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Other Projects => Other Games => Topic started by: pat on April 05, 2019, 06:16:19 am

Title: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on April 05, 2019, 06:16:19 am: (https://i.imgur.com/pW5xxsb.png)

The Red Prison is a roguelike adaption of the Basic Rules for the 5th Edition of D&D. It’s been in development for about five or so months and it’s quickly progressed to a fairly advanced playable prototype.

Download:

http://patjw.itch.io/theredprison
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1074040/The_Red_Prison/

Every week I upload compiled builds for Windows and should be playable for Linux through Wine.

The game features four classes (fighter, rogue, wizard and cleric) and four base races with subraces (human, mountain dwarf, hill dwarf, wood elf, high elf, lightfoot halfling and stoutheart halfling). Currently most low level content is in the game along with an ever expanding bestiary. I’m in the process of working on mid-level content and high level features is an eventual goal.

(https://i.imgur.com/T5yEh5c.gif)

The game features auto-explore, detailed character creation and party selection. All classes and races are complete enough to be playable. There is a real focus on party mechanics and you and your allies can be revived by others after being knocked unconscious if your team manage to win the battle before you die. You can meet and recruit other NPC’s in the dungeon and there are a few different types with different skill sets to explore, although magic-using allies are still a work in progress but they can be pretty effective support characters. You can run into organised groups of monsters with their own mages, priests and archers who can pose some really tough challenges for any party.

Another feature is a detailed lighting system combined with some races having darkvision and others going without. You will need to decide whether you use an offhand equipment slot for a torch or whether you explore in the dark or ask your allies to light their torches for you.

The game follows the rules as closely as possible so the Basic Rules double as a quasi-manual. All of the various statistics about weapons, armour, monsters and spells are faithfully created in-game from those rules. They’re included with the game but available here for download: http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/basicrules

Some features of 5e D&D don’t translate well to roguelikes, such as initiative, bonus actions, reactions and some other things but hopefully players will find that the game aims to be as accurate a conversion as possible.

The general development goals from here are to keep adding the more complicated features, along with more spells, more items, more monsters, more detailed party interactions and a much more sophisticated encounter system where monster distribution makes more sense than just random placement of enemies in a random dungeon.

If anyone is keen to give it a go and give me some feedback, I’d be very appreciative!
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: ZeroGravitas on April 05, 2019, 07:49:31 am: Interesting... I'm not sure how 5e really makes sense without a full implementation of the action economy - like how does two-weapon fighting work if you can't do a bonus action attack?

Still, nice to see a really straightforward combat system in a roguelike after wading through the obscurantism that is DCSS's combat system.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on April 05, 2019, 07:55:58 am: You’re absolutely right and that’s the exact reason why I haven’t implemented two weapon fighting yet. It’s a tricky problem but I’ll think of something!

Other bonus actions are represented in the game though, eg. casting healing word doesn’t take a turn but you can only do it once until you otherwise move or attack.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: Scripten on April 05, 2019, 08:18:31 am: Perhaps a template system might be workable? That is, allow the player to select an action, bonus action, and free action in a menu and then use those selections in combat with hotkeys.

So, for example, a barbarian might choose for their opening combat action:

Free: Draw weapon
Bonus: Rage
Action: Attack

While a Rogue might choose:

Free: Draw weapon
Action: Attack
Bonus: Disengage

As far as Initiative is concerned, I would recommend using the rules as closely as possible there. That is, maybe create a FIFO list of creatures, upon combat start, ordered by initiative roll. You could even handle stealth and surprise through that system by using a boolean "is being stealthy" variable on creatures. Granted, I don't know how the code is set up, but that was my first impression.

Overall, it looks pretty fun!
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: Teneb on April 05, 2019, 08:24:19 am: This is pretty interesting.

As for the two-weapon fighting you could either go with what Scripten said, which I think would work nicely, or just automate dual-wielding attacks.

I wonder: will you eventually include the subclasses that I like 5e for?
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on April 05, 2019, 08:30:50 am: That type of system could definitely work but one of the problems it would create is how many keystrokes it would require to do relatively simple things like move and fight.

I’ve actually implemented moving and attacking on the same turn but it’s turned off because it just wasn’t fun in roguelike form. One of the problems is that enemies have to use the same system and while I understood what was going on (because I wrote it) it seemed really opaque and it was really difficult to understand why monsters were seemingly taking multiple actions. All in all, it just didn’t feel fun so I compromised on that for now and I think the game is better for it. I think the same probably applies to initiative as well - there’s potentially fifty odd creatures moving all at once and there isn’t a clear line between where combat starts and where it stops, so that’s why initiative was effectively omitted.

I think my current system hybrid system of traditional roguelike gameplay with bonus actions essentially as free turns when they crop up is a reasonable interpretation of it, although everything’s a work-in-progress.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on April 05, 2019, 08:36:37 am: Quote from: Teneb on April 05, 2019, 08:24:19 am
This is pretty interesting.

As for the two-weapon fighting you could either go with what Scripten said, which I think would work nicely, or just automate dual-wielding attacks.

I wonder: will you eventually include the subclasses that I like 5e for?
I’ll probably end up implementing two-weapon fighting like that - you just hit twice in the same turn. It’s a bit of an oversimplification but it might prove to be the neatest solution.

In terms of subclasses, I naively chose to limit myself to the Basic Rules because I thought it would be simple and quick to code! Six months later I’m under no illusions about how wrong that is, but I’m deliberately limiting the scope to the basics in the hope of managing to just get it done, not to mention the fact that I’m limited by what’s in the SRD.

There’s a few extras that I’ve been toying with the idea of implementing but I’ve really been focussed on less-is-more so I can get a reasonably complete game out the door. So unfortunately, additional classes are very much a stretch goal. Half-orcs are a chance of sneaking in as a fifth race, but I don’t have specific plans to go much further just yet.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: Robsoie on April 05, 2019, 08:38:15 am: I have no idea about what's specific to both 4th or 5th edition of D&D as my last knowledge of D&D was with version 3 and previous , but i already like this simply for the fact that you have a party instead of yet another solo character roguelike.

As a suggestion maybe when you're leveling you may make a notice that your character gained a new ability, as i had no idea i got a new one when my character went level 2 after we destroyed a ghoul then a giant crab.

Other than that, is there a way to manage your party members equipment at this version of the game ? if not how do they equip themselves, do they level up ?
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on April 05, 2019, 08:42:23 am: Quote from: Robsoie on April 05, 2019, 08:38:15 am
As a suggestion maybe when you're leveling you may make a notice that your character gained a new ability, as i had no idea i got a new one when my character went level 2 after we destroyed a ghoul then a giant crab.

Other than that, is there a way to manage your party members equipment at this version of the game ? if not how do they equip themselves, do they level up ?
You’re right, there should be a notification of new abilities gained - that’ll be in the next version released next week.

At this stage, no one uses equipment but for the PC. I’m planning on developing the AI so that NPC’s and monsters can pick up and use items, but it’s not done yet. The code for them to use random weapons in combat is actually fully done but the issue is the decision making behind it. That’s a medium-term goal and I expect to be working on it relatively soon. I really want to write an encounter system where the player is given a quest to kill a powerful monster wielding a magic weapon or something along those lines, with the reward being that you can claim it for yourself!

Edit: and they don’t level up - they are NPC’s with stats taken strictly from the rules as written. You can of course recruit more powerful allies as you meet them in the dungeon.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: Robsoie on April 05, 2019, 08:49:17 am: Thanks , i'm liking what i see so far, and the possibility to get new recruits in the dungeon is very interesting.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: ZeroGravitas on April 05, 2019, 08:52:21 am: Quote from: pat on April 05, 2019, 07:55:58 am
Other bonus actions are represented in the game though, eg. casting healing word doesn’t take a turn but you can only do it once until you otherwise move or attack.

I think this makes a lot of sense. On my d&d community's discord server we get a lot of new players, so we're often explaining how two-weapon fighting works, and the conclusion is almost always, "wow that's so bad, why would i ever use it" with the general sentiment being that two-weapon fighting should just allow 1 off-hand attack whenever you attack. which also solves the problem neatly for you.

most other bonus action class features will be perfectly well-served as an action you take that just doesn't end your turn, like manipulating your sorcery points as a sorcerer. there will be some weird corner cases because the bonus action system does a lot of the balance work in 5e. healing word is a good example; it's a bonus action spell, but that then cuts you off from casting other spells (except cantrips). same issue with a sorcerer quickening a non-cantrip spell.

great weapon master might be tricky as it would be "attack -> if you crit OR kill something, then bonus action attack" but it doesn't seem insurmountable.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: Mephansteras on April 05, 2019, 09:36:44 am: Neat, I'll have to keep an eye on this.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on April 06, 2019, 02:07:42 am: Quote from: ZeroGravitas on April 05, 2019, 08:52:21 am
great weapon master might be tricky as it would be "attack -> if you crit OR kill something, then bonus action attack" but it doesn't seem insurmountable.
That’s where the limitations of the Basic Rules work in my favour. Feats aren’t explicitly included and a lot of the difficult scenarios don’t eventuate in those rules. Your post actually made me panic and think that I implemented the great weapon fighting style wrongly haha!
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on April 12, 2019, 05:59:08 am: New version uploaded: https://patjw.itch.io/theredprison

(https://i.imgur.com/QEZaCYj.gif)

Changes include a number of UI tweaks to make things work smoother with some more user friendliness. I've also started work behind the scenes on a broader arc of advanced dungeon/quest generation. I've built the system for displaying conversations and the like for players as they run into NPC's of importance and I'm currently going through the process of how I want that aspect of the game to be fleshed out.

