Bay 12 Games Forum

I haven't but they sound interesting.  I don't have anything planned to read over the holidays yet, so I'll try to go by the library soon and see if I can find them...

The concept of magic having very small amounts of a sort of residual effect sounds awesome though... now that you've brought it up I'll have to look into the concept of magical fields soon.  I haven't put any thought into it from a programming point of view, but conceptually, here's what I'm thinking:

Spells, regardless of how they're cast, release magical energies into the air.  For example, if the player were being attacked by a large number of monsters, and he backed up to channel them through a doorway, he could cast a lot of fire spells and it would slowly generate a field of heat.  Eventually, the aura could get so hot it damaged monsters that so much as walked near him.  Depending on the player's familiarity with fire magic, he may be harmed by the aura as well.  Auras would fade over time, but any spell with the same element that was cast within it would build it back up.  Maybe spells of the opposing element would make it fade even faster.

Reading back, it would be interesting to have a similar effect following the player.  One that took longer to build up, but faded more slowly.  So a player that used too much fire magic without having some sort of resistance would end up hurting for it.  It could be balanced by casting the occasional ice/water based spell to counter the aura, defended against to let him use it against enemies, or even just ignored and put up with the damage...

I'll have to start a notebook of sorts to keep this kind of thing it, cause I'm not ready for it yet, but now I'm all hyped up over it

As for progress, I have it generating some a rather boring map.  A grid of identical rooms always connected the same way (albeit not in every direction like before):

It always has the same pattern of doors because when I loop through the nodes it does so in the same order each time.  I'm going to rewrite that loop after dinner, then I need to figure out how I'm going to create the different room types, cause the one I've got is a horrible mess of loops and if statements to assign the values to the 2D vector I use to hold the tile pattern... Once I've got that working I'll need to make it go through the possible room types in a random order, so it'll use different rooms.

[EDIT]:  Okay, nodes are checked in a random order now.  Took me less than 5 minutes, so once I get multiple room types in it shouldn't be any harder to access them in a random order... I hope...

Wow, thanks for all the input!  I didn't get a whole lot done today cause school was... long.  I started to tackle map generation, but didn't get too far.  I'm going to look into loading maps first I think, cause that shouldn't take very long, just opening a file full of single digit numbers and loading them into an array.

Onto the input though:

@Bricks (Level Design) - I'm going to be using a new method for map generation, so the widows, balconies and such are very much an option.  Saving levels below the player is certainly an option, although if I make them go all the way to the bottom to reach the shops I may have to add an item that allows them to teleport into the town and teleport back, cause at higher levels (say the 50th floor or something) coming down would be a serious pain to sell random junk...  Still, I'll definitely consider it! 

@Bricks (Character Design) - The classes (in the version you have) just determine your five primary stats, and then you get the left-over points to put into whatever you want.  In the next version they determine stats, health (which may or may not be separate from endurance now, still working on the numbers for that one...) and how much exp you get to spend on stats later.  Reading these comments reminded me that adding a shop during character creation would probably be a good idea, so they'll probably determine how much money you start with as well.  So you might have a fighter class that has high strength and endurance by default, just a little exp to spend, but enough money to buy some decent equipment.

@Bricks (LoS/Vision) - Awesome!  I was using Pythagorean theorem to determining distance, so I'll almost definitely use that once I get to vision again.  The actual line of sight is horribly ineffective though, so I'll probably need to touch up on that as well... (it checks each tile to see if there is a straight line between it and the player...)

@Bricks (EDIT2) - Hunger doesn't do anything yet, still working on that.  The rapid decrease is actually the reason I was hesitant to use 0-100 instead of 0-1000.  It decreases fast now, but it was even faster when I had to decrease it by at least 1 percent, and since you get a little hungrier each round...

The arrows are mostly just because they're cheap.  The drops basically pick to either just drop gold, or to try and drop an item of similar worth.  If they drop arrows they drop enough to make up the value that would otherwise have been dropped in gold.

@alfie - That would definitely be interesting, but it'll probably have to wait until I get elements in for magic in the first place... still, it's certainly a possibility once I do!  As for the second idea, what do you mean "released"?  Like you can walk over it and get more 'experience' in that element or more energy or something?  An explosion of magical force would be interesting too... knocks you back, maybe causes damage, but gives you exp or energy... we'll see.

[EDIT]:  I've apparently got a cold (figures it happens AFTER the last day of school...), so I'll probably be in bed early, but I've planned out the room generator, so I figured I'd at least give that update before I hit the hay...

I start with a single room, probably in the middle of the map, but maybe at a random position.  Then I add one of what what I'll call nodes to each side of the room.  Each node will contain a position and a direction to go out in.  So the map might start like this:
+---^---+
|.......|
<.......>
|.......|
+---V---+where the <, >, ^, and V are nodes in the designated direction.  Then I loop through the nodes, trying to add a room to each one, and new nodes to each new room, until it runs out of space.  At first it will only add the same, basic room, but once I've got that working I'm going to try adding hallways and rooms of different sizes.  Heck, I could get some really weird rooms, so long as I position the room and the it's nodes properly, it should work fine.

