages of some type or another, that sort of shit.

Of course, at higher levels, you run into much more variety in what could be done, and it's a lot more content than would be in the basic mode, so I would say to more or less ignore that end of the spectrum initially, but try to set things up so that one could choose to use a specific list of items/npcs to allow work in that direction in the future (and leave it easily modable, as a bonus).


Basically, I mean that the mechanics of the game would always (once implemented) include both the basics, and special, supernatural abilites, but in order for the supernatural abilities to ever appear in the game, there would have to be something in the raw file that's being used that has the ability, like an "UNNATURAL_LUCK" (for a "spend luck/whatever to retry a skillcheck" sort of ability) or a "BURSTS_INTO_FLAME_IN_SUNLIGHT" tag.

Quote
I'm on the side of location based damage, and a more complex inventory layout. Thus, placing things in pockets, pouches, packs, but also an idea of straps/belts, like you'd get with some guns, or on packs, and needing one's hands free to use an item (perhaps a coordination check to accomplish simple tasks with your hands full?), perhaps even allowing for multiple items to be carried at once (think a bundle of something, or a precarious stack held between one's arms and one's chest), along with a fuzzier encumbrance system than "59.9 weight units and you're perfectly fine to run a marathon across the city! 60 weight units and you can't budge an inch, or have trouble walking across the room (lol STALKER),".

A really complex inventory layout could both help with immersion (I have this knife in my right jacket pocket and I can take it out this quickly), and hurt it. (What do you mean, "no free grasp"? Just pick up the fucking knife!) The inventory should be easy to manage so that it doesn't ACTUALLY become an annoying puzzle you must wrestle with every time you pick something up. Try playing a game of DF Adventure Mode without a backpack. It's terrible. There should be plenty of ways to carry items (like bags, backpacks, tool belts, pockets, holsters etc.) and the item size and volume restrictions should be fairly lenient. And maybe letting you carry an unrealistic amount of things in your hands, so that if you just want to grab a shitton of stuff and haul it to the other side of the room without worrying of things like stealth and acrobatics penalties, you can do that easily. Giving a lot of really small movement penalties for carrying everything might be good. Having any amount of weight on you starts slowing your running speed, but you can still walk normally with a heavy load. And if you're carrying something weird where it's visible, people should get suspicious.

Personally, I'd err on the side of realism for the inventory, and just try to make potentially annoying tasks easier, and then refine/fix problem areas once it becomes apparent where they are, rather than starting small and slowly making things more realistic, where you'd be adding potential problem areas rather than just fixing them.

Quote
Speaking of taking knives out quickly, what're we planning to do with time? It might be cool to have things like western-style gunfights where the winner is the guy who draws faster.
Technically the guns they used couldn't hit the broad side of a barn at the ranges such duels would take place at, so speed had essentially nothing to do with who survived...

Quote
Would it be worthwhile to separate the actions of drawing, aiming and firing a weapon, so that spraying a magazine of bullets vaguely to the right direction would take next to no time, and pointing the bloody thing at the target would be the involving part?
Well, probably the longest action there would be bringing the gun up to where you could aim from, since, in my experience, the actual aiming part (unless going for careful precision) is rather brief and automatic. Of course, if you don't want to make guns realistically OP, you'd have to gimp them somehow, and that might be one place to do it... On the other hand, in a "Realism mode", you might well want guns to be devastating weapons they are, with their downside being the volume and possible illegality...

If an experience point system would be used we wouldn't be leaving the stealthers in the dust. Exp would just be provided for completing goals instead of just killing someone. So if you were assigned a job to get some piece of art, it doesn't matter if you kill everyone in the museum, sweet talk your way in, or just break in at night, you'd get the same EXP. Also probably would need a way to get XP from minor milestones throughout the game to keep it from being 100% mission based.

If we do a skill based approach where skills improve with repeated use I don't want it to devolve into sitting in a corner picking and relocking a box to improve skills. Grinding up skills is something for MMO's. This is supposed to be fun. Paying a trainer seems fine, but what are the limits? Is it just money? Time? Some artificial level limits? Rarity of trainers?

Unless we can find a really good way to prevent boring skill grinding I'm leaning more towards applying XP from goals.
Perhaps a mixture would work? You gain specialized experience for using skills, and some percentage of that as generic experience, and then have the option of leveling a skill either with generic experience, or with specialized, perhaps giving an option to convert specialized into generic at a penalty.

Or allowing a sort of auto-grind, where you just set it to a task for a certain number of in-game hours/minutes, and then it just rushes through that with no interaction from the player, though of course that could only be done for so much of the time, and you'd have to spend the rest of the time working/sleeping/whatever. This would be like practicing picking a lock, moving quietly across a floor, using a firing range to practice aiming (though that would cost money for ammunition), etc.

Trainers can only get you so far.  I can see meeting a professional locksmith and getting up to 40-60% (Assuming a percentile skill system for the sake of an example), but after that you're going to have to go out and practice on real locks.

How does this stop me from having to grind away somewhere safe just picking locks to improve skill. It also makes some skills absolute nightmares to level up. We also get a situation where with things like sneaking where the player just turns on sneaking and sneaks absolutely everywhere. Then to counteract this the skill improvement rates need to be lowered, forcing legitimate players to have to grind their sneaking skill.
Sneaking is a suspicious activity, and creeping across a street in broad daylight hunched over shouldn't really count as "sneaking" to begin with. Stealth shouldn't be a "stand in the middle of a brightly lit room, completely invisible to everyone, just because you have 1337 sneaking skills", and should be more a mix of perception (determining where things that could see you are), ability to move silently (so as not to draw unwanted attention), remain still and silent in hiding (so as not to draw unwanted attention), and detecting places to hide (so as to have some place to hide).
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Acanthus117 on August 30, 2010, 06:20:44 pm
I'd love to beta-test this.

Sign me up please!
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: x2yzh9 on August 30, 2010, 06:24:36 pm
Won't be able to make it sry will e explain more later (in hurry posting on iPhone)
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on August 30, 2010, 06:53:24 pm
Won't be able to make it sry will e explain more later (in hurry posting on iPhone)

I'm extremely curious as to what happened.

Regardless, I'm in the Pirate Pad. Waiting.

Watching.

Plotting.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on August 30, 2010, 06:57:37 pm
Location based damage. Poor gimpy guy. This isn't a mockup. It's in game after one day. Hooray for using existing engines.

(http://imgur.com/MJhw8.png) (http://imgur.com/MJhw8.png)
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on August 30, 2010, 06:59:50 pm
Neat!
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on August 30, 2010, 07:32:16 pm
Could I see the code for that? I'm curious as to how you managed it, and what files were made/edited/etc...

It looks awesome. Is there anything I could do to help out, say, with static/random maps and such?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on August 30, 2010, 07:42:31 pm
That looks pretty cool although there's a lot of unused space it seems like, maybe it's just because not everything's been implemented.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on August 30, 2010, 07:43:43 pm
That looks pretty cool although there's a lot of unused space it seems like, maybe it's just because not everything's been implemented.

1 day

Oh another thing....indoors vs outdoors. Should the buildings have their interiors seamless with the world (like Rogue Survivor and DF) or should the doors transport you into a different zone. You can do more detail with the teleport, but there's plenty of disadvantages too.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Tilla on August 30, 2010, 07:48:28 pm
I think in addition to locational damage, what would be interesting is a pain threshold - a maximum amount before they freak out and flee or curl up in a ball on the ground or just pass out entirely. :3
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on August 30, 2010, 07:52:20 pm
A pain based morale type stat could easily be a secondary stat based off constitution and willpower.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on August 30, 2010, 08:03:07 pm
Part of me thinks separate area,s but that will interfere with trying to shoot people in a building, etc.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Jack A T on August 30, 2010, 08:06:01 pm
Oh another thing....indoors vs outdoors. Should the buildings have their interiors seamless with the world (like Rogue Survivor and DF) or should the doors transport you into a different zone. You can do more detail with the teleport, but there's plenty of disadvantages too.

My idea: Ground floor should be seamless, stairs would teleport.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: tarsier on August 30, 2010, 08:06:49 pm

Oh another thing....indoors vs outdoors. Should the buildings have their interiors seamless with the world (like Rogue Survivor and DF) or should the doors transport you into a different zone. You can do more detail with the teleport, but there's plenty of disadvantages too.

This sort of thing must be seamless - shooting through windows, seeing who's inside, etc.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on August 30, 2010, 08:11:43 pm
I think it should be as seamless as possible. Districts would of course teleport, but for the most part the things within the district should be seamless.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Josephus on August 30, 2010, 08:11:58 pm
Postan to watch, and contribute later on.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Saint on August 30, 2010, 08:24:17 pm
(http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/387/genericgunquick.png)
Saint drew quick generic handgun for HUD/ invantory. purposes.
Working at 64x64 currently.
Would prefer using 32x32 but w/e this works I just need to get used to the size again.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on August 30, 2010, 08:28:10 pm
(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/whitetshirt.png)

Made a random sprite, 64x64. Should I continue making them in that size, or do 32x32?

Also, if the style doesn't fit, or if there are any changes to the image as required (darker image, different eye style, whatever), please tell me. This particular sprite is bald, in generic convict fashion.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Josephus on August 30, 2010, 08:30:51 pm
I wanna help with spritan. At work right now, so I can't do much, but when I get home I can submit stuff.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on August 30, 2010, 08:34:43 pm
Sprites are probably the only thing I can't give my valued input for, since I prefer ASCII.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on August 30, 2010, 08:36:39 pm
64x64 is big as hell.  We're not gonna be able to have very many tiles on screen if we go that big.

If we go too much smaller though, you won't be able to tell what anything is.

That's why I prefer ASCII.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Josephus on August 30, 2010, 08:40:23 pm
32x32 is my preferred.

I wonder if this could work in Isometric view like GearHead2 or Stonesense. More work for spriters, though.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: cappstv on August 30, 2010, 08:48:42 pm
I wish I could help with this project more then just suggesting ideas.
Anyway, besides shooting though windows, how about shooting though wood?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Jack A T on August 30, 2010, 08:50:40 pm
(http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/4374/bloodsplatter32v2.png)

32x32 spread and smudged pool of blood.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Josephus on August 30, 2010, 08:51:52 pm
I wish I could help with this project more then just suggesting ideas.
Anyway, besides shooting though windows, how about shooting though wood?

Shooting through walls in general. Weapons should have a penetration factor (1, 2, 3), as should walls and body armor. For example, a .22 rifle would have a penetration factor of 1, meaning that it can't punch through body armor (factor 2) or wood (factor 1) or walls (factor 3). Fists would have a penetration factor of 0. And so on.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on August 30, 2010, 09:08:07 pm
64x64 is big as hell.  We're not gonna be able to have very many tiles on screen if we go that big.

If we go too much smaller though, you won't be able to tell what anything is.

That's why I prefer ASCII.

Yeah, I think we're downsizing the 64 ones to 32. And I much prefer ASCII as well--been playing pretty much every single roguelike in ascii, because it's more comfortable, and doesn't randomly suffer from weird graphics.

I think Jack A T's bloodstain looks too wispy. Just do a splatter, maybe?

(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/bloodspatter.png)
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on August 30, 2010, 09:09:04 pm
Yeah, I like the pixel-style better.  What Kusgnos has looks good although it needs transparency.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: x2yzh9 on August 30, 2010, 09:18:07 pm
I wish I could help with this project more then just suggesting ideas.
Anyway, besides shooting though windows, how about shooting though wood?

Shooting through walls in general. Weapons should have a penetration factor (1, 2, 3), as should walls and body armor. For example, a .22 rifle would have a penetration factor of 1, meaning that it can't punch through body armor (factor 2) or wood (factor 1) or walls (factor 3). Fists would have a penetration factor of 0. And so on.
Well, maybe as you go up in Strength your fists get higher penetration factors? Hell, people who go to martial arts can break through fucking bricks. So maybe at highest strength you can punch through walls, but it alerts people in the area and slightly damages your fists?

Anyway, why was I not there? In short, very, very busy today. I won't go into details but this is the first time I get to relax today. I'm very sorry for missing the first Dev session.

Now, what did we cover today? I want to know what topics to go over tomorrow and what to work on and such. As well, I think my position would best be fit as a organizer-I can't be a website hoster(Maybe a blogspot until/if we get a website up and going). Truly sorry for missing the first Dev Session. I'm a terrible artist/not the best at coding, so I think I'd like to do the organizing. Ie. who does what, what we're going to work on, etc. We shouldn't focus on the big picture, just incremental steps. We should determine who's good at what and how good at it, so we can assign 'assignments'. I hate to use the term, but SOMEONES going to have to take up random generation, won't they?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Josephus on August 30, 2010, 09:20:07 pm
I wish I could help with this project more then just suggesting ideas.
Anyway, besides shooting though windows, how about shooting though wood?

Shooting through walls in general. Weapons should have a penetration factor (1, 2, 3), as should walls and body armor. For example, a .22 rifle would have a penetration factor of 1, meaning that it can't punch through body armor (factor 2) or wood (factor 1) or walls (factor 3). Fists would have a penetration factor of 0. And so on.
Well, maybe as you go up in Strength your fists get higher penetration factors? Hell, people who go to martial arts can break through fucking bricks. So maybe at highest strength you can punch through walls, but it alerts people in the area and slightly damages your fists?

Individual bricks, but not whole walls. Being able to punch through a wall and tear out the heart of the person standing on the other side would be totally bad-ass, though, but more of a "Slasher Roguelike" type deal.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on August 30, 2010, 09:24:22 pm
Also, a wall isn't just a thin sheet of bricks.  If you punch a metal stud you're going to ruin your hand.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Jack A T on August 30, 2010, 09:24:56 pm
(http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/1916/shovel.png)

A second attempt at spriting, also known as why I don't usually sprite.  It's a shovel, I think.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on August 30, 2010, 09:27:40 pm
And done.

(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/bloodspattertransparent.png)

How are the human sprites? Are they going to be randomized, a la Rogue Survivor? If so, I'll go and whip up more stuff if the others think it's alright.

...

Martial artists breaking through bricks is a little different from random strong criminal breaking people. And I think it'd take a while to break a wall with your bare hands, so unless it adds a lot to the game...though it'd be pretty kickass to bust down a wall after several turns, and encounter the people inside the house huddled far away on the other side, screaming expletives or generally freaking out. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe you could bust down cheap housing, and rudimentary barriers, but not well-constructed walls with your bare hands.

In regards to organizing this, it might be useful for someone to guide/gather info, and do the floorwork for determining what graphics and stuff we've gotten done. Lap is doing the coding, and has already coded quite a bit for the framework and locational damage, and is also working on making a map generation system, too. So I'd figure just leave him to organize the code and his stuff, and have x2yzh9 make lists of what we have agreed on so far, as a rough design map.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Josephus on August 30, 2010, 09:30:05 pm
Let's do this in the thread for now, then set up probably a blog or something when we've got it off the ground.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: cappstv on August 30, 2010, 09:31:59 pm
I just realize something, if we are going to be able to penetrate walls, we should be able to do the same to doors. With axes.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Yodamaster on August 30, 2010, 09:36:38 pm
I'm in favor of ASCII, and then possibly a tile based version.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on August 30, 2010, 09:51:22 pm
Could we perhaps do it entirely tile-based, but with a default ASCII tileset?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Sir Pseudonymous on August 30, 2010, 10:03:13 pm
It'd probably be pretty easy for a strong person to punch (or otherwise smash) through drywall, or particularly flimsy wood (think lightweight interior door), though they probably couldn't tear it down with their bare hands in a timely fashion, and would probably suffer minor injuries for it.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Josephus on August 30, 2010, 10:04:32 pm
Yeah but a wall that uses Drywall typically isn't a single sheet of it, so there's also the ranged factor.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: x2yzh9 on August 30, 2010, 10:07:26 pm
Well, we're talking total-ghetto houses or warehouses here. Ones that are cockroach infested, etc. etc. Wood walls, maybe Drywall would work for punching through walls, but it'd be very disadvantageous.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on August 30, 2010, 10:09:36 pm
(http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/1916/shovel.png)

A second attempt at spriting, also known as why I don't usually sprite.  It's a shovel, I think.

Yay shovel. We should be able to use shovels to bash the crap out of people's heads.

Alright, going all the way back to the discussion on attributes...what should we do? Lap made a quick skilllist that I'll expand/expound on a bit, and...

CRIMINALY SKILLS - theft would use coordination, electronics I'd say intelligence, mechanics...not sure what Lap meant for these.

-Theft
--Lockpicking
--Pickpocketing
-Electronics
--Computers
--Hotwiring
-Mechanics (subtypes for certain specialized modifications)

SPEAKING SKILLS -uses charisma and probably intelligence
-Persuasion
--Haggling
--Smooth Talking (would work to worm out of situations/seduce?)
--Intimidation
-Leadership - mix of charisma and intelligence?

-Streetwise - I was thinking streetwise could be used to blend into crowds as well as all the other streetwisy things?

COMBAT SKILLS
-Firearms (should it be divided into pistol, rifle, shotgun and the like, or small arms, medium, heavy arms? definitely uses coordination, or equivalent stat)
-Explosives
-Throwing

MELEE SKILLS - muscle, yeah

-Martial Arts (maybe specific ones for nonlethal or submission holds)
-Melee Weapons (possibly subtypes for weird ones like chains)

-Driving -hmmm. Probably implemented much later.


STEALTH SKILLS - should use perception, since you'd need to be perceptive to know what people look for...
-Sneaking - coordination or whatever movement stat we have..agility, maybe, if that goes in
-"Looking for something that essentially means being able to blend into a crowd" --maybe streetwise could have something to do with this
-Fitness (climbing, running...) --combined with parkour, probably, or have it be a subtype
-Disguises - this should use int
-Urban acrobatics/Parkour

---

So there's my attempt to categorize. Throw in some input and more skills!

Cthulhu was in favor of these attributes,

Muscle
Constitution
Coordination
Intelligence
Charisma
Willpower
Perception

with a Reflex attribute added in as a combo of coordination and perception. How should we make the stats so it's most balanced, and there's a use for each one? Currently, according to the skill system that Lap made up there, constitution and willpower are least needed for skills, which is perfect, since those two are more 'defensive' in nature. It seems that it might be good though to ...better delineate all of this, since constitution is sort of like our agility stat now, and I'm not sure that'd be accurate? Never mind, I'm just vomiting ideas down right now. Someone help me.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on August 30, 2010, 10:11:11 pm
Coordination is the agility stat.  I still think Constitution and Coordination are way too similar-sounding, and one of them should be changed.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Josephus on August 30, 2010, 10:15:13 pm
Endurance, then, instead of Con?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on August 30, 2010, 10:20:38 pm
Or kinesthetics for coordination if we want to be dumb.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: dbfuru on August 30, 2010, 10:25:08 pm
I am actually looking forward to this more than that SK roguelike, and seeing some sprites makes me feel like this is already making progress. I like that you can also be more than just a Serial Killer, definately makes it better. Kind of like GTA but with the depth of a roguelike. Keep up the good work, guys.

Personally I think development might be a bit faster if you just made it in ASCII initially, and add support for graphics later, but seeing as I can't really help directly it's really up to you guys.

Edit: As long as DF-style body modeling or at least Liberal Crime Squad type injuries is in, I'll be happy, really, don't know why but I just prefer it to hit points.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on August 30, 2010, 10:27:54 pm
I am actually looking forward to this more than that SK roguelike, and seeing some sprites makes me feel like this is already making progress. I like that you can also be more than just a Serial Killer, definately makes it better. Kind of like GTA but with the depth of a roguelike. Keep up the good work, guys.

Personally I think development might be a bit faster if you just made it in ASCII initially, and add support for graphics later, but seeing as I can't really help directly it's really up to you guys.

The TE4 engine is pretty cool in that we can swap it around if we have all the graphics made. I'm fine with it being just ascii, but for the graphical fans, Saint and I are playing around with preliminary sprites while Lab is coding awesome things. He's apparently very experienced with TE4's engine, and after he sets more work on it, he'll give everyone else copies of the code and instructions on how to do basic things like build maps, make objects, and write up descriptors. In the mean time, hammering out a clear skill system, exp system, and attributes system are important before Lab can start chargen work. Let's brainstorm some more!

Also, the piratepad link is still here. http://piratepad.net/h9QML6qDDY

Should I put what we've got so far up there?

EDIT for dbfuru: Scroll back a bit. Lab coded locational damage, and will probably be doing the DF-style damage stuff, too.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: dbfuru on August 30, 2010, 10:33:51 pm
I was scrolling back and saw that, nice work! This looks like it's really going to go somewhere, I'm impressed. Looking forward to this, I will probably make suggestions but that's about it. Is LUA scripting difficult? My only experience is Visual Basic and Visual Basic for Applications.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on August 30, 2010, 10:37:22 pm
I was scrolling back and saw that, nice work! This looks like it's really going to go somewhere, I'm impressed. Looking forward to this, I will probably make suggestions but that's about it. Is LUA scripting difficult? My only experience is Visual Basic and Visual Basic for Applications.

http://www.lua.org/
http://te4.org/

Go and check it out. If you already have coding experience, it'll at the very least be interesting to pore over, and if you don't, it's still neat. Heh. Suggestions are also great, and I'll be doing my best to compile the current stats and attribute system. Cthulhu and the others, thanks for the work so far...and Lab is seriously doing some intense coding, haha.

Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Tilla on August 30, 2010, 10:40:37 pm
Hmm wouldn't Agility or Dexterity be a good replacement for Coordination as well? I dunno, just throwing that out there. Having the first few letters distinct enough is handy for quick reference etc.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: dbfuru on August 30, 2010, 10:56:40 pm
I'd like to fiddle around with te4 so I can get to grips with it, are there any guides or tutorials on where to start?

Edit: Found some guides on the wiki, when I get home I'll have a crack at it. I am not planning on helping programming at all, I just would like to get to know how the tome engine works for personal use.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Jack A T on August 30, 2010, 11:05:25 pm
(http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/8772/lawngrass.png)

Attempted to create good-looking grass that fits in with the art style.  Probably failed.

EDIT:
(http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/2349/pavement.png)

Pavement, not as good as the grass, but an attempt.  Consider it probably a placeholder.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: x2yzh9 on August 30, 2010, 11:27:37 pm
I think Lap is one of our more experienced coder, and unless he has quarrel with it, I'd like him to take on the random generation etc. when it comes to it, simply because I'm 90% sure he's more experienced than the rest of us and could be/is a major asset to the team.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Tilla on August 30, 2010, 11:36:32 pm
Lap definitely seems to know what he's doing. I am immediately suspicious, is this some sort of WARLOCK?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on August 30, 2010, 11:40:58 pm
I think Lap is one of our more experienced coder, and unless he has quarrel with it, I'd like him to take on the random generation etc. when it comes to it, simply because I'm 90% sure he's more experienced than the rest of us and could be/is a major asset to the team.

He is pretty much going to be bearing the weight of the coding. And it seems like he knows the creator of the engine pretty well, so that's cool. Dark God might pop in and throw in more bits of help or information at us. x2yzh9, how are you doing with organizing what we have so far? It'll probably be useful for Lap to see an outline of skills + exp + attribute + levelup system.

Should we add an agility or reflex stat? Also, what are some ideas on skill categorization? We'll probably change constitution to either endurance or health. Our current 'level-up' system for skills appears to be roughly, practice it more and you will improve on it. Should attributes be able to 'level'?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Josephus on August 30, 2010, 11:48:38 pm
Attributes should of course be slower to level, and should increase when skills dependent on that attribute are used? For example, assuming a percentile-based skill system, a skill growth of total 20 percent in four MUSCLE skills will increase MUSCLE by a point.

Or maybe a little faster?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on August 31, 2010, 12:10:23 am
Attributes should of course be slower to level, and should increase when skills dependent on that attribute are used? For example, assuming a percentile-based skill system, a skill growth of total 20 percent in four MUSCLE skills will increase MUSCLE by a point.

Or maybe a little faster?

That sounds like an interesting idea. It seems like it'd work pretty well, though that also means if people keep working their skills they'll become monstrous powerhouses of attributes. Maybe make it even slower to level. Not entirely sure on the balance, but it sounds like a great idea. We could implement it and if it ends up being unbalanced, change it then...?

Also, I made a template for a 32x32 dude. So you guys can just mess around with colors, add beard/hair/hat/gloves/different shoes, and mix it up. I'll make a female template in a bit.

(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/template1.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/template2copy.png)

EDIT: There we go, male and female template. Download and color and add hair to your pleasure. I'll stick them up at the piratepad, too.

http://piratepad.net/h9QML6qDDY
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on August 31, 2010, 12:14:46 am
Just make a soft cap.  Diminishing returns erodes at your attribute increases until by the time you're approaching natural human limits normal training is no longer viable, and you have to use steroids and stuff to increase it further (With the associated risks)
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: insectcalm on August 31, 2010, 12:24:05 am
If I knew the first thing about coding, I would definitely help with this. Actually, that's kind of a lie; I would probly be working on the Cowboy roguelike of my dreams. Oh well, posting to keep an eye on this.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Deon on August 31, 2010, 01:41:05 am
Would it be possible to make external image loading possible? I would like to be able to make my own tileset :).

P.S. Also, Lap, were you asking for my Rogue Survivor tileset for this? If so, you can use it as you wish and I can add about 30 more hairstyles and clothes I drew in my free time.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Josephus on August 31, 2010, 01:48:45 am
If I knew the first thing about coding, I would definitely help with this. Actually, that's kind of a lie; I would probly be working on the Cowboy roguelike of my dreams. Oh well, posting to keep an eye on this.

D:

We share a dream.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: insectcalm on August 31, 2010, 01:58:47 am
I wanna reenact Lonesome Dove in excruciating detail, dammit! :,(
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Josephus on August 31, 2010, 02:04:43 am
I will learn lua for that purpose and that purpose alone.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Deon on August 31, 2010, 02:07:25 am
Yeah I learn Lua too.

And look, you all know my Rogue Survivor tiles:

(http://i35.tinypic.com/w2ofog.png)

But I thought about a bit different style for 32x32 pics. With bigger face characters can recieve more details which personalize them.

Example:
(http://i33.tinypic.com/2d8i4xf.png)

You can make anything out of that sprite:
(http://i35.tinypic.com/2urs6jc.png)
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Josephus on August 31, 2010, 02:08:17 am
A bit cutesy for a crime rtd, though. Might be better if they're mostly "faceless"?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Soadreqm on August 31, 2010, 02:10:07 am
I won't be able to make it to the dev sessions since they take place at a time at which I am normally sleeping. Time zones. :(

Cthulhu was in favor of these attributes,

Muscle
Constitution
Coordination
Intelligence
Charisma
Willpower
Perception

with a Reflex attribute added in as a combo of coordination and perception. How should we make the stats so it's most balanced, and there's a use for each one? Currently, according to the skill system that Lap made up there, constitution and willpower are least needed for skills, which is perfect, since those two are more 'defensive' in nature. It seems that it might be good though to ...better delineate all of this, since constitution is sort of like our agility stat now, and I'm not sure that'd be accurate? Never mind, I'm just vomiting ideas down right now. Someone help me.

Vomiting ideas, I can help with. My suggestion for tweaking this would be

Muscle
Health (I don't like the word "constitution")
Agility (Ability to move, including running, jumping, climbing, dodging etc.)
Dexterity (Ability to perform small and precise motions, such as picking locks, performing surgery or aiming a sniper rifle)
Intelligence
Charisma
Willpower (Resisting fatigue from focusing on something for a long time or not sleeping, at least. Basically mental resilience? WIL is to INT what health is to muscle?)
Luck (If applicable)

Substats: (Calculated from the primary stats. These don't actually need to exist inside the game itself.)
Coordination: Function of agility and dexterity. Used for most combat skills, at least. Also includes reflexes. Actually, maybe it should just be called "reflexes".
Perception: Function of intelligence and Willpower: How good you are at noticing things. How smart you are combined with how patient you are. It makes sense to me. :P
Endurance: Function of muscle and health. Resisting fatigue from prolonged exercise.

Muscle and Health wouldn't really be used for any skills, but they'd be pretty valuable otherwise. Muscle determines melee damage and carrying capacity, while Health determines whether you live or die when injured.

I also thought of a needlessly complicated skill system while I was sleeping, but I'll need to type it out to know whether it runs on dream logic.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Deon on August 31, 2010, 02:12:28 am
A bit cutesy for a crime rtd, though. Might be better if they're mostly "faceless"?
Yeah I know it's cutsey. But I like to kill digital people which have character :).

Do you like my RogueLike character more? Also faceless = less space for fasion (like cigars, sunglasses and stuff) and I want to kill with style :D.

I hope we get overlays and a way to swap tilesets. This way everyone can get what he wants. Being modding DF sprites a lot, I know for sure that people have very different tastes regarding graphical representation of stuff. So the best idea would be to have different tilesets.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Josephus on August 31, 2010, 02:14:15 am
Yeah, vanilla would be the basic stuff, for example. 'Gold' would be something like your tileset, so that people can feel like "OHH AHM MODDAN!" The basic tiles would have the advantage of being easily modified by players; your set would have the advantage of being absolutely gorgeous.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Deon on August 31, 2010, 02:16:14 am
I don't want "gold", I want "goblinite" :D.

I will ask Lap if it's possible to make it outside of encoded files and to get tilesets.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Funk on August 31, 2010, 02:40:06 am
just on skills maybe

COMBAT SKILLS
-Firearms divided into hand guns,  long arms and heavy weapons with a auto weapon skill

hand guns :pistols,sawn off shotguns,small SMGs*
long arms :rifles,shotguns,assault rifles*
heavy weapons :lage machineguns*,grenade launchers

*auto weapons,not a weapon class but a modifer
 
-Explosives
-Throwing
shoud hand grenades use throwing?

-Martial Arts (maybe specific ones for nonlethal or submission holds) based off Coordination?
-Melee Weapons (possibly subtypes for weird ones like chains)
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on August 31, 2010, 02:45:52 am
Separating the sprites into head, torso, and feet is a good idea. In the meantime, here are some of the 'vanilla' sprites created. Heh.

(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/template1.png)(http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/3701/genericcivvie1.png)(http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/2918/copuniform.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/copuniform.png)(http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/7427/prisonjumpsuit.png)(http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/3198/prisonstripes.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/template2copy.png)(http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/9945/genericcivvie2.png)

Definitely not as much facial detail, as my templates were made to have realistic proportions. Might end up being too teensy for much emotional stylistic connection.

The two blank bald ones are templates, and...the stripey prison jumpsuit one is rather adorable. I wonder if it'd be possible to alter sprites based on what a person was wearing...but that might be too complex. Probably is too complex? It would be fun, though, being able to customize your sprite by wearing jackets, or stealing a jacket from a dead victim, or robbing a clothing store just for the style. I might also make another template that's way more muscle-y, and maybe one that's a lot slimmer, and make a fat one. Kind of...mesomorph, ectomorph, and endomorph, with one normal one. Now you get the fun of chasing down fat/skinny people. Haha.

Also,

Quote from: Soadregm
I also thought of a needlessly complicated skill system while I was sleeping, but I'll need to type it out to know whether it runs on dream logic.

