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Author Topic: 100 Heroes - A roguelike(like?) in development - v0.15 .exe available  (Read 53832 times)

Rexfelum

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Re: 100 Heroes - A roguelike(like?) in development - Learning Python w/ Libtcod
« Reply #30 on: September 30, 2012, 04:35:50 pm »

No one has mentioned Recettear?  It did the "merchant" thing as well.

Key differences are that this game looks to be more gritty, and apparently will quantify RPG plots for their effects on economics.  Or am I misunderstanding?  When you say "killing dreams" and "bringing the wrong stuff out of the dungeon," are you going to have randomized RPG plots that can happen behind the curtain?  Or will it be based off of, e.g., random possibilities attached to each adventurer's personality?

And I'm way late, but . . .

There was this old hack and slash game somewhat based off of dungeons and dragons and the classes were things like Wizard, Barbarian, Warrior, and Archer... but there were also two other classes... Dwarf and Elf.

Which always felt somewhat odd to me. It wasn't even something like "Dwarven Warrior" and "Elven Mystic Guard" it was just Dwarf and Elf. I wonder if somewhere in the world there is "Human".

It is essentially what I call a "Race Class" or rather a Race that is also a Class.

In other words, it wasn't "based off of" but rather "copied from."  Just add a Halfling, and there you go: you used to choose a race OR a class.  "Cleric" was, by definition, human; "Elf" was, by definition, a "Fighter-Mage."

--Rexfelum
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Neonivek

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Re: 100 Heroes - A roguelike(like?) in development - Learning Python w/ Libtcod
« Reply #31 on: September 30, 2012, 05:58:55 pm »

It was always just weird to me Rexfelum. Humans have such diverse roles but if you are a halfling, elf, or dwarf... NOPE you have exactly ONE job and that was also your race.
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Rexfelum

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Re: 100 Heroes - A roguelike(like?) in development - Learning Python w/ Libtcod
« Reply #32 on: September 30, 2012, 06:12:55 pm »

It was always just weird to me Rexfelum. Humans have such diverse roles but if you are a halfling, elf, or dwarf... NOPE you have exactly ONE job and that was also your race.

Yyyyyyyup!  Welcome to the club.  Playing off of what you said, it implies a sort of "all elves are alike" thing, which (Dwarf Fortress jokes notwithstanding) is kinda odd when you expect "elven healers" and such to also exist in the world.

Notice how modern D&D doesn't work like this?

But then, I heard tell of one other gaming project (I forget which) that brought back said rule as a deliberate nod to gaming roots.

--Rexfelum
« Last Edit: September 30, 2012, 06:15:12 pm by Rexfelum »
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mendonca

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No one has mentioned Recettear?  It did the "merchant" thing as well.

Yeah, Recettear is an obvious point of reference. I don't think I had played the game when I dreamt up the basic mechanics so far, but it probably is in there somehow, subconsciously. I don't intend to add the dungeons in to any real detail, always keeping them as abstracted little adventures based mainly on random events that lead the heroes either deeper in to the dungeons - to more peril - or back out again.

I would like to add in a means of directly communicating with the heroes though, making them go in to dungeons and fetch you stuff on 'contracts', perhaps based on whether you have a good relationship with the hero in question.

Just having a think about how the hero characters get a chance to interact with the dungeon in better ways based on their skills, got some ideas which I'll try and implement soon based on some 'special rooms' which all heroes will potentially get access to, but only certain heroes get to do anything with (e.g. because they have a given perk).

Secret treasure, summoning altars etc.

Key differences are that this game looks to be more gritty, and apparently will quantify RPG plots for their effects on economics.  Or am I misunderstanding?  When you say "killing dreams" and "bringing the wrong stuff out of the dungeon," are you going to have randomized RPG plots that can happen behind the curtain?  Or will it be based off of, e.g., random possibilities attached to each adventurer's personality?
--Rexfelum

The main thrust of the 'killing dreams' comment is to try and get the world behaviour to change based on the behaviour and performance of the heroes. At the start of the game, it should be pretty normal out there, with some buried dungeons out in the woods that slowly grow in power.

As they grow in power, better and more extraordinary items get pulled from the depths. These either have a latent positive / negative effect on the weighted balance of good/evil order/chaos, and depending on that world score, depends on what goes on in the world. There is also a challenge in trying to make a clear link between the player and the performance of the heroes. It's a bit disconnected at the minute.

I have a basic good/order metric in - based on the total summed inventory of the worlds items, but it's clear that this is not going to be sufficient on its own to get any variance over time (it will just sit at effectively 50% due to the statistical weighting of the alignment of all averaged items).

So I need to get the power of the dungeons balanced right so they grow (at the minute they are getting 'cleansed' pretty efficiently, within two months or so, without killing enough heroes), and I need to try and get the increase in world evil power to increase the profitability of the stores, probably by linking the tax rate to 'order/chaos' (more chaos less tax) and also more monsters / higher dungeon levels = better loot from the dungeons.

Also visual cues like pixies / gremlins flitting about the screen in the forest.

Probably would have more desperate heroes as well, so you could mark up your goods to a greater level.

But this would come with a downside of having evil creatures springing from the dungeons, travelling across the town map, and causing havoc in town.

Ideally it would be a balance where ->

too much order = no more dungeons = no more heroes = no footfall (plus high taxes, quicker 'fail' condition from this angle)
too much chaos = too many monsters = collateral damage (but higher profits, more 'churn', lower taxes).

The order path would be stable and low risk, the chaos path would be unstable and high risk.
Good and evil would just really be flavour modifications, I think (unicorns generating in the dungeons rather than ogres, say)

I would like to try and achieve a system whereby you can't normally play the game for any longer than 6 months before a failure condition grabs you down. It would then poll your high score in terms of profit made (but hopefully it can go on for longer than this without any real issues).