I think the leading approach at this stage might be to have a portion of the dungeon on a level inaccessible until the player speaks to a quest giver who tasks the player with killing a tough mob of monsters, recovering a treasure or another task along those lines. I want to make it so that choices have some complexity, ie. you might be able to decide to forego the treasure and turn on the quest giver, and that's the part I'm taking some care to plan.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: sambojin on April 18, 2019, 06:24:27 am: I'll have to check this out on my weekend. Looks interesting.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on April 18, 2019, 06:42:12 am: Cool! There should be a new version uploaded in about 24 hours with a whole heap of changes, including improvements to ranged and magic quick keys, spell macros, and also giving the player the choice of 50 graphical avatars which can be changed at any time:

(https://i.imgur.com/Ixi6fhA.png)
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: Retropunch on April 19, 2019, 04:04:23 pm: This looks great - it's really good to see a proper D&D rules roguelike.

As it's based on DnD which has a lot of more narrative elements - will you be thinking of adding that kinda thing in? I'm not talking about full on quest lines and NPCs - just player choices and interactions beyond 'bash stuff'.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on April 19, 2019, 05:32:32 pm: Absolutely, that’s exactly the plan. I don’t think I’ll have a very restrictive overall quest but I’m working through the logistics of mini-quests being generated with dungeon branches with a choice of goals and differing rewards depending on player choices. I think that’s important for a game like this - it’s not a balanced tactical experience like some roguelikes but rather aims to be a fun role playing sandbox. There’s a lot of work to go!
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: Retropunch on April 19, 2019, 05:45:31 pm: Quote from: pat on April 19, 2019, 05:32:32 pm
Absolutely, that’s exactly the plan. I don’t think I’ll have a very restrictive overall quest but I’m working through the logistics of mini-quests being generated with dungeon branches with a choice of goals and differing rewards depending on player choices. I think that’s important for a game like this - it’s not a balanced tactical experience like some roguelikes but rather aims to be a fun role playing sandbox. There’s a lot of work to go!

Awesome!! Really looking forward to it.

As an aside, one thing that was always good about the old computer D&D games was how alignment fitted in it - allies could hate what you're doing so much they'd attack you (or at least leave); it'd give a really interesting twist on the usual 'do quest->get stuff'. No need for it to be too elaborate or complex, just something to balance out as a risk vs reward.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on April 19, 2019, 05:52:03 pm: Alignmet is a really tricky one for a few reasons - it's ridiculously hard to implement in a sensible way because there's just so many layers to it. I don't know if I want recruited NPC's to react to your decisions like that because they're pretty hard to come by and important as part of the character build. It's a 'maybe' but unlikely. Much more likely is your actions on certain quests locking you in as enemy or ally to other dungeon groups, ie. you help a lizardman on level 2 and you find that the lizardman camp on level 5 is friendly as a result.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: Teneb on April 19, 2019, 07:47:12 pm: Here's an idea regarding alignment: have it not rally be so much as mid-gameplay choices as be an option that you can pick during character creation. The effects of it being spell selection for clerics, perhaps, availability of companions and maybe even types of enemies that can spawn.

I realise some of this stuff is not exactly feasible right now, but maybe for the future.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: Frumple on April 21, 2019, 08:59:55 am: From a practical point of view, that probably sounds like a good idea. I played the hell out of Incursion, and while there was a ton of neat things going on with it on the alignment front, it was a constant source of bugs, odd behavior, and general nuisance. If you're going to do it particularly well or dynamic (and not regularly infuriate your playerbase) you're going to be adding a metric ton of complexity and coding interactions for relatively little gain. If you can go with a more simple system and save your efforts for other interesting, less finicky, AI et al interactions, it's probably a good idea.

... or in other words, if you're thinking about it leave some design space for future implementation and mess with it after you're done with basically everything else, lest you spend the remainder of your development cycle(s) constantly beating your head against the alignment wall to get it to function decently :P
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: Mephansteras on April 21, 2019, 12:19:14 pm: It's worth noting that Alignment in D&D is generally there as a guideline for the player on how to act than it is for anything else. Yes, there are some mechanics that care about the player's alignment, but those are the exception rather than the rule. So I see no problem with it being generally ignored by the game and just used for specific things like quests and those few mechanics that reference it.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on April 21, 2019, 05:40:28 pm: My experience playing Incursion is the reason I’m reluctant to commit to a formal alignment system. I don’t think it would work without a mess of bugs unless it was very shallow, and the deeper it gets, the more weird nonsensical scenarios arise. It’s easier to leave it as a role playing mechanic and focus on more tangible features. A reputation system with different factions is much feasible and that’ll leave the moral judgments to the mind of the players.

I’m currently working on vastly different systems though - I’m about halfway through an animation system for magical effects and projectiles. This became important when monsters gained the ability to cast and make ranged attacks because it wasn’t entirely clear who was attacking and from where. Hopefully this will add a bit of visual flair!
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: Retropunch on April 22, 2019, 11:07:36 am: All good points - by alignment I was really thinking something pretty basic; not a whole DnD good/chaotic/blah blah thing. I just like the idea of something overarching that would give you various benefits and issues for sticking with being good or evil.

For instance, Uber Warlock Steve the Terrible offers you a +5 armour of the invincible crow if you slay a camp of friendly halflings. If you do that your follower, Eric the holy paladin, would turn on you as it's a very evil act. But you would get the awesome armour, which you really need. Using dark magic might also make Eric leave you (instead of attacking you).

All that said, a reputation system could work in a very similar way and might be better - especially if you're thinking of having distinctly different groups that you can side with.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on April 26, 2019, 07:29:30 am: (https://i.imgur.com/m5OaVLn.gif)

* Added info screen to display player's traits and proficiencies by pressing '@'. It still needs to be crossreferenced to the game docs but at least players can see what weapons etc they can use at a glance.

* Added graphical tile to spiritual weapon.

* Added red heart icon to top right corner of ally's graphical tile.

* Updated area of effect animation for bearlibterminal. Allows for a transition between two colours with increasing and decreasing alpha values with 3 random characters to be displayed.

* Rewrote explosion effect animation for bearlibterminal.

* Rewrote ray effect animation for bearlibterminal.

* Implemented new bolt effect animation. Draws a line between caster and target and draws a projectile with a fading trail behind it.

* Implemented projecile effect animation. Draws a '*' along the path of the projectile so the player knows what's going on in combat with ranged attacks.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on April 26, 2019, 04:08:20 pm: Because I’ve been updating so regularly, to make distribution easier, The Red Prison is coming to Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1074040/The_Red_Prison/
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: Teneb on April 26, 2019, 05:13:30 pm: Quote from: pat on April 26, 2019, 04:08:20 pm
Because I’ve been updating so regularly, to make distribution easier, The Red Prison is coming to Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1074040/The_Red_Prison/
Oh wow, congratulations on putting it on steam.

I know that getting on Steam these days doesn't mean a lot, as evidenced through the many, many pieces of turd flooding it, but this is still a pretty big move.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on April 26, 2019, 05:25:11 pm: Yeah, the only real stumbling block is the fee and then dealing with the unintuitive Steam backend, but I’m hoping that it makes the barrier for new players even lower. It’ll certainly save on me asking players to download a new build every week.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: scriver on April 27, 2019, 04:16:03 pm: Downloaded and gave it a try. Font is way too tiny. Not playable for me.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on April 27, 2019, 05:37:01 pm: I’m sorry to hear that. Interestingly I use the same font and font size as Incursion, although that game uses it for the map as well. Are you able to handle that game’s display?

(http://www.gamesetwatch.com/atplay/incurmap1.png)
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: scriver on April 28, 2019, 07:44:19 am: I've never played Incursion, but if from looking at those images, no, it is also too small.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: Retropunch on April 28, 2019, 10:56:07 am: Quote from: scriver on April 28, 2019, 07:44:19 am
I've never played Incursion, but if from looking at those images, no, it is also too small.
Honestly not exactly sure what the problem is with the display - maybe use screen magnifier if you're struggling to see it? I've never had any problems.

Quote from: pat on April 26, 2019, 05:25:11 pm
Yeah, the only real stumbling block is the fee and then dealing with the unintuitive Steam backend, but I’m hoping that it makes the barrier for new players even lower. It’ll certainly save on me asking players to download a new build every week.

Awesome to see it's on Steam - as it grows it'll really help keep the interest up in one place I'm sure!
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on May 03, 2019, 05:51:42 am: New version up: https://patjw.itch.io/theredprison

(https://i.imgur.com/keq5GWz.gif)

Major changes are the inclusion of level 3 wizard spells fireball and lightning bolt, the introduction of a character level cap of 10 to reduce the scope of the game to something more feasible for now, and the reworking of composition of various graphical tiles so that objects can be stacked on screen as well as a few other better looking effects.