Go for it. I like the statistics idea, though I would vote against luck because for some reason I don't like luck. Must be why I'm so unlucky. Muscle, Health, Agility, Dexterity, Willpower, Intelligence, and Charisma sound good. I'm unsure on the perception part...maybe we should just throw that in, since perception doesn't always need intelligence. Plenty of dumb animals that can see very well, and also plenty of soldiers who have little educational aptitude, but a whole lot of sharpshooter's gaze. So we'd have 8 attributes if we threw that in.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Soadreqm on August 31, 2010, 03:32:30 am
I think a "grim and gritty" graphical look would suit us better. And regarding really complicated graphical tricks, I think IVAN (http://ivan.sourceforge.net/) is a nice example. It uses pretty small tiles, like 16x16 or maybe even a bit less, but they're really expressive. Pretty much every single item anyone wears or wields is overlaid on the character. Limbs and head are separate, so they can be severed and thrown about. The actual graphics files look like green-tinted grayscales, and the game engine swaps the palettes to create arbitrarily colored objects. Certain colored pixels are rendered as crudely animated fire. There are flies circling around rotten creatures and items, although I'm not sure if that's a simple animation or yet another engine special effect. Lighting is also done with palette manipulation, and the field of view is bright right next to you and dark and desaturated farther away. On the easier side of things, blood splatters are slightly translucent and overlaid on top of each other, so a tile can have anything from a single drop to the whole tile being completely bright red, eventually turning dark red as the blood drys. I'm not sure how much of that the engine we're using supports, or how much of it is worthwhile, but it's a nice example of what can be done with enough graphics wizardry.

I like the statistics idea, though I would vote against luck because for some reason I don't like luck. Must be why I'm so unlucky. Muscle, Health, Agility, Dexterity, Willpower, Intelligence, and Charisma sound good. I'm unsure on the perception part...maybe we should just throw that in, since perception doesn't always need intelligence. Plenty of dumb animals that can see very well, and also plenty of soldiers who have little educational aptitude, but a whole lot of sharpshooter's gaze. So we'd have 8 attributes if we threw that in.

My idea for Luck was more of a "fate" type of thing. How much luck you have left, rather than how lucky you are. Like, a special stat that doesn't affect any skill rolls and doesn't help in any way, but lets you permanently sacrifice points to do special things like automatically succeed in a task or evade death or maybe just reroll something. I don't really like the idea of Fallout-style luck either.

Yeah, I'm not sure about perception. Is it your eyesight or just your ability to notice details? Are the two connected? What about hearing and sense of smell? What would it actually do in the game? Back in CrimsonKing's mockup, I think it was for cleaning up crime scenes, noticing blood spatters on your clothes, that kind of things, which probably would be mental-based.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Deon on August 31, 2010, 04:41:01 am
I don't think we should be crazy about art style for now, it's all easy to do in comparison to other things.

I would gladly accept Kusgnos's style as a base, because... it's what it is. Characters lack any details but they have everything needed to see clothes/gender.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Soadreqm on August 31, 2010, 05:21:07 am
About the skills. I thought about something like separating skill level into two numbers, your theoretical knowledge of it and your practical experience with it and making the former much easier to train and adding skill rust. Thinking about it more, it'd be a bitch to balance, not make very much sense in some places, and not necessarily even solve the grind problem.

Is there some kind of incentive for the player to hurry? Could we simply automate grinding? I think someone suggested this already. You could set your character to sit in his house for five years reading about lockpicks. You'd need money for things like rent and food, so you'd have to leave to rob something every now and then. And you'd need to make this kind of skill gain slower than skill gained by actually using skills "in the field" so that there is still some incentive to do the latter, but not so slow that it's completely worthless. And the character could age and eventually die, LCS style, meaning that you coulnd't just train forever with no ill effects. And maybe add some skill rust for things you go without using for a while, so that just training one thing for really long times is not good.

My suggestion for skills we need. Possibly missing some things. For the most part, I'm not sure which skills should give bonuses to each other.
Combat
melee: Individual skills for attack types? Slashing, crushing, stabbing? Or maybe item categories: knives, swords, clubs. Improvised weapons would mostly be clubs, I guess. Hit chance affected by AGI and DEX, damage by MSC.
martial arts: Sriking, kicking, wrestling? Should these even be broken into individual skills? Or should wrestling be separated to grasps, holds and throws? Eh, maybe just go with the three. For punches and kicks, skills as before. Wrestling uses the same three, but in a different way, since damage is dealt differently.
ranged: mostly firearms, but any crossbows and shit would probably use the same skill. LCS has pistols, SMGs, shotguns, rifles and flamethrowers. Is that too many skills? Where would the crossbows fall here? Eh, maybe just go with weapon size, like Funk suggested. A separate skill for full automatic sounds good too. Affected by AGI and DEX. Probably mostly DEX. It could be situational. The more time you have to aim, the more DEX matters.
throwing: This might be a subskill of "ranged", although it doesn't really have that much in common with it. I think you should be able to throw grenades with fairly little throwing skill. They're not really a precision weapon, as far as I know. Higher levels would be for things like throwing knives. Bricks would fall somewhere in between. Range affected by AGI and MSC, I'd say, and accuracy mostly by DEX.

Sciency knowledge-type skills
Medicine: For basic first aid, at least, and more depending on how sophisticated the wound system will be. INT and possibly DEX, at least for some procedures.
Chemistry: Making (and safely handling) explosives. Also acids if they come up. Identifying and manufacturing drugs and poisons would probably use both this and medicine. INT.
Computers: Do we want realistic hacking or Hollywood hacking? Are we even going to have computers? INT.
Other: I guess any "street smarts" and such would also be knowledge skills?

Mechanics and electronics
Mechanics: Not sure if there should be a generic "mechanics" skill. It'd probably give a bonus to lockpicking, at least. What else could it be used for? Repairing cars? Repairing watches? Repairing diesel generators? Is anything like that going to come up? Maybe merge this with Electronics? INT and DEX.
Electronics: This'll be needed for explosives. How detonators are put together, how to make them, how to defuse them, stuff like that. Also working with electronic locks, hotwiring cars, repairing machinery, disabling security systems and anything similar that might come up. INT and DEX.
Lockpicking: Opening locks, ranging from bicycle locks to combination locks. DEX.

Movement
I'm not sure if there should be skills for jumping, climbing, swimming and such. Technique doesn't matter that much. Your ability at those should mostly be determined by the relevant stats. A dodging skill would fall here as well, and that one would be so useful that everyone would want it. Maybe make it difficult to train? Except then we're back at grinding. Eh, maybe just go with stats.

Things missing
Driving: Probably in a LCS-style chase scene minigame. I'd suggest leaving cars static, multi-tile objects that you can't manually drive. It'd be cool to have a trunk, like in Fallout 2. Maybe entering cars, putting things in the glove compartment, stuff like that? Oh, yeah, the skill. What'd this be affected by? DEX? INT? Maybe even AGI, since that's part of the reflexes meta-attribute.
Social skills: There'd probably be a couple of these. Haggling, persuasion, stuff like that. Affected by CHA, possibly INT, maybe even WIL?
Stealth: Moving without being seen. Also knowing whether you are seen. Probably INT and AGI or DEX.
Disguise: Moving without attracting attention. And knowing when people are suspicious. INT and CHA.
Sleight-of-hand: Some kind of skill for picking pockets and doing card tricks? DEX, maybe CHA?

For lockpicking, you could make skill mostly affect how quickly you can pick the lock, not whether you can pick it. That way, you could access places with strong locks without epic-level skills, it'd just be more risky since it'd take time. And you'd still need some minimum level of skill to understand the premises of how the lock operates.

This model would leave HLT, MSC and WIL mostly useless. That's fine for HLT, at least, since it's otherwise helpful, being the stat that keeps you alive when you get hit. And muscle is for carrying capacity. I'm a bit worried about WIL, though. It'd be used for resisting pain, fear and boredom, but what else? We probably aren't going to have mind control, are we? Maybe doing anything under stress should be harder, stress here meaning anything from drug withdrawal and sleep deprivation to loud noises or an audience, and willpower would let you resist the penalties?

AGI and DEX are used a lot. Maybe too much. Perhaps we need a Perception skill to make guns and knives use different skills. Of course, they'll still be necessary for dodging. Meh.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Ochita on August 31, 2010, 05:39:59 am
Medicine could tell you what the wound is like. So skill 20~30 would be... "Its a long cut on your arm, it seems that it has not been infected" 50~60 "It is a long cut on your arn that is 3-4cm deep. It will bleed" Type stuff. Just my (Bad) 2 cents
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Saint on August 31, 2010, 08:13:43 am
Organization for the art could be done in 1 folder labled tile sets, and multipul tile set folders in there, they can be chosen from a options menu.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Deon on August 31, 2010, 08:37:13 am
It would be perfect, but even if we had to do it manually it still would be great.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: dbfuru on August 31, 2010, 08:57:10 am
I tried using the t4 engine, but I couldn't get it to work. I must have broke it when I as adding an inventory and body slots or something. I made a human race, a class, and had the sexes, but when I go to test it I get to enter a name but then nothing happens at all. I tried following the tutorials on the wiki but still, it won't load.

Are there any complete tutorials floating around?

This should be on the t4 forums but they don't seem especially active.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Xegeth on August 31, 2010, 09:15:05 am
There should be a file called stdout.txt in the same folder as t-engine.exe. If there's an error in your code, it reports it there.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: dbfuru on August 31, 2010, 09:38:19 am
Thank you, I'll go have a look. I have got it down to adding the body parts though. I added the ActorInventory to the load file and defined inventory slots, but when I add those slots to my base entity it just hangs when I select the module.

This is what my stdout says:

http://shorttext.com/0o607fhr78dkh (http://shorttext.com/0o607fhr78dkh)

Looks like a lot of lua errors. I followed the tutorials on the wiki, but I most likely have done something wrong somewhere.

I am having trouble understanding the contents of stdout, but I have narrowed it down to adding the body element to my base entity, which is

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And the body parts I defined in load are

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Again I apologize for asking here, but the official forums seem rather inactive.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Sir Pseudonymous on August 31, 2010, 10:18:13 am
To me, it looks like a variable named "level" isn't getting declared, causing a type error. Of course, I don't know lua or its error messages, so I'm just going off the "Error: ... attempt to index 'level' (a Nil value)" stuff.

Of course, I don't know why that might be...
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Xegeth on August 31, 2010, 10:26:04 am
I don't mind helping. initBody is nil, which means that it's either been removed from ActorInventory.lua, or it's not been added to the actor. If it is in the file, I'd look through http://doku.t-o-m-e.net/t4modules:objects and make sure that all of the needed lines have been added. Have you loaded the file from Actor.lua?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Soulwynd on August 31, 2010, 01:06:24 pm
I think this is relevant to this thread:
(http://i53.tinypic.com/fve1bt.gif)
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on August 31, 2010, 01:51:27 pm
If someone needs something to code, I don't think anyones working on a clothing based inventory.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on August 31, 2010, 02:35:58 pm
He's apparently very experienced with TE4's engine,

I found the T-Engine one day before posting this thread. Not very experienced at all.

I experimented with automated city generation today and tried some different sizes of how big the street should be. I'll keep experimenting and I'll post some screenshots when I fix a bug in the generation.

After I did that, I wasted a lot of time just exploring the engine and trying out different stuff. I came to the conclusion that it's probably a whole lot easier to use the existing talent system than it is to redo everything based on it. I originally didn't want to use it because there were a couple of quirks I didn't like (example-using the ability "shoot" instead of just hitting f to fire a weapon). However, it looks like it it's better to just use that system and then mod out any quirks.

Location based damage now works for everything, but explosions at the moment. There aren't any effects yet, but parts can be hurt and get healed.

Unless there's a better idea I'm also going to go ahead with slowly implementing skills and skill categories. One thing that absolutely anyone can do if they're bored is make custom locations with ASCII. So something like

#########
W              #
#   C          #
#              W
####D####

# = Wall
W = Window
C = chair
D = door

Anything like that, except you know, not as shitty. You can make up your own key and whatever items and symbols you want. I can easily import any of them.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: DarkGod on August 31, 2010, 02:43:14 pm
You do not have to have a hotkey for shooting, you can just define a new key and make it call the shoot talent, no problem :)
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on August 31, 2010, 02:52:41 pm
That's how I currently have it done, which is why I decided not to abandon the system all together for firing. There will probably end up being a lot of hidden talents. Did you see my post about generator.TileSet?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Soadreqm on August 31, 2010, 03:49:28 pm
Map design, eh? I'll give it a shot.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

EDIT: If linebreaks are messing things up, just copypaste it somewhere. They are on my tiny screen.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: cappstv on August 31, 2010, 04:11:02 pm
Just thought of something.
You know how DF has legends mode? What if instead of having a separate mode for that, its all in game. For example, searching though old newspapers will tell you when the gangs were born and the obituaries will show you the deaths of the characters.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Deon on August 31, 2010, 04:11:32 pm
Here's a flat

Code: [Select]
                            .....                                         
                            .   .                                         
                           ###+####=###                                   
                           #n  H#H  hT#                                   
                           #B  T#H    #                                   
                           #   H#n   B#                                   
                           ##+#####+###                                   
                           #    cc   H#                                   
                           #         T=                                   
                           #  HHnnHHHH#                                   
                           ## #########                                   
                           #H  +     R#                                   
                           #  ####   h#                                   
                           #  + t#H hT=                                   
                           #  ##$#H  h=                                   
                           #Y + s#s   #                                   
                           #Y #bb#o  H#                                   
                           ##+######### 

# - wall
+ - door
= - window
. - fence (balcony in this case)

B - bed
cc - coach
n - nighttable/low table
H - cabinet
h - chair
T - table
bb - bathroom
t - toilet
Y - coathanger
s - sink
o - oven
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on August 31, 2010, 04:57:29 pm
Definitely need realistic newspapers.

Liking the locations a lot.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Evilgrim on August 31, 2010, 04:57:51 pm
Evilgrim approves.
Etcetera.
Not feeling too well, apologies.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: head on August 31, 2010, 05:21:47 pm
So how can i help?.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Jack A T on August 31, 2010, 05:29:16 pm
I've got some rooms and a small house up on the piratepad.

http://piratepad.net/h9QML6qDDY
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: silverskull39 on August 31, 2010, 05:31:13 pm
you people are all heroes. Truly.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: dbfuru on August 31, 2010, 06:06:51 pm
I don't mind helping. initBody is nil, which means that it's either been removed from ActorInventory.lua, or it's not been added to the actor. If it is in the file, I'd look through http://doku.t-o-m-e.net/t4modules:objects and make sure that all of the needed lines have been added. Have you loaded the file from Actor.lua?

I need to create an ActorInventory.lua? I couldn't find anything about it in the tutorials or what to even fill that with. I'll go look in the Tome module to have a look. I did copy all of those lines to where it tells me to, I am certain of it.

In any case I am not at home any more and don't have the module I was working on with me, but I have a copy of the tome engine with me so I can look at the tome module.

Edit: I typed in the lines by hand this time, and it seems to work. The only thing now I need to know is how to add the code to pickup items, equip them, etc. Doesn't seem to be any information on it on the wiki.

I was looking through the te4 documentation, specifically all of the entries about keys or keybindings, but I couldn't figure it out. I looked at the TOME Actor.lua and can't find any of the keybinds. Where does the TOME module store it's key binds?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: x2yzh9 on August 31, 2010, 06:24:49 pm
Alright guys, lets make this game. We go incrementally, and we've definitelly past the 'this is just ideas' milestone, we're starting to see some solid stuff. Let's keep this up, and hopefully within 3 months maybe, we'll have a playable alpha.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Acanthus117 on August 31, 2010, 06:39:38 pm
Ooh, boy, am I excited!
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Josephus on August 31, 2010, 06:41:47 pm
Alright guys, lets make this game. We go incrementally, and we've definitelly past the 'this is just ideas' milestone, we're starting to see some solid stuff. Let's keep this up, and hopefully within 3 months maybe, we'll have a playable alpha.

Give me a month to grok* lua and I could probably contribute well.

*oh my god hahaha firefox counts grok as a real word so awesome
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: x2yzh9 on August 31, 2010, 06:55:22 pm
Right. Dev Session 2 in T-mins 5 minutes. Hop on in here!

http://piratepad.net/h9QML6qDDY
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on August 31, 2010, 07:02:21 pm
My internet's not working today so I can't make it.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: x2yzh9 on August 31, 2010, 07:06:05 pm
GO TIME DEV SESSION 2
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: kilakan on August 31, 2010, 07:13:55 pm
sooo watching this, and we really need a Corrupted Law Enforcement Personal class, like a police man who wishes to kill all the local gangs so he has good combat but horrible stealth/other criminal actions.  Or a cop being controlled by the local mafia whose job is to become Chief of Police so he can cover up crimes for the mafia.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: x2yzh9 on August 31, 2010, 07:34:05 pm
Get on the pirate pad and put your name in what you want to do at the top. Including your name, how much you want to work, and what you want to work on. We'll assemble a list over the next few days. We're making some REAL progress here guys, let's keep it up.

EDIT: http://piratepad.net/h9QML6qDDY
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on August 31, 2010, 08:10:32 pm
Current game stuff developy!

Lab's work:
Locational damage, very basic. Limbs can get hit and healed.
Automated map generation, also basic. Street size hasn't been finalized yet.
Engine's talent system is being transformed into a bunch of hidden talents set to hotkeys.

Deon's work:
Lending his furniture to our cause! See the pirate pad.  http://piratepad.net/h9QML6qDDY

Jack A T's work:
Making floor tiles, ie pavement, grass, dirt.
Also helping to make people from templates.

Kusgnos's work:
Making people templates.
Making people and making mini-versions of weapons that can be overlaid on the people.

Saint's work:
Making weapon sprites.

DarkGod's work:
Being awesome and giving code guidance. (DarkGod is the maker of the engine).

Xegeth's work:
Helps out with coding questions.

Everyone else, see Lab's post here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=64931.msg1528643#msg1528643
And go for making maps, or helping with sprites, or downloading TE4 and Lua and experimenting, then talk to Lab and ask how to help out with code.

As you can see, the burden of the coding right now is on Lab. People who want to code should talk to him--he has the dev version and all that. 
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Deon on August 31, 2010, 09:05:43 pm
Quote
Lending his roguejack furniture to our cause!
1) his "Project Zero" furniture
2) Roguejack is an author. The game is called Rogue Survivor and it's not mine :P.

Just pointing obvious mistakes out.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Dakk on August 31, 2010, 09:18:28 pm
Wow, a "lets make this game" thread that hasn't failed completely after the 15th page, I approve of this.
Since I have no real coding skill and Deon's sprites outclasses most of the stuff I can come up with, I'm limited to helping with ideas and watching it unfold.

Sure hope something nice comes from this.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on August 31, 2010, 09:24:31 pm
Quote
I'm limited to helping with ideas and watching it unfold.

You can always crank out house/building designs. There can never be enough of those, since it doesn't look like they're writing anything to procedurally generate them.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Tnx on August 31, 2010, 09:26:25 pm
Is there an actual list of things that we can include in the house design that will translate into the game? like C for couch or F for fridge, things like that? I'd be happy to design some houses/apartments for you guys.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on August 31, 2010, 09:28:30 pm
I would just do what comes to you, within reason. Those things can always be subtracted out later, and could guide item design at some point. Just don't go crazy and add like 30 unique items per building.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Acanthus117 on August 31, 2010, 09:30:47 pm
I'll also try and make house layouts.

:D

Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on August 31, 2010, 09:33:50 pm
If/when you guys need people to write flavor text and what not, I'd be up for it.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Sir Pseudonymous on August 31, 2010, 09:36:10 pm
I'll totally look into the TE4 engine when I wake up (I've been up for almost twenty hours at this point). I think I already have the lua shit (though it might be outdated, depending on when the last version was) and perhaps even a book or two on it on my harddrive (I was looking at learning lua a while back, but never had a compelling reason to learn it on account of knowing python. I'll see if I can find it... Nope, apparently not. Neither in windows or on my linux partition, though there is a book that has a section devoted to it... Odd, considering I'm fairly certain I looked at it after the last time I reformatted my harddrive, and it wouldn't be (I hope) something so large that I'd delete it to clear up space... Anyways, I'll see in the morning.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Puzzlemaker on August 31, 2010, 09:38:13 pm
Hmm, I haven't slummed through the entire thread, but is there a SVN repository set up?  I may want to help code this project.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: kilakan on August 31, 2010, 09:46:47 pm
Get on the pirate pad and put your name in what you want to do at the top. Including your name, how much you want to work, and what you want to work on. We'll assemble a list over the next few days. We're making some REAL progress here guys, let's keep it up.

EDIT: http://piratepad.net/h9QML6qDDY
Join the chat people.

Also I've got a few buildings but i'm not all that creative.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Jack A T on August 31, 2010, 10:41:29 pm
Idea: Arrows with each person showing the direction he or she is facing.   Makes stealth that much easier.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Josephus on August 31, 2010, 10:45:52 pm
If/when you guys need people to write flavor text and what not, I'd be up for it.

As will I. Also, I will help with sprites.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Acanthus117 on August 31, 2010, 10:54:12 pm
If/when you guys need people to write flavor text and what not, I'd be up for it.

As will I. Also, I will help with sprites.
Ditto, but not on the sprites. I suck hairy balls when it comes to that kinda artsy stuff.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Pandarsenic on August 31, 2010, 11:02:29 pm
I can spritework.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on August 31, 2010, 11:44:50 pm
I'll probably make a few house designs tomorrow.

HURRAY FOR CONTRIBUTION!
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Vic Romano on September 01, 2010, 12:41:45 am
I've spent the past year trying to find a roguelike that i can get into.  So far I've tried Crawl, but eh.  I wanted to lend some help with this thing.  Floor plans!
(http://www.houseofmaupassant.com/sites/www.houseofmaupassant.com/local/cache-vignettes/L500xH393/plan_rdc-2-6493e.png)
(http://www.logcabindirectory.com/architects_design/images/house_blueprint_l.jpg)
(http://house-blueprints.net/images/lf/824_house_lf_plan_blueprint.jpg)

some are pretty small, others are basically mansions
I also dont know if the plan is to do a Z axis thing with the stairs or have everyone living in ranch houses
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: kilakan on September 01, 2010, 12:43:03 am
There's Z-axis planned, but I've only used it for basements.... for the drugs.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Xegeth on September 01, 2010, 03:04:10 am
I typed in the lines by hand this time, and it seems to work. The only thing now I need to know is how to add the code to pickup items, equip them, etc. Doesn't seem to be any information on it on the wiki.

I was looking through the te4 documentation, specifically all of the entries about keys or keybindings, but I couldn't figure it out. I looked at the TOME Actor.lua and can't find any of the keybinds. Where does the TOME module store it's key binds?

All of the keybinds you need are in \game\data\keybinds\inventory.lua. Actually making them work though takes a bit more effort. You need to add them to self.key:addBinds in setupCommands(), which you can find in \<YourGame>\Class\Game.lua. You'll need to write the functions yourself, and add them to \<YourGame>\Class\Player.lua. It would probably be best to check how tome did it, because ActorInventory.lua has some functions that you should use. If you've not found ActorInventory yet, it's in \game\engine\interface.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Apple Master on September 01, 2010, 04:00:40 am
CONTRIBUTAN.
And by contributan I mean:
Good work so far, gimme alpha now.
Also I may make some stuff to help a little or something.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Farce on September 01, 2010, 04:34:30 am
Woo, go team.  /cheerleader


This is the extent of my contribution, as I cannot code, nor can I sprite.  I don't think my interior design is very good either.  :(

I'm kind of interested in trying to learn code-wizardry, though.  Where should I start?

At the moment, the only thought running through my head is your average sedan car should be two tiles wide and four long.  Front two are the hood/engine, the middle two rows are the seats, and in the back is a trunk.  Thus, road lanes would be two tiles wide each.  Sidewalks I know of are usually much thinner than a road lane, but it would be kind of silly if you couldn't walk around someone without risking horrible automobile inflicted death.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Deon on September 01, 2010, 04:39:43 am
Cool designs, Vic Romano. Did you get them from some architecture site or do you have something with house layout designers? They look nice and clean.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Xegeth on September 01, 2010, 04:52:52 am
Woo, go team.  /cheerleader


This is the extent of my contribution, as I cannot code, nor can I sprite.  I don't think my interior design is very good either.  :(

I'm kind of interested in trying to learn code-wizardry, though.  Where should I start?

At the moment, the only thought running through my head is your average sedan car should be two tiles wide and four long.  Front two are the hood/engine, the middle two rows are the seats, and in the back is a trunk.  Thus, road lanes would be two tiles wide each.  Sidewalks I know of are usually much thinner than a road lane, but it would be kind of silly if you couldn't walk around someone without risking horrible automobile inflicted death.

I found http://www.lua.org/pil/ very useful for learning lua. It's for an older version, but most of it is still relevant.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Soadreqm on September 01, 2010, 05:09:24 am
At the moment, the only thought running through my head is your average sedan car should be two tiles wide and four long.  Front two are the hood/engine, the middle two rows are the seats, and in the back is a trunk.  Thus, road lanes would be two tiles wide each.  Sidewalks I know of are usually much thinner than a road lane, but it would be kind of silly if you couldn't walk around someone without risking horrible automobile inflicted death.
I was thinking of 2x3, although then you'd have to squeeze things in a bit. Back seats and the trunk occupying the same space? Eh, it doesn't sound that bad. Also, road lanes are wider than cars, at least in places where they're planned beforehand. To accommodate for turning and trucks. Three tiles, I'd say, plus whatever parking space there is on the side. Two tiles for sidewalks sounds sufficient. Or three, if the city has notable bicycle traffic.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Deon on September 01, 2010, 05:34:38 am
Woo, go team.  /cheerleader


This is the extent of my contribution, as I cannot code, nor can I sprite.  I don't think my interior design is very good either.  :(

I'm kind of interested in trying to learn code-wizardry, though.  Where should I start?

At the moment, the only thought running through my head is your average sedan car should be two tiles wide and four long.  Front two are the hood/engine, the middle two rows are the seats, and in the back is a trunk.  Thus, road lanes would be two tiles wide each.  Sidewalks I know of are usually much thinner than a road lane, but it would be kind of silly if you couldn't walk around someone without risking horrible automobile inflicted death.

I found http://www.lua.org/pil/ very useful for learning lua. It's for an older version, but most of it is still relevant.
I use the same as well :).

P.S. This is a character design I use in Viral Resistance:
(http://i52.tinypic.com/2iiye5l.png)

I will make my own tileset later, when there won't be gaps in graphics and it may be done easily.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: head on September 01, 2010, 06:39:47 am
As before i'm once again offering my services

all tough i have limited experience with Lua I've worked on bay station for about year or two as a programmer.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on September 01, 2010, 09:29:03 am
You don't need to offer, I believe you can just code some shit and talk about it on the pirate pad and the thread.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: terroroinker on September 01, 2010, 10:43:33 am
if you want to contribute, you might want to have a look at this site:

http://piratepad.net/h9QML6qDDY (http://piratepad.net/h9QML6qDDY)

Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 01, 2010, 12:44:37 pm
Male:
(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/template1head.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/template1torso.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/template1legs.png)

Female:
(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/template2head.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/template2torso.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/template2legs.png)

For some reason I forgot to de-color the female. But yes, I've separated each sprite into three parts, so that they can be randomized when we modify them. I'll be doing some work with miniweapons that'll show up on the sprite. What are some weapon suggestions?

EDIT: Lockpick sets and lockpick gun (snap gun).

(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/lockpicks.png) (http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/lockpickgun.png)

I'm thinking lockpick sets are easier to hide, and are silent, while lockpick guns attract attention through noise (the 'snapping'), and are much harder to hide. For anyone who doesn't know how they function, lockpick sets use a tension wrench and a pick to 'rake' the lock and get the tumblers to line up while applying pressure, and lockpick guns basically 'snap' and hit all the tumblers while you are applying pressure. So lockpick guns work faster, and require little skill.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Puzzlemaker on September 01, 2010, 02:22:23 pm
There are also bump keys and numerous other ways of picking locks.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 01, 2010, 02:31:33 pm
There are also bump keys and numerous other ways of picking locks.

Bump keys get jammed and are unreliable, and you need a set of them most of the time to fit different locks, depending on how finely you file them down, so I figure adding bump keys would be unnecessary for the game as they serve and function almost identically to lockpicks. The lockpick gun might also be unnecessary, but I thought it'd be an interesting addition to generic lockpick sets. 
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: kilakan on September 01, 2010, 02:34:13 pm
I think that there should simple be a command to shoot the lock out with a gun/silenced gun or crack it open with a knife as opposed to having lockpick guns.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: DarkGod on September 01, 2010, 02:39:15 pm
DarkGod's work:
Being awesome and giving code guidance. (DarkGod is the maker of the engine).

Ahah thanks :)

I'll keep on eye on thid thread but if you have questions I'm usually lurking more on my forums ;)
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Vic Romano on September 01, 2010, 02:40:36 pm
If whoever is making the tiles wants to send me them i could start turning those blueprints into roguelike blueprints
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Puzzlemaker on September 01, 2010, 02:43:42 pm
A lot of the are already on the pirate pad.

http://piratepad.net/h9QML6qDDY

As for bump keys:  I never actually used them, but I keep meaning to.

And as for shooting the lock:  That... wouldn't really work, it would just jam the lock.  Unless you used a shotgun, which would work.

But jimmying open the lock using a knife/credit card/cord should be possible too, if only for "low level" doors.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 01, 2010, 03:08:43 pm
I think that there should simple be a command to shoot the lock out with a gun/silenced gun or crack it open with a knife as opposed to having lockpick guns.

Yeah, shooting out the door hinges would make sense. Kind of like...you can choose to be more quiet and go the lockpicking/bump keying route so there's no trace of breaking in, or you can break the door hinges, make a lot of noise, and it'll be obvious there was a breaking and entering, but you won't need the skill.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Sir Pseudonymous on September 01, 2010, 03:15:04 pm
A lot of the are already on the pirate pad.

http://piratepad.net/h9QML6qDDY

As for bump keys:  I never actually used them, but I keep meaning to.

And as for shooting the lock:  That... wouldn't really work, it would just jam the lock.  Unless you used a shotgun, which would work.
I'm curious as to how exactly a shotgun would take out a lock and allow a door to be opened. Does it just shred the door around the lock/tear the lock out?

Quote
But jimmying open the lock using a knife/credit card/cord should be possible too, if only for "low level" doors.

Well, specifically for doors without a locked deadbolt/chain, if I understand the mechanism correctly (knocking in the bolt by hitting the wedged end of it that allows it to close while locked (or close and remain locked while unlocked)).
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 01, 2010, 03:25:32 pm
Quote
I'm curious as to how exactly a shotgun would take out a lock and allow a door to be opened. Does it just shred the door around the lock/tear the lock out?

Doors have hinges opposite the lock, that are what actually keeps the door attached to the wall. If you shoot out the hinges, all it takes is one kick to break the lock free of door frame and the door falls right in.

It's Hollywood though. Law enforcement uses a battering ram when they want to go through doors. For criminals it would make sense to have a quick, violent entry method...but it sounds a little overly complicated for just trying to get through a door with whatever brute force you have available.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Sir Pseudonymous on September 01, 2010, 03:33:12 pm
Quote
I'm curious as to how exactly a shotgun would take out a lock and allow a door to be opened. Does it just shred the door around the lock/tear the lock out?

Doors have hinges opposite the lock, that are what actually keeps the door attached to the wall. If you shoot out the hinges, all it takes is one kick to break the lock free of door frame and the door falls right in.
I have an even harder time believing a gun could take out hinges than I do believing it could knock out a lock/weaken the area around the lock so it can be torn out.

Quote
It's Hollywood though. Law enforcement uses a battering ram when they want to go through doors. For criminals it would make sense to have a quick, violent entry method...but it sounds a little overly complicated for just trying to get through a door with whatever brute force you have available.
I seem to recall something on modern shotguns talking about the use of slug rounds by police/SWAT teams to breach doors. Presumably flimsy interior doors, rather than heavier external doors, where one would have room to move in a battering ram.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 01, 2010, 03:35:32 pm
Quote
I have an even harder time believing a gun could take out hinges than I do believing it could knock out a lock/weaken the area around the lock so it can be torn out.

A slug point blank-into your average apartment door will not only tear out the lock, it will take a significant chunk of the door with it. Two shots, and the door is gone.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Aramco on September 01, 2010, 03:37:40 pm
Quote
I have an even harder time believing a gun could take out hinges than I do believing it could knock out a lock/weaken the area around the lock so it can be torn out.