Basically, the nodes represent possible places for doors.  If there's room on the appropriate side of the door to add a new room (or any other map feature) it adds the door and adds the new room.  Simple enough in theory, but only time will tell if I can actually pull it off...

@Bricks - Okay, so I'm thinking hunger will remain on a scale of 0-1000, and I'll display it as either a percentage or a word.

As far as magic, I'd love to make a magic-centered character possible, but it's going to be a bit tricky to balance.  Here's what I'm thinking, higher level spells, rather than just being more expensive, will also be harder to learn, and maybe even have a minimum intelligence requirement.  That allow me to make the higher leveled spells really powerful, while restricting them to players that concentrate on magic/intelligence, save through scrolls and wands which could still be purchased by the money hogging warrior who needs a backup plan

@qwertyuiopas - Sounds like that's likely to be the plan.  I'll probably display it as a percentage (%73, rather than 73/100) since the max will never change.  That, or use a single word description, to make it a little less precise...

@Outcast Orange - I've figured out how to display them as part of the map, and it does look better.  (Sorry, no screenshot, the maps are completely random just to test drawing at the moment, loading and generation are my next target)  So thanks for the advice!

SATs are only really a pain because they take so long... I managed 85% overall on the practice test, which I'm okay with (suck at the reading sections...), it just takes forever.  I have to get up at 6AM or so just to get to the freaking building on time, and they don't start till about 8:30... I hate waiting, waste of time I could be better spending on school, with friends, or generally expelling energy in any way possible.

@Bricks - I don't think using scrolls/wands will require energy.  Hopefully I can retain some sort of balance by making them rarer and expensive enough to be a sort of trade-off.  I'm going to need a better interface for spell casting if I do this, cause I'll need a way to display the casting cost, as well as health and energy... 

On that note, if I do use energy for spell casting, should I remove memory casting limit?  I mean, I'll definitely still make the player cast it enough to learn it, but at the moment each spell has a sort of 'knowledge' stat that increases by one when cast from a scroll/wand and decreases by one when it's cast from memory.  I'm thinking I may remove the part where it decreases when cast from memory if I use energy though.  That, or just make magic really powerful, cause it would be hard to use it regularly if both restrictions stay...

@Outcast Orange - No reason really, when I started it in the first place I didn't know about the special symbols, but now that I do I'll probably do just that.    The only real reason I didn't have symbols in the example screen is cause I was in a hurry.  It was thrown together in a couple minutes, but once I finish my practice SAT (little over half-way done, taking a lunch break) I'll probably make a better one.

[EDIT]: Missed your comment on the hunger bar Bricks, my bad.  My only issue with using numbers for hunger is that the scale is from zero to one-thousand, so the numbers would take up just as much room as the bar and look a little out of place... so I guess my options are:
1.  Use a verbal display (I.E. Starving, Hungry, Sated, Full, etc.).
2.  Change the scale to something smaller.
Both have good and bad things too them I guess.  The verbal display would take a little longer to write, and might still look out of place.  But changing the scale (to say, 0-100) would mean that I'd have to take out a bigger chunk of hunger each round.  I suppose I could use a decimal value to store it but only display the rounded version... hmmm...

[EDIT2]: Okay, apparently ifstream doesn't agree with unicode formatting, so special symbols loaded from the file are out until I can figure out a way to load them properly...

Screenshot time, however lame it may be to share screenshots of a text-based character creation process


A little more work on this tomorrow, and I'll start on the basic map and movement stuff.

You're talking about the first one right?  The cut-scenes with Al Mualim talking.  You can avoid those if you stop by the bureau in the city you're supposed to be in, and it'll load you straight into the bureau when you pick "Continue Memory" or something like that... haven't played it in a while...

I was referring to the second one though, and didn't notice any cut-scenes on the startup or load, besides the expected company logos.  Incredible game, fixed all the problems the first one had (I still liked the first one, but I'm not going to claim it was flawless, not by a long shot) and then just piled more on top.

I'm on it

I've got the main menu back in, as well as the basics of my c_game and c_player classes (with obvious chunks commented out where they require other classes, like the inventory).  All the splash-screens (the loading screen, main menu, etc.) are all loaded from external files now, to make editing them easier.  I should be able to get character creation back in (and far nicer looking and smoother) either tonight or tomorrow, depending on how much I decide to sleep

After that I'll get the maps back in (although they'll be the same, mediocre ones I have in the current release, I'll make them better later, but I want everything working for now), followed by items, then enemies, then spells.

I'm considering making all the files look like the spell file, with a format more like DF's raw files.  Any opinions?

I should be back full-time after Saturday, but I've got SATs that morning, so while I will be working, it may be a little slower until the end of the week.  On the other hand, you don't have to worry too much about Assassin's Creed 2 sucking up all my time, cause I've almost finished it already, just need to find the other 49 feathers for 100%.....  epic game though, loved it the first time, and I'm planning on playing it through several more times, albeit maybe a little slower this time...