Full change log:

* Implemented fireball spell. 3rd level wizard spell with radius of 3 squares, dexterity check for all targets in that radius with 8d6 damage on failed save and halved for successful save.

* Updated spellcaster AI so that mage companions can use the fireball spells if they are far enough away to be safe and no allies will get caught in the blast.

* Fixed bug where enemy archers projectiles weren't being animated.

* Fixed bug where actors out of sight would overwrite door squares.

* Added a 1 in 3 chance of kobolds, orcs and bandits in mobs to have a lit torch.

* Increased chance of spellcasters using shocking grasp and inflict wounds in combat to 50% per turn.

* Fixed bug where AI spellcasters weren't properly using spell slots.

* Fixed issued in compiled version where second console window opened for no reason.

* Added level cap of 10 so that focus can be put on those class features under the cap.

* Implemented lightning bolt spell - 3rd level wizard spell with a ray sent from caster, dexterity check for all targets in the way with 8d6 damage on failed save and halved for successful save. Still not finished because it needs to keep going until it hits a wall and this currently doesn't happen.

* Added transparency to custom tiles. Changed actors to be printed on another level to background and to effects so that they can be visually merged properly for a better graphical effect. Made a whole host of changes behind the scenes to do with different layers - now background is layer 0, actors, items and effects are layer 1, special effects are layer 2, and menus are layer 3. Items now stack on ground (!!!).

* Fixed bug in character creation where menus for high elf cantrip selection didn't clear properly.

* Fixed bug where last spell caused a crash when you hadn't cast anything yet.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on May 04, 2019, 08:37:33 pm: Quote from: scriver on April 28, 2019, 07:44:19 am
I've never played Incursion, but if from looking at those images, no, it is also too small.
I got this feedback elsewhere as well, so I've introduced another font for game info, the message log and menus.

(https://i.imgur.com/OnzDuDm.png)

It's really pretty complicated now with a number of different fonts in different sizes all working around each other - a base 8x8 ascii font for the small ascii mode, a 16x16 ascii font, an 8x16 font for text and a whole host of graphical tiles in both 12x12 and 16x16 for different uses. But despite the complexity, it seems to be working!
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: ( Tchey ) on May 05, 2019, 02:26:28 am: Hi,

Just to say, it does run well via WINE on PC Linux.

However, it seems that the "Linux" build from itchio is not a Linux build, and i have to dig to local folder to then launch the .exe with WINE.

Also, is there a way to go fullscreen ? The current size is quite "small" compared to my screen (standard size, but still).

That, and with non qwerty keyboard (french bépo), i have some issue to actually playing the game, but that's something else.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on May 05, 2019, 07:10:56 am: Thanks for the feedback. To be honest, the only reason I marked it as a Linux download was because someone directly asked me to. I’m glad to hear it’s working well for you though. I haven’t even considered full screen yet but leave it with me!
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: ( Tchey ) on May 05, 2019, 08:37:52 am: "Someone" could be me, as i asked about a Linux version on itchio.

Fullscreen would be (very) neat.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on May 17, 2019, 08:48:01 pm: This week was spent entirely on playtesting, UI fixes and bugsquashing yet again. I had a few people playtesting for me and it was really helpful to try and find a few odd things that were going on, particurly with areas of the game that I don't often replay. I'm pretty happy to say that I haven't had a crash or other issue come up in the last few hours of playtesting and my playtesters are saying the same. I even implemented an autoplay mode on top of autoexplore which doesn't quite manage to play without issue yet but manages to automate a lot of the game which was helpful.

This is great timing because the game unlocks on Steam Early Access in about 22 hours from now: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1074040/The_Red_Prison/

It should be an interesting experience and I'm curious about how it's going to go because the game is still relatively immature but there's still a fair bit of content worth playing in my opinion. It'll always be free on all platforms and I've currently got about 50 wishlists for the game and I'll be trying to monitor things to make sure things don't horribly wrong once people are playing through Steam and I'll be keen to see what the stats end up looking like, which is something I have no idea about currently.

Moving forward from here, I think I'll keep trying to release unstable builds regularly on itch.io but perhaps hold back on the content which hasn't been tested from Steam so that version is always stable. I've started planning for the next arc of development which is the addition of more dungeon features, encounters and complex traps. And what I mean by complex traps is something like the player exploring an old church and stumbling onto a pressure plate which locks the door and releases a group of ghouls. I don't think I'll implement traditional traps which just cause damage but hopefully they'll all incorporate the environment like that and make for some fun!

Full change list:

* Implemented a rough autoplay for testing purposes. It's commented out in public builds but it combines autoexplore with invincibility and autofight.

* Fixed bug with error in tile setting for chimera.

* Fixed bug with accidental doubling up of fighting styles at level up to 10 for fighters.

* Fixed bug with shocking grasp causing crash.

* Fixed bug with displaying armour character in non-default font in bearlibterminal.

* Updated character creation so that you can restart at any time and continue creating a character.

* Fixed number of player avatars with overly transparent backgrounds.

* Added heavy armour proficiency to all clerics to reflect that they are all Life domain.

* Made sure that previous saved games are deleted upon player death.

* Fixed bug where converted bandit archers would not use ranged attacks as allies.

* Updated character creation so if you press escape on the first menu, you're back to the main menu.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on May 17, 2019, 08:48:52 pm: Quote from: ( Tchey ) on May 05, 2019, 08:37:52 am
"Someone" could be me, as i asked about a Linux version on itchio.

Fullscreen would be (very) neat.
By the way, fullscreen is implemented by default in bearlibterminal I realised - it's still undocumented in the game but alt-enter will do it and it works pretty well with small ascii in particular in my view.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on May 21, 2019, 03:03:10 am: I had some really frustrating issues with the Steam Early Access launch where I had done everything right and the game was scheduled for release over the weekend. It announced to everyone that had wishlisted it that it was out but the store page didn't have a download link... there was a workaround through the steamdb website but it was really annoying to be unable to do anything about it until business hours Pacific time.

Turns out the issue was completely on Steam's end and the game was in a "unique release state" for unknown reasons which have now been fixed. So after all that, it's free for download on Steam at: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1074040/The_Red_Prison/
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: Mephansteras on May 21, 2019, 11:41:10 am: Oh, good. I was wondering what was up with that.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on May 24, 2019, 07:24:30 pm: I'm sure there's quite a few people who wishlisted the game and recveived an email that the game was now available but then not being able to see a download link on the Store page. No doubt some of these people might still be unaware that the game is available on Steam properly now.

The issue was made worse that the launch date was on a weekend (because it had to be one month after I signed up as a Steam partner) and technical help wasn't available until business hours Pacific time, which came around on a Tuesday morning where I live in Australia.

Apart from resolving those issues, I managed to resolve a couple of rare bugs identified by new users, and make some important changes to autoexplore which meant that it no longer sometimes had trouble dealing with doors and also made it stop whenever a new item was discovered so that important things weren't missed by the player.

Full changelog:

* Fixed bug which caused crash when pressed esc while targetting spiritual weapon.

* Fixed bug which caused crash when trying to set spell macros but not having any spells to choose from.

* Fixed problems with autoexplore dealing with doors - now the game just opens all doors when passing by them.

* Added additional stop to autoexplore whenever a new object is seen.

* Fixed bug which caused a crash when casting misty step and cancelling during casting.

* Made change to make sure that no bug would show up during casting and cancelling spiritual weapon.

* Amended healing prayer message to make it clear that up to 6 targets can be chosen.

* Amended aid and bless message to make it clear that up to 3 targets can be chosen.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on June 01, 2019, 02:20:13 am: I tried to return to proper development this week after a month or so of being side-tracked from straight foward development. I actually found it a little bit hard to get back into coding after doing different things for a while and there were a couple of hours where my codebase felt a bit alien to me. Lesson to learn from that is to never take a break!

Main things that happened this week are:

* I finally received the finished product after paying an artist to create an image to use as cover art (https://i.imgur.com/okTMeZ1.png)! I'm really happy with the result and I think it fits in well with the tradition from the original Rogue with cover art which doesn't resemble the game whatsoever!

* Custom names for player and for NPC's. During custom character creation you are still given a suggested name (and implied gender) but you can regrenerate this until you're happy or enter your own name. During the game, when giving orders to your allies, you can also choose to name them now as well.

* Reworking of the poison system. Before this I just lazily created a 'poisoned' condition which applied 1 hit point of damage per turn for a set number of turns. This didn't really reflect how poison works in the rules where there are a number of different poison types which instead apply damage instantly with various dice rolls to determine this, along with the chance of saving throw against variable difficulties with differing results if you succeed... there's a lot to deal with there from a programming point of view! But it's all implemented now and each monster with venom follows the rules as written in terms of how it's applied, how much damage it does, and whether you have a chance at a saving throw or not and what chance that is.

