Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Dungeon Diving 6

Latest Build: Latest

New features;
Camera pans around when a battle initiates
Stats ported over (or slowly ported over) to a more comprehensive system:
POW - attack damage modifier
DEF - damage reduction modifier
SPD - ability speedup modifier
LCK - Critical/luck modifier

Health will not be controlled by a stat, and rather only by skills/level/permanent upgrades

This will likely be my last update for awhile -- not because I won't be working on it, but because I'm going to start the (long) process of adding equipment/skills/enemies to try and make a decently playable dungeon. I don't want to update mid-process (unless just to talk about my current findings) because there's a 90% chance it's gonna suck until it's right

-J

6 comments:

  1. Hey again!

    So I'm looking at each build and I keep feeling like each room should be bigger and/or changing the third person view to a more top down sort of view as to give a better sense of control and to expand upon combat later as now it seems a bit claustrophobic.

    I like the idea of different characters and being able to slowly build up until you are strong enough to conquer the next dungeon. This lead me to the idea of what if you are given the option of returning to the surface at the end of each dungeon to keep everything you earned (Loot, Armor, Weapons, etc.) but the dungeon resets upon doing so.

    On another note I would try and keep the entire leveling and abilities system pretty bare-boned so that it can remain flexible as I've seen a lot on that a game should be fun at the very basics of its mechanics showing that it has the potential to expand and become much bigger.

    I'm very interested to see where you decide to go with this game and all of my comments above should probably be disregarded until more has been added, but overall it does seem to progress smoothly even if the controls are a bit clunky.

    Any good luck with all of this. I'm off to continue learning C++ in an effort to make my own game titled "Helheim" along with a few other crazy ideas I've had.

    -Zack F.

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  2. Hey Zack!

    Comment back:
    #1 Yeah the view I'm not happy with how it is now. Right now the rooms are a "grid" of floor tiles - the rooms are 9x9 with each "block" made of four floor tiles. What I might end up doing is making it 10x10, but "splitting" a block around the middle row to keep it symmetrical. Viewing angle too I'm not happy with, I originally wanted more of a first person view but it looked stupid so now I'm in this awkward third person view. I'll probably mess around with it more when there's more content.

    #2 I've actually debated with a friend (not sure I posted here) about a port out system. The idea would be at any point you could "port out" of the dungeon, at the expense of restarting, and keep your gear. There's a decent chance something like this will happen, but I'm trying not to scope creep at the moment so it may be a feature for the future to test. But we're on the same wavelength (:

    #3 I've actually "removed" a lot of the way the system is going to work. As of right now, there's only two ways to get skills -- one's through leveling up (either in the dungeon or buying permanent levels outside the dungeon), the other's through defeating rare mini-bosses in the dungeon that feature the skill. They'll likely be "shared" skills across all classes. As to WHAT skills classes are going to have is what I'm starting to focus on now, but I removed a lot of the "fluff" that concerned everything. In fact the outline for everything is as follows --

    Gear -- gear can be found in the dungeon (and be used for the remainder of the dungeon). It can also be forged outside the dungeon (to be used permanently) if you have the crafting materials (which will randomly drop in the dungeon -- you'd have to have all the items in one run to permanently craft something)

    Abilities -- outlined above, from leveling up or defeating the miniboss in each dungeon

    Stats -- You can permanently buy health/mana/level/maybe stat upgrades in each dungeon by using the experience you earned in the last playthrough. There will likely be a cap on the amount of upgrades in each you can earn in each dungeon (tbd).

    #4 Why C++? stick with C#! OOP is more 'complete' for someone who's looking to make a game. I use unity, they just added native 2D tools so you can make a 2D game in it. Take a look at it sometime and let me know when you have something playable (:

    -J

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    Replies
    1. My first thought was to use C# but there were a few things I liked a little better with C++. Unless of course all my books are severely outdated and things have drastically changed.

      C++ seems faster than most languages and could handle bigger projects and still has a lot of OOP features. Another thing was that apparently C# doesn't work well outside of Windows programs where as C++ can cover almost any OS. Lastly, there seems to be far more support and help with C++ than with C#. However C++ does seem quite a bit more difficult so I may switch to C# as my first in order to get more familiar with programming.

      May I ask what advantages I would have learning C# over C++?

      I was thinking 'Helheim' as a roguelike with zelda-ish controls and a top down view. I want to incorporate different room sizes and heights that blend well together as well as items that uniquely change certain mechanics within the game.

      Whether I can or should make the game like this I have no idea, but it was the simplest of the ideas I had that I actually liked so I'm probably sticking with it.

      -Zack F.

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  3. At the "learning" stage of the game, you have absolutely 0 worries about project size and speed. Your #1 goal is completing something -- your dedication to a project/burnout is going to be a much bigger factor in a working game than the efficiency of the language. But C++ is going to require you to manage things that otherwise are automated handled (garbage collection, pointers for memory allocation) in C#. This means you're going to be wasting a LOT of time designing/coding/debugging systems that you don't even need to worry about.

    C++ has OOP features, but it's not OOP by design. C# is.

    C# is cross compatible -- here's a compiler that'll handle it http://mono-project.com/Main_Page

    The biggest advantage is the resources -- there's PLENTY of people who are creating games/resources in C#, not so much in C++ anymore (unless you're talking applications). The only reason to do C++ would be to learn about pointers, but it's not essential for designing a game. Better resources + more handled = less time to get something functional. The question then becomes flipped: why C++ over C#?

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  4. Well with such a convincing argument I guess I don't have any other choice. =)

    I never knew something like mono existed, but that pretty much sums up everything so I will indeed try to switch over to C# and see how far I get with it.

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  5. Haha yeah! If you need any help or anything if you get stuck just leave a comment here or shoot me an email (john.akerson(at)gmail.com) and I'll do my best to help figure it out (:

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