In terms of the RPG plots, it is very much tending towards a whole host of random rolls tied in to the personalities. I think I could make this a lot more immersive by opening up the hero activity to be seen by the player (with a few hundred lines of flavour text associated with actions, hopefully this can be made to appear reasonable) and that will certainly be the first path I will be taking. It also fits in pretty well with where the codebase is at the minute, so all I would really need to do is whip up an individual hero interface sheet with a list of recent thoughts / activities and write a bunch of different possible sentences to describe the various things that can go on.
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Rexfelum

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Recettear likewise had a basic good/evil metric in "store atmosphere," and it was a bit vague in terms of usefulness.  The idea was to have practical effects on items sold: holy items get sold when you attract the holy customers in preference to the sinister ones.  But again, how was this useful?

So you're defining it (from the player's perspective) as risk and reward.  Gameplay would then be about pushing for more or less chaos/risk to keep at the "sweet spot."  This sounds awesome: push the chaos button until it breaks (i.e., nasty monsters are unleashed), then profit off of the "order people" who come to fight it.

That alone could be a game, but it would be richer if the player had more possible goals.  Two thoughts:

1).  Maybe a goal like "cornering the market" could earn the player profit outside of the order/chaos game.
2).  The good/evil mechanic needs something better to do or you'll spend lots of time programming for little reward.

So . . . how about combining the two?  Perhaps make it profitable to push the market "good" or "evil," like providing easier monopolies or simply having the items be more valuable.  In Recettear, "neutral" seemed to be more profitable than either extreme; doing the opposite would set you apart.

--Rexfelum
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mendonca

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Thanks for the feedback, Rexfelum, it's good stuff to think about.

I have been working through getting the evil and chaos in, designing some systems around that, but still not really got too far with the implementation.

It's happening, slowly, but as I plod through and fix bugs etc. I am getting slightly worried as the Dead start to walk the earth, oblivious to their ailments, that if I'm not careful I'll break more than I fix.

I'm therefore doing a bit of a release 'as-is' for record / backup purposes mainly (which seems round about somewhere semi-stable, although I'm not 100% I've fixed the last bug that I was tackling).

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/66536185/ahundredheroes006py.rar

I'll feel a little bit more comfortable about the future sweeping changes I'm eventually going to make, and I may as well post the link here should anyone wish to play about. Hopefully I'll do a corresponding .exe build later on today.

Release Notes:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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mendonca

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Gentle bump to signal the release of an .exe for new version v0.06a (see OP).

Minor tweak to the savegame function which wasn't storing the inactive_sites properly ... (in fact it wasn't storing them at all ...)
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mendonca

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Working on getting the Player much more involved in the actions of the Heroes ...
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Korbac

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Will grab the next release! :D
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mendonca

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Will grab the next release! :D
:) Thanks for showing interest!

I'm getting fairly close to where I want to be for a working release.

Some of the things that are in and working currently (subject to a bit of tweaking, and getting the rest of the factions to play along ...)

- The Tax Man will now ruin your day if you can't pay him (End Game condition ...)
- Wandering monsters spawn from the dungeons after a build-up of evil in the world. They slowly path to the shops and destroy them if they don't get killed first. If a monster kills your shop - you die (End Game condition no. 2)
- Contracts. Take out a contract for heroes to either delve in to dungeons on your behalf. If they come out successfully, they give you any items they find whilst they were under your employ. Can be very rewarding, but it's also very amusing when the hero dies mid-delve. Other factions don't do this yet, but they probably should, especially the more 'adventurous' factions.
Also you can take out a Contract on a wandering monster. It's the only reliable way to get people to fight these things off, and I think I do need to get other factions to act defensively in the case of a wandering monster (at the minute they watch passively as the whole town gets destroyed).

Before I release I am working on adding the following:

- A placeholder high score table. Will tot up things like total turnover, and I'll get this saving to a general file for posterity. Needs a bit of thought how this will work long term, there are lots of options for recording all sorts of information but might need some extensions and refactoring of the code to make it all workable.

Also thinking about adding:

- A mayoral body. Somebody to both defend, and rebuild the town. I can send all the taxes from all the factions to this body and hopefully in time this will form another kind of measure of town strength which potentially gets depleted with time. Also could provide a useful 'Law' counter against the dungeon 'Chaos' counter.

But I might just release prior to this, get something playable out there for comment.

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mendonca

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Okay, lets give this a go.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/66536185/ahundredheroes010py.rar

Link for those with Python above.

I'll build an .exe (hopefully) later tonight.

Release Notes:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

e: And a highscore to beat:



I went too hard on Contracts, hoping that I could get some free items for little work.

All three of them didn't come off, with two dying mid-adventure (Markus Hume had the nerve to subsequently get resurrected, and high-tail it out of town without so much as a word - unfortunately such is the contract law in this part of the world ...) and the third came home empty handed.

JUST made the January tax payment thanks to good timing from a visiting merchant, but unfortunately soon after Grax the Malevolent had free reign to cause havoc in an unprotected town, and my shop was fourth on his hit-list.
« Last Edit: October 16, 2012, 07:06:42 am by mendonca »
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Neonivek

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Does the losing screen change depending on the loss condition?

Or does the Tax man suddenly turn into a demon and bite you in the face for some reason?
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mendonca

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There are two possible end conditions at present, and two possible end screens  :)

SPOILER ALERT  ;)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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Neonivek

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AHH! That is Hideous! What horrible demon dons thy crooked face!?!
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mendonca

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AHH! That is Hideous! What horrible demon dons thy crooked face!?!

He he he  :D

Bump for .exe (updated the OP with details)
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