The poison rework actually has been a sorely needed buff for the rogue class because they start with a blowgun and poisoned needles. Needles only do 1 hit point of damage, but on top of that you add the dexterity bonus along with a possible sneak attack bonus and a further possible critical hit bonus AND now a further 1d4 poison damage. The end result is that rogues can dish out quite significant damage against poison vulnerable enemies right from the start of the game and it's even possible (although very hard) to play an effective solo rogue without a light source and specialise in hiding and sneak attacking from the shadows.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: Retropunch on June 01, 2019, 06:41:10 pm: Quote from: pat on June 01, 2019, 02:20:13 am
I tried to return to proper development this week after a month or so of being side-tracked from straight foward development. I actually found it a little bit hard to get back into coding after doing different things for a while and there were a couple of hours where my codebase felt a bit alien to me. Lesson to learn from that is to never take a break!

Main things that happened this week are:

* I finally received the finished product after paying an artist to create an image to use as cover art (https://i.imgur.com/okTMeZ1.png)! I'm really happy with the result and I think it fits in well with the tradition from the original Rogue with cover art which doesn't resemble the game whatsoever!

* Custom names for player and for NPC's. During custom character creation you are still given a suggested name (and implied gender) but you can regrenerate this until you're happy or enter your own name. During the game, when giving orders to your allies, you can also choose to name them now as well.

* Reworking of the poison system. Before this I just lazily created a 'poisoned' condition which applied 1 hit point of damage per turn for a set number of turns. This didn't really reflect how poison works in the rules where there are a number of different poison types which instead apply damage instantly with various dice rolls to determine this, along with the chance of saving throw against variable difficulties with differing results if you succeed... there's a lot to deal with there from a programming point of view! But it's all implemented now and each monster with venom follows the rules as written in terms of how it's applied, how much damage it does, and whether you have a chance at a saving throw or not and what chance that is.

The poison rework actually has been a sorely needed buff for the rogue class because they start with a blowgun and poisoned needles. Needles only do 1 hit point of damage, but on top of that you add the dexterity bonus along with a possible sneak attack bonus and a further possible critical hit bonus AND now a further 1d4 poison damage. The end result is that rogues can dish out quite significant damage against poison vulnerable enemies right from the start of the game and it's even possible (although very hard) to play an effective solo rogue without a light source and specialise in hiding and sneak attacking from the shadows.

That cover art looks fantastic!!

I really like the tiles you have, but it'd be interesting to see what would happen if the same artist did tiles in a similar style. I imagine a visual overhaul with that level of graphics would make it definitely something people would buy on steam.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on June 01, 2019, 07:51:27 pm: Yeah the artist did a fantastic job! I couldn’t ask for anything better to be honest.

In terms of in-game art, it’s not a priority to play around with an alternative tileset just yet although the game is very easy to mod if someone wanted to do it - it’s simply a matter of replacing the image files. In relation to Steam, the game will always be for free and I just use that as a distribution service at my own cost so I’m not focussed on being a commercial success at all. It would be amazing if someone did produce an all new tile set and it could even be something that I look at paying for in the future.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: Retropunch on June 02, 2019, 03:14:37 pm: Quote from: pat on June 01, 2019, 07:51:27 pm
Yeah the artist did a fantastic job! I couldn’t ask for anything better to be honest.

I’m terms of in-game art, it’s not a priority to play around with an alternative tileset just yet although the game is very easy to mod if someone wanted to do it - it’s simply a matter of replacing the image files. In relation to Steam, the game will always be for free and I just use that as a distribution service at my own cost so I’m not focussed on being a commercial success at all. It would be amazing if someone did produce an all new tile set and it could even be something that I look at paying for in the future.

If it's easily moddable then I don't think you need to worry! Maybe either make a guide or you could even put an 'import file' thing in an option menu so it's easy for even the least technically capable. I'm sure with how great it's shaping up that you'll have loads of people wanting to create tilesets soon!
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on June 22, 2019, 02:46:42 am: Some pretty significant changes took place this week:

Made reach weapons work. This was something which didn't really occur to me as being a core part of the game but it's something that a few players have gone looking for almost immediately so it needed to get done.

They work via the ranged combat menus by pressing 'f' or 'F' with a limited range. You can select a target within range manually or just use 'F' to auto-target within range. It works alongside thrown weapons as well so that if you're at range, those commands will throw at the target and if you're closer then they will default to a ranged melee attack.

Reworked entire encounter and monster generation system. Single monsters are still generated depending on dungeon level and CR of the individual monster.

Mob generation was reworked from scratch with new classes for Encounters and Monsters within that encounter so that special types can be defined and mobs can be specified easily with combinations of monsters along with spell users and ranged fighters. It should prove to be easily extensible in terms of special features and new mobs.

Full change list (apart from the above):

* Updated menu options for ranged/reach attacks.

* Updated display to show when wielding a reach weapon.

* Redid the following mobs in the new system: bandits with captain; mix of low level undead; kobolds with mages, shamans and slingers; orcs with mages, shamans and chuckers.

* Created new mob types: lizardfolk with a large number of weak lizards; single ogre with goblin followers; solo ogre mage.

* Turned off seperate factions being generated for different mobs of monsters to experiment with no in-fighting.

* Added extra customisation of monster types in mobs. Now individual stats can be specified along with character level so that casting levels can be simulated. Applied upgraded stats to all spellcasters already implemented.

* Fixed bug where doors could appear on the outer boundary which let the player walk out of bounds.

* Doubled food ration spawn rate.

* Fixed issue where fighter's second wind ability took a turn when it should be a bonus action.

* Added two different starting kits for fighters. If strength is higher or equal to dexterity, you start with one of longsword, battleaxe and spear and ring mail. If dexterity is higher, you start with one of scimitar, shortsword or whip and leather armour.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: Robsoie on June 22, 2019, 03:36:01 am: downloaded todat from itch.io and gave a try, I got a +2 crossbow and some bolts at some point, i ran into a room in which at a distance there was a monster, i pressed f then moved the aiming cursor but i let the direction key pressed for too long and the cursor moved past the target and into the wall (and probably beyond it) , leading to this crash :
Code: [Select]
Traceback (most recent call last): File "theredprison.py", line 10078, in <module> File "theredprison.py", line 9483, in main_menu File "theredprison.py", line 9412, in play_game File "theredprison.py", line 4676, in handle_keys File "theredprison.py", line 5433, in player_ranged_attack File "theredprison.py", line 5317, in target_monster File "theredprison.py", line 5204, in target_tile File "theredprison.py", line 2346, in blocks_sight IndexError: list index out of range
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on June 22, 2019, 03:41:36 am: Thanks for letting me know, I'll look into it right away and fix it. Sounds like a fairly niche situation which I hadn't anticipated but it's good to iron out any weird bugs like that.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on June 22, 2019, 03:45:53 am: It was a problem to do with the graphical display of ranged targetting where I show the projectile path and things like. It was really obvious once I took a look at it. I'll upload new versions with that fix to Steam and Itch right away.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on June 27, 2019, 11:04:26 pm: I've decided to widen the scope of the game a bit and expand beyond the original four races plus subraces and things got a bit out of control!

Now there's six new races to play: half-elf, half-orc, tiefling, aasimar, kobold and bugbear. This opens up some interesting new character builds:

* Kobold rogue - high natural dexterity makes a natural fit for a rogue, but the pack tactics trait synergises really effectively with sneak attack. When you and an ally are both next to a target, you get advantage on your attack from the pack tactics trait and the bonus damage from sneak attacks which becomes very effective.

* Bugbear fighter/rogue - the key feature of the bugbear class is natural reach on all weapons and bonus reach using weapons already with that trait. What it means is that you can be a great weapon fighter and use a polearm to hit monsters 3 squares away. Or you can be a rogue with a finesse weapon and sneak attack from 2 squares away. Both builds become excellent support fighters because you can always attack over the heads of your allies who can take the brunt of the damage for you.

* Half-orc fighter - this build makes for a really powerful and direct fighter. The savage attack trait means that when you roll a critical hit, you roll an extra die of damage so you hit extra hard, particularly when combined with the fighter's improved chances at critical hits at higher levels. The relentless endurance trait gives you an extra buffer before being knocked out. Knowing that you can drop to 0 HP once and automatically be given 1 HP to keep fighting means that you're extra resilient in the front of a party.

* Aasimar are still under development, but they are already useful support characters no matter what class you choose. The healing hands trait gives you a once per rest ability to heal damage up to your character level. It might not seem like much, but it can revive an unconscious ally during combat which can make all the difference.

* Tieflings are also still under development, but a race with darkvision, fire resistance (still a work in progress but will be really helpful to survive enemy spells) and high charisma is a versatile choice for any class.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: catacombs on July 08, 2019, 05:04:39 pm: .
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on July 09, 2019, 07:59:35 am: I'm not much of a Codex user because I don't think there's as much of a roguelike fan base there when compared to other places but I post there occasionally because of the D&D aspect. Having said that, people seem pretty positive about it over there.

In terms of recent development, I've been working away but not releasing as often as I have in the past. The reason for that is because I've been working on two big new features:

1. Druids are almost complete in their basic form. They've got a few spells already and the framework has all been done. The most complex issue, and most interesting to be honest, has been the wild shape ability. I actually finished it in a broad sense tonight and I think I've just got one more issue to do with the sidebar display to tidy up before I'm willing to release that.