A slug point blank-into your average apartment door will not only tear out the lock, it will take a significant chunk of the door with it. Two shots, and the door is gone.

But then you'd have less bullets.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on September 01, 2010, 03:38:41 pm
That's why you use breaching shot instead of actual shells.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 01, 2010, 03:38:47 pm
If you're alone, yeah. Who the hell breaches doors like that alone though.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Tellemurius on September 01, 2010, 03:39:14 pm
Quote
I'm curious as to how exactly a shotgun would take out a lock and allow a door to be opened. Does it just shred the door around the lock/tear the lock out?

Doors have hinges opposite the lock, that are what actually keeps the door attached to the wall. If you shoot out the hinges, all it takes is one kick to break the lock free of door frame and the door falls right in.

It's Hollywood though. Law enforcement uses a battering ram when they want to go through doors. For criminals it would make sense to have a quick, violent entry method...but it sounds a little overly complicated for just trying to get through a door with whatever brute force you have available.
we have produced a breach shell for shotguns. its called the Hatton round and uses frangible material for destroying the area around a deadbolt or hinges. works at 6 inches from target aimed at a 45 degree angle for maximum effect and safety. the round disperse into a harmless powder after fire.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on September 01, 2010, 03:56:46 pm
If you're alone, yeah. Who the hell breaches doors like that alone though.

Professional hitmen, bro.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 01, 2010, 03:59:17 pm
Quote
the round disperse into a harmless powder after fire.

Wow, that's crazy. That it can go from a deforming round to nothing. What's it made of?

Quote
Professional hitmen, bro.

I thought they slipped into your house by picking your lock during the day, so they can be sitting your favorite chair when you walk in, and then shoot you in the face.

Forced entry with a shotgun sounds like more an assault on a fortified position than a professional assassination. Put another way, how many crime scenarios can you think of where people go to apartments and houses and blast their way in just to rob the place? Not very many that I can think of. That sounds more like, I dunno, Heat where they're getting revenge on people, an over-the-top mob hit on safe house, or an attack on a rival gang's stronghold.

Definitely not like a smooth, professional hitman though. That kind of reeks of Hollywood to operate that way.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Soadreqm on September 01, 2010, 04:13:18 pm
I think criminals mostly use crowbars. Cheap as free and probably makes less noise than a shotgun. Or just break a window. Kicking usually works in movies, but Hollywood has some pretty flimsy doors. And the fire department uses axes. Here's Johnny! >:D

As for shooting locks open, I think I saw a Mythbusters episode where they tried it on padlocks. I think the result was that if you use a big enough gun to actually damage the lock, it jams rather than opens. Breaking a wooden door by shooting at it sounds like it might work a bit better.

By the way, how do pick other kinds of locks? like those hemicylinder-locks with the little rotating plates inside. These. (http://www.westsidelocks.com/images/abloy_key_system.jpg) Finnish doors have these pretty much exclusively. How do they work?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 01, 2010, 04:16:57 pm
I haven't tried picking anything other than your standard rotating cylinder lock. Those look like they're just designed for deeper keys, and require all tumblers be engaged all at once to be opened. (How it works normally is you force one tumbler and rotate the the cylinder slightly so it locks the tumbler in place, As you keep forcing tumblers, the cylinder rotates ever further until it unlocks.)

Haven't messed with lock picking in a while though. Now that they have lock picking guns, you have to appreciate the art of it, or be broke, to do it with standard picks.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 01, 2010, 04:27:28 pm
By the way, how do pick other kinds of locks? like those hemicylinder-locks with the little rotating plates inside. These. (http://www.westsidelocks.com/images/abloy_key_system.jpg) Finnish doors have these pretty much exclusively. How do they work?

That thing looks like a beast. I wonder if it's even pickable.

Further research shows that people who know how to lockpick like these locks as security, because they're apparently nigh-impossible to pick. Only known way, say some, is to use a decoder. :|

Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Sir Pseudonymous on September 01, 2010, 04:32:05 pm
Well, interior doors are usually flimsy as hell and meant more for privacy than security, whereas doors leading outside are usually tougher. Except when they're glass...

Quote
the round disperse into a harmless powder after fire.

Wow, that's crazy. That it can go from a deforming round to nothing. What's it made of?
That sounds more or less like what all frangible rounds do: they shatter on impact, causing anything from superficial scratches to catastrophic mutilation, with essentially no penetrative power. Kind of like super hollowpoints that could be stopped by a thick jacket and a little luck.

Quote
Quote
Professional hitmen, bro.

I thought they slipped into your house by picking your lock during the day, so they can be sitting your favorite chair when you walk in, and then shoot you in the face.

Forced entry with a shotgun sounds like more an assault on a fortified position than a professional assassination. Put another way, how many crime scenarios can you think of where people go to apartments and houses and blast their way in just to rob the place? Not very many that I can think of. That sounds more like, I dunno, Heat where they're getting revenge on people, an over-the-top mob hit on safe house, or an attack on a rival gang's stronghold.

Definitely not like a smooth, professional hitman though. That kind of reeks of Hollywood to operate that way.
I can't imagine that would work on an actually fortified position though. More like a locked but otherwise normal door. Might be a good way to break into an occupied room though, if you're going to be shooting anyways.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 01, 2010, 04:34:11 pm
Quote
That sounds more or less like what all frangible rounds do: they shatter on impact, causing anything from superficial scratches to catastrophic mutilation, with essentially no penetrative power. Kind of like super hollowpoints that could be stopped by a thick jacket and a little luck.

Well, either they fragment or they mushroom. They don't just vanishes into particles. So I'm curious what it's made out of if it really does do that after impact.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Soulwynd on September 01, 2010, 04:37:10 pm
Btw, unless your door is really crappy, shotgun/pistols will not really do much to it. Good, solid wood doors will stop most pistols and will make shotguns shoot a few times to get past it.

This is, for all intents, a crappy door's reaction to slugs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GB0VK7e350
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwKQZsC8RiI

And these are good doors:

http://www.rhinovault.com/ballistic_doors.htm

Plus there are anti-breach systems that plate the knob, hinges, and frame.

So you might want to consider that.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 01, 2010, 04:43:23 pm
I watched a few breaching videos before posting here, including one with troops in Iraq breaching residential doors.

In general, those standing door tests are shit even if you're trying to prove how hard door breaching is, because it doesn't have the support of the rest of the wall. In that one video, the dude is 10 feet away, so I'm not sure what they're trying to prove, other than a shotgun blast at 10+ feet won't blast a door off it's hinges.

Also there should just be a distinction between "average door" and "security door." It's worth remembering that feature creep is the death of all game development, and getting bogged down into trying to simulate one aspect or another is probably misspent effort.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Soulwynd on September 01, 2010, 04:48:50 pm
In that one video, the dude is 10 feet away, so I'm not sure what they're trying to prove
That the slug would get through the door and kill anyone behind it.

Even if that door was in place correctly, it wouldn't stop breaching, crappy door is crappy.

I think you should put a simple difficulty value to the door with each value range given a name. Cheap, average, solid, security, vault, etc.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 01, 2010, 04:53:57 pm
Something for text writers to do: we have a bunch of furniture, objects, and so forth that are going to need descriptions. For each furniture item, one or two lines of description will do, (A wooden chair. You can sit on it!) and for weapons, tools, and objects of interest, there ought to be maybe...two or three lines. If knowledge based on skills is implemented, it might be neat to have different descriptions of objects depending on how knowledgeable you were about it. For example...

A handgun. It's a semiautomatic pistol.
vs
A S&W 1911 semiautomatic pistol. It uses .45 caliber bullets.

It might even be kind of funny to have someone look at bullets and see

Smallish bullets.
vs
.22 short ammunition.

But yeah, there we have it. All the furniture items that people wrote in their maps are going to need descriptions, and text writers can do that. :D

Chairs, tables, wineracks, shelves, cash registers, TVs, doors, lawns, dirt/grass, stairs, doors, crowbars, weapons, melee weapons, clothing, computers, people...etc. People are probably going to use some code that'll pull from their descriptions, but in the meantime, someone can also write up some text for attribute descriptions, skill descriptions, and the description on your character with the attribute in the style that I started some pages back.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Sir Pseudonymous on September 01, 2010, 04:54:51 pm
Quote
That sounds more or less like what all frangible rounds do: they shatter on impact, causing anything from superficial scratches to catastrophic mutilation, with essentially no penetrative power. Kind of like super hollowpoints that could be stopped by a thick jacket and a little luck.

Well, either they fragment or they mushroom. They don't just vanishes into particles. So I'm curious what it's made out of if it really does do that after impact.
That's not frangible rounds though. There are round that break up on impact, and ones that mushroom, but frangible rounds specifically shatter into many little pieces.

Quote from: wikipedia
A frangible bullet is one that is designed to disintegrate into tiny particles upon impact to minimize their penetration for reasons of range safety, to limit environmental impact, or to limit the danger behind the intended target.

Also there should just be a distinction between "average door" and "security door." It's worth remembering that feature creep is the death of all game development, and getting bogged down into trying to simulate one aspect or another is probably misspent effort.
I'd hardly call "one door is flimsy and can be easily destroyed (interior "privacy" door), one door is tougher (normal), one is reinforced (reinforced normal door), one is a tough as hell slab of metal, one is a window you can open and walk through..." "feature creep". That sounds more like "trivial differences in the definition of each type of door". Aside from the last one (which would probably be more of a window with a door lock that you could walk through if opened/broken), that sounds like it could be done with a simple 'toughness' stat, and saying "you can't kick down a door above x toughness, or use a breaching round on one above y toughness, or meaningfully damage one above z toughness with anything short of explosives".


And I've started looking at TE4 and lua. Lua seems a whole lot like python, so I don't see much trouble there.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: kilakan on September 01, 2010, 05:05:18 pm
I like the toughness idea myself, with toughness having ranges based on location, for instance outdoor door's are between 10-30, indoor doors are between 1-15 (yes one, I have a door, I put a chair through by accident in my house, so one is plausible.) Store doors are 25-80 (think 80 being reinforced re-bar riot protection doors in a gunstore)  And government buildings/gang establishments have 40-100.  With high explosives like C4 being able to destroy 80>1 but weaken 99>81, and special explosives along with blowtorches and other equipment can weaken a 100 door until it can be broken. 

I think the main thing we need is to have some way to get through every door in the game forceibly, for the higher up gang aspects/police possibilities.  That way there isn't certain area's where only master lock-pickers can get.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 01, 2010, 05:15:09 pm
Quote
I'd hardly call "one door is flimsy and can be easily destroyed (interior "privacy" door), one door is tougher (normal), one is reinforced (reinforced normal door), one is a tough as hell slab of metal, one is a window you can open and walk through..." "feature creep". That sounds more like "trivial differences in the definition of each type of door". Aside from the last one (which would probably be more of a window with a door lock that you could walk through if opened/broken), that sounds like it could be done with a simple 'toughness' stat, and saying "you can't kick down a door above x toughness, or use a breaching round on one above y toughness, or meaningfully damage one above z toughness with anything short of explosives".

I was more meaning stuff like:

There is a door. Do you wish to:

a) Smash it
b) Pick the lock
c) Use a crowbar
d) Shoot the hinges with your shotgun, using slug rounds.
e) Shoot the hinges with your shotgun, using buckshot.
f) Shoot the lock with your shotgun, using slug rounds.

Ect...

Quote
That's not frangible rounds though. There are round that break up on impact, and ones that mushroom, but frangible rounds specifically shatter into many little pieces.

Yeah, I know. Pieces smaller than the size of a BB round. I hadn't seen anything where the round literally disintegrates into powder.

Quote
Item descriptions

First off: Do weapons have any stat? Or do you just want generic filler text we can pull down from the Internet?
Second: Do we have an actual list of objects, or are we supposed to go through people's designs?
Third: Let's use a master page. Duplication sucks unless it's adding to the aforementioned "item knowledge" thing.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Tnx on September 01, 2010, 05:22:35 pm
Why not make a second pirate pad for a list of items and everyone can just type in descriptions there?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Soadreqm on September 01, 2010, 05:30:35 pm
Also there should just be a distinction between "average door" and "security door." It's worth remembering that feature creep is the death of all game development, and getting bogged down into trying to simulate one aspect or another is probably misspent effort.

Well, it's a crime focused roguelike so a lot of gameplay will probably revolve around getting to places where other people don't want you to go. Focusing exclusively on the door opening simulator at the cost of all else would be stupid, I agree, but I think it would be worthwhile to have arbitrary strength doors with arbitrary strength locks and let the player try to either pick the locks or try to break them down. Not a dozen different commands for kicking that sucker in, but rather letting you attack the door like any other enemy.

EDIT: Also, for the more distant future, getting the key should be a valid method for getting into places with really strong doors. Bribe or kill someone who is allowed to get in.

By the way, how do pick other kinds of locks? like those hemicylinder-locks with the little rotating plates inside. These. (http://www.westsidelocks.com/images/abloy_key_system.jpg) Finnish doors have these pretty much exclusively. How do they work?

That thing looks like a beast. I wonder if it's even pickable.

Further research shows that people who know how to lockpick like these locks as security, because they're apparently nigh-impossible to pick. Only known way, say some, is to use a decoder. :|

Huh. Looks like my country hit the jackpot with getting the good lock company. I've seen those things on bicycles.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Deon on September 01, 2010, 05:39:12 pm
It looks like a fun and long discussion, I just want to point that 95% of apartment doors where I live are three-layer metal and with "cerberus" locks :P.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Sir Pseudonymous on September 01, 2010, 06:31:15 pm
Quote
I'd hardly call "one door is flimsy and can be easily destroyed (interior "privacy" door), one door is tougher (normal), one is reinforced (reinforced normal door), one is a tough as hell slab of metal, one is a window you can open and walk through..." "feature creep". That sounds more like "trivial differences in the definition of each type of door". Aside from the last one (which would probably be more of a window with a door lock that you could walk through if opened/broken), that sounds like it could be done with a simple 'toughness' stat, and saying "you can't kick down a door above x toughness, or use a breaching round on one above y toughness, or meaningfully damage one above z toughness with anything short of explosives".

I was more meaning stuff like:

There is a door. Do you wish to:

a) Smash it
b) Pick the lock
c) Use a crowbar
d) Shoot the hinges with your shotgun, using slug rounds.
e) Shoot the hinges with your shotgun, using buckshot.
f) Shoot the lock with your shotgun, using slug rounds.

Ect...
How about "melee breach" (a kick to a weak point (namely the area near the lock, with the goal of breaking the lock out/tearing it out of the frame), unless the player is wielding a weapon with a "breaching" quality, like an axe, sledgehammer, or battering ram), which wouldn't work on doors above a certain breaching toughness dependent on character muscle, "firearm breach" (a shot to a weak point, assumed to be wherever is best), which wouldn't work on doors above a certain breaching toughness dependent on what type of gun you're firing. A close failure (this shouldn't be an extremely random element, rather a check against whatever formula is used to determine what strength a given attack has, with perhaps only a small amount of random chance which wouldn't necessarily be enough to make an attempt fail if its base is high enough) would cause structural damage that weakened the area you're attacking, while significant failures wouldn't scratch it (except literally, unless you were trying to kick in the kind of thick metal doors a lot of commercial/public buildings have for side doors, so there'd be traces that someone tried to break in).

Instead of the cliched, obnoxious "let's attack this door and try to knock its hitpoints down to completely destroy it!", this would just be a "neutralize whatever's holding it closed so it opens" action.

Picking would be a completely different menu (and I think using a crowbar to force a door open, or using some precision tool to cut through it, would also go here). Think of the other menu as a "quickly and violently get through this motherfucking door!" one, and this as a "use some tool to work the door open".

Quote
Quote
That's not frangible rounds though. There are round that break up on impact, and ones that mushroom, but frangible rounds specifically shatter into many little pieces.

Yeah, I know. Pieces smaller than the size of a BB round. I hadn't seen anything where the round literally disintegrates into powder.
I'm thinking the dust thing was an exaggeration meant to emphasize their going to pieces, not a literal "they're reduced to a fine powder".

Quote
Quote
Item descriptions

First off: Do weapons have any stat? Or do you just want generic filler text we can pull down from the Internet?
Second: Do we have an actual list of objects, or are we supposed to go through people's designs?
Third: Let's use a master page. Duplication sucks unless it's adding to the aforementioned "item knowledge" thing.
I'm curious about items too. Though more "how are we going to store them?" than any of these questions at the moment. Unless the engine has its own special storage type, I'd be for using XML (same for NPCs), in which case I could trivially produce an editor to streamline the process of creating the lists, if I knew what elements it needed. I'm assuming lua can handle XML (and would be utterly shocked if it couldn't, especially since the little introduction thing the installer played explicitly mentioned working with XML with it). Unless it all has to be hardcoded into the engine, which is another thing that would utterly shock me.

It looks like a fun and long discussion, I just want to point that 95% of apartment doors where I live are three-layer metal and with "cerberus" locks :P.
Yeah, I think that my front door is two slabs of metal with wood and a third slab between them. Interior doors are more or less hollow wood panels with locks that can be picked by shoving a broken qtip or needle into them.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: x2yzh9 on September 01, 2010, 06:33:14 pm
We can get a $4 a month for a website through Godaddy.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on September 01, 2010, 06:35:41 pm
Website?

Do it.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: x2yzh9 on September 01, 2010, 06:41:21 pm
We can setup a VPS(We can run Chat servers, Website, SVN server, and IRC servers) for $10 donated to my brother's paypal, plus the domain name. He's willing to do it and I trust him, but it's up to you guys.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 01, 2010, 06:42:22 pm
I'm all about what people think they can code quickly and correctly so there's at least something working. If it's a "kick down the door HP", it has the benefit of adding to a whole game, and can be changed later.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 01, 2010, 06:43:06 pm
We can get a $4 a month for a website through Godaddy.

Can't we use a free blog instead of a website? Someone make a google email account that we'll all have the pw to, and then make a google blog for it that we can all log onto.

Either google blogs or wordpress would likely work fine. What'd be the name, if we had one?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 01, 2010, 06:49:59 pm
I've been thinking about that.

Crimelike.

I think it's straight and to the point.

Also do you just start a whole new page for Piratepad, or is it parented to the one going now? I might as well set up the item page while I'm eating dinner.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Acanthus117 on September 01, 2010, 06:51:31 pm
CrimeRL?

Crimelike sounds cooler, but for some reason I find the RL cool.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Soulwynd on September 01, 2010, 06:53:36 pm
A free blog is better, but whoever has access better be active.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 01, 2010, 06:56:14 pm
Pirate Pad for item descriptions. Can include other stuff later. (http://piratepad.net/QMgLE1rrwF)

Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Sir Pseudonymous on September 01, 2010, 06:56:35 pm
Wordpress allows multiple contributors to a blog, doesn't it? (I know one free blog site does, having frequented an IRC channel, two regulars of which ran a joint blog for a time, before one got pissy and took it down because the other never posted) That would be more secure than sharing a single account, since one trouble maker could just up and change the password, fucking it all up.

I'm all about what people think they can code quickly and correctly so there's at least something working. If it's a "kick down the door HP", it has the benefit of adding to a whole game, and can be changed later.
It'd probably take one person an hour or two to do, assuming the engine isn't so grossly complicated as to make the task of adding a few options and equations to a menu a monumental task, in which case I can't imagine we'd be using the engine in the first place...
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: x2yzh9 on September 01, 2010, 07:00:16 pm
The thing is, we could have a SVN repository for keeping all the code and sprites together, and having a website instead of just a blog will attract more players.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: kilakan on September 01, 2010, 07:02:19 pm
I'd prefer the free multi-admin blog idea myself, since I probably won't donate more then effort to this, and I've kept up on this so fr on both pirate pad and the forums so i'd be more then happy to check a blog onc or twice a day and answer public questions about progress/future ideas/ect.

Personnally a website should wait until we have a beta, that way we can ask for donations and god knows, maybe get enough to pay for the website (hahah or pay us.)
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 01, 2010, 07:03:14 pm
Quote
It'd probably take one person an hour or two to do, assuming the engine isn't so grossly complicated as to make the task of adding a few options and equations to a menu a monumental task, in which case I can't imagine we'd be using the engine in the first place...

*shrug* I'll leave that up whoever is taking on the task to decide. The last time I tried to write script was NWN 2, and I failed. Before that, BASICA, and I failed :P
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: x2yzh9 on September 01, 2010, 07:03:34 pm
Yea, this is true, but what about an SVN repository? We need one, and I doubt we could find one for less than 10 bux.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 01, 2010, 07:10:24 pm
Can we get all the pertinent information edited into the top of the first post? The main PP entry and now the Item one, so far.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Sir Pseudonymous on September 01, 2010, 07:20:17 pm
Let's wait till we have a (very early and unfinished) alpha release to show for it before we go to the lengths of shelling out for a website, shall we? Or we could now, I suppose, if people are willing and able to contribute money for it (something I can't do at the moment, on account of not having money in the first place). And even then, a devlog would be a good thing, and a shared blog would better than pasting news items onto the front page.

Quote
It'd probably take one person an hour or two to do, assuming the engine isn't so grossly complicated as to make the task of adding a few options and equations to a menu a monumental task, in which case I can't imagine we'd be using the engine in the first place...

*shrug* I'll leave that up whoever is taking on the task to decide. The last time I tried to write script was NWN 2, and I failed. Before that, BASICA, and I failed :P
I'll take it on (assuming no one has any objections), once I've delved into the engine (looking over a book on lua at the moment). And once I know specifically what we want, of course.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 01, 2010, 07:36:29 pm
What person perspective do people prefer for descriptions?

Like....

"*I* see a stove here."

Or

"*YOU* see a stove here."

I prefer 3rd person narrator. I loathe first person perceptive.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Acanthus117 on September 01, 2010, 07:37:40 pm
I prefer *You*, rather than *I*.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Sir Pseudonymous on September 01, 2010, 07:44:25 pm
What about just "It's a stove."?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Soulwynd on September 01, 2010, 07:46:43 pm
Yea, this is true, but what about an SVN repository? We need one, and I doubt we could find one for less than 10 bux.
Isn't google code free? O.o
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on September 01, 2010, 08:09:16 pm
Is sourceforge free?

We could always use Freewebs.  Get a flashing animated banner, some whole-screen effects like falling rain, an animated cursor, maybe throw in a Linkin Park song, it'd be great.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Acanthus117 on September 01, 2010, 08:11:14 pm
Huhuhuhuhuhu
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 01, 2010, 08:12:01 pm
Is sourceforge free?

We could always use Freewebs.  Get a flashing animated banner, some whole-screen effects like falling rain, an animated cursor, maybe throw in a Linkin Park song, it'd be great.

Hahahahah.
 Anyway, the items description page is going quite well. Spriters can help sprite any of the items described on there.
http://piratepad.net/QMgLE1rrwF
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Josephus on September 01, 2010, 08:12:26 pm
Is sourceforge free?

We could always use Freewebs.  Get a flashing animated banner, some whole-screen effects like falling rain, an animated cursor, maybe throw in a Linkin Park song, it'd be great.

BLEEEEEEEEDING IIIIIN MY BLOOOOOOD
MY BLOOOOOD IT WIIIILL NOT BLEEEEEED

...

Yeah, google code is free, as far as I remember.

Second person is a good perspective for an adventurous criminal roguelike like this, and it is also a common Roguelike format.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Medicine Man on September 01, 2010, 08:24:32 pm
maybe throw in a Linkin Park song
Linkin Park?I thought this was supposed to be a roguelike not a torture chamber of terrible songs

 :P
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 01, 2010, 08:25:28 pm
Ok, well, there is officially a whole lot of shit going on now in the item PP. Lol. People with some quasi authority over the project need to start setting some ground rules, or we at least need to start discussing them.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Puzzlemaker on September 01, 2010, 08:32:40 pm
To make this happen SVN must have we.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Puzzlemaker on September 01, 2010, 08:49:09 pm
I made a sourceforge.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/crimelike/
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Soulwynd on September 01, 2010, 08:51:04 pm
Afaik, the current prototype already has a code.google page.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Saint on September 01, 2010, 09:26:27 pm
We could always use Freewebs.  throw in a Linkin Park song

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?
ARE YOU LIKE 10?
Linkin Park isn't even music, and freewebs is for idiots.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: x2yzh9 on September 01, 2010, 09:27:45 pm
We could always use Freewebs.  throw in a Linkin Park song

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?
ARE YOU LIKE 10?
Linkin Park isn't even music, and freewebs is for idiots.
Linkin Parks okay, but I'm sort of against throwing a Linkin' Park song in. And how is freewebs for idiots?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Acanthus117 on September 01, 2010, 09:30:56 pm
Uh, sarcasm?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: kilakan on September 01, 2010, 09:39:17 pm
Can we get back on topic, sarcasm doesn't go over well on the internet and that was just plain mean man.
I'm against using music that isn't made by us/free ware artists.  I've got a friend whose good with ambient songs, I could try and get him to make us a theme song/background music.

edit*Or if you want this to be a solely Bay 12 game, I could give making some songs to choose from, I make some in my off-time and I've got a few programs for it.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 01, 2010, 09:52:10 pm
Is sourceforge free?

We could always use Freewebs.  Get a flashing animated banner, some whole-screen effects like falling rain, an animated cursor, maybe throw in a Linkin Park song, it'd be great.

He was joking and being funny and humorous. I laugh. Haha!

Anyway, both pirate pads are quite productive. Linking everything again!
Dev pad: http://piratepad.net/h9QML6qDDY
Items pad: http://piratepad.net/QMgLE1rrwF
Sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/crimelike/
Blogspot: http://crimelike.blogspot.com/

Do we have any other websites we should keep track of?

EDIT: Also, I have no idea what brain damage I have, but I've been referring to poor Lap as Lab for the past...several days.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Puzzlemaker on September 01, 2010, 10:45:00 pm
Keep in mind that sourceforge has a SVN repository for us!  If we could move all our stuff into it, I would be ever-so-grateful.  Of course, I need to give other people admin/access, so give me your sourceforge ID's if you would please.

The repository is here:
https://crimelike.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/crimelike
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Jack A T on September 01, 2010, 11:13:34 pm
http://piratepad.net/vVEWqeLn8P

Our mapping PiratePad.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on September 01, 2010, 11:20:21 pm
Turns out I'm busy until Friday, but this weekend I'll make some maps and possibly flavor text.

Is there some sort of ASCII mapping tool or do you just type it out all awkwardly?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: cappstv on September 01, 2010, 11:21:45 pm
Turns out I'm busy until Friday, but this weekend I'll make some maps and possibly flavor text.

Is there some sort of ASCII mapping tool or do you just type it out all awkwardly?
ASCII Paint

The one you download
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Jack A T on September 02, 2010, 12:31:53 am
Sourceforge username: RodlenJack.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Deon on September 02, 2010, 12:32:07 am
Why were my furniture tiles deleted from the PiratePad? Jack AT's are there but mine (except for unrelated creep) are missing.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 02, 2010, 12:33:52 am
The idea generation in Items is nice, but we need to some serious pruning in there. The descriptions are turning into "how many movie references/jokes can we piles on." Something like how dungeon crawl does would be nice. Having each item basically be a chat wall of one liners is lame.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Puzzlemaker on September 02, 2010, 12:37:17 am
Added you JackAT.

Post your usernames and I'll add you when I wake up in the morning, hehe.  Haven't tested it out myself yet, so if someone could check out the SVN repository and see if it's all working according to plan that would be great.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: cappstv on September 02, 2010, 12:43:44 am
I have wrote the theme song for this game, its called the "crime like song,"
When I was growing up
The teachers would always say
Bobby what do you want to beeeee?

And to that I would reply
A thief or a hitman
or even a goon!
Then they would laugh at me,
and say crime doesnt pay.
And i would cry, and go home that day!

But then one day,
I found the crimelike game
and i began to play!

and now i am a thief,
cause crimelike prove to me
that crime really does pay!

If you stay smart!
If you stay smart!
Crime does pay!
If you stay Smaaaaart!

First person to record this song gets a free cookie
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 02, 2010, 12:44:06 am
Added you JackAT.

Post your usernames and I'll add you when I wake up in the morning, hehe.  Haven't tested it out myself yet, so if someone could check out the SVN repository and see if it's all working according to plan that would be great.

Check your PM, I sent my username and ID, I think.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Puzzlemaker on September 02, 2010, 12:49:38 am
Gotcha.  I added you Kusgnos.  Hmm... I -was- going to go to bed, but since I don't feel that sleepy I guess I'll see if I can get the SVN all ready.

Edit:  Okay, I added a basic file structure in.  I'll start moving in some of the stuff people committed if I don't fall asleep, hehe.  For those of you who are new to SVN, a good client is:

http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/

I highly recommend it.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Puzzlemaker on September 02, 2010, 01:16:53 am
Okay, added in a bunch of tiles to SVN.

ANY NEW WORK SHOULD BE PUT ON SVN.  PLEASE.

Lets at least try to keep this organized.

Another thing of note:  I did not add any human sprites to SVN, since there where so many variations.  We should probably talk about how to handle that exactly.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Jack A T on September 02, 2010, 01:33:23 am
I'll separate the people into their parts and update that end.

EDIT: Success.  All parts separated and sorted.  They're in the repository.  Could use some more parts, though.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 02, 2010, 02:51:42 am
I'm going to propose a system for narcotics, pretty loose to start. More like outlining what feature it could include, or the steps that might be involved in it.

First off, whatever people are comfortable with is what we should do. I'll say that we need drugs, but whether we need every single substance people can put into their bodies, just the key note ones, or just the ones people don't feel icky talking about, is up to the community.

I'm basically ok with everything. We don't need to get too deep into the difference between these drugs, even if ingested, as long as they stand apart for the player in terms of value, difficulty and inherent risk. More below. Skills and attributes are just listed so people can get a sense of what might apply.

So, drugs. Three parts.

Supply.

Processing.

Selling.

------

Supply. Whether you grow it, buy it "wholesale", steal it or make it out of some other product, it has to come from somewhere. The question becomes is the player a middle man, just pushing processed product, or are they doing the whole shebang from step 1 to step 10? There's a gameplay element here. Starting your own drug business would require more investment from the player, but turn a higher profit. Being a middle man would turn quicker but lower profit, and require a lot less logistics on the player's part. However you do it, it also include deals going bad, or, if the player is growing/brewing their own supply, they might become a target for law enforcement or OTHER criminals.

Next to each entry is listed the potential yield for each source.

Sources:
Other dealers (purchase/rob or kill) (HIGH)
Grow it. (HIGH)
Purchase/steal the necessary legal ingredients. (HIGH)
Steal it from the authorities, rob or kill them. (MED)
Steal/rob/kill drug users. (LOW)

Associated Skills/Attributes:
Charisma
Street smarts
Negotiating
Intimidation
Bluff
Business

Processing. Most drugs have to be processed in some way for consumption, even if it just means breaking it up into smaller quantities to sell to people at a higher price. Again the question for the player becomes, how involved in the process do they want to get? Let's assume that when players acquire a significant amount of any substance, whether they bought it or stole it, it has a required processing time relative to the quantity and substance type.

But not only is it a turn over time, it's a coefficient, that determines how much of raw product you turn into finished product. Your skills should adjust how well you turn 30kg of X into substance Y, or how many grams your plants yield. The conversion rate could be different if you're already working with finished product, then you'd only lose a little bit as stuff gets spilled on the floor. (Or perhaps you start dipping into your own product if you've got an addiction.)

So, processing should involve:
-Time. Lots of time eventually for lots of product.
-Land. You can't grow/brew/bag drugs without a place to do it in private.
-Equipment. All drugs require some equipment to make. Even if it's just a garden hose, a trowel or plastic baggies. We could abstract this to a general upkeep cost, or a one time set up cost via the items people buy/beg/steal to bring together.
-Skill. Skill reduces overall processing time and increases yield. (The yield should never be greater than a 1:1 ratio however.)

