New entry: "Descending Dungeons"

[climacus]

Sept 3, 2015 12:23:49 GMT catweazle said:

That's quite ok! That info's definitely going to help a couple of us out, and if it encourages other visitors to enter the competition - so much the better!


I'm doing a quick dev update here - with some early screenshots of the random map generation:

View Attachment  View Attachment  View Attachment

This is all first-pass graphics, and a bit fugly - so I hope that a lot will change before 'release'.  That checker floor has to go for a start, lol!

I intend to have some more variety in room shapes too with irregular caverns, etc.
The map will not be revealed at first as it is here - you will have to open doors to discover the next room.

Rooms will all have unique names, and may contain a variety of props - tables, pillars, treasure chests, etc.

And of course - monsters..    Quite how many unique types depends upon memory of course, so I don't want to speak to soon!

My plan is to have 4 player characters - Barbarian, Sorceress, Mage, Valkyrie - or something like that.

There will be 4 levels of dungeon, and at the bottom the Dragon's Lair.  You can power-up your players on the way down in order to stand a better chance in the final encounter.

That's all for now - I don't want to get too carried away, as a lot will depend on how many Kb I have left to implement this hehe

I like so much!!! I want to see it in action!!!

[alxinho]

Qué buena pinta, me encanta ese caballero!

[Ivanzx]

Wow, I really like it too! The game, even if those graphics are provisional, has a very nice atmosphere for a game of that kind. To be provisional, they are quite good!
I think this game is going to fill a gap in the Spectrum scene

[catweazle]

Hi all!

Am really enjoying following the dev diaries of the other games, whilst I've been hard at work on DD.  It's time for a wee update!

Here's 3 new screenshots showing how things are progressing:

   

The main new things to see here are 3 player characters, random monsters, props/scenery, and the UI.

The game logic is coming along well: the player can move & expend action-points, opening doors, searching chests, swapping items with other players, etc.  However the enemy AI is not working yet, and I've yet to implement melee and ranged combat/spells.

As you can see I have a proportional font to fit as much info as I can in the sidebar.  FZX editor is awesome; but I couldn't get their asm to work so wrote my own display code.

Memory is now my biggest concern (I'm targeting the 48k Spectrum).. I've implemented tile mirroring which will save quite a bit, plus there's some other tricks I have up my sleeve.   As you may recall, the majority of the code is C - so I will soon start selectively rewriting speed critical sections in ASM.

That's all for now, I'm off to try and find some more memory for the pathfinder..

[JB]

I really like those graphics, you get a perfect environment for that kind of game.
 


I am very curious to play this game !!

[Ivanzx]

Whoa!!! Looks really good! and also quite complete for a game like that, regarding options, from what I can see in the menú of the right side of the screen.

Keep it up! Will it be 48K or 128K?

[alxinho]

Me encantan estos juegos, pinta fantástico! Pedazo de concurso!

[rmartins]

Love that Mage sprite. Powerful dude in a cool posture

This reminds me a lot of "Lords of Chaos", but with a map

Keep those development logs coming.

[Ivanzx]

I have the feeling that all this time catweazle is advancing in the development of the game and suddenly he is going to surprise us
By the way, out of curiosity, will you implement music in the game? It would be nice to have an atmospheric tune for the game

[catweazle]

Sorry for the absence! You're right Ivanzx, I have been hard at work on the game

I've been mostly working on the game logic and the AI. Monsters now have real pathfinding, which took a while to perfect but is working very well! For the temporary storage requirements I reused the buffer containing the screen border, which is about 800 bytes - and not needed again after loading

I am currently adding ranged attacks, and have finalized a system of weapons and enchantments. You have a base weapon type (sword, axe, etc), which can also have a to-hit/damage magical power (+1, +2, etc), and in addition an enchantment (fire, frost, shock, etc) which you can choose whether to use in combat. Certain monsters will be susceptible/immune to different attacks.. I anticipate that part of gameplay will be concerned with using the right weapons on the right monsters, and swapping items between your party members!