2. Dynamic quest generation has also been taking up my time and its far from finished. In fact, it's the kind of feature that will probably never be finished but it's well underway. Currently I'm in the process of finalising stage 1 which will be two randomly generated npcs who hate each other and offer the player a reward to kill the other. You can take sides or decide to kill both or even complete the quest and then try and recruit the remaining npc to your party.

I'm hoping I can get a stable build out this week with those features and more.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: catacombs on July 09, 2019, 10:38:15 am: .
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on July 18, 2019, 01:25:18 am: (https://i.imgur.com/BzrDMbz.png)

After a few weeks delay, a new version is finally up for download. The delay was because I embarked on a bit of a complicated arc of development and the build was too unstable in various ways to release because of these big additions to the codebase.

I've been spending the last couple of weeks playtesting and ironing out bugs and hopefully (!!!) the version that I've released is as bug-free as I can hope for an playable!

Here is a rundown of the big changes:

* Druids - new character class has been added. The big feature of this class is the level 2 ability to use wildshape! There is also a powerful selection of spells available from both the cleric and wizard lists and there'll be more custom spells coming over the next few months.

* Dynamic quests - I've begun the work on making dynamic quests which appear randomly in the dungeon and assign you different and often competing goals. The first step of this rollout is on some dungeon levels, there is a chance that two rival NPC groups will spawn. They are often very, very tough although their makeup is random. Both will task you with killing the other. It is planned that you'll get a big reward for doing so, but that hasn't been implemented yet. It's a bit experimental still although it seems to be working well apart from a hard-to-reproduce weird behaviour where the quest dialogue doesn't work randomly. I'm looking into it though.

* Map generation - with the addition of quests came the need to rework the map generator to set out special areas where these quests would spawn. I also took the opportunity to add special entry and exit vaults for levels so that stairs would spawn in more logical places rather than just randomly in some narrow corridor. So the dungeon generation should seem a fair bit different and more complex with a lot more variety hopefully.

Full change list:

* Fixed bug where casting bless caused a crash due to an error in the stats display code.

* Changed the way that druids get spells so they are now like clerics and instantly know all spells at a level they can cast.

* Updated stats display to properly display the damage type being used when in wild shape.

* Started work on dynamic quest system. Implemented quest object and start of work on generating quest givers and target throughout maps.

* Changed AI to not attack neutrals automatically.

* Made it so that neutrals don't provoke opportunity attacks.

* Built upon dynamic quest system. Added new long message function so that there are popup dialogue boxes to convey the quest instructions. Added quests object into saving and loading games. Ensured that quest objects are removed from general pool of actors when loading and saving and tracked through the quest system instead. Ironed out bugs with finishing kill quests.

* Made it so that quests and their goals spawn on the same floor to prevent what would be an excessive amount of backtracking. Dummy quest currently has two NPCs asking for the death of the other.

* Enlarged map size to accomodate quests on the same map but with targets at opposite ends.

* Added proper_noun flag to deal with oddities arising from wild shape and the name display.

* Added check for player to have blindsight to deal with scenario where player wild shapes into a bat.

* Added checks to make sure that wild shaped creatures can't pick up or drop items as well as not being able to cast, fire or open and close doors.

* Changed autoexplore algorithm to deal with wild shapes being unable to open doors.

* Fixed bug where followers weren't switching loyalty to new wild shape object (and back again) after transformation.

* Implemented preserving intelligence, wisdom and charisma and XP gains across form changes.

* Fixed display issues with wild shape, now it hides the player's true name, race and role and just displays the monster shape with no gaps in spacing.

* Changed map generation to make the complete map 4x3 vaults which is probably a better size and helps with generating times.

* Added new UI option to confirm whether player is sure they want to do an action. Linked this to attacking neutrals.

* Added make_hostile function which recursively works through monster list to check to see what other allied monsters need to be made hostile when player attacks.

* Created basic MagicMonster and RangedMonster AI's to use for non-companion creatures because that hadn't been implemented yet.

* Created new vault type for quests designed so that a tough NPC and followers can spawn there.

* Tidied up quests by removing references to different levels so that all quests occur within a single level.

* Changed sidebar display colours so that allies are green, quests are purple, neutrals are white and hostile are red.

* Added mobs of allies for quest NPC's. Made it so that allies of NPC's can't be convinced to follow player.

* Reworked dungeon generation algorithm so the game distinguishes between normal, stair and quest vaults and implemented all three with basic options.

* Reduced number of quest NPC allies to 1-3 rather than 2-5. It was too cluttered.

* Added a bunch of new stair and quest vaults.

* Added two new dialogue options for each stage of each quest.

* Added more complexity to the way in which names are printed to take into account whether there are proper nouns as names or not and whether a 'the' should be used or not.

* Reworked all messages to take advantage of new naming system.

* Reworked spell messages so that they aren't shown when a caster is out of sight of the player.

* Simplified AI when it comes to healing and reviving because it seems a bit buggy.

* Reduced ally chat by about half because it was happening too much.

* Hopefully fixed a bug causing hangs to do with quest NPC's AI.

* Fixed bug where crash would occur when more than 26 items picked up.

* Hopefully fixed bug where sometimes quest NPC's wouldn't talk.

* Made sure that arrow keys worked as input across the board rather than just some of the time.

* Updated display to show max HP for enemies and neutrals but not current HP.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: Rince Wind on July 18, 2019, 06:27:44 am: Made it to lvl 4 (and in the dungeon), but basically died because I had no food left. Only found a single ration.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on July 18, 2019, 06:55:25 am: You've got to be really careful with food - it's deliberately a scarce and incredibly valuable resource. For those that haven't played the game, there is no automatic healing over time nor is there a food clock. The alterative system is that the player and allies get fully restored in terms of health and abilities after a long rest, and resting consumes food.

I tried to create a real tension for the player needing to conserve food versus needing the healing effect of a rest. You really need to fall back on abilities such as second wind for fighters and healing for clerics and druids. Allies with the ability to heal like acolytes and priests are invaluable but they'll only heal you once you're at about quarter health.

Try holding out on resting and trying to stretch the food further. It's designed to encourage you to make the tough choice of continuing to explore and fight while in a weakened state. I'm not saying that the drop rates for food rations have been finalised for good, but just thought I'd explain the design philosophy and why it's so important in this game.

Thanks heaps for giving it a go!
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: Rince Wind on July 18, 2019, 04:01:34 pm: Yeah, I only realized food is needed for rests when I ran out. I had an acolyte (my starting priest died somewhere along the way) but when me and the 2 guards fell he was behind an obstacle and died soon after us. I was out of 2nd wind and action surge.
Do my npcs use spellslots?
Do you plan to add the subclasses like battlemaster for fighters, hunter for rangers and so on? I guess that would be a long term goal after adding the base classes.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on July 18, 2019, 04:58:06 pm: Yeah NPC's do use spell slots which is why I only have them heal when an ally is down to quarter health in an effort to conserve them. Wizards are a bit more variable with when they'll use their non-cantrip spells but they'll generally try and conserve them.

Those class archetypes are potentially on the horizon but not a short-term goal. I thought the basic rules would be simple to implement but that couldn't be further from the truth in reality!
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: sambojin on July 31, 2019, 08:55:32 am: This still sounds like it's shaping up to be an awesome rogue like. I'll continue to follow it closely, and will spend a bit of time on it this weekend (you had me at 5e and Druids).
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on August 01, 2019, 07:57:22 am: That's awesome to hear, it's always good to see people excited about the game and I appreciate any feedback you might have.

Development has been deliberately a bit slower over the last couple of weeks. I've been steadily fixing bugs and playing around with some small bits of new content but I'm trying to take some time away from full on development. When I was putting out a big new version on a weekly basis, I was probably working too hard on it - on the one hand my motivation levels were fantastic but on the other, it's all that I was doing with my free time. I'm still highly motivated about things but this is a small planned break before getting back into things aggressively.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on August 08, 2019, 08:45:25 pm: After a bit of a break from development, I've been back into the swing of things and have just released a new version.

The main features of this version are picking up a bunch of small big fixes and changes that I've been making slowly over the last few weeks (while notionally not working on the game) and a big development push into expanding the categories and variety of magic items available in the game.

These now include:

* wands of web, fireballs, lightning bolt and magic missiles;
* dwarven plate armour;
* dragon scale armour of all kinds;
* elven chain mail;
* mithral armour of all kinds
* oil of sharpness;
* rings of poison resistance, invisibility and protection;
* potion of giant strength (with different strengths for hill, frost, stone, fire, cloud and storm giants);
* potion of heroism;
* scimitar of speed.

There are two categories of magic items with common and rare having different chances of being placed in the dungeon. I still haven't finalised how items get distributed because there is new stuff being added all the time so you might find that magic items might prove too powerful and common in the current build and that'll be addressed in due course. Until then, it's probably a good chance to try things out!

One thing that I'm actively monitoring is the strength of wands - the rules say that you get 7 charges and they can recharge after a long rest. In game, this means that you might get, for instance, 7 fireballs each and every rest and this seems a bit too powerful to me. I'm thinking that I'll potentially turn off item recharging, maybe on a case by case basis because it's a poor fit for the game but I'm still undecided.

Next things on my list are to add more druid spells, add more magic items, expand on map generation, and maybe look at implementing barbarians and monks...

