Finally!! I Beat Brogue

YEEEEAAAAH!!

After 2 months of obsession intense focus, I finally beat brogue. (Not so coincidentally only two days after Andrew Doull managed a win.)

Brogue is by far my favorite roguelike, and in the running for favorite "game" overall these days. The current version (1.6.4) really hits the sweet spot in terms of difficulty, and showing you "cool stuff" in the game. Basically that means that you are always just barely getting farther than you have before, and always seeing something cool and new, which in turn drives you forward.

After a particularly grueling pair of almost-wins, my actual victory game turned out to be (mostly) a breeze. I spent the first 12 levels with no weapon but the starting dagger, and no pet.

This was pretty embarassing...

On level 13 I found:

1. A sword
2. A captive ogre
3. A +3 Ring of Awareness
4. A cage zoo

I (ab)used my wand of beckoning that I had been carrying around to free a dar priestess and a troll. Now I was set. The ogre didn't last long, but the dar priestess survived, and learned flight. I had been waiting for a good moment to use my wand of plenty that I had been carrying around all game, and then I had 2 flying dar priestesses. The troll later turned invisible which is surprisingly NOT useful when you have other pets that cannot see it... with little no regret I polymorphed the troll into a toad and left him to wander the dungeon.

About level 18 or 19 I found a golem. Between the golem and the two priestesses I basically had the perfect tank-healer-dps combination. After I (we?) plowed through two tentacled Horrors in a row, I knew I had a lock on victory... assuming I didn't do anything stupid!'

For the rest of the game it was just a matter of aggressively destroying any discord-casting enemies (Lich, dar battlemage, pixie) and letting my pets do the rest. Eventually I found a war pike and was able to deal some decent damage of my own. Tentacled Horrors, Dragons, and Golems all fell quite easily. Revenants and Liches are much easier to kill when one of your allies can cast negate. The staff of turret destruction tunneling, which I had attained on level 1 or 2, was incredibly helpful in getting through the rest of the levels quickly and safely.

The rest of the game went something like this

A couple of other things I learned along the way:

• Plate armor really is worth it. I never knew!
• Some pets are not worth rescuing (dar battlemage, salamander)
• Centaurs are easily foiled by doors
• A staff of tunneling is surprisingly useful
• You don't have to pick up every key!
• Sometimes it is OK to just take the stairs without exploring every last room...

My thanks to Pender for creating such an amazing game. Now I can relax and return to my regularly scheduled development work!

Adventures in UI Design

Traditional roguelike games are restricted in what they can display graphically. Restrictions are part of what make roguelikes great (this is definitely true for the original rogue), but graphics no longer have to be one of them. While troubleshooting the firing logic for robocaptain I found myself stuck in a "traditional" mode of thinking.

In the original 7DRL version of the game, firing took two steps: 'f' to confirm target, and 'f' again to fire. Alternatively, once 'f' was pressed the first time, the player could hit 'g' to cycle between targets. This is mostly fine, but can be improved. While I mostly play with the mouse, I want the keyboard controls to be just as good.

The thing that 'unstuck' me was realizing I wasn't limited to conventional roguelike graphical restrictions. The restriction being '1 tile, 1 character'. Why not just add another indicator over top of the existing character?

I came up with a simple 'targeting' overlay that constantly tracks the closest (or last hit) enemy. This targeting overlay can be cycled at any time by hitting 'g'. Hitting 'f' will automatically shoot at the currently targeted enemy.

This kind of 'passive tracking' saves the player an extra keystroke, since most of the time you are shooting the only/closest enemy. The rest of the time you can use 'g' to cycle between targets just as before. The game will remember the last enemy you shot at and always keep them as the default target.

Don't look down...

Work on robocaptain continues. My goal is to transform it from 7DRL into a "lunch break" roguelike. Which is a phrase I just made up after listening to the first 20 minutes or so of roguelike radio (who I noticed has a slick logo now!).

Somewhere between coffee break and a full roguelike. Shooting for 30 or 40 minutes of playtime to finish the game. Maybe less.

In the meantime here is some proof of progress! Anyone reading this interested in alpha/beta testing, drop me a line.

Still working on some less-aggressive color schemes, but for now it is easier for me to design things this way.

Roguelike Radio

Oh right, I was on the most recent episode of the roguelike radio podcast! It was lots of fun and surprisingly easy to get into (especially considering how I usually react to public speaking).

Tired of Caves?

During my first 7DRL the only dungeon generation algorithm I had was a variation of this roguebasin article. For the next two 7DRLs I kept the same algorithm, but only because I ran out of time to make a new one. For GnomeSquad, this wasn't as much of an issue, since caves fit the theme of a bunch of Gnomes adventuring deep underneath a mountain.

For RoboCaptain, this was more of a problem. I knew I wanted the player to control a murderous robot, but what the hell would one be doing in a cave? (Secret rebel human lair under a mountain of course)

Not that these things matter very much, but I want to be sure I am not unprepared for my next game (whatever that is...), so I have been working on dungeon generation. I have read and re-read Andrew Doull's series of articles on dungeon generation in Unangband, and want to put some of those ideas to work.

This is what it looks like so far:

The blue rooms represent a 'region', which correspond roughly to Andrew's room types construct. These could be a special area of the level, or an area that a certain monster hangs out in, or nothing (or anything!). I'm trying to build a system that can handle this kind of thing from the ground up, without getting bogged down too deep in trying to build the "perfect" dungeon.

I also put some decent effort into the display code (seen above). This is only for my own personal testing. This added a slight overhead to the actual dungeon generation code, but I am trying to take a page from Bret Victor's book and invest in some great and easy visualization features, to make my life easier. I'm not saying I will end up with anything nearly as slick as his tools, but so far they are a nice step up from the usual crude text file dumps.

The actual code is in python but serves output as JSON, since my next game will run in JavaScript, I think this will vastly increase my flexibility. Maybe if it ends up being good enough I can share it as a web service, or at least as a cool visualization tool online. (Although the "market" for a) JavaScript roguelikes that b) don't want to use their own dungeon algorithms is probably zero)

What's Next for RoboCaptain?

I've had the most fun working on this game than any other game project I've done in the last 5 years or so. I think I will just keep going with it for now and see where it takes me.

Just as a teaser, the screenshot above is some semi-working alpha code for the next version (0.3 or 0.4). I originally intended to have the Cloak and Jetpack systems in there as secondary systems. Eventually I decided that the Cloak was so much fun as a mechanic that it got promoted. But I ran out of time to add the Jetpack... which I think all good games should have.

We'll also see how many of these original ideas I can get in eventually.

RoboCaptain (2012 7DRL) - Update

Fixed a few semi-critical bugs (no power regeneration during exploration)
Added some 'easter egg' names for certain 'hero-class' enemies. :)

You can play both versions (original 7DRL and "7DRL+") here:
http://www.heroicfisticuffs.com/robocaptain/