Associated Skills/Attributes:
Intelligence
Farming
Chemistry
Cooking?

Selling. I see this sort of as a general text option you could have with all NPCs. "Hey do you wanna buy some drugs?" or "Hey do you wanna buy...." and then you pick what you have on you from a displayed list, and the NPC reacts based either on their preference for a certain kind of drug, or their overall opinion of drugs. Selling in front of "the man" would check against some relevant skill to see if you can keep it concealed, or they're on to you and do their thing. But there should also be a tie-in to your general heat rating, because the more people you deal to, the more word spreads that you're "the guy" and that eventually makes its way back to "the man."

Associated Skills/Attributes:
Perception
Charisma
Street smarts
Sleight of hand
Business
Negotiation

The List of Substances

Just so we know what's on the table.

Listed next to each entry is is the drug's relative value, it's relative cost of investment and processing time, it's availability and it's level of criminality. An * means I personally think it's shouldn't be growable, because I think growing coca plants in people's backyards kind of stretches the simulation a little far. Meth labs, however, are entirely feasible.

Marijuana (LOW, LOW, HIGH, LOW)
Cocaine* (MED, MED, LOW, HIGH)
Crack (MED, LOW, MED, HIGH)
Methamphetamines (HIGH, HIGH, HIGH, HIGH)
Heroin (HIGH, HIGH, LOW, HIGH)
Opium* (HIGH, HIGH, MED, HIGH)
LSD (LOW, MED, LOW, HIGH)
Mushrooms (MED, MED, MED, LOW)
Ecstasy (MED, MED, MED, HIGH)
Prescription Medicines (MED, LOW, MED, MED)

A note on criminality: It should not only affect how harshly law enforcement sees it (how much heat it generates, ect...) but also how likely it is that drug deals of ANY kind go wrong. You're dealing with other criminals, after all, and the higher up the drug schedule you go, the more dangerous and untrustworthy those people become.
 
That's all I got for the moment.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Acanthus117 on September 02, 2010, 03:38:08 am
Hehe, that's cool.
 
I like it!

Hm, maybe a similar system can be done for illegal weapons (automatics/explosives/military grade), with changes and stuff.

Maybe a job could be guarding these transactions and stuff.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 02, 2010, 08:50:27 am
ANY NEW WORK SHOULD BE PUT ON SVN.  PLEASE.

The directory structure is already wrong so you might want to hold off on that to avoid having to needlessly reorganize everything.

Drug stuff- I think you are giving meth creators too much credit in the investment and processing.

I liked what I saw on the item pad, but doing stuff in XML seems like an extra step for no reason. I'll try to throw up a more basic version of what I have to the SVN. It may not have a lot of the features done, but it has the right directory structure and should let everyone experiment with things easier. I will need access to the SVN for that though. Sourceforge username = tourresh
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Sir Pseudonymous on September 02, 2010, 09:56:43 am
Listed next to each entry is is the drug's relative value, it's relative cost of investment and processing time, it's availability and it's level of criminality. An * means I personally think it's shouldn't be growable, because I think growing coca plants in people's backyards kind of stretches the simulation a little far. Meth labs, however, are entirely feasible.

Marijuana (LOW, LOW, HIGH, LOW)
Cocaine* (MED, MED, LOW, HIGH)
Crack (MED, LOW, MED, HIGH)
Methamphetamine (HIGH, HIGH, HIGH, HIGH)
Heroin (HIGH, HIGH, LOW, HIGH)
Opium* (HIGH, HIGH, MED, HIGH)
LSD (LOW, MED, LOW, HIGH)
Mushrooms (MED, MED, MED, LOW)
Ecstasy (MED, MED, MED, HIGH)
Prescription Medicines (MED, LOW, MED, MED)
Opium is actually quite easy and cheap to grow, considering it's produced by a common garden flower, which is legal to grow (though large quantities of them, and ones that showed signs of processing, would be suspicious at the very least). Hell, you can make it from commercially available poppy seeds. I also don't believe there's that much of a market for opium. I believe most opiate addicts are on either heroin, morphine, or hydrocodone.

LSD and mushrooms are, as far as I can tell, around the same cost on the market, and mushrooms can be easily produced by anyone with a few dozen dollars to spend, whereas LSD requires a proper lab setup and a significant degree of expertise to produce. Meth, in contrast, amounts to boiling cough medicine and ammonia in kerosene (from what I understand), all of which is cheap and easy to do, if extremely dangerous on account of the fact that you're boiling an extremely flammable chemical.

Cocaine would be extremely valuable, while meth and crack are both cheap gutter drugs for the dregs of society. Heroin probably falls in the middle range. Don't really know shit about ecstacy, though I seem to recall hearing the price for a cap once, which was in the same range as LSD and mushrooms.



My sourceforge username is sirpseudonymous.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Puzzlemaker on September 02, 2010, 10:16:02 am
Haha, Yeah, the directory structure I kinda did at three in the morning.  Feel free to move stuff around, just gave you access/admin.

As for the XML, it seems there would be a lot of information to keep track of with all the descriptions, how much you could pawn each item for, how bulky it is, etc, etc.  Keeping track of all that in the code would be a pain, and putting everything into XML wouldn't be that hard, IMO.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Tellemurius on September 02, 2010, 10:52:22 am
Btw, unless your door is really crappy, shotgun/pistols will not really do much to it. Good, solid wood doors will stop most pistols and will make shotguns shoot a few times to get past it.

This is, for all intents, a crappy door's reaction to slugs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GB0VK7e350
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwKQZsC8RiI

And these are good doors:

http://www.rhinovault.com/ballistic_doors.htm

Plus there are anti-breach systems that plate the knob, hinges, and frame.

So you might want to consider that.
you can blast around that, the frangible material use for breach rounds is steel powder binded with wax. its basically sandblast times 100. the effective range is 6 inches as i said and yes this stuff is not good for killing people unless you like a foot from the person but this WILL leave a hole in them.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Tellemurius on September 02, 2010, 10:53:19 am
Okay, added in a bunch of tiles to SVN.

ANY NEW WORK SHOULD BE PUT ON SVN.  PLEASE.

Lets at least try to keep this organized.

Another thing of note:  I did not add any human sprites to SVN, since there where so many variations.  We should probably talk about how to handle that exactly.
how about GIT?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Puzzlemaker on September 02, 2010, 11:13:01 am
SVN hosting comes free with sourceforge, all set up and everything.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on September 02, 2010, 12:10:32 pm
I have some free time today. Where do I put my maps now?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Jack A T on September 02, 2010, 12:12:36 pm
http://piratepad.net/vVEWqeLn8P

The mapping piratepad. Yay.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on September 02, 2010, 12:14:20 pm
Yay indeed.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Funk on September 02, 2010, 02:10:39 pm
on drugs

costs
all these costs are uk based.

Heroin £13,000 per kilo at 40 per cent purity.
Ecstasy 40 to 70p in bulk, £2 street price.
Cannabis £1150 per kilo resin.£50 per ounce
cocaine £30 to £50 a gram.
crack rock costs between £10 and £20

Processing.
processing often does yield greater than the in put as most drugs are cut with other stuff

crack is an easy drug to make from cocaine.
one ounce of cocaine will some 370 rocks of crack
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on September 02, 2010, 02:13:38 pm
I just did a bunch of item descriptions. I feel useful :D
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 02, 2010, 02:20:24 pm
snip

I made some assumptions with that list. 1) The game is set in America. 2) We aren't doing a plantation simulation, which is what you need to produce enough poppies to make opium (or heroin.) Therefore I assume those things all have to be imported, which drives up the cost/risk/profit SIGNIFICANTLY. French Connection? Afghani Opium and Heroin producers? These are not nice people. So while the list may not be 100% accurate to real life, a drug's place on drug schedule should follow ever increasing levels of risk, reward and investment.

On LSD: It's kind of gone out of fashion, replaced by mushrooms which are cheaper and much easier to produce. It has a goofy place in the schedule because it takes a lot of science to make, but sells for very little. These things can be tweaked however.

Crack/Cocaine: The Obama Administration just recently equalized the penalties for both crack and cocaine. They're both considered equally bad by the government now. The difference in them is which groups they appeal to.

Quote
while meth and crack are both cheap gutter drugs for the dregs of society.

The funny part? Crack is a derivative of cocaine. You get a more potent product from reducing cocaine to crack, but you still need the seed. So it's not completely cheap to produce, but cheaper than straight coke.

Meth has a special place in American society. It's like the moonshine of the drug world. It is also the drug that is currently in the government's cross-hairs the most, because it can be produced domestically, requires less science than say, LSD, and there is a huge demand for it in the Midwest.

So basically crack, cocaine, heroin and meth are all in teh same bracket for criminality. They're in the same relative bracket for profit too, "lots." They differ in the amount of processing they require, and who your potential clientele would be. This is one place we could probably prune the list since only drug users would probably care about having their pet substance available, but since we wanted realism, I think we should have options. Make a few differences between each drug (Like, meth dealers are just more untrustworthy than others) so they stand out a little. But I believe in multiple paths to profit as a drug dealer.

Quote
processing often does yield greater than the in put as most drugs are cut with other stuff

This is true. But you do still need some significant seed money to start producing crack. And...

It sort of begs another level of simulation, doesn't it? If you choose to cut your stuff too much, people get pissed and come see you. I'm not sure how much total effort people want invested in drugs (since there are a lot of other crimes to cover) but from a game play perspective, I don't know if we need to get down to that level of detail.

Plus it might be unbalanced for game play, if someone can buy $1k worth of coke and turn it into super cut crack that sells for....$5k?

Quote
you can blast around that, the frangible material use for breach rounds is steel powder binded with wax. its basically sandblast times 100

Again, this so cool.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Funk on September 02, 2010, 03:21:45 pm
Plus it might be unbalanced for game play, if someone can buy $1k worth of coke and turn it into super cut crack that sells for....$5k?
well you will only see the $5k if you sell all the drugs your self,and that can be FUN.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Jack A T on September 02, 2010, 03:22:38 pm
We have got to figure out where this game is taking place.  Laws change based on location...
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on September 02, 2010, 03:28:26 pm
Seriously?  I don't think we need to be that detailed.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Strange guy on September 02, 2010, 03:31:39 pm
I think it should initially be based on the US, since a lot of people here are familiar with it and it has gun laws that suit a crime game, but in the future you should be able to set different laws when the game generates towns, sort of like the realism/fantasy people were talking about earlier in the thread but IMO it's more important and probably easier to implement.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on September 02, 2010, 04:10:07 pm
Definitely too much future talk. First goal is to make a pseudo playable alpha, right? So let's focus on that.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: cappstv on September 02, 2010, 04:38:28 pm
Seriously?  I don't think we need to be that detailed.
YES WE DO.
Not only will this game teach the kids now days that crime does indeed pay, it will teach them the laws of foreign countries!
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Soadreqm on September 02, 2010, 04:45:32 pm
Right. Baby steps. First, a playable alpha, THEN a hydroponic farming simulator with individually modeled pest insects so you can grow drugs in a wardrobe.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Puzzlemaker on September 02, 2010, 04:52:39 pm
I think we do have a somewhat-playable alpha.  It just needs to be uploaded so others can mess with it.  *cough*
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on September 02, 2010, 05:08:38 pm
We have a playable alpha that isn't released?

:O
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Puzzlemaker on September 02, 2010, 05:19:50 pm
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=64931.msg1526516#msg1526516

Just waitin' for it to be uploaded to SVN!
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 02, 2010, 06:48:05 pm
I've been toying with the idea of what happens when you get caught.

I'd like to see something akin to LCS's trial system, but perhaps slightly more simplified.

But I'd also like to see Prison be an experience for the player, that plays out sort of like interrogations or car chases do in LCS.

Let's say you get sentenced. You've got your time to spend. Each year you get a choice:

I want to spend my time:
A) Working out (Enhances various combat or athletic skills and stats, increases chance for early release)
B) Learning in the prison library (Increases knowledge skills and/or stats, increases chance for early release)
C) Trying to make money hustling (Earns income while in prison)
D) Making contacts within the prison (Increases your standing in criminal society, decreases chance for early release)
E) Learning from other criminals (Increases some crime-related skills)
F) Keeping my head down and just serving my time. (Does nothing, increases chance for early release, possibly makes you a target.)
G) Trying to make a shank. (Takes a whole year of gathering materials. Gives you a large bonus in combat events for the duration. Reduces chance of early parole.)
H) Recover in the infirmary. (Regain HP over the course of the year. Does not make you safe from events.)
I) Trying to escape. (Factors in a TON of skills, your criminal rating, and you would get a bonus for every year you've already spent in prison, because you've done more thinking and recon. The game should end, I think, if you get caught, either because you die or they put you in max security for the rest of your life.)

During each year, how much your stats and skills increase is based on your current stats and skills.
Each year also can have a number of random events that occur, with the chance they do being relative to some of your stats and skills. Whether they happen at all, whether you win, lose or die, should be based off your stats. The higher your score, essentially, is the less criminals in or out of prison would fuck with you.

So it would be like...

You've got a three year sentence for burglary. What do you wish to do to pass the time in Year 1?

A) Work out.

You spend the year working out. You're getting buff.
There was a prison riot. You kept your head down, and only suffered minor injuries. (Lose some HP, gain some stealth skill)
You almost got into a fight with skinheads, but the guards intervened at the last moment. (Chance of attack from skinheads next year increases.)

You've served one year of a three year sentence. What do you wish to do to pass the time in Year 2?

E) Learn from other criminals.

After talking with some old timers, you learned a few new tricks. (Lockpicking increased.)
You got jumped by some inmates in the shower room. You fought the good fight, but there were too many of them. (Lose some HP. Unarmed combat skill increased. Criminal standing reduced.)
You got into a fight with a skinhead. You won, but your sentence was lengthened by one year. (Lose some HP. Gain some unarmed combat skill. Sentence increased.)

You've served 2 years of a 4 year sentence. What do you wish to do to pass the time in Year 3?

H) Recover in the infirmary.

You spend the year recovering from your injuries. (HP +)
Nothing eventful happened this year.

You've served 3 years of a 4 year sentence. What do you wish to do pass the time in Year 4?

B) Learn in the prison library.

You spend the year reading books in the prison library. You've become more educated. (Intelligence or knowledge skills increased.)
There was a prison riot. You manage to avoid trouble entirely. (Stealth skill increased.)
You land a job in the warden's office. You manage to sneak a couple bucks into your pocket. (+cash at release.)

You've served four years of a four year sentence. You're now a free man.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Jack A T on September 02, 2010, 06:55:27 pm
That would be awesome.

How about having "attempt to break out" be another option?  Unlikely to succeed, and usually leading to a longer sentence if you fail, but if you succeed, you get out early.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 02, 2010, 07:00:06 pm
I knew I was missing something totally obvious.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: cappstv on September 02, 2010, 07:08:59 pm
A simplified trail system?
Or how about a brand new ace attorneys game! Except this time your client really did did it!
Also its more realistic!
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 02, 2010, 07:11:04 pm
I can't tell if that means your in support of the prison idea or against it :P
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on September 02, 2010, 07:11:21 pm
I like it, but I think it should be by months.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 02, 2010, 07:16:57 pm
Like, bi-annual? Doing all 12 months for a 10 year sentence gets a little unsane, I think.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: cappstv on September 02, 2010, 07:44:40 pm
My thoughts about prison
Have journalist and true crime writers visit you there. Maybe have some sort of randomly generated quiz thing that goes along with those events. Then they will describe your crime in gritty details, but unlike normal newspaper articles about your crimes, it will have your side of the story too.

Make prison escaping way more in depth. Have the option to recruit your cell mates or go at it alone. Then you will select what tools you will use and when on your prison schedule you plan to escape. Then you have to play though your escape. If you make it your story continues. If you don't you get a climatic end.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on September 02, 2010, 07:53:16 pm
Perhaps an option to play through incarceration?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 02, 2010, 08:16:11 pm
So there's been some disagreement as to the level of silliness and/or offensiveness we want to allow. Not even in the game play sense, just the kinds of easter eggs, quotes or things that make up items and descriptions.

So we think a good compromise is an optional mode for the game. We'll think of something clever to call it. All items would be parsed for tags like SILLY and OFFENSIVE and EASTEREGG. These items and/or descs would only show up in the "+ mode." We're trying to be pretty liberal about what we tag with what, and most items will have no tag. But we felt everyone has a line somewhere on what's acceptable, and I think this will probably help us focus what the theme and style of the core game is, while still leaving room for all the fun, bad jokes, in-jokes and stuff that people crave.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 02, 2010, 08:38:39 pm
As for the XML, it seems there would be a lot of information to keep track of with all the descriptions, how much you could pawn each item for, how bulky it is, etc, etc.  Keeping track of all that in the code would be a pain, and putting everything into XML wouldn't be that hard, IMO.

Please make an example of an XML file for an item or whatever so I can see what you are proposing.

I'm tired from stupid kids drinking bleach and such. I should have the SVN updated in the morning or early afternoon tomorrow. I'm trying to remove all the random experimental stuff I was doing that could easily crash your game if you don't know what you're doing. Don't be expecting too much. Most of my time was spent exploring possible coding paths and experimenting with stuff.

And was there ever a consensus on if the city should be a "world map",  as in the city travel is at a different scale than most indoor areas. It sounded like there was more votes for having everything have the same scale everywhere, but I wanted to make sure.

Also, I don't know if there's a good solution to dealing with situations where you are trying to look from a fifth story down to the street or vice versa.

Easter egg stuff? Behold the magic of Lua where we can easily tag and make just about everything in the game optional.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 02, 2010, 08:51:51 pm
Quote
Also, I don't know if there's a good solution to dealing with situations where you are trying to look from a fifth story down to the street or vice versa.

Isn't it possible to just handle it like DF does, minus all the z-axis calculations? As long as enemies know how to reach the same elevation as the player, I think we can all accept not being able to shoot down the z-axis. I don't think anyone's expectations are that high, at this point.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 02, 2010, 08:56:01 pm
It's all about time. If the engine doesn't have native support it means one of us has to code it in and something like that isn't even close to as easy as it sounds, which is why very few RL's have good Z-axis implementation.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 02, 2010, 08:56:50 pm
Following was some discussion on normal NPCs, unique NPCs, and identifiers that can give the player information about the NPC being looked at that was on the PiratePad. I put it down here, since it seemed like some good points, though we've yet to really put it all together.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also, I think most people agreed that indoor spaces should have the same scale. The only thing that ought to have a location change is between districts.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 02, 2010, 09:15:18 pm
Would cracking open LCS to see how it's handled there be of any use?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Puzzlemaker on September 02, 2010, 09:25:48 pm
Haha, wow, it sounds like you had a fun time Lap.

Here is a good example of fairly complicated XML with nested stuff.  I will eventually get around to doing one myself.

http://www.redversconsulting.com/images/cobol-xml-sample.gif
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Soulwynd on September 02, 2010, 09:38:44 pm
I think it would be best to forget about XML, it's much easier to do items in .LUA and you have the advantage that's already in the code the game uses. Not to mention the items have lil bits of functions inside of them (such as the damage randomization function), they're basically classes (or structs, or tables, or constructs, depending on what language you are used with) with a variable range of definitions.


As for prison, I think it should be an actual area of the game, so you're able to kill inmates and attempt some fun escapes or getting killed in there. It's much more interesting than just skimming through menus. Of course, time could pass faster in prison.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 02, 2010, 09:45:37 pm
I like the idea of prison both as a punishment for getting caught, and an element of game play. I think just running around shooting prison guards and opening cells sounds kind of one track. What happens outside the clink is just as important to criminals as what happens inside. I think it adds a great deal to the simulation that the game isn't over when you're arrested and convicted, it's just another chapter in the tale of your criminal, how they went to prison and came out reborn hard.

I'd hate the game to just climax at "Cops shoot you, you die." Or "Cops put you in cell. Now walk out of cell."

It also sets up the potential to play the whole LIFE of your criminal, not just the part before they got killed. Imagine a whole game, going in and out of the prison system. When the game finally tallies your score, you could be proud of having an epic criminal veteran.

I think a prison side-experience sounds more flavorful, easier to do in a meaningful way and offers a change up of gameplay. Which is one thing I've always liked about LCS.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Jack A T on September 02, 2010, 09:47:26 pm
If you really want to run around beating people to death in prison, raid the prison from outside.  You even get to bring a real weapon.

I like nenjin's idea.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: cappstv on September 02, 2010, 09:53:41 pm
I just really want to escape from super prisons.
Of course this has to be as hard as possible.

And may take years in game time. But it would be worth it.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Jack A T on September 02, 2010, 09:54:06 pm
Also, we could really use more people mapping.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Soulwynd on September 02, 2010, 09:55:12 pm
I dunno why. Maps can be random generated. The mapped areas are similar to what vaults were in angband. I mean, sure we will have a huge diversity of 'vaults' but most of the map will be random.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 02, 2010, 10:08:17 pm
I know I'm going through a lot of potential mechanics, but I'm using this sort of as a note pad.

On the heat/evidentiary system.

This system needs to be complex. It relates directly to the core of the game; breaking the law and not getting caught. Of all the things in game, this needs to make sense, be meaningfully complex, and be balanced.

I see 4 questions that relate to evidentiary chain/increase of attention from authorities.
1) What are you doing to generate heat?
2) Do the police know who you are?
3) What evidence have you left behind to convict yourself?
4) How does the game "know" when you're being bad?

I propose 4 stats.

Identity.
Notoriety.
Heat.
Evidence.

Between these 4 stats, I think we can accurately simulate all the aspects of criminal behavior, getting caught and avoiding getting caught.

Heat: How interested authorities are in your activities RIGHT NOW. Higher heat increases the likelihood of police activity near you. This is an important distinction. Notoriety tracks your overall behavior, but heat is a moment-to-moment value.

Notoriety: Your general reputation in the criminal world and elsewhere. This is essentially the player score. The more they do, the higher it gets. What it does is serves as a MULTIPLIER for heat. The higher your notoriety is, the less it takes for police to become actively interested in you, because they want you BAD for the things you've already done.

Evidence: Evidence is what allows authority figures to arrest you and is factored into your trial results. It is rated on a scale of 1 to 100. When you commit a crime, you generally leave evidence. DNA. Witnesses. Descriptions of yourself. Footprints. Ect... Better skills or stats would reduce the amount of evidence you generate. Some activities would generate much less evidence than others. Some activities, like attacking a police officer, generate maximum evidence. Some items or behaviors might REDUCE evidence, like changing clothes, wearing disguises ect... NOT doing somethings might increase the rate of evidence gain. Like not wearing a disguise to a bank robbery where there are security cameras.

Identity: If the cops aren't there when you commit crimes, they need to identify you before they arrest you. This stat would govern whether or not police officers try to arrest you on sight. It can be increased by doing or not doing some things, just like evidence gain. DNA and finger prints for example, are as good as as photo ID these days. And identity can be decreased by taking certain actions. The game should store certain things like what the player was wearing, so when they change the identity value drops.

All these values except notoriety would degrade over time. More later.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Sir Pseudonymous on September 02, 2010, 11:50:09 pm
I'm out of commission until further notice. I simply can't wrap my head around the absurdity of the current situation I'm facing.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nuker w on September 03, 2010, 12:11:52 am
Hmm. This is in Lua i'm guessing? I'm ok with See Plus Plus if you need anything like that. I might have a look into Lua and try and give you lot a hand.

NINJA EDIT: Yea, i'm in. Realised i've done this to a degree before anyway. So count me in.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 03, 2010, 12:31:09 am
I'm out of commission until further notice. I simply can't wrap my head around the absurdity of the current situation I'm facing.

You'll be okay. Take a good rest!

In regards to Nenjin's heat system, I think it's pretty...pretty damn good. So if every single crime were assigned a heat value, every little slip up in evidence was assigned an evidence and identity value, it'd make the system work out. To make it more complex, each district could have different rates of police response, depending on how crime-filled the area was. I'd say that an area with more crime has less chance of police intervention, but more chance that the people there are going to be prepared.

Disposing of clothing and switching outfits sounds very interesting. It'd be even more interesting if police might mistake bystanders for you, if that particular npc was wearing an outfit like yours when you committed the crime. It'd also give people incentives to obtain/buy clothing and wear as much as they could, so after committing the crime, they could ditch the cap, hoodie, and gloves, and significantly lessen the chance of cops nabbing them based on the identity stat.

The heat system of the game, like Lap originally said, is meant to be one of the central cores of it. So this sounds good to me. I like it!

EDIT: Also, for those who are too lazy to get the tortoise SVN client set up to download all the goodies in our Sourceforge SVN, I've posted some of the sprites up in the blog. http://crimelike.blogspot.com/
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 03, 2010, 03:18:56 am
I think we easily have enough items, descs and floor plans for an alpha. Now we need to hash out mechanics and get the coding started. I.e. all the hard stuff.

More on Identity, Notoriety, Evidence and Heat:

Identity and Evidence: Anyone who sees you commit a crime adds to your identity and evidence score (even something like pulling out a gun.) You can immediately remove those increases by killing that person. But their body too generates some evidence if it's not destroyed (say placed in the dump.)

Killing anyone creates evidence. Certain items (Chainsaw, certain guns, ect..), certain combat methods (HTH, biting?) or certain deaths will generate more or less than average evidence because they are more or less noticeable. (Modus Operendi)

When YOU get wounded, it generates more than average evidence, and generates some identity as well. This evidence and identity can only be removed by a time consuming clean up action, and may be based on skill. Something like "Forensics" knowledge should be the primary determiner of how much evidence you leave and identity you generate when you kill and when you clean up. 

Certain objects, like security cameras, will increase identity and evidence hits when you commit a crime near them. This value however should be modified by whether the player is wearing a mask or face covering. An If X then Y but if Z then A statement.

At a certain threshold of identity, say 100%, every law enforcement officer that sees you will recognize you. Others may recognize you too.

Other ideas for reducing evidence/identity per crime increase, or after the fact: burning down houses to destroy evidence, changing clothing or appearance, wearing masks and disguises. Hacking police databases and destroying evidence.

Heat and Notoriety: When you complete criminal actions, you generate both heat and notoriety. The action committed determines the extent of both. Heat determines how large of a police response is called to any criminal action, and is factored in with identity to gauge when police forces raid your safe house. Certain people should choose not to deal with you if your heat is too high.

Notoriety is a long-term modifier that affects heat, but also dictates a lot of other things that can happen to you. High notoriety may make you the target of other criminals as well. It might serve as a "level" to get access to more connected drug dealers, weapon dealers, fences and the like. It might have an effect on your results in prison.

Long term scales for heat and notoriety:

Heat should have a llllaaaarrrrgeeee scale, and be fractional in increases, because we don't want it giving you 1 out 100 total possible for heat for every item you steal, or every drug deal you make. There needs to be pacing involved in heat gain, so the increase in police attention is noticeable by the player. Heat gained from criminal actions might also be increased under certain circumstances, like performing actions in front of cops. We could approach the situation like in real life...what kinds of behaviors would get police VERY interested in that particular suspect, very quickly. Suicide bomber vest? AK47? A Tank? There are all sorts of places we can tie things into these mechanics, while keeping a lot of it from the player.

Notoriety likewise needs to have a large scale to accommodate paced game play, since it and heat are intrinsically tied. Heat should be able to spike independently of notoriety. Notoriety should probably have the largest scale of all.

All things, probably even notoriety, should decay over time.
Laying low should really be a benefit. There should be a rest option, of sorts, where the player just has to pay upkeep for their living space and food, so they can bleed off the attention from epic criminal feats. That said, Heat, Identity and Evidence should be able to go to values above 100%, so the player can really go over board and not know it. Evidence should probably decay slower than everything else, since law enforcement keeps that information for a long time (Finger Print databases and DNA databases) and evidence will need to be used in any trial system.

A hierarchy of stats for coders, of sorts.

Notoriety
  Evidence
    Identity
       Heat

Foreseeable issues: The game is going to have to recognize when something has been done once and shouldn't be counted against the player a second time. Killing multiple people should increases all the relevant scores. Pulling out your gun, putting it away and pulling out again shouldn't be two crimes. So tracking criminal behavior has to be tied to actors somehow, where each object and each person witnessing a crime tracks what's been done and knows to exclude the right redundant actions. It would be helpful I think if all that information is deleted when the player changes areas, leaving only the modified Identity, Heat, ect.. scores, so the game isn't have to track a ton of shit building up over time.

How I see it working:

Player stands at house. All scores are at zero. Player is totally unskilled and totally unprotected against identity/evidence. (No gloves, no hood, no mask, no jump suit.)
Player forces entry into the house. (Heat +1, Evidence +5, Identity +5)
Player steals objects. (Heat +5, Evidence + 5, Identity +5, Notoriety +5)
Home-owner sees player. Player is trespassing. (Heat +5, Evidence +10, Identity +15)
Home owner hits player with a bat. (Evidence +10, Identity +10)
Player kills home owner with knife. (Evidence -10, Identity -15, Heat +20, Notoriety +20)
Corpse created (Evidence +10)
Player takes body and runs, and buries it at the garbage dump. Corpse destroyed (Evidence -10)

Result for this one combined burglary/murder: Heat: 31/10,000*, Evidence: 20/100*, Identity: 20/100*, Notoriety: 25/100,000*

*Theoretical maximums

What I think this system can accomplish:

With different possible combinations of scores, I think you arrive at different kinds of criminals.

Low notoriety, high identity, high evidence, high heat = A new punk about to spend some time in prison.
High notoriety, high identity, low evidence, low heat = The notorious criminal the authorities know about, but can't touch for lack of everything.
High notoriety, low identity, low evidence, high heat = The professional, anonymous criminal cops lose sleep over at night.
High notoriety, low identity, high evidence, high heat = The accomplished but sloppy criminal who the authorities just need to identify before they've nailed them.
Low everything = either a new criminal or a criminal who has been in hiding so long, virtually everything about them has been forgotten.
High everything = A criminal mastermind that's not going down without a fight.
High notoriety, low everything else = The legendary criminal that can't be touched. KAISER SOZE!!111

I think you arrive at a pretty good spread of criminal types through this. That there are many aspects that play off each metric will add layers of depth for people to get into, characters specialized manipulate the system in different ways. With notoriety we don't even need levels, we just need an xp pool for skills and perhaps stat growth. Notoriety will in the end control the pace of the game and how fast the power scale is doled out to the player.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Acanthus117 on September 03, 2010, 03:22:12 am
Goodness, you have this IN DE BAGH, MON

I can imagine playing 1.0...

OH MY
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: head on September 03, 2010, 03:40:34 am
As soon as the source code is on the svn.

I can get cracking.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nuker w on September 03, 2010, 04:00:13 am
Hmm. If you killed someone (and they made no sound), how would the Cop's know to come?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 03, 2010, 04:04:11 am
We'd need a separate mechanic for police response. Weapon + Time of fight + random NPC shouting = alert. Location and heat determine response time.

But let's say you kill them in their sleep. The effect of that is abstracted. Nothing is generated but the evidence of the body and any evidence you leave. Let's say you do nothing and just leave the body there. You assume someone finds it eventually, the cops are called, it is investigated, ect... I don't know if putting a time delay on that would be doable or not, so we assume all the scores for evidence, notoriety (word of you killing spreading) ect... apply immediately. Because word essentially travels instantaneously, the scales for stuff need to be really large so players don't notice it as much.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Deon on September 03, 2010, 05:14:18 am
If we used LCS-style districts, all "body finding" stuff could happen after you leave it.

Just make "green zones" which are likely to be visited (streets, stores, public places), yellow zones where they CAN be found and orange red zones where they have little luck to be discovered, based on the map features.