All feedback, bug reports or suggestions are more than welcome.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on August 08, 2019, 11:51:16 pm: Here's a gif demonstrating the new magic items with the spawn rate turned up to 100% so I have a whole bunch of toys to try out. An unfortunate NPC party found themselves the test subjects:

(https://i.imgur.com/lZSvGko.gif)
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: Frumple on August 09, 2019, 05:33:00 am: Well... as long as you don't do the exploding dice UMD check thing for wands, they'll probably be better balanced than Incursion's are :P

Amusing as a wand-slinger default for "I want to blow the game up" is it can get excessive, ehehe. _{especially when the UMD check causes the wand's AoE to exceed its firing range :V}

That said, some other balance ideas... having a cross-wand cooldown between uses might be enough to offset recharging. Make it so you can't just spam out fireball for seven turns straight, but have to wait a turn or three before using the same effect again. Maybe outside of special wands that don't recharge but can be rattled off... or do it the other way around with more rare slow-firing rechargeable wands, perhaps with the default non-charge having fewer (only two or three) shots. Delayed fire could be interesting, too -- rechargeable, no CD, but it takes a turn or two for any particular shot to fire off.

Amusing but probably unpleasant could be a increasing chance of explosion on chain use* -- first shot is free, second has a 5-10% chance of exploding in your face, each turn after doubles the chance. Cools down a step each turn a wand isn't used. You'd still be able to use wands and even panic spam them, but it would have risks and wouldn't just be a more-or-less free hurl-fireballs-until-they-die thing.

Probably other stuff you could do, too. Have fun with it!

* Maybe feat-mitigated -- most fun there would be something not changing the odds (or maybe even increasing them), but reducing the self/ally damage and increasing the AoE, basically letting you suicide bomb your enemies via wand spam.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on August 09, 2019, 05:50:25 am: Those are some great ideas. The simple one of making wands needing a few turns to recharge is a good one. Likewise, the one about common wands not recharging but rarer ones having that characteristic might be a sensible change - really easy to program and allows for special artifact wands.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: Rince Wind on August 09, 2019, 06:45:37 am: Another idea would be that the wand has to roll to regain the full charge, a bit like breath weapons work. 1-4 on a d6: everything is fine, 5 or 6: lower the maximum of charges by one.
It is no one use consumable, but it won't last forever either (and you tend to get more of those things in a game than in a table top adventure).
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on August 09, 2019, 07:08:08 am: That's not a bad idea either. The more I think about it though, turning off regeneration for everything but rare items is probably the best way to go.

The fact that you can find a wand of fireballs on level 1 and have 7 fireballs immediately to clear the level and you start with 5 food rations which means that you can rest 5 times giving you an extra 35 fireballs. I just think that a lucky loot drop on level 1 giving a player 42 fireballs for free just based off starting equipment is way too powerful.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: Persus13 on August 09, 2019, 07:25:37 am: If you're worried about Level 1s getting lucky, you could also have wands be affected by the spell scroll rules where if you're not high enough level to cast the spell you need to roll an ability check to do successfully cast it.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on August 09, 2019, 07:39:26 am: I would actually probably do something like that and tie the item strength to character level but I'm trying to follow the D&D rules as closely as possible so that players know what to expect. I don't always succeed at that but I try.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on August 11, 2019, 07:09:54 pm: New version with minimap:

(https://i.imgur.com/ZDsiMMo.gif)
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on August 20, 2019, 06:13:05 pm: (https://i.imgur.com/P4ygtgW.gif)

One of the things that RPG's and especially roguelikes seem to do badly is traps. It seems pretty boring to just inflict a certain amount of damage by way of dart trap, arrow trap, spear trap, etc. There's a few deviations from the boring path with rolling boulder traps in nethack, gas traps in brogue and things like that, but I wanted to go in a completely different direction.

So I implemented more of an environmental trap system where when the player steps on a pressure plate, certain doors shut and other doors open changing the shape of the dungeon. The hope is that this will create some tactically interesting situations where the player needs to reassess the path they need to take in an unfamiliar situation and perhaps with allies being unexpectedly stranded outside of the room. I don't want to make these things automatically lethal so they're all fairly benign at this stage but I'm going to add in some dangerous ones next I think. The plan is that they'll be clearly signposted though, ie. the player will see an artifact on a pedestal in a really obvious vault with warning runes on the door. In that scenario the player shouldn't be surprised that when they pick the artifact up, walls open to reveal a group of skeleton warriors or something like that.

Anyway, by doing all this, I created a heap of edge cases where the player might end up trapped forever in a part of the dungeon and I'm trying to avoid this by reworking the situations where these traps can take effect. And the way I'm testing it is by turning off monster generation and running my autoplay feature for as long as possible to hopefully identify any weird situations like that. So the above gif is what my work screensaver for the day looks like.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: sambojin on August 21, 2019, 11:27:39 pm: Another alright way would be to include wall-type spells as the thing that gets triggered by a trap plate. Instead of permanently locking off a door, have it be covered by flames/ice/stone etc. Not as an instant damage thing, but as a "Well, you can go that way if you really want, but then you'll take damage or it will take some time to smash through (for stone). There's probably other ways through (teleports, elemental resists, dispels, etc), but you get to decide if you want to use those resources, or if you're happy to go around the long way".

Gives the player a choice, rather than constantly rerouting them. One of the funnest parts of DoomRL was working out how to deal with the devastation your barrel popping caused on top of all the lava and acid pools already in place. This could work a bit like that (or maybe think Ultimate 4/5's energy fields or something, but in trap form). You could expand it to summon traps, raise dead traps, etc as well give if you wanted.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on August 22, 2019, 05:25:05 am: All good ideas and definitely possible. The way it works now is that the map has invisible effects applied to certain squares and these could easily be something else, both visible to the player and with any other characteristic that I want. The only real complication is that I will need to write a way to parse the map layout files and identify those squares but it's not difficult at all.

Surprising the player with monsters through things like raise dead traps is also definitely possible although I want to make sure that it feels fair. It would definitely add more interesting aspects to the dungeon.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: Frumple on August 22, 2019, 12:19:49 pm: I mean, stuff like raise dead traps have an obvious solution, so to speak, so far as fairness goes. Just make them need corpses and have the corpses laying around. Summoning stuff in general could have similar 'props' that give indication you're about to walk into something even if not specifically what it is. Maybe even offer a means to mitigate things -- seeing a room full of corpses you didn't put there and tossing in a fireball to clear it out (or gift yourself a passel of flaming undead, ether/or) would be a neat interaction. Smashing a glowing blue crystal to disarm the water elemental summoning trap (or maybe flood the room, who knows), stuff like that.

No-tell traps could be particularly high level (or low danger) junk, regulated to real nasty areas or somethin'.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on August 23, 2019, 06:01:41 am: (https://i.imgur.com/MVjn6rd.jpg)

New version has been released with the biggest changes being the introduction of all-new vaults with interactive features. Currently they are limited to pressure plates which open and shut secret doors, but it has the capacity to be expanded to all sorts of effects.

This is the way that I've decided to implement traps - rather than just a simple trap which causes damage without much other interaction, these traps cause the dungeon to shift around the player. Sometimes this will expose the player to unexpected danger, sometimes the player will find themselves having to survive without their allies for a while, or sometimes it'll just make exploration a bit more interesting.

The next biggest change was the implementation of a form of the cunning action trait for rogues. Thanks to some clever user feedback, the idea is to allow rogues to always withdraw from combat with provoking opportunity attacks through the use of this trait. What this means is that rogues don't have to be as careful when it comes to getting into melee range and it synergises really well with sneak attack. Now rogues can explore and scout without fear because they know that they'll be able to drop back without incurring too much damage to their allies where they can really dish out some damage!

Another important change for ease of use is the implementation of another premade character type - the tiefling druid. This will allow for quick starts for druids and will speed up play for those who just want to dive straight into the game.

Apart from that, here's the full change list:

* Changed the way that the game checked to see if player could see monsters doing certain actions resulting in messages. Hopefully will tidy up some issues to do with this.

* Added fog cloud as a level 1 druid spell.

* Began reworking field of vision calculations to take into account the necessity for some Effects to block sight.

* Added new pre-made character to help with testing - Tiefling Druid.

* Finished updating field of view calculations to take into account effects which block sight.

* Added new tiles for various magic effects.

* Added a non-diggable trait to tiles in special vaults so that set pieces can't be interrupted during mag gen.

* Fixed bug with using oil of sharpness on blunt weapon causing crash.

* Finished implementing special vaults with trigger squares causing walls to appear and disappear.

* Implemented possibility for multiple special vaults per floor.

* Put in a whole bunch of new special vaults including ones that mirror normal vaults to cause some surprises.

* Fixed a bug with healer pathfinding AI which caused a rare crash.

* Fixed aasimar racial charisma bonus to +2.

* Fixed potential bug with dying while in wild shape.

* Fixed potential bug with messy monster deaths.

* Implemented an always-on cunning action trait for rogues which allows them the unique class ability to withdraw from combat without drawing opportunity attacks.

* Reduced spawn rate of rare magic items.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on August 27, 2019, 12:42:48 am: (https://i.imgur.com/RJo1gzQ.jpg)

New version has just been released which allows for the player's allies to be controlled in terms of what weapons and armour they use.