The inventory system is complete now also, with each character having a single "melee", "ranged" and "item" slot. You can swap between other characters, and stash/remove items from chests.

The "item" slot is interesting, since it allows an item with a special power to be carried. This might be usable at any time (eg. ring of teleportation/vanishing, potion of healing), or help in combat (eg. amulet/helmet of protection), or have a one-off use (eg. amulet of resurrection). I have not encoded the game logic for these yet, so I am tentatively hoping I'll have the memory...

Speaking of memory, I've also been having some fun there also:

- I had a major data structure change which gave me 4k back from the map, which was a time of great rejoicing! However that very soon got absorbed by all the new game logic code..

- I ditched IM2 as its not really necessary for this game, and that frees up a vector table at the top memory.

- I relocated some data right down 23296, since I will for sure not be returning to Basic after loading!


Most lately I've been rewriting some of my drawing code in ASM, getting some great speed and size improvements as anticipated/hoped.

Memory, as mentioned before, is my biggest enemy!! I am continually battling with the code size, but I guess that's just a part of programming C in such a small platform.  Incidentally, I am really glad not to be writing some of the complicated game logic in pure ASM.. Mucho respect to the folks who do this!

To answer some of the questions from above:

- This game is 48k only.. somehow to me the "old rubberkeys" feels like the purest speccy, and anyhow - the 128k paging makes my head spin!

- Yes, I am planning on having some intro music and text!  I am aiming to cram this into the map buffer, which will be unused at load-time since the levels are randomly generated.  I'm looking forwards to composing this!



No new pictures for now I'm afraid.. but I'll have some new graphics, and gameplay shots, to show very soon!!

[rmartins]

Great development update!
Keep them coming

[catweazle]

Hello everyone!

Sorry for the long delay between updates. Development continues, although progress has slowed down somewhat!

First let me hit you with some new sceenshots..

melee combat:

casting a spell:

searching a chest:


As you can see, there's no earth-shattering new visuals.. but basically more new features are getting implemented, and game logic is being added.

The AI now puts up a pretty good fight, engaging in melee/ranged and magic attacks.  It chases the player around very effectively as well!

Pentagram teleport squares are working, as it the Teleport item (ring/amulet).

The spell system is working now also: There are 10 spells, although you start with only 1 or 2.. and you have to find and use scrolls to learn the rest!

Melee and ranged combat are basically done, except for tweaking attack/defense values, and some graphical effects.

I've been ironing out some map generation glitches, and trying to ensure that there's no way that the random generator can create invalid maps (eg. where its impossible to get to the exit!)

I am running super-low on memory, and I still have the Dragon boss to implement at the bottom of the dungeon.  Squeezing that it is going to be fun!

After I've locked that down, I think I will be spending the rest of the development time just fine-tuning the game and making it fun to play.  Oh yes, and optimising!

Bye for now!


ps. I've just noticed a graphical glitch on the right-hand screen border in the screenshots, which is due to stack corruption; oops!

[rmartins]

To check if there is a valid path to exit, you can use a simple depth first, path-find algo (it consumes the least memory while searching/traversing), just make sure you keep a list of visited places, to prevent loops.

Some bugs are real hard to find, but we must find them, to make a perfect game
Just think like this is a release in the 80's, where it wasn't possible to make updates after release.

Nice update. Keep them coming.

[catweazle]

Thanks - yeah that's exactly how I implemented it in the end, via a room-to-room floodfill!   In the rare case where the map is disconnected, I make sure to place a pentagram tile in the start or end room (depending on the connectivity) so that the player can teleport to the rest of the map.

Yes I agree it's important to have that 80s attitude, where there's no such things as a day-one patch!  Gotta get it right first time..

[Ivanzx]

Nice to see that there is job being done in the background
Still around 3 months to the deadline, so don´t rush much, keep sharpening the code
So far it looks realy good!