Also if the person has no relatives/job, he shouldn't be found until late time when neighbours start to notice a pile of milk bottles near his door or the fact that his car is in garage but there're no lights during the night and something else like that.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Soadreqm on September 03, 2010, 07:44:49 am
A mechanic for hiding corpses with a chance of someone finding them later would be cool. I think CrimsonKing's fake plans had something like that.

The numbers would have to scale enough to represent virtually any level of wanted-ness possible, yes? From petty vandalism to stealing a purse to shooting down the president's airplane during takeoff. Pretty much any action should probably only increase the counters to a certain level, after which the cops wouldn't really give a shit. Even if you shoplift infinity times, you would never get the FBI after you.

If this grows sophisticated, some kind of news feature would be cool. Gruesome murder headlines, mentions of missing persons, stuff like that. Also, disguises and disguise skill sound like they could be quite integral to evading capture. Being insanely good at disguises and being a legendary master thief to the tune of Arsene Lupin sounds like it would be cool. A lot of people have seen your face, but it never looks the same. And you leave calling cards on the crime scenes and send letters to the newspapers describing your burglaries.

Would it be worth it to add some kind of public support mechanic at some point? So that you could be either a notorious mass murderer or a merry outlaw. Like, if you make a point of never killing anyone, and maybe made a big show of things with stuff like leaving notes for the police to find, the papers would adore you. The police would still try to catch you, although they might be less inclined to shoot you on sight than if you were wanted for an orphanage massacre. A similar mechanic would be needed for being a vigilante; if you only killed criminals, the criminal underworld would start hating you. I'm not sure what good public opinion would actually do, but it'd be neat to be able to play a "good guy" if you really wanted to, and have the game acknowledge it.

Maybe split notoriety among factions? So that every group would have their own "I hate this guy"-counter, and some groups would hate some actions more. The lawful authorities would probably want you caught no matter what you do, but it should be more conditional to things like criminal syndicates and large corporations and whatnot. Maybe even have kind of meta-groups that aren't working together but kind of occupy the same niche. "This guy has a habit of murdering drug dealers, so I don't want to do business with him."
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Saint on September 03, 2010, 08:12:18 am
I like the idea of prison both as a punishment for getting caught, and an element of game play. I think just running around shooting prison guards and opening cells sounds kind of one track. What happens outside the clink is just as important to criminals as what happens inside. I think it adds a great deal to the simulation that the game isn't over when you're arrested and convicted, it's just another chapter in the tale of your criminal, how they went to prison and came out reborn hard.

I'd hate the game to just climax at "Cops shoot you, you die." Or "Cops put you in cell. Now walk out of cell."

It also sets up the potential to play the whole LIFE of your criminal, not just the part before they got killed. Imagine a whole game, going in and out of the prison system. When the game finally tallies your score, you could be proud of having an epic criminal veteran.

I think a prison side-experience sounds more flavorful, easier to do in a meaningful way and offers a change up of gameplay. Which is one thing I've always liked about LCS.

Then I want a whole range of plastic spoon sharpening and digging related skills.
Prisoner mcdwarf looks like he could dig a minning shaft through solid steel with a plastic spoon
Prisoner mcdwarf looks like he could sharpen a plastic spoon until the point was so sharp if he stabbed you with it, it'd make your mother bleed.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 03, 2010, 08:47:43 am
http://www.redversconsulting.com/images/cobol-xml-sample.gif ... ew.

Lua can display that same data, more logically, with less mess and file size, in addition to allowing in data functions. No reason for XML.

I uploaded the basic skeleton to the SVN. I also deleted and moved around some of the stuff that was there. All the graphical stuff goes into trunk/data/gfx . How we split it up from there is whatever works easiest. If we want to do something like

tiles
people
items
items/weapons
items/ammo

or something more like

tiles
entities
entities/items/weapons
entities/people


I currently have it set up the first way, but whatever.

The skeleton is mostly a combination of the example module combined with a cleaned out version Yufra's viral resistance module. By doing this there's a lot more examples of how to go about doing things (inventory, basic firearms...). You can also check out the somewhat failed early experiments at map generation.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Puzzlemaker on September 03, 2010, 09:29:06 am
Awesome!  I'll be poking around in this for awhile, hehe.

Edit:  Hmm... How do I run it?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: head on September 03, 2010, 09:43:57 am
I'l take a look.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nuker w on September 03, 2010, 09:52:08 am
Ok. I took it for a run. Going to have a look at the code now and see whats happening there.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Funk on September 03, 2010, 10:01:58 am
in prison time should pass by month with you seting jobs for every week.

new ways to pass time in prison.
1)work at job,this only pays a little money but, you can steal things and it increases chance for early release.

2)make trouble,you pick fights,start riots,Slop out on jailers and so on.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Puzzlemaker on September 03, 2010, 10:05:17 am
If someone could upload all the necessary requirements to run the game, and put a step-by-step in the readme to run it, that would be great.  I don't want to screw something up by doing it myself, since I have never used TE4 before.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Soadreqm on September 03, 2010, 11:11:39 am
Could someone explain again how to access this basic skeleton of a game?

By the way, if something interesting happens while you're in prison (You get attacked, there's a riot, prison gets attacked from outside), I think it would be more entertaining to play through those parts manually.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: kilakan on September 03, 2010, 11:19:53 am
definitly I don't want a message to pop up:
There's a riot, you don't escape.
Because that's just.... wrong.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 03, 2010, 11:47:16 am
Hahaha, alright. Even though it's just a skeleton, and the descriptions are placeholders, I'm still finding this funny. "Intelligence defines your character's ability to think about stuff and stuff." "If you're perceptive enough you'd know what this does already."

The streets are interesting. Is there a way to make the some of the | lines display as __ so that the road doesn't look odd horizontally? Also, I encountered a weird effect where after walking around for a while, my character started to lag very badly, and it couldn't move well unless I used the mouse to click on where I wanted him to run to.

For the people that don't know how to access it, first, you get the tortoise svn client that lets you download and upload files to and from the SVN repository. Then, make sure you have Lua. You can use Lua's editor tool, or just any old text editor, to modify the code. In order to run it, I just plopped the game into a new folder in the module folder of the TE4 engine. 
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Puzzlemaker on September 03, 2010, 12:00:21 pm
Kus:  It may be best to commit the engine to SVN itself, so it's all in one package, if that's possible.  If not, can you update the readme with step-by-step instructions on how you did it?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 03, 2010, 12:10:11 pm
Kus:  It may be best to commit the engine to SVN itself, so it's all in one package, if that's possible.  If not, can you update the readme with step-by-step instructions on how you did it?

Yeah, it is possible. You can also set the SVN checkout to be in that module directory of your TE4 folder.

I'll update the readme to give some step by step instructions.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Puzzlemaker on September 03, 2010, 12:42:30 pm
Thanks.  Ima start taking a looksie at this stuff here then.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Jack A T on September 03, 2010, 12:57:18 pm
I love the

Spoiler: EASTER EGG (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Jack A T on September 03, 2010, 03:53:07 pm
Bug report: If you shoot something, the game slows down considerably, to the point of unplayability.  To be exact, you take several turns to take each action, noticeable if you're standing on an item.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 03, 2010, 05:01:27 pm
Bug report: If you shoot something, the game slows down considerably, to the point of unplayability.  To be exact, you take several turns to take each action, noticeable if you're standing on an item.

Might actually have be an error from when I transferred it over it over Viral Resistance. I don't remember that being a problem. I'll check it out. Easter egg bazooka is also a legacy from Yufra. By the way, unless someone is going to volunteer to host it, I'll be hosting forums for this game as this thread is a messy hell hole.

Things like talking about prison and such are valid and vital to the game, but having so many different topics ongoing in the same thread just makes vital info hard to reach. I'll have it up later tonight.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on September 03, 2010, 05:07:51 pm
If its an SMF or another mobile compatible forum that would be dandy.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 03, 2010, 08:11:28 pm
It's an SMF. I'm too addicted to its features not to. I made sure to put in plenty of categories so it's very easy to find relevant ideas when coding and contributing. If you have any suggestions for more let me know.

Forum is up! (http://76.26.38.52/crimelike/)
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on September 03, 2010, 09:37:32 pm
Do I get something for being the first to register?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Jack A T on September 03, 2010, 09:39:24 pm
I got to the forum, but I'm finding it incredibly slow.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: x2yzh9 on September 03, 2010, 09:49:12 pm
Where's the SVN?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Sir Pseudonymous on September 03, 2010, 10:08:19 pm
Sourceforge apparently provides a forum for each project. (https://sourceforge.net/projects/crimelike/forums/forum/1221761) I don't know how good it is, but it's there.

Where's the SVN?
On sourceforge, the url is a couple of pages back... let's see... https://crimelike.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/crimelike


I have not resolved my current situation, and don't expect to at this point, but I've gotten my head back together, and will return to what I was working on in the morning. I understand what's going on now, know that it is inherently irrational and that I can't fix it, and simply have to take this as an opportunity to do what I've wanted to do for months now. I'm being vague because the specifics of what's going on are rather meaningless to anyone but myself, and I don't want to derail the thread with a discussion of my problems (or worse, have them go completely ignored :P). So uh... yeah. I'm back to working on my part.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on September 03, 2010, 11:14:04 pm
For the people that don't know how to access it, first, you get the tortoise svn client that lets you download and upload files to and from the SVN repository. Then, make sure you have Lua. You can use Lua's editor tool, or just any old text editor, to modify the code. In order to run it, I just plopped the game into a new folder in the module folder of the TE4 engine.

Alright, so... I downloaded Lua 5.1.4 at http://www.lua.org/download.html and... well, I have no goddamn clue what I'm supposed to do next. Please help?

EDIT: I'm a silly bitch and I figured this out. I don't like how big TE4 is though.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Tilla on September 04, 2010, 01:54:34 am
Sourceforge apparently provides a forum for each project. (https://sourceforge.net/projects/crimelike/forums/forum/1221761) I don't know how good it is, but it's there.

Where's the SVN?
On sourceforge, the url is a couple of pages back... let's see... https://crimelike.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/crimelike


I have not resolved my current situation, and don't expect to at this point, but I've gotten my head back together, and will return to what I was working on in the morning. I understand what's going on now, know that it is inherently irrational and that I can't fix it, and simply have to take this as an opportunity to do what I've wanted to do for months now. I'm being vague because the specifics of what's going on are rather meaningless to anyone but myself, and I don't want to derail the thread with a discussion of my problems (or worse, have them go completely ignored :P). So uh... yeah. I'm back to working on my part.

Few if any actively use the forums SourceForge provide. They're generally not very pleasant user experiences. And prone to spam.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: DarkGod on September 04, 2010, 07:31:27 am
EDIT: I'm a silly bitch and I figured this out. I don't like how big TE4 is though.

Download the music-less version then.
And you do not need to download lua, it's embedded in TE4
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on September 04, 2010, 09:27:43 am
I already downloaded it.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Medicine Man on September 04, 2010, 09:29:26 am
How do I run this?I haven't downloaded it I just want to know.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Deon on September 04, 2010, 09:56:22 am
Double-Click it.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: MaximumZero on September 04, 2010, 10:03:37 am
I am on the fora. Yaaay!
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Medicine Man on September 05, 2010, 04:38:47 am
I can't find a link to download this anywhere. D:
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Xegeth on September 05, 2010, 04:42:57 am
I can't find a link to download this anywhere. D:

It's still in development so you'll need to use svn to get it from https://crimelike.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/crimelike. You'll also need to use the T-Engine at http://te4.org/Download if you want to run it.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Brons on September 05, 2010, 08:46:00 am
I've read the entire thread and I want this game.

In the first few pages of the thread people were talking about getting families and gangs, etc. I've been walking around with an idea for this a long time now but didn't get around starting it. I do think my idea can be a great addition for this game.

It's basically based around the mechanics of Crusader Kings by Paradox. There are 4 basic tiers for characters. Tier 0 are your courtiers and they have no real power. Tier 1 consists of counts, they hold land and produce income from that, they pay tribute to a higher tier (2 or 3). Tier 2 is the duke who holds land but also has vassals (tier 1) that pay tribute to them. Tier 3 is the king, he holds land but has tier 2 and 1 characters under him paying him tribute. Characters only have on liege so some counts report directly to a king while others report only to a duke, but not the duke's king.

I think this system can be perfectly adapted to an organized crime system for a game.

You basically have tier 0 characters who are not directly associated with an organization. They can be civilians, cops, journalists, petty criminals, unassociated hitmen, etc. Tier 1 would be the soldiers who hold a street corner to sell drugs, pimp out prostitutes, etc. They can have tier 0 people working for them on a salary basis to help him secure his corner etc, but the tier 0 people aren't part of the organization. Tier 1 pays a large part of their income towards tier 2 who would be the lieutenants or capo's. They can also have the street corners but are more likely into more advanced forms of crime, like the production or importation of drugs, extortion or whatever you can think of. They receive money from Tier 1 but have to pay Tier 3. Tier 3 is the boss who is more likely less busy with everyday crime but is making sure his organization is safe and is trying to expand.

This can also fit into the justice system. Tier 1 and 2 are likely targets for violent crime investigation while Tier 3 is likely a target for tax evasion, etc. Unless they can get tier 2 to flip on tier 3 (like in LCS). Tier 3 will probably pay lawyers for all his underlings to make sure they don't flip.

The player would probably start as a petty criminal on tier 0. It's also not known to the player who controls what. So he can get into trouble if he robs a business that is extorted by a powerful person. The player could rise in the ranks (and discover who's the boss where) by doing some jobs for the soldiers or capo's. For example a murder or the protection of a street corner.

I'm familiar with lua so if the consensus is that something like this should be in the game I'm more than ready to chip in. Also, tell me what you think about something like this.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Muz on September 05, 2010, 09:00:38 am
Hmm... I've wanted a game where I could sell pirated software :P
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: usedpilot on September 05, 2010, 09:09:26 am
Just wanted to register to say this game sounds fantastic and I hope you guys are able to make it, and if you do, thanks for the impending work.

If I have one thing I especially hope for, it's that the combat will have the depth of descriptions of something like Dwarf Fortress like that hoax guy was planning.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on September 05, 2010, 02:51:07 pm
I think the combat is going to be the same as the hoax.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Megaman on September 05, 2010, 08:04:40 pm
You mean non-existent?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Medicine Man on September 05, 2010, 08:41:47 pm
D: No combat?  :'(
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: cappstv on September 05, 2010, 08:59:34 pm
Who is spreading these terrible no combat rumors?
They will burn I tell you.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Acanthus117 on September 05, 2010, 09:02:15 pm
what he meant was that the combat system will be similar to the SKRL...
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on September 06, 2010, 12:44:34 am
The hoax videos. It will be the same as what the hoax videos were.

Its not that hard to understand, guys >:(
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: ductape on September 06, 2010, 12:53:15 am
what hoax?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on September 06, 2010, 12:54:44 am

*facepalm*
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Medicine Man on September 06, 2010, 01:05:15 am
Serial Killer Roguelike

Please never mention it again as you are just giving the hoaxer what he wants.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: ductape on September 06, 2010, 01:07:23 am
 ;D
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Rumrusher on September 06, 2010, 02:10:45 am
can we get the ability to do a upper decker in toilets?
the silly things like that could make this some type of GTA:RL
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Soadreqm on September 06, 2010, 04:07:51 am
This hoax. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1dGKxH8U2U)

A guy calling himself CrimsonKing made a mockup of a serial killing game, and said he was going to release a playable alpha in like a month. A while later he admitted that the gameplay video was an outright fabrication, and he was not, in fact, making a game. That caught everyone by surprise, especially Dwarf mc Dwarf, to whom it's still a sore subject, apparently. Personally, I think it was a really good hoax, and we should all applaud the man.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Medicine Man on September 06, 2010, 04:09:42 am
This hoax. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1dGKxH8U2U)

A guy calling himself CrimsonKing made a mockup of a serial killing game, and said he was going to release a playable alpha in like a month. A while later he admitted that the gameplay video was an outright fabrication, and he was not, in fact, making a game. That caught everyone by surprise, especially Dwarf mc Dwarf, to whom it's still a sore subject, apparently. Personally, I think it was a really good hoax, and we should all applaud the man.
Actually I don't care, you probably didn't see the thread where I said that everyone should stop caring about it as CK probably wants that attention.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: tarsier on September 06, 2010, 05:32:45 am
If there is enough heat / evidence, then meeting up with contacts (especially making arrangements to meet at X place at Y time) should have a chance to be spied on / bugged / ambushed.

Anyway, that's just a random tidbit.
What I present to you now is my ideas for the NPC mood system.

It needs to be established that every NPC will have an attitude and a mood.

ATTITUDES are the current relationship an NPC has with the PC. Attitudes range on this scale:
Bonded - The NPC is in a close relationship with the PC - they've been in some tough situations together, they are romantically involved, or they have taken some sort of sacrifice for one another. Whatever the case, they're looking out for one another. The NPC has the PC's back, is susceptible to demands and charisma checks, and will do their best to help the PC. The kingpin you've served for a year as a bodyguard - and taken a bullet for - is bonded to you.
Friendly - This NPC has probably formed some kind of rapport with the PC. She is easier to manipulate with charisma checks - She will act to help out the PC's cause, although she is generally going to put herself before the PC in any risky situation. It is easier to bring her mood into a more favourable status. The junkie who knows you've got the best cocaine in town - and whom you always sell it to for a fair price - is friendly towards you.
Amicable - This NPC is polite and a somewhat kind to the PC - he/she is slightly easier to manipulate with charisma checks, but isn't going to take a risk for the PC. The girl who works at the coffeeshop you frequent and is receptive to your flirting is amicable to you. (Of course, the whole girl/guy thing brings up the issue of sexual orientation - something that should also be given to PCs and NPCs alike.)
Apathetic - This NPC holds no favour or disfavour for the PC (or whichever NPC is in the PC's party.) No bonuses/minuses with charisma-based checks. A stranger is apathetic towards you.
Bothered - The NPC has a slight distaste for the PC. Predisposed to resist and sort of demand, slightly harder to bring their mood down to baseline, etc. The bouncer who you've tried - and failed - to fast talk your way past for the last ten minutes is bothered by you.
Angered - The NPC doesn't like the PC. Something has been done by the PC to harm the NPC, directly or indirectly. Charisma skills will have a tough time getting through to these NPCs - they don't want what you want. They are easily provoked to violence. The middle-aged man whose son's car now belongs to you (and he has an idea how THAT happened) is angered by you.
Wrathful - Some serious hate going on here. The PC has really messed up the NPC's shit. They are hostile and they will do what they can to make the PC's life harder. The cop whose partner you shot down in cold blood last month is wrathful towards you.

Attitudes are essentially a way to flesh out the usual "enemy/ally" classification of NPCs - people are complex, and things shouldn't be so black and white as they are in most games.

NPCs spawn with a certain random attitude towards the PC. Certain types of NPCs have greater chances to spawn with one than another. Charisma checks should influence these attitudes once the NPC sees/interacts with the PC.
NPCs should also have an over-reaching attitude towards each faction. These aren't as changeable as the PC/NPC attitude with charisma checks, as they concern a larger group and are formed by a greater number of experiences. However, a PC should be able to affect, to a degree, the "faction attitude" of a PC through some sort of charisma check - convincing the citizen that the Giarmo family aren't really THAT bad, for instance.
The average innocent bystander should have an evenly large chance to spawn with the attitude of either "amiable," "apathetic," or "annoyed/bothered." There should be a very small chance that they are either "angered" or "friendly." These initial values should be influenced by their "faction attitude," IF it is apparent that the PC is a member of said faction. (If the NPC is a criminal who hates cops, and the PC is wearing a cop uniform, then that's going to effect it. If your faction isn't so obvious, this may not come up at all unless it is somehow revealed through dialogue. Certain actions, too, could tip NPCs off to belonging to a faction - if the Giarmo family always cuts off the noses of their victims, and the NPC sees you cutting off a nose, they will assume you're a member of the family.)
Helping an NPC (healing them, killing their enemies, giving them gifts) will obviously "increase" their attitude (depending on the magnitude of the action, but generally slowly - you don't make friends over night), harming them (stealing from them, hurting their friends, hurting them) will "decrease" it. (Increase/decrease is a poor word choice but you know what I mean.)
Attitudes are invisible, meaning the PC will never see an NPC's attitude listed explicitly - instead, attitudes will reveal themselves by the actions and dialogue of NPCs.

Now, getting into moods. Moods are less of an NPC-PC relationship like attitudes, and are more like by-the-moment behavioural systems. There are several moods. An NPC will always have at least one mood, sometimes more (except if they're opposite - no NPC should be happy and sad simultaneously. I realize this is possible IRL but for determining game effects this is one area where a bit of blackandwhiteness is okay.)
An NPC's mood is probably visible via a perception check (one can tell when someone looks sad or pissed or afraid), whereas attitude is not as readable.
An NPC's mood effects not how they feel in relation to another, but what sort of action they are more likely to take.

There are several moods. Here are just some of them.
Suspicious - Security guards, cops on patrol, and doormen to criminal hangouts should by default be suspicious. They are on the lookout for trouble, and they're watching you as they pass by. Suspicious characters are harder to surprise and gain bonuses to perception checks.
Nervous - Occurring in conjunction with suspicious, a nervous character has heard a strange sound in the basement of his house. A nervous character faces a penalty to willpower checks - he is more likely to get scared or buckle under pressure.
Afraid - An NPC who is afraid is scared for the safety of herself or her friends or children. An NPC who is afraid is slightly less likely to attack (but when provoked, or with the right ATTITUDE, she certainly will, especially if there are other NPCs with which she has a high attitude around (ie she is likely to protect her children (This also implies that families need to be coded - they would function as mini-factions. DF has it, shouldn't be too bad to implement))). Because she is afraid, she is more likely to be intimidated, or threatened into doing something ("give me the keys to the safe and noone gets hurt"). Certain drugs should negate fear, and certain drugs (LSD, mushrooms) should have the potential to cause it.
Sexually aroused - Tying into sexual orientation (again, a characteristic that could - and should - easily be generated into every PC and NPC), gender, and charisma, an NPC who is sexually aroused is more likely to be manipulated by a character who is of the proper gender/orientation and is charismatic enough. Flirting, dirty-talking, etc. can be a good way to loosen someone up, and it should be possible to sleep your way into certain situations. Alcohol and amphetamines should increase the likelihood of this mood occurring.
Terrified - You just burst into his livingroom and fired a shot into the air - he knows you mean fucking business and so he's doing his best to run away from you. A terrified NPC will not fight unless cornered. Will do their best to flee. Difficult to manipulate due to their hysterical demeanour but certain intimidations should work or even be easier on terrified characters.

Anyway, those are just some examples of MOODS - perhaps I'll return to these later, perhaps you guys can work some out. However, there should be TONS of moods - happy, sad, drunk (not an emotional mood but could be thrown into the same general system), brave, vengeful (this one might persist over a long time, or might be immediate - you killed his dog in his yard and he's not letting it go unchecked), confused, distracted (fire alarms are going off, sprinklers are showering, what the hell is going on? penalty to concentration-based checks or tasks that take some time to complete), delirious (drug-induced, possibly, or just after witnessing a lot of trauma), excited, peaceful (smoking grass makes you lethargic, slow, and a lot less violent), shocked, the list goes on... each must have its own implications and game effects.
The MOOD of innocent bystanders is, by default, "calm" or something, maybe some times sad or happy or whatever for flavour.


I have a feeling most of this stuff would be fairly easy to code, and I think realistic emotions and attitudes such as these for characters are a must. A really in-depth character interaction system such as this would really bring a lot to the game, and would, I think, set it apart from most.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 06, 2010, 07:40:40 am
If you're not getting any responses about your ideas it might not be that they suck. To prevent things from getting totally messy and confusing I've resorted to only doing in depth discussion on the Crimelike forums. Anyways, if you have an idea that you haven't reposted on the forums please do.

I'll mostly try to use the forums and blog for updates. For now, I'll just say that I'm learning a lot more about the engine and it's limitations. I'm implementing destructible everything. If you have a building and you want in you can bazooka the wall if you somehow have one. I've also got lockpicking functioning. More in depth stuff on that will get posted on the CL forums.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Xegeth on September 06, 2010, 03:54:41 pm
I've just finished making a couple of tweaks to the inventory system, so what's the best way to submit it? I've basically added the ability for objects to contain other objects, overhauled the inventory screen to allow manipulating containers, and added volume based restrictions on how much can be added to a container. There's also a couple of new items to test out the system. At the moment, objects don't change their volume based on what's inside, but that shouldn't be too difficult to change later on.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 06, 2010, 04:34:10 pm
The mood stuff sounds pretty awesome. Maybe change the bothered to irritated or distasteful. But yeah, post the ideas in the forums. We're all more or less doing random stuff, spriting, mapping, or coding, and ideas that are set down will have a high likelihood of being implemented in the future, especially since having a base to work with would be very useful. The earlier tier idea is also interesting, though I'm ambivalent towards it. We can repost it to the crimelike forums and see how people like it.

FORUM! http://76.26.38.52/crimelike/
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Little on September 06, 2010, 04:39:48 pm
I'm in for supporting this project as a text writer.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 06, 2010, 05:22:35 pm
Pirate pad's too big! Can't save more than 100 revisions. Do we make a new one, or should we get the stuff transferred onto the Forum?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Jack A T on September 06, 2010, 05:26:51 pm
Pirate pad's too big! Can't save more than 100 revisions. Do we make a new one, or should we get the stuff transferred onto the Forum?

A pirate pad is best for item descriptions.  Copy and paste the stuff we've got on it to a new one when it goes back up?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: MaximumZero on September 06, 2010, 05:28:13 pm
As I posted on the other fora, I noticed a "Martial Arts" skillset. If you need someone to help with names or styles, I'm game.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 06, 2010, 05:45:51 pm
I've just finished making a couple of tweaks to the inventory system, so what's the best way to submit it? I've basically added the ability for objects to contain other objects, overhauled the inventory screen to allow manipulating containers, and added volume based restrictions on how much can be added to a container. There's also a couple of new items to test out the system. At the moment, objects don't change their volume based on what's inside, but that shouldn't be too difficult to change later on.

I've been tweaking a lot of core stuff as well. Care to send me the inventory changes so I can safely merge them and upload to the SVN?

Pirate pad's too big! Can't save more than 100 revisions. Do we make a new one, or should we get the stuff transferred onto the Forum?

Everything besides the ASCII stuff should be moved to the forums. For now, I'm trying to figure out a good addon that well let use copy and paste ASCII onto the forums without losing all the whitespace.

Also, take it easy on the silly stuff. Serious stuff needs to outnumber silly suggestions 10:1, not the current 2:1 we seemto have going on the forums.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 06, 2010, 06:01:51 pm
I made a serious faction, haha, based off of a real world organization. I'm not into the silly, but I think people have fun brainstorming silly things, so as long as it doesn't end up cluttering the game, it should be fine. I generally haven't made sprites for the silly easter egg items, since I figure if people want their silly ideas hidden inside the game, they should do the legwork on making it be.

EDIT: Also, made a favicon. (http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/crimelikefavicon.png)
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Soadreqm on September 06, 2010, 06:17:13 pm
I think silly things are just easier and more entertaining to think up. Small matter. As long as there are some usable suggestions among them, you can just cull the silly stuff. Nice icon, by the way.

As I posted on the other fora, I noticed a "Martial Arts" skillset. If you need someone to help with names or styles, I'm game.
I have no idea how realistic or detailed that's going to be, and I don't think anyone else does, either. Keeping things relatively simple might be good so the combat's approachable. You should draft a suggestion so we can bicker about it. :)
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 06, 2010, 06:18:13 pm
favicon's live. The silly stuff is fine an dandy and can easily be included, but when we only have like one serious mission idea and one or more silly ones we need to shift the priorities.

Throw detailed martial arts ideas into the combat section.

I've been seeing a lot of people PM me or otherwise ask how they can help without art or coding skills. There are so many sections that could use design suggestions. For example, there's zero ideas related to thievery at the moment. If you want to help, find a section that is kind of sparse and then think how you could represent that topic in the game. This is a rare chance to have ideas directly implemented into a game.

FYI, if the forums go down it's probably due to a storm. We also need to whip Deon and get him on the forums.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 06, 2010, 11:11:12 pm
For factions and the such, should we be able to use real-world names of gangs and corporations, or should we stick to wholly inventing them, or making similar names? I'm guessing similar.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Acanthus117 on September 07, 2010, 02:55:49 am
But there should be a lee-way for randomly generated names, if this is gonna be procedurally generated.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: MaximumZero on September 07, 2010, 06:59:28 am
I personally think that all names should be Procedurally Generated. Except the player's, of course.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 07, 2010, 09:38:40 am
Go for similar corp names. Player and NPC names will be randomly generated.

Right now production is being held up by me trying to figure out the best way to make the maps.

Fully procedurally generated cities are simply not feasible at the scale we are looking at. Any city generator we make needs a lot more guidance than the average landscape creator because of how much detail we expect from a city. So here's my current plan.

Quote
1. The game looks at an street map file that may or may not be randomly generated. It looks something like this:

(http://imgur.com/QYRuS.png)

A more blown up example [of a different map]:

(http://imgur.com/UR4Gn.png)

Each one of these streets is a representation of far more tiles. A '+' might actually be a block of tiles like:

   |   
   |   
--+--
   |   
   |   

These streets do not contain sidewalks, curbs or anything, but asphalt.

2. The game then calculates the space in the open plots.

(http://imgur.com/36iqR.png)

3. All available premade tiles for this district/theme that fit the dimensions of the plot will be gathered and one will randomly be chosen.

A plot tile might for a suburban house might look like:

(http://imgur.com/CItfq.png)

4. The plot tile is randomly rotated and placed to fit in the plot, in game looking like:

(http://imgur.com/oSziq.png)

5. The plot is filled with whatever random elements it comes with (random litter, trash cans, doodads)


I honestly do not know if I have the mad skills to code a much better system than this and will probably need help if anything more advanced is done. It's already a huge bitch trying to implement what I've described.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Soadreqm on September 07, 2010, 10:29:00 am
I'd be for every name being random. Or being randomly pulled from a huge pile of various organization names, much like people names presumably will be. Or being named after people. In one game, the Midnight Crew is a notorious gang, and in another, it's a hardware store.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Strange guy on September 07, 2010, 12:04:22 pm
Agreed, at very least each organisation will have some randomness in it, eg picking from at set list of names and with some variation in their goals and ethics. I say this because we don't want to end up with themed gangs ending up with names unrelated to them or whatever.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 07, 2010, 06:22:52 pm
I'd like to take this opportunity to announce that I am nearly done with spriting all the weapons. :D We'll need a template to code these into objects, and then that should do it. I'm guessing we use the same tiles template as given in the forums?

(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/9mmberetta.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/22huntingrifle.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/38revolver.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/44magnum.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/ak47.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/ak74.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/cz550.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/derringer.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/famas.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/mp5.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/spas12.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/uzi.png)

Also, props to whoever can name all the guns just by looking.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Megaman on September 07, 2010, 06:26:53 pm
Hmm... not sure about the rifles, revolver and pistols, but I recognized the AK-47 and AK-74, Spas 12, bullpup, mac 10, MP5, and the flare gun? Pretty good spiriting, recognizable from sprites only is always a good sign.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Josephus on September 07, 2010, 06:27:19 pm
No idea what the first gun is. Dragunov. Python. No idea. AK-74. Chinese Type-56. What is that? Derringer two-shot pepperbox. FAMAS. MP5k/MP10. One of the Benelli's M line of shotguns. An Israeli micro-uzi.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Megaman on September 07, 2010, 06:28:57 pm
Wait that's the FAMAS? Curse you design similarity
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: x2yzh9 on September 07, 2010, 07:08:24 pm
Yea, I thought it was the Bullpup too.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on September 07, 2010, 07:44:10 pm
Is number 4 a Taurus 627?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Tilla on September 07, 2010, 08:11:17 pm
Bullpup is just a standard configuration that contains several guns, FAMAS being one type available as a Bullpup (http://palmgoon.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/the_more_you_know2.jpg)
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 07, 2010, 08:24:17 pm
From left to right! 9mm Beretta, generic .22 hunting rifle, .38 S&W, .44 magnum (Colt anaconda), AK-47, AK-74, CZ550, Derringer, FAMAS, MP5, SPAS12, and microuzi.