This should let character builds who can't use heavy weapons and armour, for instance, to kit out their followers with these things so that they don't go to waste.

You can use this feature by 't'alking to your follower and choosing the inventory management option. This will give you the choice to give the follower items to equip or carry along with making them give them back or drop them on the ground. Hopefully it's fairly self-explanatory.

The 'l'ook command has also been expanded on so that you can use that to see creatures (which practically at this time is limited to player followers only) and what items they are carrying and have equipped. I might expand this system to giving a visual cue to the player as to when a monster has a special item equipped so that it's more obvious, but this will become more relevant once I introduce monsters using items, not just the player's allies.

Along with this, there's quite a few bug fixes in this release as well.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: Asin on August 31, 2019, 09:57:39 pm: ...I just realized you're the same dude/lady/person who made Mongrelmen!
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on September 01, 2019, 02:01:14 am: Haha yep, that's me. This game started as a short-term diversion from Mongrelmen but I soon realised that it had more potential (in my eyes anyway). Mongrelmen was fun but unfocused and this is a more serious attempt at getting a game finished.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on September 08, 2019, 04:03:42 am: (https://i.imgur.com/ZN98X7V.png)

I've just released a new version and there's some really quite significant changes:

* Warlocks - a fair few players have requested this class be added to the game and the current build has them in there as an experimental option. You can quick-start as an aasimar warlock to try it out quickly. It required quite a bit of work behind the scenes to deal with the different way that warlock's spell slots worked - rather than having spell slots per level like wizards and clerics, they only have a single pool of spell slots to cast all spells from.

There's still quite a bit of work to do - there aren't any eldritch invocations in the game yet but there'll be a few options being implemented very shortly and there's plenty of room for more spells. I also need to properly implement low level spells being used with higher spell slots. It wasn't a big priority previously but it's an important aspect of the way which warlocks use magic so I'll be taking a look at that as well.

One of the big decisions to make was how to handle the warlock's pact boon. The Pact of Chains and the familiar that it grants felt like a bad fit for a game where fighting is most of the actions that you'll take. I'm still not sure how or if that'll work. Pact of the Blade is a possibility but I haven't implemented it yet, so all warlocks at this stage take the Pact of the Tome.

Any feedback or bug reports for the new warlock class would be greatly appreciated - there was a fair bit of work done on them which changed some long standing features of the game so there may very well be something unstable created as a result.

* A proper endgame along with balancing dungeon generation - previously the dungeon was of an infinite depth with ever-increasing difficulty the further you went down. That was always just a placeholder though and the intention was always to make a final level with a final encounter. So I decided to cap the dungeon generation at level 20 and implement that final boss, although that encounter will develop more as time goes on. The final boss on level 20 is an adult red dragon with a CR of 17. Considering that the level cap for players is 10, even with a few henchmen, you'll need a lot of luck to stand a chance.

Because I picked an end to the dungeon's depth, it made sense to rejig the way that monster generation worked so that players saw a lot more variety as they went deeper. That's been done, but the side effect of that is that the dungeon is now a hell of a lot more dangerous. You'll start seeing tougher monsters immediately and level 1 is no longer a risk-free zone. Hopefully it makes for a much more tense and challenging experience right from the get go.

Full change list:

* Implemented arcane recovery for wizards. Created a custom menu to deal with this and allocating spell levels up to half character level divided by two but rounded up.

* Added dungeon depth cap. Fixed issues with autoexplore and a lack of a downstairs when at max dungeon depth.

* Added end game encounter with an adult red dragon.

* Increased the possible CR of spawning monsters to make the dungeon a whole lot more dangerous.

* Fixed bug where druids were not using wisdom as their casting stat.

* Added different displays for warlocks and wizard spell slots. Removed spell slot displays for non-casters.

* Added in a whole bunch of special cases to deal with the unique way that warlock spell slots work.

* Implemented hellish rebuke as a level 1 warlock spell. It works as a reaction in the rules as written but that's a bit hard to translate so I made it a condition which lasts until the player rests and triggers automatically on taking damage against whoever that attacker is.

* Implemented eldritch blast. Cantrip which can target multiple enemies as levels go up.

* Implemented pact of the tome for level 3 warlocks. Reworked spell menu so that spells were always in ascending order of level due to the quirks that this new process created.

* Added chill touch as a wizard and warlock cantrip.

* Implemented infernal legacy abilities for tieflings - can cast hellish rebuke as an ability at level 3 and darkness as an ability at level 5.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pikachu17 on September 14, 2019, 09:47:17 pm: Cool. I'll have to try this out.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on October 29, 2019, 07:52:55 pm: New version released: warlocks and other spell casters can now use higher level spell slots for extra spell power!

Here's a pretty big gif of warlock gameplay:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
(https://i.imgur.com/tYgMONY.gif)

The user interface is still up for discussion but the way it works currently is that for non-warlock spellcasters when selecting a spell, you can also press a number between 0 and 9 as an override for the default spell slot level. If you have the corresponding spell slot available and it's higher than the default spell slot level, then you'll cast that spell at the higher level and potentially have it cause considerable more impact. Warlocks use the higher level spell slot by default so they don't have the same option in the menu.

Overall, it's a buff for spellcasters and allows for a fair bit more flexibility as well as letting spellcasters make full use of all of their spellslots rather than being stuck with unused higher level slots but needing to cast a low level spell like in previous versions.

Next step from here is to rewrite the speed system so that different races and monsters can have different move speeds along with allowing for different time for different actions to be performed. The idea will be that movement will become cheaper and attacking and casting, along with moving steathily, will become more expensive timewise and this will shift the game balance away from archers and spellcasters spamming cantrips at range and put melee fighters onto a level playing field.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pikachu17 on October 29, 2019, 07:55:55 pm: Is there currently a way to choose short rest or long rest, and if not, will you be adding it anytime soon?
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on October 29, 2019, 08:22:21 pm: At the moment, there isn't and that's because I fudge that part of the rules. It's a bit of an interesting problem in that I don't necessarily think that long rests are an easy thing to convey in a roguelike game just because of the enclosed nature of the surroundings and the frequency of encounters. I'm definitely not ruling out splitting short and long rests and letting the player choose, but at this stage I've gone for simplicity of just having a single rest option which gives the full benefits of a long rest.

I'm happy to hear any ideas that you have about how you think it could be implemented and what it would add (or take away) from the game. I'm trying to walk that fine line between being as faithful to the rules as written as possible but also to make the game fit into a roguelike, which isn't an entirely natural fit in all respects.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pikachu17 on October 30, 2019, 12:54:33 pm: Well, in this game, a rest currently requires a ration, yes?
A short rest could not require rations, in return for the reduced benefits, which you could make more reduced than regular 5e if you wish.
If you need to balance rests one way or the other, you could lower the number of allowed short rests between long rests, or you could make a long rest have a small chance of summoning something nasty.
You could also have an NPC later in the game reward you for getting there in a short amount of time, which obviously would make taking short rests to your benefit.

Those are just some ideas off the top of my head.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on November 26, 2019, 06:59:47 am: Things have been a bit slower for me in terms of putting out new releases. That's been because of a combination of real life commitments which needed to take priority over game dev work but also because there was some big ticket items which would need a fair bit of time to complete and to properly test.

(https://i.imgur.com/SJbRu2Q.png)

The current new version is one of those big changes and the game now includes variable movement speeds for all creatures. While that might seem like a relatively small change, it required a lot of behind-the-scenes work to implement a kind of energy system for all entities and to translate that to work with each creature's speed.

The big reason for the change was the intent to rebalance the game more in favour of melee combat and against ranged combat and spellcasters who spam offensive cantrips. I've always worked on the theory that each on-screen tile represented ten feet in terms of distance. That worked quite well in most respects until you think about the normal PC movement speed being 30 feet per turn. Without that aspect of the rules being implemented, spellcasters and ranged combatants effectively got 3 times as many turns to attack while melee fighters slowly approached them. That's all changed now.

It's still a bit experimental because you'll see that when you're actively engaged in combat that other creatures can kinda jump towards you as they move multiple squares at once. That's deliberate and that's part of what I'm monitoring in terms of whether it's actually fun or not. From my own playtesting it feels pretty good, but I'm very open to ideas if someone thinks that movement speeds should be tweaked in any way.

Full change list:

* Fixed bug with opportunity attacks where a creature has died somehow (I think????)

* Implemented constants for time to take actions and movement. Add cooldown variable to all objects to record this. Added method to record this value whenever actions are movements are made.

* Finished implementing variable movement speed system - movement now takes 1/3 as long as other actions as base costs and these can be altered to reflect different speeds for each creature for each types of acts.

* Changed order of attribute display just to suit my cosmetic preference.

* Implemented movement delay of 50% times base value for hidden actors.

* Implemented movement delay of 50% times base for wearing heavy armour without requisite strength (apart from for dwarves).

* Updated movement speeds for all monsters.

* Implemented numpy instead of standard python lists to deal with a number of arrays for map storage to improve speed problems introduced by new speed system... and then removed it because my poor programming actually meant that it was slower!

* Did some tidying up of graphics routines to remove redundancies to improve speed.

