Bay 12 Games Forum

The most that can be done is 1 level up and 2 down (and a hidden 3rd below that shows a dot or empty space depending on what's below)

Theoretically, I could do 255 levels by shading pixels accordingly. But the more I draw the less distinctive the levels are and the more confusing the view gets.
This doesn't take into account dynamic lighting either, so the actual range at play here is much less.

Well.. then you are kind of limited in options if you dont figure a way to seperate presentation/rendering from the actual game physics or something. What about making creatures multiple cell only horizontally (x/y axis)? That would mean giants would not really differ from humans, but mammoths and dragons would be larger. That would solve the presentation problem.

Besides that only solution that comes to mind is DF quantum cell.

Okay, I got you. Sounds nice

I have a question for you about how are you going to present big NPC's like giants, mammoths and dragons? You said you are going to make entities multiple cells, like humans 2 cells tall and so on. I'm just wondering how are you going to present them in ASCII, are you going to just present the bodyparts wich exist at the current z-level or what? Can you perhaps draw an example for us or even give a video demo?

EDIT: Ah you already pondered on this question previously on the thread:

That's probably a good idea although it complicates things immensely for the renderer. How am I supposed to render a humanoid player if their body spans two different z-levels in a top-down view? Start at the waist and have the head invisible to the 2D camera? Or start with the head and have the body extend to the secondary layer?

You also mentioned the way DF solves this with "quantum tiles".. Does that mean that all entities are 1 tile big but just with different properties? I know that is the easy way to go about it, but doesnt really do justice to large dragons and mammoths. Giants might just be okay in my opinion. Altough these huge legendary creatures are relatively rare in times of the books, so you could also choose to just drop them and do only humanoids + similar sized creatures. Then again.. its ASOIAF RL and Dragons are Dragons

Perhaps multiple cell entities would not be so bad, since with 3D FOV you have to always show multiple z-levels anyway. Just make the default presentation range enough to show all of the mammoth/dragon/giant at once and the problem is solved?

What are your toughts about this now?

Collapsing the wall would be a feat though. If your machine can handle it that is.

Yeah , isnt it quite funny that a simple looking ASCII game might bring modern computers to its knees? Obviously memory space is one thing big time RL's can take up. By the way what language are you conding this in? I have mainly used Python myself, since its very easy to learn, powerful and has libtcod support too. Dont know if Python is as feasible for a big project like this as C++ is..

On another note have you tought about how to make sneaking work? One of the main things I have visioned for this kind of game is playing as a Faceless Man or some other assasin. It would bring re-playability and versatility in a world full of hack and slash action. Then one (or no-one, lol) could just take hitman jobs or make up their own, avoiding direct combat and wreaking havoc. This would be even more meaningful if player could influence the outcome of conflicts and balance of the realm with a well placed arrow, meaning that there would have to be some kind of on-going background action in the realm without direct player input.

Making the engine allow implementing many different playing styles would certainly make the game epic and extremely re-playable. If I remember correctly you tought about making elders scroll kind of skill based system so that player gets better in things he uses and I like the idea. Coupled with feats selected at the beginning like "natural swordsman (Jaime)", "agility of a cat (Bronn/Arya/Syrio)" or "big and strong (Glegane brothers)" the system could give that potential edge to make the player char legendary in the realm, if the player so wants.

Crafting skills are nice for the players who want to make their own stuff, altough warrior smiths are pretty rare in the books and so realistically it should take a long time to develop any skill to good level. Gendry is the only one that comes to mind and he isnt a trained warrior, just strong because of work and heritage. Also implementing a economy system could allow players to play the game to accumulate wealth and hire others to do the fighting for you, like sellswords and assasins. Ofcourse that would be another huge aspect of the game if made well and interesting enough to actually be enjoyable playing option.

I see no one has commented on this for quite a while! What is the status of the project, voodoo?

I have myself dreamed of coding a ASOIAF roguelike, but it seems like you are well ahead and have some very good implementations and ideas! I am just a dabbler at coding and never gotten past tutorials, still the idea pops up to my mind sometimes. I used to had boatload of ideas for this kind of RL and I really like your idea of combining URW, DF and ADOM, my all time favorite RL's as well! 

One thing I see you discussed alot here is the 2.5D or 3D implementation in ASCII, which also was a big brainer for me to visualize. Personally I never tought of making any player or NPC entity/creature multiple Z levels (much less humans), but I always tought dragons would warrant a horizontally multiple tiles, since full-grown they are described as HUGE. So my vision of "3D" implementation is pretty much the same when it comes to terrain/buildings (lower tiles are darker, show 3 layers all the time), but when it comes to creatures I always envisioned them as being 1-tile-flat in the game engine/representation sense.

So in game mechanics terms humans and dragons are all equally tall/high, but dragons would be wider/horizontally much bigger. In this vision I would propably present giants as same as humans, altough harder to kill etc. and mammoths the same way as dragons since mammoths are also horizontally big. Same applies to wagons etc. What do you people think of this approach? I think it would simplify things alot, since there arent too many abnormally large creatures in ASOIAF lore, altough it would not be as physically realistic. Dont know too much about coding problems this could conjure, so please educate me on that.

P.S. Also be mindful of GRRM's pretty hostile attitude towards fan fiction and creations. There is some kind of text-based fan roleplay multiplayer thingy out there, wich is GRRM blessed. Other than that all games I have found are full sanctioned commercials. http://badassdigest.com/2013/11/14/george-rr-martin-fuck-your-fan-fiction/