So yeah, most of you guys were pretty much spot on, or did very well considering my inability to cram all the detail required into the sprites. The first pistol in particular I made it a bit too big, because it was the first sprite I did. The .22 is dubious because I wanted to lower the scope, otherwise it looked like a FAMAS, and the Uzi looks a little off because I used multiple models of uzis to make it.   
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Evergod41 on September 07, 2010, 08:39:19 pm
I thought the one left of the uzi was a flamethrower...

But no worries on the confusion, that is a pretty unique layout, whether it's called an Uzi, Micro-Uzi, Mac-10, or w/e you all know: What it is, the Average Clip size, General Spray, and Portability... or at least I do.....
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Josephus on September 07, 2010, 10:45:42 pm
Wait that's the FAMAS? Curse you design similarity

Bullpup is a generic term for a particular type of design. I guess you meant the Steyr-Aug bullpup?

EDIT: Okay so Tilla beat me to it.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Xegeth on September 08, 2010, 06:05:22 am
Lap, did you receive the code fine?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 08, 2010, 09:56:46 am
Yea, sorry for not uploading it to the SVN yet. Damn kids got me sick and I've been trying to sleep it off for a while.

What was the reason for this change:

-      WEAR_ITEM = function()
-         self.player:playerWear()
-      end,
-      TAKEOFF_ITEM = function()
-         self.player:playerTakeoff()
-      end,

to

+      
+      WEAR_ITEM = "SHOW_INVENTORY",
+
+      TAKEOFF_ITEM = "SHOW_INVENTORY",
+

Hopefully, I'll be able to get that up later tonight.

This map thing is going to be my main focus until it gets working. I believe it's going to be the biggest hurdle the project is going to have for some time. Once the maps are generating and throwing down even somewhat believable cities it will probably herald an upwelling of new content. The game will start to feel like a game and actually being able to see your work in game very soon after completing it (this tends to be very important to keeping artists around). Since the world will start too look really good, even if it's mostly without purpose we'll also have some good publicity shots to attract people.

Does anyone have an SA account? At some point in the future we'll probably want to debut over there as well.

I'm also hoping half the coders haven't run away. Looking at the list we had on the devpad about half of them haven't even registered for the forums. Currently, only Xegeth has stepped up to the plate so far, but I'll just assume that's due to most people just getting a hang of the engine and Lua.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Xegeth on September 08, 2010, 11:24:13 am
What was the reason for this change:

-      WEAR_ITEM = function()
-         self.player:playerWear()
-      end,
-      TAKEOFF_ITEM = function()
-         self.player:playerTakeoff()
-      end,

to

+      
+      WEAR_ITEM = "SHOW_INVENTORY",
+
+      TAKEOFF_ITEM = "SHOW_INVENTORY",
+

I did a lot of the programming before you uploaded the code, so I didn't have the functions at all in my version. When I was modifying it to work with your code, the inventory screen was already able handle wearing and removing items, so I just set the keys to open the inventory in case anyone was used to the way most roguelikes handled it. You can change it if you want though.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 08, 2010, 12:49:41 pm
Generally, out of all the coders that want to do a project, only about half of them end up sticking through. Maybe less. I hope we get as many coders as possible--I'm still learning it, so I'm sticking to spriting and doing the easy gruntwork tasks. I'll likely have even less time to learn Lua as the year goes on, but it's still a goal of mine.

Good work and good luck with the code so far, you coders. I'd rather be a code-savvy person than an artist, but I guess we all make do with our skills.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on September 08, 2010, 12:50:55 pm
Generally, out of all the coders that want to do a project, only about half of them end up sticking through. Maybe less. I hope we get as many coders as possible--I'm still learning it, so I'm sticking to spriting and doing the easy gruntwork tasks. I'll likely have even less time to learn Lua as the year goes on, but it's still a goal of mine.

Good work and good luck with the code so far, you coders. I'd rather be a code-savvy person than an artist, but I guess we all make do with our skills.

Hey, at least you're not the "ideas guy"
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Brons on September 08, 2010, 02:04:21 pm
Like I said before I'm willing to help coding. But it's rather hard to do anything without design documents. Just coding some random stuff doesn't really help. I think a lack of direction and purpose is one of the main reasons coders leave projects.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 08, 2010, 03:02:26 pm
Do all you coders have an account at the Crimelike Forums? There's loads of brainstorming on design, and various ways of putting down what you want done, what you need done, and what you'll be doing, as well as an easier way to collaborate with other coders.

Also, spriters and ideas people, we need you. Make an account and dump your ideas down, whether in an organized, cohesive fashion, or in a haphazard vomiting pile. All of it might be useful, no matter how unrefined, and your ideas will likely make it into the game itself. :D A chance to make wide, sweeping suggestions, or nitpick on little neat things, or write up flavor text.

Suggestions people have made so far have been about the inventory system: http://76.26.38.52/crimelike/index.php?topic=27.0
Taking drugs: http://76.26.38.52/crimelike/index.php?topic=45.0
Martial arts system: http://76.26.38.52/crimelike/index.php?topic=51.0
Character Attributes: http://76.26.38.52/crimelike/index.php?topic=4.0
Starting situations: http://76.26.38.52/crimelike/index.php?topic=17.0

Whole lists of weapons you can add to that are being sprited by me, bunches of objects, tile design that you can start to code even if you don't know much code, just by going off the template: http://76.26.38.52/crimelike/index.php?topic=12.0

There's a lot available to do and to work on. Anyone can help out with something. Joining the forum's an important part of it.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 08, 2010, 08:38:17 pm
Like I said before I'm willing to help coding. But it's rather hard to do anything without design documents. Just coding some random stuff doesn't really help. I think a lack of direction and purpose is one of the main reasons coders leave projects.

You're right about that. At this stage I'm not too concerned because there is so much brainstorming going on and I don't want to see someone code a massive system for something that later gets obsoleted. As I've learned working on my 4X project, working on something with an open design document is a huge bitch, even when you are sole coder and source of most of the concepts. I am surprised that more of the potential coders haven't even registered or been pitching ideas. I personally find most coding to be far less fun than actual design. Muz is just a freak I guess ;).

Anyways, given the scope of this game, it looks like there are going to be a lot of things that can be easily coded in isolation. Certain elements can even be expanded to their own mini games (I know a lot of people expressed interest in having a really in depth court system). As the game develops I'm going to try to give a little more direction by posting more "assignments", which are just tasks that anyone can volunteer to pick up and work on.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Xombie on September 09, 2010, 01:40:48 am
speaking of brainstorming, i got a little proposal:

1)replace Charisma with Appearance
2)add social skills instead:
Leadership - will
Speechcraft, Persuation or whatever - int
Disguise - dex
Merchantile - int, dex
...etc

Base NPC reaction based on appearance and factions relationship, then skills go.

(N?)PC can get cut or shot in the face(or have a burn) and Jimmy becomes 'Gorgeous' Jimmy

Isn't it better than vague 'charisma' stat?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 09, 2010, 09:53:34 am
Just uploaded Xegeth's inventory system to the SVN. It allows containers within containers and eliminates magical storage. This means that everyone who wanted a more realistic system of concealment should be really happy. I can also make all sorts of neat stuff like locked briefcases that can be picked to reveal their multiple item contents.

Tons and tons of stuff we can do with this, including stupid shit like this:

(http://imgur.com/KRx0D.png)
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 09, 2010, 12:05:33 pm
Ngh. I am extremely happy, and cannot express it enough. However... I'm trying not to get that dastardly, horrifying tune in my head now.

...

Can you seriously shove things up orifices? It sounds like you could hide stuff in your mouth and so forth, and that's pretty awesome. Gonna test it! Totally updating my SVN for this.

EDIT: Xegeth you are awesome. Someone needs to get you on the SVN. Upon testing it, though, I see Lap's new map modification (looking good), but I don't see how the inventory system works yet. Is the code pointing to it, or has it not been fully integrated yet?

Blog updated with screenshots from the game. http://crimelike.blogspot.com/
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Puck on September 09, 2010, 12:35:52 pm
Just thought I'd mention that "gerbilling" is an urban legend. Mostly.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Xegeth on September 09, 2010, 12:48:36 pm
Revision 49 should have a working inventory system. Can you get the inventory screen to show up? You should be able to press 'i' to open it, and click on an item to move it around. You don't start with any items, but both the slums and the sandbox have items lying around. They show up under "On floor" when you stand on them. There's a few items and slots in Lap's version that aren't in mine or on the svn, so there's no gerbil nonsense at the moment (even though Boo was a minature giant space hamster anyway). Thanks for the encouragement with the system. At the moment I'm fixing bugs in the second version, so hopefully it won't be long before the volume and weight of an object can be affected by the contents.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: BigD145 on September 09, 2010, 02:39:08 pm
Just uploaded Xegeth's inventory system to the SVN. It allows containers within containers and eliminates magical storage. This means that everyone who wanted a more realistic system of concealment should be really happy. I can also make all sorts of neat stuff like locked briefcases that can be picked to reveal their multiple item contents.

Tons and tons of stuff we can do with this, including stupid shit like this:

(http://imgur.com/KRx0D.png)

Lemmiwinks!!
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 09, 2010, 03:06:45 pm
Inventory shows up, but I can't move the clips or the gun around to anywhere else besides the hands and ammo, I think. Or maybe I'm just confused. Did you test it out? Post a few screenshots of how to do it?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Xegeth on September 09, 2010, 03:23:55 pm
Anything can be put into a white or purple slot, but brown or green are restricted to a single type of item. You'll need to find a coat and wear it as armour, or find a backpack and put it on your back if you want more inventory slots. I've only added the items that I needed to test the system, so the selection is very limited at the moment.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 09, 2010, 07:58:14 pm
It's working, yes. Thanks a lot! I got to put a fedora on my head, slip things into my pocket after I wore a coat, and carry around first aid kits in my backpack. For some reason that makes me very happy.

I think there needs to be a way to separate items and drop just 1 of something. After I picked up four first aid kits, I was unable to drop a single one--had to drop the whole load.

So far it's looking good. It sounds a little silly that I'm going to ask a question, but...how would you make this graphical? I'm making all the sprites, but I don't even know how to play Crimelike in a graphical mode, hahaha. I plan on adding items and linking tiles up, but then how would you toggle a graphical mode? Thanks.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Acanthus117 on September 09, 2010, 09:47:55 pm
Awesome.

This is really, really cool!
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 09, 2010, 09:52:31 pm
So I took a few days away from thinking about CL to get the juices recharged....and you guys have totally blown me away with what you have devised since. In the whole crazy spree of item creation, how were going to carry all that shit never crossed anyone's mind. And then you go and add backpacks. *golfclap*

And then you went a step further and made orifices. I never even conceived of that level of simulation. Random stops by the police and pat downs suddenly became a 100% viable part of game play. Smuggling coke balloons in your ass? Holy fuck!
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 09, 2010, 09:53:52 pm
weird, no idea how I DP'd there.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Acanthus117 on September 09, 2010, 09:58:43 pm
My, my, my.

This is shaping up to be one amazing project!

:D
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on September 09, 2010, 10:51:52 pm
Wait, so if I play the current version I can shove a hat in my ass?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Deon on September 10, 2010, 12:07:26 am
"A goblin kidnapper has made it with Rawr 359, MD the child".

Haha, I see where it came from now! ;D
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 10, 2010, 02:09:40 am
(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/thompsonsubmachinegun.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/m16.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/m4a1.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/dragunov.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/browningautomaticrifle.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/scimitar.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/sabre.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/rapier.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/wakizashi.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/khopesh.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/longsword.png)

Felt like it, so I'm dumping more little teensy pictures here. Five guns and six blades that are in the game, sprited in the past few days.

Also, some examples Soadreqm's awesome work on loot:

(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/smartphone.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/simplewatch.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/silvercrossnecklace.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/pocketwatch.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/leatherclaspwallet.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/goldchainnecklace.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/bonenecklace.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/bigwhitemp3.png)

I never would have been able to make as awesome sprites as he did here, with this stuff. Seriously. I'm a weapons kind of person, and no good with perfect-looking, detailed small entwining stuff. Gape in awe! So yes, thanks to everyone who's working on the sprites.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: cappstv on September 10, 2010, 07:13:28 am
And then you went a step further and made orifices. I never even conceived of that level of simulation. Random stops by the police and pat downs suddenly became a 100% viable part of game play. Smuggling coke balloons in your ass? Holy fuck!
What.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Josephus on September 10, 2010, 07:17:48 am
(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/thompsonsubmachinegun.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/m16.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/m4a1.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/dragunov.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/browningautomaticrifle.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/scimitar.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/sabre.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/rapier.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/wakizashi.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/khopesh.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/longsword.png)

Felt like it, so I'm dumping more little teensy pictures here. Five guns and six blades that are in the game, sprited in the past few days.

Also, some examples Soadreqm's awesome work on loot:

(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/smartphone.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/simplewatch.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/silvercrossnecklace.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/pocketwatch.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/leatherclaspwallet.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/goldchainnecklace.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/bonenecklace.png)(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/bigwhitemp3.png)

I never would have been able to make as awesome sprites as he did here, with this stuff. Seriously. I'm a weapons kind of person, and no good with perfect-looking, detailed small entwining stuff. Gape in awe! So yes, thanks to everyone who's working on the sprites.

Guh, that's lovely. I should totally be helping like I promised, but I have lots of work.

I will sprite tomorrow. THIS I SWEAR.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 10, 2010, 07:31:18 am
Just thought I'd mention that "gerbilling" is an urban legend. Mostly.

Stop ruining our fantasies. Prove it can't be done!!

(even though Boo was a minature giant space hamster anyway).

I decided to go for the maximum amount of references per item instead of accuracy.

So far it's looking good. It sounds a little silly that I'm going to ask a question, but...how would you make this graphical? I'm making all the sprites, but I don't even know how to play Crimelike in a graphical mode, hahaha. I plan on adding items and linking tiles up, but then how would you toggle a graphical mode? Thanks.

Every time you load up the game you are playing in graphical mode. All tiles and items automatically check if they have an associated image and if they do they display it. Later I'll probably change that code to allow it to be toggled on or off. The "Tile Entry" assignment is pretty much all you need.

And then you went a step further and made orifices.

The whole "butt party" screenshot took me less than fifteen minutes to code as I was just looking at what Xegeth did. I haven't actually implemented anything formally. A lot of the things I showcase in posts will either not be on the SVN at all or will be hard for the average user to access. If you see me driving a car around in a screenshot, odds are that I needed some debug command to even spawn it, among other quirks. Functionality comes first, accessibility later, so don't expect to jump into the latest SVN version and be able to easily replicate a screenshot you saw.

Right after I posted that last screenshot I knew that even though I posted it mostly as a joke that it would start up serious conversation and requests for orifices. That's a discussion we'll continue elsewhere as it might get to be a bit too dirty for this thread. I can't wait to discuss male vs. female balance issues.

Someone asked me why the city can't just be 100% procedurally generated and here's one of my reasons:

(http://imgur.com/oFBVy.png)

=(
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Josephus on September 10, 2010, 07:32:25 am
That's a discussion we'll continue elsewhere[/b] as it might get to be a bit too dirty for this thread. I can't wait to discuss male vs. female balance issues.

We take it to the other, official board, then?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Xegeth on September 10, 2010, 07:39:52 am
I've just uploaded the next version of the inventory system, which has had two major changes. Firstly, the size and weight of containers are affected by their contents, so you can't put a full backpack inside another one anymore and bags of holding no longer exist. Secondly, it's now possible to assign a priority to each item slot by pressing a number while a slot is highlighted. (Item slots only though. There isn't much reason to allow you to do it to equipment if you can only wear one at a time.) The game can then try putting any item you picked up into each numbered slot until it succeeds, or ask you where to put it if it fails.

The volumes of the items are a bit unrealistic at the moment, so someone will probably need to give the items consistent sizes at some point. At the moment, a briefcase can fit inside a coat pocket.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: thobal on September 10, 2010, 08:07:10 am
Someone asked me why the city can't just be 100% procedurally generated and here's one of my reasons:

(pic spoilered)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
=(

I think you mean 100% randomly generated. You just need to add more specific procedures. A check for cul-de-sac length or something. Unless I'm totally misunderstanding the problems with that screen shot...
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 10, 2010, 08:26:55 am
I think you mean 100% randomly generated. You just need to add more specific procedures. A check for cul-de-sac length or something. Unless I'm totally misunderstanding the problems with that screen shot...

Technically, random map generation isn't entirely random and technically, everything done on computers is procedural as it follows sets of procedures. Either term is fine here.

What I meant to say was that having a few basic equations to place down roads and buildings isn't going to cut it like it does for most roguelikes. Neither are buildings created mostly by equations. It's not very hard to make purely equation based landscapes, but it just doesn't work as well for cities. The equations have to be so complicated that a tile placement method is preferable. The screenshot I posted was also meant to show that just trying to place blocks of tiles down like dominoes (by finding matching sides) is also not going to be viable. For the domino method to work there needs to be a lot of special checks in place and even then there will still probably be many tiles that technically work, but that don't look right anyways. This is why I am trying to go for the layered streets and premade plots method that I described earlier.

We take it to the other, official board, then?

Further orifice discussion goes here:

http://76.26.38.52/crimelike/index.php?topic=71.0
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Puck on September 10, 2010, 08:40:10 am
Just thought I'd mention that "gerbilling" is an urban legend. Mostly.
Stop ruining our fantasies. Prove it can't be done!!
Oh it CAN be done alright, I mean goatse shoved what was it? A coke bottle? A volley ball? Up his.
So it would probably be easy to first shove a pipe and then add the gerbil element.

But what I was getting at... supposedly there are no medical records or close-to-true stories about small animals in peoples colons. And you know, everybody has a friend who worked at a hospital and one point in their life. As parties drag on you get all the stories about stuff they removed from peoples behinds, ranging from lightbulbs to my personal favourite: THE TOILET BRUSH! (That guy's excuse supposedly was that he tripped  and fell while on the toilet. Still that doesnt explain all that well how it got in there with the brush thingy first...)

But nobody ever tells the story about that gerbil. And seriously. If any medic ever had to get an animal out of somebodies ass (and I mean an undigested animal) that story would make its rounds QUICK. Anyway, all hail to lemmiwinks, the gerbil king!

This game is hopefully going to be half as awesome as I imagine. And I sure hope, later on, you guys implement a... building sim style element. Like plantations, drug labs and how-you-call-em bootleg shops, where you can pirate movies, music and videogames.

With awesome random name generators for said media!

Oh and what always entertains me are videogames in videogames. Maybe you could add an arcade (which you can rob or at which you can sell drugs to minors, of course) in which you could play that crime focused roguelike game itself. Maybe there is even room for a witty joke about how the game is so real, because its just like the rest of the gameworld.

It would act as a sandbox. you wouldnt really need to be afraid to die or anything, since its just a game, and could try out stuff. Then you would play all day, get tired (in RL), get out of the arcade, forget that you're not playing that videogame inside the videogame anymore and YASD ensues. \o/

Also, I need to make at least one sprite for that game, so I can say I contributed. gimme something you need so I can go all pixelart on that fooker.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 10, 2010, 10:04:15 am
I work in an emergency department so there's no surprising me.

Macro/sim elements are planned and there are a lot of fun things we can do with that.

Video games in video games? I'll number that as feature ∞ + 1. It's not impossible, but I'd rather work on anything besides that.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Puck on September 10, 2010, 11:25:16 am
I totally agree.

But seriously, have you ever seen a small animal up a butt? I bet not. But I bet you seen other objects, or at least heard of them. But supposedly no medical records of gerbilling(yes, it has a name) exist.

Just for the record: I know this because a friend of mine despises Burt Reynolds. And she despises him because she accused him of gerbilling. I did some research, because I just had to rehabilitate the Bandit.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: ductape on September 10, 2010, 11:45:28 am
OOO! I want car chases!

(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_CzxI-j0FD-w/S47_hqkQeJI/AAAAAAAADZU/u39xAqOmcPM/s400/Bandit-postcard.jpg)
West bound and down, eighteen wheels are rollin' ,
we're gonna do what they say can't be done.
We've got a long way to go and a short time to get there.
I'm west bound, just watch ol' "Bandit" run.

Keep your foot hard on the pedal. Son, never mind them brakes.
Let it all hang out 'cause we got a run to make.
The boys are thirsty in Atlanta and there's beer in Texarcana.
And we'll bring it back no matter what it takes.

West bound and down, eighteen wheels are rollin' ,
we're gonna do what they say can't be done.
We've got a long way to go and a short time to get there.
I'm west bound, just watch ol' "Bandit" run.

West bound and down, eighteen wheels are rollin' ,
we're gonna do what they say can't be done.
We've got a long way to go and a short time to get there.
I'm west bound, just watch ol' "Bandit" run.

Ol' Smokey's got them ears on and he's hot on your trail.
He aint gonna rest 'til you're in jail.
So you got to dodge 'im and you got to duck 'im,
you got to keep that diesel truckin'.
Just put that hammer down and give it hell.

West bound and down, eighteen wheels are rollin' ,
we're gonna do what they say can't be done.
We've got a long way to go and a short time to get there.
I'm west bound, just watch ol' "Bandit" run.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on September 10, 2010, 10:14:54 pm
"A goblin kidnapper has made it with Rawr 359, MD the child".

Haha, I see where it came from now! ;D

Wha who what? Is that from a let's play? I've been in a lot, which one would that be?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 12, 2010, 03:56:59 am
(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/hudguns.png)

I put a few guns into the game with nice little sprites and everything. :D
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: ExKirby on September 12, 2010, 02:28:00 pm
Ok... how the hell do I download all of this? To me, the SVN looks like a pile of code. And I don't know what to do with it D=
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 12, 2010, 02:43:43 pm
Consider figuring out how to get the game the test to see if you should be playing it. If you can't figure it out with google odds are you probably wouldn't get any enjoyment from the game at it's current pre-alpha state.

Never healing left leg injuries and head trauma are are all parts of natural birth in the Crimelike world. Life sucks.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Hugna on September 12, 2010, 02:46:37 pm
Easier to say this:

Crime-focused roguelike thats ultra-realistic and full of stuff you can do like Dwarf Fortress. I wanna run a mafia. :O
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 12, 2010, 02:47:55 pm
Easier to say this:

Crime-focused roguelike thats ultra-realistic and full of stuff you can do like Dwarf Fortress. I wanna run a mafia. :O

I wish we could say that.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Hugna on September 12, 2010, 02:56:06 pm
Easier to say this:

Crime-focused roguelike thats ultra-realistic and full of stuff you can do like Dwarf Fortress. I wanna run a mafia. :O

I wish we could say that.
Someone with $4,000/month, and no programmers cept himself and some guy to fix sdl bugs. You CAN say it. <.<



But yeah... with payments on a roguelike it'd probably be low very low if no graphics are settled. Come now, a version of DF thats focused on the modern times of crime, and stuff is awesome, being able to control any type of crime-related syndicate and all that, including cop briberies and shit.

And hell, a futuristic one too. Your imagination is the only limit... only problem... if you can dig into Z-Levels on every world... oh my god, here comes the LAG that can crash any computer that isn't a high-end.. um... server? mainframe? ???

But yesh, crime-focused roguelike thats AWESOME.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 12, 2010, 03:16:45 pm
Quote
Someone with $4,000/month, and no programmers cept himself and some guy to fix sdl bugs. You CAN say it. <.<

I'll say it when it's true. Not saying it won't ever be something we can say.


Quote
But yeah... with payments on a roguelike it'd probably be low very low if no graphics are settled.

I have no idea what you are trying to say here.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Hugna on September 12, 2010, 04:39:47 pm
Quote
Quote
Someone with $4,000/month, and no programmers cept himself and some guy to fix sdl bugs. You CAN say it. <.<

I'll say it when it's true. Not saying it won't ever be something we can say.

So we can't count on Toady?

Quote
Quote
But yeah... with payments on a roguelike it'd probably be low very low if no graphics are settled.

I have no idea what you are trying to say here.

Paying a lot of money on work for Roguelike games isn't worth to pay too much on.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 12, 2010, 05:58:51 pm
Uh, I was "insulting" this project, not DF. I was just saying that we can't say that this is in any way has the realism of DF or much of anything at the moment. We just aren't that far along. More of a complement to Toady than anything.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 12, 2010, 06:00:33 pm
As a general update for people who come by to the thread, I'd just like to state that the PiratePads are pretty much inactive now, thanks to the Forums. The Forums are bustling with excitement, and people with any sort of fun idea should go and make an account and post it. People are pretty active!

Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Soadreqm on September 13, 2010, 06:05:54 am
Toady One has been working on his dwarf game for like, what? Four years now? I think we'll have something to show if interest stays up for that long.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 13, 2010, 10:28:19 am
All my time has been going to trying to get a nice city generator up and running. The first attempt I went for maximum CPU efficiency, which in the case means that the code was very complicated from my end. Combining that with frequent interruptions and suddenly, my own code was becoming too complicated for me to work with. It made some street maps, but most of them had some flaws I didn't know where to fix.

So I tried again and this time I went for a version a bit more friendlier to me. It was laying down streets that looked good, but the edges looked terrible. Fixing the edges ended up screwing the middle. After enough back and forth with that I'm currently on attempt #3.

This attempt is going to focus on the reverse method, laying the plots down and then filling in the streets. It's working a lot better so far.

All of this would be far easier if I wasn't so insistent on having the exact directions and unique tiles for every type of intersection. Hopefully, it'll result in much nicer looking street tiles.

Lots of hours, not wasted, but it's not as productive as I would have liked. I'm going to keep chugging along on this. I want the whole city generation thing implemented before Civ V comes out and I take a break for a few days.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: ExKirby on September 13, 2010, 11:27:39 am
Consider figuring out how to get the game the test to see if you should be playing it. If you can't figure it out with google odds are you probably wouldn't get any enjoyment from the game at it's current pre-alpha state.
Meh, I guess I could TRY to figure out which script goes where.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Puck on September 13, 2010, 01:36:51 pm
After all those discussions about orifices I'm tempted to say "Script goes WHERE?!?", but I think we've got enough of those by now.

So I'll ask again:
I want to do ONE sprite/tile whatever. I think I'm talented enough to provide ONE friggin piece of pixelart. But I'm lazy and not really motivated to properly contribute.

So, what would you guys think you could need? A syringe? A player sprite? A stack of money? Sunglasses? Anything?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 13, 2010, 01:50:30 pm
Can people that aren't contributing to the coding whatsoever please pipe down about "what's possible?" Nothing worse than arm chair lurkers who tell you what's possible while not actually doing anything.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 13, 2010, 04:10:36 pm
Can people that aren't contributing to the coding whatsoever please pipe down about "what's possible?" Nothing worse than arm chair lurkers who tell you what's possible while not actually doing anything.

Aw, no one's doing that. I think people just want to help.

And, for Puck? There's lots of sprites available for the working. Sign up at the forums and check out any of the weapon lists or the loot lists. Could use a wallet, a purse, cash, credit cards...or you can try your hand with a crossbow, etc etc.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Puck on September 13, 2010, 04:24:49 pm
Sign up at the forums and check out any of the weapon lists or the loot lists.
It's a quirk of mine that I try to avoid signing up for more and more stuff, but hey, if its viewable without registration...

at any rate, after some shuteye, I'll try a wad of cash or something :D
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 14, 2010, 10:29:55 pm
Alright, the macro street maps are coming out well now and I might be able to have the whole thing up on the SVN soon enough.


(http://i.imgur.com/XdzXb.png)

Each tile seen here represents a 5x5 block of tiles or whatever the final block size becomes. The building plots can also include back alleys and anything we want, so there may actually be more streets and passageways than you see here.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 15, 2010, 12:06:44 am
Holy crap, are you serious? That's faster than expected work. Hey, how come you didn't go and create your own game years before, if you had this kind of skill?

Anyhow, I'm still doing the sprites. Almost every single weapon sprite is finished. Ones needed include prison crossbow, hunting crossbow, frag grenade, and apache revolver, if anyone wants to take a shot at those. I'll be taking a break for a few days to get ready for some real life stuff, and then I should return to do some tile work and make some sprites for loot and peoplez.

Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Xombie on September 15, 2010, 12:25:36 am
Can people that aren't contributing to the coding whatsoever please pipe down about "what's possible?" Nothing worse than arm chair lurkers who tell you what's possible while not actually doing anything.
Sorry to interrupt your hatred, but you guys have no working binary yet, right? Just tons of self-importance. ^^
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 15, 2010, 12:39:28 am
Can people that aren't contributing to the coding whatsoever please pipe down about "what's possible?" Nothing worse than arm chair lurkers who tell you what's possible while not actually doing anything.
Sorry to interrupt your hatred, but you guys have no working binary yet, right? Just tons of self-importance. ^^

Nenjin's just sensitive to that stuff. Probably been through experiences with coding with people who misdirected a project through saying a lot of things, but not doing much.

That said, check out the SVN! The game is entirely playable, though in a very alpha-y state. Lap's done some kickass work on code, and I'd like to say that I've done some good work with spriting, as have many, many others. Everyone's pitched in a lot together, and I'm kind of glad about progress. I didn't expect Lap to finish up a good map generation algorithm this quickly. Sense my jubilance!
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 15, 2010, 02:42:21 am
It's just irritating to hear "if Toady One can do it...", when the people that are coding are having to handle, well, everything and learn as they go. I live to make things easier for them to do right now. Throwing stuff like that out doesn't help. We actually having a thing you can screw around with, with no tiles set, no stats, no guts or anything.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nuker w on September 15, 2010, 03:26:04 am
Hey guys. I was having a bit of a "mind clash", wondering if I should stay or if I should go and do my own thing. The first one won, thank goodness. Anyway, I was about to throw in the towel... When I finally found the engine Ref sheet. Oh thank God, I am saved. I shall start at once.  :)

EDIT: For info, i'm dealing with the basic AI code. Fun times.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 15, 2010, 04:03:21 pm
Alright, here's a screenshot of some weapon object-adding. I added a few guns and stuff...and I made the subtype of the shotgun a rifle. Which is probably wrong. I'll change it in a bit! >.> The clothing and other objects still don't have pictures yet, as of now.

(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/doublebarrelshotgundesc.png)
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 15, 2010, 04:05:36 pm
I like that the item desc window has a little border around it. It's little details like that, that take the polish and appearance level way up!

Is there any chance we can add a more detailed paper doll? I know lots of people would be all about doing that.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 15, 2010, 04:27:26 pm
I'm going to dig around to find out how Lap made the locational damage thing work. And, hopefully, fix the head and leg injury, haha.

I fixed the typo already, in game.lua. "Interresting things" for the looking around part has been changed to interesting things. XD
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 15, 2010, 04:33:28 pm
I'd like to start spriting some effects.

What format are you guys using for tiles? PNG? At what dimensions?

NM: Figured it out.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Acanthus117 on September 15, 2010, 05:25:13 pm
Hot damn, that is one sexy GUI.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: dragnar on September 15, 2010, 05:29:52 pm
*watching*

This looks promising. Too bad the SK roguelike was just a troll...
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 15, 2010, 06:50:11 pm
Hot damn, that is one sexy GUI.

Glad you like it, as we've put only minimal work into it.

Is there any chance we can add a more detailed paper doll? I know lots of people would be all about doing that.

The paper doll is currently something I made out of pure math because there was no way to draw pictures on the HUD well. The actual engine function for drawing was hidden, but I finally got the secret out of darkgod so later we can have a much nicer looking png paper doll.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 15, 2010, 06:58:24 pm
Schweet. I assumed something like that since we have borders for windows. Did you want to handle the PD or can we throw out some iterations? What dimensions would it use?