* Added custom time costs for resting, opening and closing doors and talking.

* Fixed bug with heavy armour and movement speeds not calculating properly.

* Updated action surge to work with new speed system which is actually a lot simpler than the previous system.

* Removed an anomaly with the sidebar display when the player is affected by only invisible conditions and there shouldn't be any visible sign of this.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: sambojin on November 27, 2019, 09:39:01 am: Do you mind if I link this post and your basic sites for downloads etc on Giant in the Playground's 5e board? It would probably get it plenty of exposure and quite a bit of feedback and thoughts on the project (although, it might devolve into "this isn't *exactly* like 5e, or even a *proper* roguelike, how dare you!" stuff).

There's way more people that already like 5e there, but it might bring more critiscism and BS that you really don't need to deal with, at least until you've got The Red Prison closer to where you want it for general consumption purposes. Also might get the "that's not in the basic core rules" mafia onto you, but considering everything in your game is essentially homebrew, loosely "inspired by" 5e rules, you should be able to sidestep that with the swipe of a druid's paw.

(note: I like the basic premise of the changes. Another roguelike I love, Pathos: the Nethack Codex, has a tiny bit of "inverse squared firepower" law going on, and multiple attacks available with ranged weapons to the people doing them to really hit stat/equipment synergy, which makes it feel (in sometimes a cool feeling way) like DoomRL: Nethack Party Edition. Dual wielded crossbows, etc, with a charmed or party created friend for more dakka, can get silly. But at least it takes ammo to do it in Pathos, even if that ammo doesn't really break that often if enchanted. Cantrips in 5e really don't require anything at all. No crafting, no finds, no gear. Nothing. Just the stat you'd probably max asap anyway. Pew pew pew!
All rogue/hack-likes do have movement/action speed of enemies though, sometimes in comparison to your own, sometimes static amounts, so something moving multiple squares in a turn isn't exactly genre breaking. That kind of balancing is completely necessary in games like this)
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on November 27, 2019, 03:40:15 pm: Of course that's OK, I'd always be appreciative of anyone doing something to promote the game. I'm not too stressed about that kind of scrutiny because that type of crowd is probably the target audience for the game and I'd like to think that discussion of how I've done things can only help to make the game better in the long run.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: sambojin on November 28, 2019, 08:55:11 pm: Done.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?603676-The-Red-Prison-a-5e-basic-rules-inspired-roguelike-computer-game&p=24284194#post24284194
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on November 28, 2019, 10:35:26 pm: Thanks a lot of that, I'm pretty reluctant to sign up to forums just to advertise things but I'll keep an eye on that thread.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on December 25, 2019, 06:18:59 am: I've just uploaded an experimental version of the game filled with some HUGE changes. I never planned on making the game anything more than a simple dungeon crawl but the idea of creating an overworld and a number of different places to visit and explore crept into my thinking and I've spent the last few weeks working pretty heavily on it.

Here's what the new overworld looks like:

(https://i.imgur.com/3CaX3zX.png)

Normally I would remove the old version from itch.io and upload all new versions to Steam straightaway but I haven't had the chance to test this as much as I would like although it feels pretty stable to me. So at the moment I've got two different version for download (http://patjw.itch.io/theredprison) - one of them is the stable(ish) single dungeon crawl and the other is the experimental version with the full overworld and other features enabled.

You can expect to find 9 dungeons to explore, each with a different theme, enemy types, dangerous bosses with powerful artifacts to be discovered. There are also 5 friendly settlements around the map, some containing unique NPCs to interact with. A lot of this is just a skeleton to be filled out with future updates but it should give you a good feel for how the game is progressing and the direction I'm heading in.

A word of warning though, some of the dungeons might be quite deadly - especially as you go deeper and deeper and I'll definitely rebalance them as time goes on. I intend on directing the player to the easier dungeons through various quests so that they don't accidentally stumble into the hardest dungeon on the map. For now, my advice is to start with the Warrens, and then look for the Bandit Keep and the Ancient Shrine. And if you want to explore the old dungeon layout, it still exists at the far south-west of the map.

If anyone tries this out and wants to give me some feedback (good or bad), I'd be really appreciative!
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: ZebioLizard2 on December 26, 2019, 12:39:13 am: Oh that's cool! The Overworld looks quite nice too, this has certainly expanded out further then I thought it would.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on December 26, 2019, 12:47:16 am: That makes two of us haha! I've done a lot of things which were never in the original scope of the plans but I'm really happy that I did in hindsight. It feels to me that I'm on track for making a game which feels like a D&D campaign in terms of scope, although I've got a lot of work to do to fill in the details. It's actually an interesting change of pace where I'm starting to write my own content as opposed to procedurally generating it all.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on December 26, 2019, 01:29:08 am: And of course I made some mistakes in that experimental version with item generation being completely out of kilter for testing purposes along with an incorrect graphical tile for villages. Fixed now with a new version uploaded.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: guessingo on January 04, 2020, 06:09:36 pm: Is there a tooltip or anything that explain what different skills and such do? its hard to figure out what to pick. along with race/class bonus and restrictions?
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on January 04, 2020, 10:24:49 pm: Unfortunately there isn't that information in-game yet, although there will be in the future. That's one of the reasons that the pdf of the Basic Rules is packaged with the game in the resources folder. I guess one of the benefits of using such a well-known system like D&D is that a lot of players know a lot of the rules instinctively, but there's a definite barrier to entry if you aren't familiar with them.

Is there anything in particular you need information about? I'm always happy to explain.
Title: Re: The Red Prison - 5e D&D roguelike
Post by: pat on January 11, 2020, 02:51:59 am: New version released on both Steam and itch with a number of dungeons and towns to explore and a couple of quests to undertake. The world is still a work-in-progress but there is the beginnings of a broader story and series of quests which I'll be working on expanding as time goes on.

Full change list:

* Implemented static whole map starting level. Implemented special case light map for above ground. Amended save and load routines to deal with scenarios where there aren't any up and down stairs. Implemented a new vault type, which covers the whole map to be The Red Outpost.

* Continued work on fixed level generator. Continued work on The Red Outpost. Added flipping of set map on x and y axis.

* Implemented trees and shrubs into level generator.

* Implemented unique NPC generation from map files.

* Implemented flavour text for unique NPCs and necessary routines around that.

* Wrote Saint Othmar's custom flavour text.

* Updated save system to handle different dungeon branches.

* Continued work on new level generation, multiple branches and overworld content.

* Updated trees to be always visible once discovered so they act as quasi-map walls.

* Updated commands so that options on the overworld are very restricted.

* Removed most of the code to do with procedural quests because they're temporarily a bad fit for the game's structure.

* Finished special item and monster generation code using data from dungeon branches.

* Fixed weird and long-standing bug to do with placement of monsters.

* Reworked encounter generation routines and finished compulsory special encounter generation in a random vault in the dungeon.

* Implemented new tile sets for walls in normal dungeons, towns and the red prison.

* Got rid of the scorpion tail's from crab tiles.

* Implemented basic version of North Warren with unique NPCs: Odette, Sunny, Susie.

* Implemented basic version of Mirefield Keep with unique NPC: Lord Wesley.

* Finished implementing skeletons of remaining towns.

* Implemented unique monster distribution for Badbog, Catacombs, Rage Hill, Haunt and Sanctum.

* Fixed bug with hidden attackers.

* Fixed bug with item distribution.

* Changed village tile to something a bit more consistent.

* Reduced player XP gain by half.

* Added Saint Barnabas, Saint Hedwig and Cardinal Florian.

* Added flavour text for every generic NPC.

* Hopefully fixed a bug with dungeon generation which created unintentional hordes of enemies.

* Added random monster generation to special item vaults.

* Added kobold mobs spawning to warrens:2; added kobold horde as a guaranteed mob on warrens:3.

* Added Nubnag, a powerful kobold boss with the savage, relentless and extra attack traits.

* Varied the monster generation routines so there is always a chance of a random monster turning up on any dungeon level.

* Made all potions stackable to save inventory room.

* Fixed bug with NPCs dropping some items on death.

* Slightly reduced food generation rate.

* Added ranged attack stats for skeletons.

* Created necromancer horde with skeleton archers and zombie brutes.

* Added Saint Cormag the necromancer as a boss for the ancient shrine.

* Added flavour text for Nubnag.

* Designated certain encounters as special so that they don't randomly spawn.

* Added dictionary for actor positions to try and optimise the AI functions somewhat. Should cut down on a lot of looping through lists looking for actors in certain spots.

* Fixed bug with targeting system and lookup table.

* Added visual indicator of when a unique NPC is seen.

* Implemented basic journal to record all player actions.

* Implemented basic quests and reward system.

* Added gold and made it spawn as a common item in amounts between 5 and 20 pieces.

* Implemented new quest system with ability to create multiple quests per quest giver with different priorities, rewards and prerequisites.

* Fixed bug with items spawning in walls around the exterior of the map.

* Added quest given by Cardinal Florian to kill Saint Cormag.

* Finished work on quests so that they work properly and quest givers can have multiple quests to give with different prerequisites and competing priorities as well as properly giving rewards.

* Reduced how often the screen is updated to hopefully give a big boost to speed.