Also, have some blood:
(http://img812.imageshack.us/img812/8981/bexample.jpg)

I guess this means I need to get teh SVN thingy working now. ><
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 15, 2010, 07:45:16 pm
Divulge the secret, so that all us artists may dick around with the locational damage! :D
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 15, 2010, 09:14:09 pm
Secret at: http://forums.te4.org//viewtopic.php?f=40&t=22318
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 15, 2010, 09:28:15 pm
Hell, that's straightforward enough even I get it.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Acanthus117 on September 15, 2010, 10:02:11 pm
I don't speak programmer, what is the secret?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 15, 2010, 10:14:41 pm
I don't speak programmer, what is the secret?

0111001101110100011101010111000001101001011001000010000001101110011011110110111101100010
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Acanthus117 on September 15, 2010, 10:17:24 pm
Fffffuuuu-

You just had to go and do that, didn't you. D:

EDIT: Hey, I'm not a stupid noob! D:
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 15, 2010, 10:28:27 pm
lol, at least you're a quick learner.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Acanthus117 on September 15, 2010, 10:31:46 pm
Hehe, thanks.

Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 15, 2010, 10:36:36 pm
Alright, now go program the rest of the game in binary. /whip
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Acanthus117 on September 15, 2010, 10:40:11 pm
ah shit man I'm not a programmer

/cower
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 15, 2010, 11:56:15 pm
Hey, does that mean that we'll need different sets of pngs, say, red, yellow, and green ones for the arm, leg, etc, to draw it on the screen as the player gets injured?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 16, 2010, 08:12:54 am
There should be an SDL function that allows applying a color over any image.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Puck on September 16, 2010, 12:17:38 pm
Fffffuuuu-

You just had to go and do that, didn't you. D:

EDIT: Hey, I'm not a stupid noob! D:
Quote
01010010 01101111 01100010 01101111 01110100 00100000 01001101 01100101 01100100 01101001 01110100 01100001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 00001101 00001010 01001111 01001101 00001101 00001010 01001111 01001101 00001101 00001010 01001111 01001101 00001101 00001010 01101111 01101101 01101101 01101101 01101101 01101101 01101101
..... 2
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Acanthus117 on September 16, 2010, 05:30:55 pm
what.

Why are you talking about a meditating robot?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 17, 2010, 06:35:05 pm
So can someone explain how to upload files to the repository through SVN?

And is Puzzlemaker the only one able to grant people access to it?

I've got it installed and all I'm interested in atm is getting some tiles on there.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 17, 2010, 08:29:53 pm
Puzzlemaker and tourresh (Lap) have admin control of it, so they can allow you.

Read the readme file in the SVN, too. I wrote it, and am proud. But if there's anything unclear, you should tell me. Here, I'll copy and paste it.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 17, 2010, 08:41:13 pm
Gotta make a sourceforge account and tell me what it is so I can add you.


Also...did puzzlemaker just kind of get excited, post for one day and make the sourceforge account and then disappear forever? I haven't seen or heard from him in any way. Someone said he worked on Puzzle Quest. Any truth to that?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 18, 2010, 01:31:06 am
He's been on the forums in the last day or so. But yeah, he basically swooped in, demanded we use an SVN, and then poofed. I think he's registered on the forums but he's never posted.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 18, 2010, 02:18:52 am
'Bout two weeks ago he said he'd take a look at stuff, but I'm guessing he had other stuff to work on. We have a pretty good number of brainstormers...I only wish I could help out more with the math-oriented stuff. Not too familiar with thinking up systems, so I'm still learning as I go along. His SVN idea was pretty good--I think someone else before him said that we could pay money for a working SVN, so a free one is great. I don't know anything about Puzzle Quest, though.

Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 18, 2010, 07:53:12 am
His SVN idea was pretty good--I think someone else before him said that we could pay money for a working SVN, so a free one is great.

We knew we needed an SVN or github, but we were waiting to actually have something worthwhile to post there before even bothering. I didn't want to have everyone upload all these tiles and then have to move everything around. I was actually just going to use googlecode, which is also free, but they're fairly equal. The only time you pay for SVN's is if you are really concerned about privacy. If that was the case I'd just host it on my machine (which is also where the forums are).
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 18, 2010, 08:44:38 pm
City generation is now functioning! It was a huge bitch, and it just might be the hardest part of this entire project, which is great news for moving forward! Let's populate this world!

(http://imgur.com/F4HaV.png)

What we need now are tons of floor and wall tiles. We also need people to draw out far more ascii maps of places.

Before we get too carried away we need to  determine the scale of the world. In the screenshot above, I have the average city street as 5 tiles wide. Should it be 2? 4? 6? 8?

Keep in mind the following things will almost certainly be only 1 tile big:

Most doors
People
Items

The size of things like multi-tile furniture and beds will depend on how big we scale everything. Let's figure out the scale and then get cranking on content.

I'll be hanging out in #crimelike on irc.newnet.net if anyone has quick questions on anything.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Itnetlolor on September 18, 2010, 09:28:39 pm
Looking good. I'm impressed with the amount of development already done. I like it.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 18, 2010, 10:01:23 pm
Amount of development should also speed up since:

1. Having a pretty looking game world brings more publicity and volunteer.
2. Existing members of the team get a morale boost knowing this game can actually be completed.
3. The map involved me going through many complex, intertwining, uncommented bits of code. Most stuff from here on out I can just code straight without having to do so much fighting with the engine.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Jack A T on September 18, 2010, 10:08:42 pm
I'm putting this update up on the blog.

This is one of the biggest milestones we've reached.  Now we need to reach more.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 18, 2010, 10:20:39 pm
For those of you who want to help, anyone can make ascii maps using something as simple as notepad or http://asciipaint.com/

Just make a map of anything and through up a key/legend for your map.

Even without art skills, there's a lot of data that needs to get entered in text files if you'd like to help with that.

We of course always need more sprites.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 19, 2010, 12:42:57 am
Great work mang, I'll start cranking out some walls and floor tiles.

Quote
2. Existing members of the team get a morale boost knowing this game can actually be completed.

I can tell you I feel like doing more when I see more stuff coming from the people doing the highly specialized labor.

I just wanna get some mechanics nailed down finally though :P But you're busy doing mind-blowing stuff like city generation, so it's coo.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 19, 2010, 12:30:12 pm
I'm putting this update up on the blog.

This is one of the biggest milestones we've reached.  Now we need to reach more.

Awesome blog post. And awesome map generation. I love all of you guys.
I think I'll get to working on some of the loot and more item code stuff...I put in all the guns into the guns.lua file, I think. If I haven't, just point it out to me and I'll do those. I'll also get to the swords...probably make a new lua file for swords, and link that to the game.lua file? Yeah.

Also, here's the blood I was doing in the effects section of the thing, posted here for more opinions. Someone mentioned that blood would look better as a blendier, foggier substance, so it could be layered, like in the original Serial Killer roguelike. What do you guys think?

(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/Kusgnos/sprite%20attempt/bloodspattersamples.png)
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 22, 2010, 04:04:58 pm
So is the forum server down?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Soadreqm on September 22, 2010, 05:55:33 pm
Seems to be.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 22, 2010, 06:36:24 pm
I tried to get on it yesterday, and was all :( because it didn't load. Still not working as of now, either.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: mendonca on September 23, 2010, 03:44:57 am
I've been itching to get on it as well ... but instead of readin the forums I have been drawing floor tiles, so its not all bad ...

(http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/crimelike/brickfloor.png)(http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/crimelike/brickfloor.png)
(http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/crimelike/brickfloor.png)

(http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/crimelike/brickfloor_2.PNG)(http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/crimelike/brickfloor_2.PNG)
(http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/crimelike/brickfloor_2.PNG)

(http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/crimelike/carpet.PNG)(http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/crimelike/carpet.PNG)
(http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/crimelike/carpet.PNG)

(http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/crimelike/floortile_2.png)(http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/crimelike/floortile_2.png)
(http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/crimelike/floortile_2.png)

(http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/crimelike/office_floor_tiles.png)(http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/crimelike/office_floor_tiles.png)
(http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/crimelike/office_floor_tiles.png)

(http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/crimelike/small_tiles.PNG)(http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/crimelike/small_tiles.PNG)
(http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/crimelike/small_tiles.PNG)

(http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/crimelike/travertine.png)(http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/crimelike/travertine.png)
(http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/crimelike/travertine.png)

(http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/crimelike/brickfloor_3.PNG)(http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/crimelike/brickfloor_3.PNG)
(http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/crimelike/brickfloor_3.PNG)
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 23, 2010, 08:33:07 am
Auto restart program on the server got killed and after it went down it forgot to come up. It's all good now.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Jack A T on September 24, 2010, 06:25:24 pm
I've been itching to get on it as well ... but instead of readin the forums I have been drawing floor tiles, so its not all bad ...

Adding to SVN...
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Sir Pseudonymous on September 25, 2010, 09:44:51 am
Gah, I've just now gotten around to downloading this. I've been rather preoccupied with other things. Mostly HellMOO, which I got back into because of a discussion on the piratepad about it... :-\


I suppose I'll do what I said I'd do, and make an item editing gui, and then get back to studying lua...


Is there supposed to be a map at this point? Because all I'm getting is the interface over a black screen when I try to run it...
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on September 26, 2010, 12:28:56 am
Indeed. It seems that the map generator is not entirely working. I put the stuff into the module, and just now tested it, expecting a harmonious mix of beauty, but all I got was a black screen as well. Also, it never gets past the saving screen when you try to exit. Map generator issue? Was it not worked in properly? I'm guessing it can't save because the data for the map generation is missing...something like that. Lap, how did you get it to work?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Grishnak on September 26, 2010, 01:34:07 am
Ive got a random map generator written in python that I can have spit out txt files of map layouts. One is more dungeon based, and another is a cavern generator. I can pump out a bunch of generated maps if anyone wants.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 26, 2010, 01:41:16 am
Go register on the forums and speak with Lap. If you could write a (housing) plot generator, that would save a lot of time creating filler content.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Grishnak on September 26, 2010, 03:07:44 am
Done, and made a topic instead of pming Lap
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 26, 2010, 07:46:50 pm
We're kind of stalling out here on map creation as only Mendonca has made any plots. The item tiles art is coming along nicely, but the actual tile entry into the code is lacking.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on September 26, 2010, 07:50:14 pm
After you stated the plot requirement format more concisely, people can get started. I've been piddling around writing and doing the odd tile, but I'll start making maps.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 26, 2010, 08:05:16 pm
The basic rules are:

1.You can define any tile, even if one doesn't exist in the game yet.
2. All dimensions must be multiples of 5.
3. The longest side must be the x-axis (width). Having both sides the same is fine.
4. Do not use the characters: ' (apostrophe) or \ (backslash)

Here's an example:

--Three mostly empty shops
--Author: Lap
--30x15

defineTile('.', 'FLOOR_WOOD_ONE')
defineTile('S', 'SIDEWALK')
defineTile('P', 'PAVEMENT')
defineTile('B', 'WALL_BRICK_DARK')
defineTile('d', 'WALL_BRICK_DARK_DOOR_BACK')
defineTile('D', 'WALL_BRICK_DARK_DOOR')
defineTile('O', 'DOOR_WOOD_DOUBLE')
defineTile('c', 'COUNTER_WOOD_RED')
defineTile('C', 'CABINET_WOOD')
return {
   [[SSSSSSSSSSSSSSPPSSSSSSSSSSSSSS]],
   [[SBBBBBBBBBBBBBPPBBBBBBBBBBDBBS]],
   [[SB...........BPPB.C.D.......BS]],
   [[SB...........BPPB...B.......BS]],
   [[SD...........BPPBBBBB.......BS]],
   [[SB...........dPPPPPPd.......BS]],
   [[SBBBBBBBBBBBBBBdBBPPB.......BS]],
   [[SB...............BPPB.......BS]],
   [[SB...............BPPB.......BS]],
   [[SB.........ccccccBPPB.......BS]],
   [[SB...............BPPB.......BS]],
   [[SB...............BPPB.......BS]],
   [[SB...............BPPB.......BS]],
   [[SBBBBBBBOBBBBBBBBBPPBBBBBDBBBS]],
   [[SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSPPSSSSSSSSSS]]}


Remember that most of the time streets will be surronding all sides of your plot so making a 5x5 little house would look silly. Even having a single house surrounded on all sides kind of looks silly. If you want to make 3 separate houses you can make them and then paste them in different combinations into a larger plot. Maybe you make a few plots where all three are there in different positions with different surrondings or maybe you also make a couple that just have one or two houses.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 26, 2010, 10:43:26 pm
Right now we could also use a list of crimes. I threw up a new pirate pad. http://piratepad.net/bhZLA9sI6k
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Grishnak on September 26, 2010, 10:49:57 pm
So, if I write a generator in python, is anyone willing to port it to lua? If I port it to lua, it will probably suck cause Id have to learn it first. :P
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 26, 2010, 11:52:35 pm
I'll probably be able to do it if you use descriptive vars and good commenting.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: mendonca on September 27, 2010, 03:20:48 am
1.You can define any tile, even if one doesn't exist in the game yet.

Just as a note, I have been trying to keep my own little database of the current state of the tiles, to try and make it manageable and easy for me to do any further mapping.

If you do define any further tiles, I wouldn't mind a little note about it in http://76.26.38.52/crimelike/index.php?topic=120.0 (http://76.26.38.52/crimelike/index.php?topic=120.0).

It only needs to be minimal information, just so I can look in the SVN and get the definition information myself.

The idea is (as you might be able to see from the thread) that this becomes a central point to define / conceptualise tile types in order to make duplication of work during mapping a non-issue. (we don't want four mappers defining four identical brick floor-tiles with four different names and putting them in four different .lua files).

Also this file should make it easy to see what it is you are using, source the sprite directory and see whether it is fully defined in the Trunk SVN etc. Plus anything else that any mappers might feel would be useful.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on September 29, 2010, 05:59:28 pm
Scratch that. I'm planning on having a piratepad session Friday night. Topic TBA.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on October 01, 2010, 01:08:55 pm
I'll be hanging out in a new pirate pad (http://piratepad.net/GN9mCV7fpl) all day. New topic will likely be something related to HIDEN.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on October 01, 2010, 08:28:42 pm
PiratePad go Poof. :(
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on October 01, 2010, 08:52:59 pm
It exploded, but it's back.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on October 02, 2010, 03:26:53 pm
Today's topic is "Combat & Skill Checks". I'll be focusing on mostly on how we want skill checks to function as they bleed over into combat a lot. I'd really like to get down how the equations should work. Should they be mostly linear or logarathmic where it gets harder/easier at certain extremes.

Same pirate pad as before http://piratepad.net/GN9mCV7fpl
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on October 04, 2010, 11:23:22 am
Hey Lap, sorry I wasn't around for the last discussion bit.

However in the war of words between Soad and I on the skill advancement thing...I did come up with one thing I wanted you to know about.

Quote from: nenjin
My main idea on this is: whether or not a character learns a skill is based on their % chance for FAILURE. I.e., if you succeed at a task you only had a 10% chance of success at, you get a lot of skill learning. If you succeed at one you had a 50% chance of succeeding at, you get less. If you succeed at a task you had a 99.9% chance of succeeding at, you get NO SKILL LEARNING, because your character WASN'T challenged. If you FAIL and you know almost nothing, you STILL get learning just for having tried, but only to a point.

Would it be possible to get the skill check down to a point where the attempt can be assessed as a % chance of success or failure, then store that value and have it referenced for a skill learning check?

Initially I thought of some sort of "Difficulty Check" value for all attempts, like doors have a DC of x, that would be the reference for a skill check.... but I don't really like a system tied to one abstracted value like that when it comes to skills. I'd prefer to have all the inputs assessed and converted to a %, either for the actual skill check or just as a reference for how tough it was for skill leveling.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on October 06, 2010, 06:56:18 am
I figure this is worth a bump for those people not reading on the Crimelike forums.

(http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/crimelike/mealtime.png)

While it's still a shaky alpha, it's starting to look like a good, shaky alpha!
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Medicine Man on October 06, 2010, 07:05:59 am
Can it now be run without using some program to run the source?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Keiseth on October 06, 2010, 07:18:02 am
This looks great! I see it going places, and the theme is something extremely rare in Roguelikes.

Excellent interface, too!
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on October 06, 2010, 07:24:26 am
Medicine Man: No. You'd have to download the TOME engine and then download all the files we've got so far into a root directory.

And there's no real content right now anyways. It's still just an alpha. But progress is being made!
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on October 06, 2010, 12:49:20 pm
Some of those tiles need transparentizing. If no one else does it, I'm going to go in and scour them of that blackness.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: mendonca on October 07, 2010, 03:30:35 am
Nah, it's cool man. They are all transparentisized, it's just the way they show up at the minute (I think anyway... feel free to check).

Lap is close to a conclusion to how you get the map to know there is a floor under a chair (for instance) which I suppose is the root of the problem. (i.e the chair is transparented but all you can see behind it is space, it doesn't know there should be a floor there.)
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on October 07, 2010, 09:44:12 am
Lap is close to a conclusion to how you get the map to know there is a floor under a chair (for instance) which I suppose is the root of the problem.

Getting the map to know there is a floor under a chair is easy, as it's always been part of the engine. You throw down a floor and then tell the game that there is a chair object at coordinates (x,y).

I've been holding off posting how to do it since I was trying to think up alternative ways to code to make it easier on you guys. Here are some options:

1. Layers. Your map file might have a terrain layer and an object layer. Wood floor with a chair in the middle. It is slightly annoying syncing up larger more complex maps, but probably allows for the most options.

WWW
WWW
WWW

...
.C.
...

2. Specific tiles that combine an item with a floor. Basically, CHAIR_WOODEN_FLOOR_WOODEN. This would make far more tiles though for all the desired combination so we probably shouldn't do it.

3. The standard currently where you place all the floors and then at the end of the map file write in the specific (x,y) coordinates of where you want an object. Least user friendly, but easiest to code.

Any alternative ideas?

I've also got most of the Fallout style chat working. I'm fiddling around with random lines of conversation so that conversations can be more diverse.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on October 07, 2010, 12:12:33 pm
I don't suppose there's any way to arrange the syntax, so that defineTile 'X,O,' 'Tile_blah, Tile_blah" would work?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on October 07, 2010, 07:01:55 pm
There we go. That was the 4th idea I remember thinking of at some point, but couldn't remember it when the time came to write the post. I still need to look into how to code it, but that's probably the best option.

EDIT= Well that was 10x easier than expected. It's all good to go, just use

defineTile('C', 'WOOD_FLOOR', 'WOOD_CHAIR') to make a wooden chair on a wooden floor.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on October 09, 2010, 12:48:52 pm
Alright, the conversation system can now handle just about anything I can throw at it. Everything you can do in the old school Fallout dialogue system we can do.

I also updated the game to the latest version of the T-Engine. The latest version has a nicer UI, is faster, and also supports multithreading. Saving is now much faster too. The new update breaks my little health guy we're so used to seeing on the left, but he's getting replaced anyways so whatever.

I want to show you how the ToME UI now looks as I will probably be updating our UI so that it can also be entirely mouse driven.

(http://imgur.com/a1NVp.png)

We've got all sorts of nice buttons, tooltips, and menus in the above screenshot and I absolutely love tooltips. So at some point our UI will have those features and all the fancy bells and whistles like textured backpanels.

From here on out I don't really know what to focus on so I'll just be working on random content and the HIDEN system.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on October 09, 2010, 02:46:46 pm
Dude....shiny UI is shiny. The amount of buttons and additional stuff on the interface will help a ton dealing with complexity of game issues.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on October 09, 2010, 03:42:55 pm
I'm excited for when we get the tiles and the stuff all sorted out. I kind of want to start doing people, but I'm vaguely unsure of what direction to proceed for limbs/clothes/how many different body sizes there are. :(
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on October 09, 2010, 04:16:13 pm
Work on people last as I still want to see if we'll be able to have all clothing dynamically shown. There's plenty of art stuff we need more of. If you really want to work on people you could always try to make the paper doll for the UI.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on October 10, 2010, 11:29:55 pm
Xegeth improved his inventory system, which opens up a lot more stuff I can do now. I started working on the basic pull/push, open/close commands. I'm going to have to wait to finish those commands when furniture gets better implemented. Furniture shouldn't be much longer now as the feature I need the engine to have should be released in the next T-Engine.

For anyone who is using an old T-Engine version make sure you update to beta 12 as it is a lot nicer.

At this point, I'm struggling to find focus. There are so many things that can be worked on, most of which won't be that fun or amazing without other completed systems to interact with so it's hard to get motivated. Any votes on what system you'd most like to see work? Thoughts on if there is a milestone we should work towards? (making a small intro mission, getting firearm combat working, etc.).
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: MaximumZero on October 11, 2010, 12:05:25 am
I vote for the small intro mission.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on October 11, 2010, 12:26:05 am
Yeah, just doing that initial conversation chunk, I realized I could dive into that for days at a time. This long ago reached enough work to consume all people's time.

I guess my personal preference would be nailing down the player character.

Actually getting stats and skills codified and able to interact with the game world. Stats and skills, the player character, are the ultimate starting part for so many things, from NPCs to combat to how HIDEN ultimately plays out, that it seems the place to start to me. It's an RPG afterall. That discussion kind of stalled seeking input from other people and negotiating, and I re-focused on tiles and ideas in other areas. I've got the rough expectations down, so it's probably time to get that stuff sorted.

Once the character, and by extension, NPCs are truly sorted, we can move to combat.

I'm also trying to get some RL friends with coding experience involved. Not having a ton of luck there though.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on October 16, 2010, 09:35:34 am
I'll be this pirate pad (http://piratepad.net/bhZLA9sI6k) for most of today if anyone wants to contribute, question, or whatever. We got a new coder this week named BobAlmighty. He sounds experienced and this will hopefully mean even faster development.

Just about every feature I wished the T-Engine had is being or has been added to the T-Engine's next beta. When the next beta is released I'll start working on fixing the graphical annoyances we currently have in the map.

Right now I'm working on improving firearms, combat, and ammo.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Audioworm333 on October 22, 2010, 08:25:13 pm
This sounds awesome, are you still working on it?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: cappstv on October 22, 2010, 09:10:57 pm
This sounds awesome, are you still working on it?
Of course not!
I mean by no means check the official forums for the game to see if work is still being done, It is not! It has been abandon! I am for super serious!
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on October 22, 2010, 10:16:27 pm
This sounds awesome, are you still working on it?

Yes, a lot of stuff is being done, and has been done. Basically, people are making tiles (as the game's graphical), and Lap and some other people have done work on the AI, character generation, and other assorted things. Also, people are doing mathy things while they figure out bullet trajectories and skill gains and experience.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on October 22, 2010, 10:48:04 pm
Time for a status update:

Personally, most of my time until the November 5th or so will be spent with a big thing I gotta do at work, so not much amazing will be coming from me until then. It's been rough on this end and I took some of my free time recently to take a break from coding and crush Fallout: New Vegas into the dust.

Codewise, this is a lull. I'm waiting for the next version of the T-Engine to come out so I can do more stuff with layers and furniture. Furniture should most definitely be better supported in the next engine and I also think that I might be able to get the layered player sprites to work so that we can mix and match people sprites, as well as represent players equipping different equipment graphically. The last part might have to wait a bit longer, we'll see.

Xegeth has been the only other one doing the harder coding work and his inventory system works great. I haven't really heard from any of the other coders. Nenjin brought in a coder friend who sounds competent, but is looking for a very focused area to work in. I have not yet figured out what would be best to set him loose on.

I can't remember who said they were going to do something with the AI, but I've heard nothing from anyone about it and the only AI I see is the little I've done.

Graphical tiles are still being made and we have a huge amount of items, loot and weapons. We could probably use more mundane items and decorative world objects, but most importantly we still need more plots and unique maps. Luckily, making maps is still probably the easiest job anyone can do. Don't worry too much about furniture objects for now. Kudos to everyone who's been keeping the tile database updated when adding new tiles. That is really going to help out.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Audioworm333 on October 23, 2010, 07:57:50 am
Well, awesome. I am really looking forward to this.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Muz on October 23, 2010, 12:15:45 pm
You guys should move this over to Creative Projects, since Other Games is so active, and Creative Projects isn't ;)

I tend to go there anyway when I want to see what B12ers are making, and I check in Other Games to find something to play.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on October 23, 2010, 12:57:09 pm
well you can play it. Its just not fun yet :)
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: ghosteh on October 23, 2010, 03:44:47 pm
if this is another hoax I will shoot up my school
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Jack A T on October 23, 2010, 03:49:04 pm
This is not a hoax.  We have made actual progress.  Progress that can be freely seen and accessed by all.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Farce on October 23, 2010, 11:28:16 pm
Personally, most of my time until the November 5th or so will be spent with a big thing I gotta do at work
Are Guy Fawkes jokes as stale as the-cake-is-a-lie jokes yet?  I apologize if they are.


Anyway, I eagerly anticipate T4's update and subsequent progress.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on October 26, 2010, 06:41:07 am
Man I was starting to get worried because the board has been down and there's been no new posts. Thanks for relieving my angst Lap.

I've been utterly consumed by Hazordhu II of late. Maybe I should go back to spriting Crimelike again to get a change of pace. I like watching the tile database grow, and grow and grow, so I try to keep it up to date as often as possible.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: mendonca on October 26, 2010, 11:37:36 am
(http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/crimelike/playermodel/butch_v2_32_preview.png)

Been playing about with more player models, for kicks.

Butch here was easy to seperate in to layers, thanks to a really handy app 'Layer Saver' for paint.net which can save each layer of a PDN file as a seperate file. Real handy for something like the proposed player model architecture (if it will work as we hope).

Butch is 28 seperate layers (at the moment), which are the minimum amounts of seperate layers I think you need to have a bare bones model (inc. base equipment types and base clothing).

(http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/crimelike/playermodel/butch_v2_32_getorf.png)

'Get orf my land!'
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on October 26, 2010, 06:17:35 pm
Board going down was entirely my fault. It's back. 27 layers? What?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: mendonca on October 27, 2010, 03:31:13 am
Sorry, that is Paint.net layers, not player model layers.

Each layer is one different graphic for equipment / clothing. So there are 27 types of things that Butch can wear. It's more related to the load associated with creating the assets rather than drawing the model in the engine. That would be entirely open, and I reckon could be anywhere from 4 to 10 depending on how you approach it. I'll elaborate on my thoughts on the forum when I get home tonight.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Hugehead on October 28, 2010, 11:50:24 am
Stupid question, but how can I download the alpha? On Sourceforge I don't see any files to download.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Xegeth on October 28, 2010, 12:13:06 pm
There's no official releases yet, so you'll need to use svn. The game is at http://crimelike.svn.sourceforge.net/, and you can find the readme at http://crimelike.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/crimelike/readme.txt?revision=31&view=markup
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: PTTG?? on October 28, 2010, 12:16:25 pm
I was rather thinking of having a detective mystery simulator where there's a medium-sized town with a whole bunch of radiant-style AI, and two human players. One is a serial killer that gets computer-assigned MOs that they must fulfill, and the other player is the detective who has to question NPCs to find the killer.

The neat thing is, there would be human observers who would be able to say things to the killer, with a mask that distorts it into groans and whispers. The brilliant part is, no matter what the observers say, it'd be totally in character for voices a serial killer hears.

Each game would be saved, particularly highlights, could be played back later. So, naturally, killers will try to set up complicated and bizzare plots, and detectives will try to do awesome things because if they do well, everyone will want to see the video.

It's important to note that there would be a strong narrative causality system, so that if it's two minutes in and the detective happens to run into the murder and whips his revolver out, there's a 99% chance it'll jam or miss, but if the detective just suprised the killer after tracking him for twenty minutes, beat him down with fencepost, and went for a cue-de-gra (or however it's spelled) on the murderer while he's down, then it doesn't matter how many HP he has, it's over.

I don't know how any of that could apply outside of the serial killer class. Maybe a Vigilantie class?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on October 28, 2010, 12:20:08 pm
I was rather thinking of having a detective mystery simulator where there's a medium-sized town with a whole bunch of radiant-style AI, and two human players. One is a serial killer that gets computer-assigned MOs that they must fulfill, and the other player is the detective who has to question NPCs to find the killer.

The neat thing is, there would be human observers who would be able to say things to the killer, with a mask that distorts it into groans and whispers. The brilliant part is, no matter what the observers say, it'd be totally in character for voices a serial killer hears.

Each game would be saved, particularly highlights, could be played back later. So, naturally, killers will try to set up complicated and bizzare plots, and detectives will try to do awesome things because if they do well, everyone will want to see the video.

It's important to note that there would be a strong narrative causality system, so that if it's two minutes in and the detective happens to run into the murder and whips his revolver out, there's a 99% chance it'll jam or miss, but if the detective just suprised the killer after tracking him for twenty minutes, beat him down with fencepost, and went for a cue-de-gra (or however it's spelled) on the murderer while he's down, then it doesn't matter how many HP he has, it's over.

I don't know how any of that could apply outside of the serial killer class. Maybe a Vigilantie class?

Holy crap that sounds awesome.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Ioric Kittencuddler on November 02, 2010, 01:15:10 am
Here's a missed opportunity for you.

The guys who made The Ship just released another game called Bloody Good Time... Except apparently they've shut down... so... I'm not really sure how that worked.  In any case it seemed at first like a sort of multiplayer slasher flick game but as it turns out it's just a consolized version of The Ship with only 3 levels that are each smaller than most of the levels in The Ship.  Instead of making you a random character with random clothes there are 8 distinct characters that you can choose from.  Oddly everyone can pick the same character, so it seems to serve little purpose other than to simplify the disguise system.  The changeable clothes have been removed, and now instead of changing your clothes to avoid being found by your hunter you go to a disguise closet which changes you into another one of the characters for 30 seconds.  Instead of finding weapons and items in closets and containers you collect them from glowing spawn points that they float above with their Fame For Kills value floating above that.  Instead of earning money for kills (currency and shops have been removed completely) you earn fame, which is just points that determine the winner of the match.  Now there are only three needs for the character and a lot fewer ways to fulfill them.  Instead of an inventory you get to carry four weapons and four "Murder-Aids" which are items that don't deal damage directly but instead aid in murdering through immobilization of your target or just steal fame from them.  The few actual additions to the game are the aforementioned murder aids, the fact that the three levels that are in the game are actually a bit more varied individually than the much larger variety of levels in The Ship with their addition of traps you can trigger by pressing bright red buttons, and the fact that the weapons are now a bit more varied in function with some that can insta-kill from behind.  You can also instantly kill someone who's fulfilling a need.

It's really kind of a shame the game turned out the way it did, because the premise gave it such potential.  Basically the characters are competing for a part in a slasher flick.  It wouldn't have been far off for the characters to actually be in a slasher flick with someone trying to off them and they had to work together to survive.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: dmgpurity on November 05, 2010, 08:21:21 pm
Time for a status update:

Personally, most of my time until the November 5th or so will be spent with a big thing I gotta do at work, so not much amazing will be coming from me until then. It's been rough on this end and I took some of my free time recently to take a break from coding and crush Fallout: New Vegas into the dust.

Codewise, this is a lull. I'm waiting for the next version of the T-Engine to come out so I can do more stuff with layers and furniture. Furniture should most definitely be better supported in the next engine and I also think that I might be able to get the layered player sprites to work so that we can mix and match people sprites, as well as represent players equipping different equipment graphically. The last part might have to wait a bit longer, we'll see.

Xegeth has been the only other one doing the harder coding work and his inventory system works great. I haven't really heard from any of the other coders. Nenjin brought in a coder friend who sounds competent, but is looking for a very focused area to work in. I have not yet figured out what would be best to set him loose on.

I can't remember who said they were going to do something with the AI, but I've heard nothing from anyone about it and the only AI I see is the little I've done.

Graphical tiles are still being made and we have a huge amount of items, loot and weapons. We could probably use more mundane items and decorative world objects, but most importantly we still need more plots and unique maps. Luckily, making maps is still probably the easiest job anyone can do. Don't worry too much about furniture objects for now. Kudos to everyone who's been keeping the tile database updated when adding new tiles. That is really going to help out.
Is the T-Engine still being developed?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on November 05, 2010, 08:23:28 pm
Yep, all the time. New version comes out about every couple of weeks and the SVN is updated even more often.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Jack A T on November 07, 2010, 06:32:30 pm
Woo, T-Engine 4 beta 13 is out!
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on November 20, 2010, 08:23:34 pm
b14 is actually out now. Unfortunately, both b13 and b14 have a bug that is absolutely crippling my startup times. It's taking many minutes to load in if it does at all. It's really annoying. I was mostly waiting until b14 came out to resume coding, but it doesn't seem like the problem is yet fixed. Here's hoping for a quick fix.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: DarkGod on November 21, 2010, 08:55:18 am
If the get news is slowing you down you can comment out line 92 of game/engines/default/modules/boot/class/Game.lua .
You can also run your module directly from the command line BTW this is even faster:
t-engine -Mcrime
You can add a -ufoo option to name your character "foo" and a -n option to force a new character
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Jack A T on November 21, 2010, 04:14:27 pm
b15 is now out.  Woo.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on November 22, 2010, 01:33:16 pm
Commenting out that line doesn't change the problem. Using the comandline option has worked since b13 though everything seems less responsive.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Ringmaster on December 03, 2010, 05:42:56 pm
Is something wrong with the forums? All I'm getting on Firefox is "Document contains no data"
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on December 03, 2010, 06:48:44 pm
Oh noes. The forum server is down! Lap will have to come around and fix it.

Speaking of which, I really should get back into making some graphics. Minecraft and real life distracted me badly. How's the coding coming along? Did the AI coding guy ever finish?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: magikarcher on December 14, 2010, 03:54:16 am
Is this dead, or what?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on December 14, 2010, 04:56:13 am
I was rather thinking of having a detective mystery simulator where there's a medium-sized town with a whole bunch of radiant-style AI, and two human players. One is a serial killer that gets computer-assigned MOs that they must fulfill, and the other player is the detective who has to question NPCs to find the killer.

The neat thing is, there would be human observers who would be able to say things to the killer, with a mask that distorts it into groans and whispers. The brilliant part is, no matter what the observers say, it'd be totally in character for voices a serial killer hears.

Each game would be saved, particularly highlights, could be played back later. So, naturally, killers will try to set up complicated and bizzare plots, and detectives will try to do awesome things because if they do well, everyone will want to see the video.

It's important to note that there would be a strong narrative causality system, so that if it's two minutes in and the detective happens to run into the murder and whips his revolver out, there's a 99% chance it'll jam or miss, but if the detective just suprised the killer after tracking him for twenty minutes, beat him down with fencepost, and went for a cue-de-gra (or however it's spelled) on the murderer while he's down, then it doesn't matter how many HP he has, it's over.

I don't know how any of that could apply outside of the serial killer class. Maybe a Vigilantie class?

This sounded cool until you reached the last paragraph.  If the detective stumbles upon the murderer and shoots him, tough luck.  The game shouldn't warp reality to continue it, and it definitely shouldn't force-kill the murderer like that.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kitsunin on December 14, 2010, 05:00:13 am
This sounded cool until you reached the last paragraph.  If the detective stumbles upon the murderer and shoots him, tough luck.  The game shouldn't warp reality to continue it, and it definitely shouldn't force-kill the murderer like that.
I agree with you, unless the game has really great graphics, then it might be a bit different, as it would be more dramatic, in my opinion, drama isn't that import if things don't look reasonably realistic.

I mean, there would have to at least be animations and such, in other words, I don't think it would work for a roguelike.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: PTTG?? on December 20, 2010, 06:35:55 pm
When it gets down to it, I feel that the game would be more consistently enjoyable when it loads the die. It's what every good DM does- you don't let the players die from falling off the back of a wagon, and you don't let them kill the Big Bad by pushing him off the back of one either... at least not without some drama. And a good DM definitely doesn't let a player say "I've played this aventure before, and the evil priest always escapes down the secret passage right over there, so let's set a bunch of traps there." Indeed, a good DM would probably cheat physics by either getting the priest a couple "natural 20s" to dodge the traps, or else changing the temple around so the secret passage is somewhere else.

In the same way, the game engine should move things around so that, while driven by the players, boring endings don't happen.

That said, if the murder does something stupid like slashing people left and right in the middle of the street, either the detective or the NPC cops should be pretty much able to one-hit kill him right there. That's not because it makes a good story, which it doesn't exactly, but it encourages the murder to be stealthy, indirectly encouraging good storytelling.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Gatleos on December 20, 2010, 08:10:35 pm
I was rather thinking of having a detective mystery simulator where there's a medium-sized town with a whole bunch of radiant-style AI, and two human players. One is a serial killer that gets computer-assigned MOs that they must fulfill, and the other player is the detective who has to question NPCs to find the killer.

The neat thing is, there would be human observers who would be able to say things to the killer, with a mask that distorts it into groans and whispers. The brilliant part is, no matter what the observers say, it'd be totally in character for voices a serial killer hears.

Each game would be saved, particularly highlights, could be played back later. So, naturally, killers will try to set up complicated and bizzare plots, and detectives will try to do awesome things because if they do well, everyone will want to see the video.

It's important to note that there would be a strong narrative causality system, so that if it's two minutes in and the detective happens to run into the murder and whips his revolver out, there's a 99% chance it'll jam or miss, but if the detective just suprised the killer after tracking him for twenty minutes, beat him down with fencepost, and went for a cue-de-gra (or however it's spelled) on the murderer while he's down, then it doesn't matter how many HP he has, it's over.

I don't know how any of that could apply outside of the serial killer class. Maybe a Vigilantie class?

This sounded cool until you reached the last paragraph.  If the detective stumbles upon the murderer and shoots him, tough luck.  The game shouldn't warp reality to continue it, and it definitely shouldn't force-kill the murderer like that.
Exactly. The best part of open-ended games with emergent stories (like Dwarf Fortress), is that there's a real sense of involvement with what's going on. When you're playing an RPG with a pre-scripted linear story and something really cool happens, it happened because a writer wrote it to happen that way. When the story emerges from interaction of players with each other or the game world, it's totally different. Knowing that whatever happens next will happen because of your actions and not a pre-defined story can do wonders for player immersion, and it's a hell of a lot of fun. So while that pre-scripted RPG might have a much better story, ones defined by the players through their actions are far more exciting. Much like a story suddenly becomes much more interesting when you find out it actually happened, rather than being a fictional story made up by the storyteller.

While "loading the die" might make for more drama, it dampens the unique advantage that video games have as a storytelling medium, that advantage being interactivity. And if this were more a cinematic experience than a video game, we wouldn't be making a rogue-like, would we?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Jack A T on December 25, 2010, 12:22:45 am
So, how's progress?  Anything still going on?

I've been kind of taking a break from spriting and mapping for a while, myself.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on December 25, 2010, 02:51:38 am
I've left off most stuff until Lap had a big push with the engine, now that (I think?) he got the update he was looking for.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Jack A T on December 29, 2010, 09:31:45 pm
Does anyone mind if I dump the sprites/tiles I made onto OpenGameArt.org (http://opengameart.org/)?  This doesn't seem to be going very far, Lap hasn't been on for over a week, and I might as well make sure my stuff ends up useful to someone.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on December 29, 2010, 10:40:24 pm
At this point, I'd say go for it. Nothing wrong with making sprites available for others' use.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Megaman on December 30, 2010, 12:44:01 am
Do it, considering this is a project cooked up on the forum I have a feeling it WILL go nowhere.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on December 30, 2010, 03:30:45 am
It's always nice when people that put no effort into the project still take the time to slam it.

On the art, I don't mind. No one had any delusions of copyrighting it, I think.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Megaman on December 30, 2010, 03:33:52 am
People either get bored or just don't care in the first place in this kind of situation.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: mendonca on December 30, 2010, 10:27:39 am
Given that it is open source, the project is still very much in development.

It's just waiting for people to develop it.

Any of the tile stuff I did is fair game, feel free to do what you want with it.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on January 10, 2011, 09:37:29 pm
Does anyone mind if I dump the sprites/tiles I made onto OpenGameArt.org (http://opengameart.org/)?  This doesn't seem to be going very far, Lap hasn't been on for over a week, and I might as well make sure my stuff ends up useful to someone.

There's no reason not to. No one is doing this for money. I know as an artist I'd want my work to benefit the most possible people; that is how I feel about my code. That is far more important than leaving them exclusively tied up to a project that might never see completion.

Repost from the main forums in case some of you have stopped checking there:

The project is not dead.

Though there has been code contributed by others, I am the primary coder. When I stop updating, only art assets and ideas continue being submitted. This can only go on so long without code updates.

Where have I been? Well for those internet stalkers out there, I never left and you'll see my posting on b12 and lurking daily. Send me a PM or email and I'll likely respond within a day. However:

1. I code in spurts. I get a great idea for a new game mechanic and I sometimes end up coding that same thing for hours straight and often continue working on it for days. After this high productivity period I temporarily burnout and need to give myself a break. My current break involves me working on a previous project; a 4X game (http://76.26.38.52/forum/index.php?topic=3.msg54#new). Looks familiar huh?

2. I was losing direction. There are tons of great ideas on these boards, but a lot of them are simply not detailed enough. When I go to code something in it is going to take 10x longer if I have to keep switching gears from actually coding and stopping to figure out how the whole mechanic works and should be balanced. So when posting an idea for combat or something, it helps tremendously for the actual formulas and such to already be worked out. Writing in pseudocode also helps. I waste a lot of time screwing around on my TI-89 trying out different damage curves and formulas. Most of which is work that will never be seen.

3. The T-Engine was being angry. Updates to the T-Engine, the engine that Crimelike is built on were causing my personal computer much suffering and causing impossibly long load times. I worked with darkgod for a while to fix them, but the cause was really hard to find. I've since been on a break so I haven't checked to see if later versions are as problematic.

4. IRL busy. Went home for holidays, no computer, studying for massive board exam, rest of month in and out of long surgeries.


So now that my long list of excuses is done, what about the future of Crimelike?


Well, towards the end of the month I'll be releasing a tech demo for the 4X game I've been working on so I won't be too active here. Inbetween doing that I'll try to see if I can get my T-Engine issues worked out with darkgod so that when I'm ready I can jump right back into coding.

How can you guys help?


You're already helping out just by showing interest. Nothing is more inspirational than checking in and seeing that we have so many forum users and ideas being submitted. Most important though is if I see well discussed mechanics WITH NUMBERS AND FORMULA so that I can get right in there and code. You can also try to learn a little about the easiest coding language ever and make some very basic stuff to help out. Aside from that try to recruit some more coders. Hell, if someone comes along that has the time, passion, and know how I'll gladly give them project lead if they'd like.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on February 09, 2011, 08:32:10 pm
It's been a little hiatus, but I'm getting back in gear as are some other people. I've still been getting questions a couple times a week with people asking how they can help move things along, so that's promising.

Since the last major code updates the TOME engine has seen at least six major revisions. For us this is a double-edged sword; there are a lot of new fancy graphics stuff as well as online profile features that I'm going to have to explore, but I also have to spend some time bringing Crimelike up to date with the new functions. If you download the latest SVN version right now and try to play it with TOME 20, it's not going to run. I'm working on that right now, but I might just end up scrapping some of our oldest files and just rewrite them for the new better version.

Looking around, there still aren't a lot of hard formulas and mechanics written for the features everyone is waiting for. As said before, when I have to spend hours experimenting with how game play should work, that's time taken away from actual coding. Since there's very few coders, but everyone has ideas, I'd much rather be put to work actually implementing these ideas. Special thanks to nenjin for creating so many mechanics so far.

I've also had about five or so people offer to either transfer over from another coding language or learn Lua from scratch to help out. I am more than willing to help anyone transition over or even learn from scratch. At this point, coders are the bottleneck for this project and they directly relate to how fast we can release playable versions.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on February 09, 2011, 08:43:29 pm
I can get into seriously writing out numbers, but one thing people I've tried to bring into this have asked for is a design plan.

I.e, a prioritized list of goals just so we can design with some surety we're not writing mechanics for a future systems. I know you said you're comfortable with shorthand, i.e [SKILL CHECK], but it's not easy to conceive mechanics with confidence or implement them when your text is littered with those references.

Even something as basic as 1) Character stats 2) skills 3) checks 4) gear would give us some direction.

So yeah. All this time we haven't really had a concise list of priorities to code from, it's been "find what interests you, develop some code around it." I think we need a little more cohesion. Bringing together the work that people have already done so it can be understood by others would also be a big help. We kind of don't know where we stand on many features atm, other than art, of which we have tons, and building plots, which were last waiting on some re-write from TOME last I checked.

What I did in my last major push was just try to get some discussion on each major area, mostly character advancement, HIDEN, and what the shape of the city and the districts would be like, and get ideas down. After this long, I think the time for debate has kind of ended in most places, so I guess I'll head back and see what motivates me to write out numbers, until I get some firm direction on what needs to be done first to get something remotely playable.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Jack A T on February 09, 2011, 08:50:27 pm
Ooh, active again!

Ready to sprite, map, and perhaps think again.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on February 09, 2011, 09:34:03 pm
Lack of direction

True enough. Since most of my time was spent doing a lot of basic stuff: gathering people, creating forums, familiarizing myself with the engine, etc. I was content to just let people talk and see where that led us.

Unfortunately, more focus and direction means that some executive decisions are going to have to be made. There are a lot of topics that have some great ideas, but no clear consensus and seemingly no more actual discussion. To move things along an option has to be picked even if that means cutting cool features or even hurting some feelings. Whether an actual idea was bad, infeasible to code, or simply lost to a slightly different idea, it's inevitable that people will get offended and/or disappointed when their idea isn't chosen. This is the part I hate the most.

I've been free to bounce around between different parts of the code, experimenting, and implementing stuff on whim, but that has to stop. I think the "code what you want" directive for new coders clearly didn't work so well. I thought it would attract more help since people wouldn't feel like they were just being assigned boring bitch work, and maybe it did, but without direction most of the people who contacted me never followed through with anything. The one thing that did work well was assigning the inventory system out to a single coder. That worked very well and I'll definitely keep an eye out for more systems like that that can be easily assigned.

This has convinced me that yes, the next step is a focused design doc/roadmap. I'll throw out a rough draft soon so we can look it over and see what needs to be reprioritized, added, or removed.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on February 09, 2011, 09:59:03 pm
Cool. I've always proposed mechanics waiting for you to come in and go "can't make it work" "can make this work" "like it" "hate it." Executive decision in my mind has always rested with you about exactly what kind of mechanics or philosophy we go with.

It was nice, we gave people a several month grace period to get their opinions out, but the time to get firm and get some real code started is nigh.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on February 09, 2011, 11:00:32 pm
I try to immediately axe stuff I know can't be coded if it's discussed in more than passing. I have fairly eclectic gaming tastes so I don't even quickly gravitate to one type of playstyle either.

The hard part is that there isn't a right answer to some of these debates. A lot are just matters of preference. They're relatively similar in coding difficulty and have some nice pros/cons on each side. I hold off as long as I possibly can with these hoping that someone brings up something that pushes one idea towards being the winner.

On that note, one of the most well debated topics (skill advancement) looks like might finally be solved. An idea was just posted about skill advancement should satisfy everyone. That one is looking like a winner.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Meta on February 10, 2011, 03:38:07 am
Just a small post to let you know that there's a friend of the programmer of Rogue Survivor who started to program a rogue-like with a Grand Theft Auto theme: http://grandrogueauto.blogspot.com/ (http://grandrogueauto.blogspot.com/)
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on February 12, 2011, 12:46:02 pm
I really like the editors that guy made for his game. I might end up making something like that for the tiles and items further down the line. Luckily for us, there's really no competition here as the game seems a lot less ambitious and "serious" than this project. Not in terms of quality, but in terms of realism and depth.

I threw up a basic guideline/design doc for the next stage.

https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1BCgE3cb3dXwe_dAe3mpHUY9cu0G9cZRyH3G3dET9f-s

It looks like we might have a new coder too. Kronos seems qualified and interested so I'll be spending some time trying to get him up to speed.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Serial Kicked on February 12, 2011, 09:16:14 pm
Hi there, it's hard not to notice the massive visitor income from this board, thanks for that. Even if it was way too early. So, yeah, i did read about Serial Killer RL but instead of doing a poor copy of something that's impossible to make in the first place i decided to build a city simulator with a relatively depth GTA/crime related gameplay.

(btw, yes I play DF and read this forum regularly)

If you have questions about GRA, you're welcome to ask, preferably on the development blog (http://grandrogueauto.blogspot.com/). Post a comment on whatever article, and you'll get an answer. However I am not interested in feature requests, yet.

Luckily for us, there's really no competition here as the game seems a lot less ambitious and "serious" than this project. Not in terms of quality, but in terms of realism and depth.

lol.

You shouldn't do that when you don't have any kind of release to back anything up and especially in this particular case (you know the fake serial killer RL and all the related drama). But as I am not a bad guy I won't hold a grudge and give you a few free tips. The more games the better, IMHO, anyway. First, I have written a roadmap for you so you can avoid to read the boring design documents all over my website and stop saying this kind of stuff ;)

Two,

You have a few interesting ideas there and there, but it's lost amongst waves after waves of impossible things to implement correctly. I don't recall the programming language, but if it's LUA/script based, it's slow as hell and not open/dynamic-world friendly. So put your game in a "feature locked" mode, and work toward building a half decent city. Nothing fancy, just NPC following their schedules (whatever AI system you want to use). Then, and only then, you'll be able to figure what kind of feature can be included without killing the CPU. Believe me on that, anything said before having a relatively good working environment, should be discarded for this kind of project.

Cheers,
SK.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on February 12, 2011, 10:02:36 pm
Serial Kicked, I don't think Lap intended that comment as an insult of any kind.

Anyway, it cheers me up to see that this is still active. College and its associated work has kept me away from Bay12 for the most part, so I look forward to any new coding additions you add, Lap.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on February 12, 2011, 10:03:30 pm
I went out of my way to clarify that there was no competition because there is a difference in play style. And yes, after looking at your road map along with the rest of the site it still looks that way. If you want to be offended by the difference in direction, go ahead.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Serial Kicked on February 13, 2011, 12:42:44 am
Err, did i really sound offended ? Because i wasn't. Amused would be a better word here.
Oh, well, sarcastic humor and non native english don't mix well, i should know that by now.

Anyway, the more the better like i said. The advices I gave you were sincere ('been there done that' kind, feel free to ignore), with a little bit of trolling inside because it seems the usual method in this board. Anyway, my apologies if I have hurt your feelings, it wasn't intended at all. Still, my main point stands, gameplay and rule related discussions with the community are irrelevant until you know what your engine can or cannot do CPU wise (especially when you don't know the agent related AI that will be used in your engine yet). 

Cheers,
SK.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on February 13, 2011, 01:22:38 pm
The discussion is not irrelevant because most of the mechanics that get suggested and discussed are not CPU intensive. The only things that are, are the requests for fully scheduled AI. A Dwarf Fortress like game where every single citizen is fully simulated with desires and all sorts of detailed routines is not really feasible or worth it. I'd rather just do more elaborate out of sector calculations.

Last year, before this project was started, I did a stress test with a similar Lua engine for a space game. It couldn't really handle the amount of sprites, physics, and AI. Unfortunately, I already wasted a couple days coding in a ship editor. Lesson learned.

Before this project was started I took the already large Tome module and did a stress test with intentionally extra laggy AI that spammed AStar pathfinding and sight checks for no reason. Aside from the engine taking a couple more seconds to load up maps than engines in other languages, the actual turn to turn time was acceptable. The engine has since had 12 major revisions since then so I'm even less worried.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: rawr359 on February 13, 2011, 02:46:28 pm
Err, did i really sound offended ? Because i wasn't. Amused would be a better word here.
Oh, well, sarcastic humor and non native english don't mix well, i should know that by now.

Anyway, the more the better like i said. The advices I gave you were sincere ('been there done that' kind, feel free to ignore), with a little bit of trolling inside because it seems the usual method in this board. Anyway, my apologies if I have hurt your feelings, it wasn't intended at all. Still, my main point stands, gameplay and rule related discussions with the community are irrelevant until you know what your engine can or cannot do CPU wise (especially when you don't know the agent related AI that will be used in your engine yet). 

Cheers,
SK.

No, you don't sound offended. You sound like a cocky bastard who has no real reason to post.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Soadreqm on February 13, 2011, 03:03:36 pm
Yesss! We shall become archnemeses! Exchanging rude notes, posting vitriolic rants, and if any actual games ever get released, inserting some insults into them too. It will be so much fun! :D
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: mendonca on February 13, 2011, 03:16:23 pm
Hey SK, just so you know, you do sound a little cocky - but that's okay by me, you obviously know what you are doing so good luck to you with GRA.

but Rawr, was that really necessary? The opening line of SK's post was thanking the forum for the extra traffic, I think he deserves the benefit of the doubt?

Ninjaedit:

Yes, every crime focused roguelike clearly needs an archenemy, it couldn't have worked out better!
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Serial Kicked on February 16, 2011, 04:21:18 am
@rawr:

I did not want to cause any kind of drama. Like I said, I tried to put some humor in my post in a non native language, it failed and like I said (again) I should know better. Anyway, I apologized, case closed. Flame all you want, I couldn't care less (and if i sound 'cocky' here, it's intended).


@Lap:

I have been following your project for quite a while with interest, otherwise i wouldn't be posting here no matter what other people may think. TBH the "we got tiles" post was what motivated my post in the first place (+ the income of visitor i wanted to thank), it got me a bit worried. I've seen so many projects gathering a hell lot of good ideas dying because of engine related issues that i don't want something i follow to do the exact same mistake. And I am glad to know that you've extensively tested the basics beforehand.

Out of interested, what space game are you talking about ?
(I have probably played with it like most if not all space games)

Cheers,
SK.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Ioric Kittencuddler on February 21, 2011, 03:49:31 am
Space game?  Hm... single player Shores of Hazeron with AI empires would be so amazing.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: nenjin on February 21, 2011, 05:26:24 am
Let's just chalk this up to friendly competition and move on, yes?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Servant Corps on February 21, 2011, 02:39:49 pm
Space game?  Hm... single player Shores of Hazeron with AI empires would be so amazing.

Lap was working on a game called "Echoes of Imperium", which is basically an updated version of EoFS. You play as a House of an Empire (whose Emperor have mysteriously disappeared) and you win when you take control of the Empire. He has released a tech demo, and um, that's about it.

...To be honest, I didn't even know he worked on this Serial Killer knock-off. Surprising.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on February 25, 2011, 05:15:31 pm
The actual space game I was previously referring to was a multiplayer remake of Battleships Forever. I had the ships down, a basic ship editor, movement/commands, and multiplayer working. It seemed to bog down a bit too much when I threw up 10's of thousands sprites and effects so I passed on continuing to make it. I now realize I could technically use LuaJIT (basically computes stuff a bit faster than standard Lua) and it would probably work multiple times quicker. I heard that the creator of Battleships Forever was working on a sequel so I don't have a burning desire to pick it back up at the moment.

Back to Crimelike:

Still can't say this engine will be perfect when all is said and done. A benchmark can only estimate so much and the base engine is only partially able to be edited.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Angel Of Death on April 05, 2011, 06:32:44 am
Sorry for the MAAJOOR necro, but is this still being worked on?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Untouchable on April 05, 2011, 06:49:38 am
I checked the blog for it and it looks like it's still being worked on although the last news that I saw was from late Feb.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Hiiri on April 05, 2011, 08:30:00 am
Sorry for the MAAJOOR necro, but is this still being worked on?

Major necro? A week? :P
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Angel Of Death on April 05, 2011, 11:00:11 am
Wait, It's just a week? I misread the date of the last post as 2010.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: shaihulud on April 05, 2011, 11:12:05 am
the ideas of this game sounds extremely cool probably the closest thing to that SK hoax i was longing for
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: jakeread1 on June 10, 2011, 02:00:47 am
the ideas of this game sounds extremely cool probably the closest thing to that SK hoax i was longing for

Some people are actually making it and are going to release it in a month or so http://skrogue.com/ (http://skrogue.com/)
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Angel Of Death on June 10, 2011, 02:50:47 am
the ideas of this game sounds extremely cool probably the closest thing to that SK hoax i was longing for

Some people are actually making it and are going to release it in a month or so http://skrogue.com/ (http://skrogue.com/)
I wonder if that game will have torture...
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: jetex1911 on June 12, 2011, 08:11:14 am
You can already do that in Dwarf Fortress, and this game asks that you do bad things... Any Updates?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Yodamaster on June 17, 2011, 07:12:31 pm
What's the status of this?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: jetex1911 on June 20, 2011, 11:02:22 pm
I- I think it's dead, Jim.  :'(
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Angel Of Death on June 20, 2011, 11:08:30 pm
I- I think it's dead, Jim.  :'(
I do, too.  :'(
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Grakelin on June 20, 2011, 11:12:05 pm
skrogue.com is still going fine.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Audioworm333 on July 28, 2011, 08:14:43 pm
Man this sounds awesome. Is it still being developed?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Kusgnos on July 28, 2011, 08:29:24 pm
The main developer on it seems to be working sporadically on it. It's like a personal project for him now, mainly because the rest of us didn't know enough code. There are still archives of various sprites and images made for it, but it's just him coding, all alone.

;_;
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Rakonas on July 28, 2011, 10:18:45 pm
The main developer on it seems to be working sporadically on it. It's like a personal project for him now, mainly because the rest of us didn't know enough code. There are still archives of various sprites and images made for it, but it's just him coding, all alone.

;_;
Send him cookies. Every day.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: hemmingjay on January 22, 2012, 11:59:07 pm
Resurrecting to ask if this is completely dead?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: gimlet on January 23, 2012, 05:53:55 am
This looks like his blog http://skrogue.wordpress.com/ and he posted about a month ago, so looks like he's still on it, if not exactly ripping through it...
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: DrPoo on January 23, 2012, 08:47:25 am
Ill make music for the game if you adf a plumber class, turtles and mushrooms then rename it to "Super Dario World 3"
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Lap on March 14, 2012, 09:17:25 pm
Resurrecting to ask if this is completely dead?

Mostly dead. I still have a copy of the forums and all the code, so nothing was lost. Project stopped mainly because I couldn't continue as essentially the only coder when I have other projects to finish. I did check out the ToME and the T-Engine (engine this was built on) extensively this last week or so. The T-Engine is a great engine, but the engine was changing very rapidly. It has since gone through more than 25 major releases.

These releases were making it hard for me to work. Things kept changing and I'd have to redo code. Now the T-Engine is a lot more powerful and a lot more stable, so resuming work would be a lot easier than before.

That being said, the project still will not be able to be completed by me as sole programmer simply because of time restraints. If more people eventually help out (possibly some of the ToME people I was talking with in IRC), then maybe the project can get back up and running. Plans are on hold for the time being. If anyone is willing to take up the banner or wants to help coding we can talk about reopening the project.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Zireael on August 13, 2014, 01:44:15 am
I suppose this is dead, however, is there anywhere I could download it or the source code?
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Cthulhu on August 13, 2014, 04:22:00 am
Judging by what I saw of it I'm not sure there was ever anything to kill.  It mostly seemed like people bouncing ideas off of each other with very little actual work being done outside of a few people.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Zireael on August 13, 2014, 05:16:03 am
I liked the inventory system and it seems it was working...
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: hemmingjay on August 13, 2014, 06:08:23 am
I'd like discuss sponsoring this project and see what the community feels. My game releases in Sept/October and sales projections are all over the place depending on when I actually release. If I should end up anywhere near the middle of those projections or higher, I will have some money to work with beyond my studio's next two simultaneous titles.

If that is the case, would you be interested in my use of resources to help progress this game? I see two key issues at play and a third minor. The first is the nature of the beast which is organization. Since it's an open source project there is a lot of wasted time and energy figuring out what to work on and finding a community consensus. The second time is a lack of dedicated programming hours.

This is merely talk right now, but it's the time for such discussions. First, if the assistance is welcome I would initially bring in a project management expert to consult and organize the project with a 30, 60  and 90 day plan followed by a 1 and 3 year timeline. I would pay them to provide 3 hours a week after that to keep up on recording progress and maintaining the track with assignment for those producing.

Speaking of producing, I would pay a stipend for 2 part time programmers. Ideally one would be Lap. It would be best if they could commit to 40 or 60 hours a month in exchange for a reasonable stipend.

Is there any interest in this? My reasons are purely philanthropic. I believe gamers have wanted this game since our emotions were toyed with so long ago. I thing a commercial attempt would be met with demand and then severe damage and finally pitchforks due to the media. This is the best way imho.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Geneoce on August 18, 2014, 01:12:53 am
If this eventuated I would spend an unhealthy amount of time playing it.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Fikes on August 18, 2014, 03:05:36 am
I always wonder if it would be possible to develop a game through some sort of bounty system. You start out with the very basic framework of a game and post a bounty for, say, the inventory system. Who ever can provide code for a drop in inventory system that meets a set of requirements in a set time line wins 200 dollars.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Reelya on August 18, 2014, 03:39:54 am
That's an interesting idea, but it might be better to use a bidding system instead. Treat improvements as contracts put up for tender, developers bid time & cost, players put payments into a pool to be used for improvements and get to vote on contract approval, based on how much they have contributed. If only a few people vote, then the payment only comes out of their personal contributions, that keeps it fair and would make approvals and voting fast since you wouldn't need many people online at a time.

If the developer hasn't delivered by the deadline then the contract goes public again - but the existing developer is free to resubmit a bid ("I just need two more days!" etc).

This sort of model would possibly help to reduce delays waiting for improvements from people who had promised to deliver. Maybe if they go over the agreed time then the bounty starts to fall.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: hemmingjay on August 18, 2014, 05:59:54 am
Fikes,

It is possible. I built the prototype for Arms Dealer that way on Guru.com and Freelancer.com    even better is that they bid themselves down to the lowest price. The downside is anyone who bids less than $75/day to do something is unlikely to complete it. Even in India or Indonesia.
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: ibor211 on March 07, 2015, 07:25:28 pm
Hello everybody!
This is my first post.
Im making Crime (light) roguelike game.Hope to get help with sprites and feedback from this great community like author had before in similar game.
Plans for alpha version:
-Simple AI with minimal interaction to player
-Semi random city generator
-Complex systems like Heat,Evidence,Witness,Respect,Economy,etc
-Stats like intelligence,intellect,strength,focus,speed,etc
-Factions like street gangs,corporations,mafia,cults even garbage companies.each with its own agenda and objectives.
-No classes.You make your own character based on your actions
-Simple inventory and body parts system

Gonna make new topic soon when I start with game.Any ideas and suggestions are welcome!
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: Farce on March 08, 2015, 01:31:59 am
Start small.  Like super duper tiny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvCri1tqIxQ
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: ibor211 on March 08, 2015, 06:58:39 am
Already made AI and factions but lost it in hd crash some time ago  :(
even growing weed and cooking meth lol
Title: Re: Crime Focused Roguelike
Post by: ibor211 on March 25, 2015, 07:30:34 am
After reading whole thread I can see that very complex game was in making.I didnt work on something like that.Anyhow I made a concept of the gameplay in warcraft 3 and test it.It isnt fun to play.Something like Sopranos,Gta,Constructor and Gangsters OC fused with Warcraft3.So after proof of concept failed Im probably gonna make game where you have to run cult set in modern time(2d isometric Lcs) or turn based crime game for hotseat multiplayer.