Unfortunately, a family emergency has put the final nail in the coffin for AarrrRL participating in the first-ever Annual Roguelike Release Party. With the "deadline" looming, I can't very well release AarrrRL and call it a complete game. It is much more feature-complete than the 7DRL version, and there are a lot of (what I think are) fun "piratey" features, it simply needs more work.

I'll be releasing a playable beta version in the fall for anyone who is interested in helping me test. Good luck to all of the other AARP participants! I think the Deadline really did help push me towards the finish line -- it really does help sharpen your focus and forces you to work down paths that lead to playability and keeps you from delving into never-ending feature "rabbit holes"!

Anyone want to team up for a "Fall Release Party"? :)

HF

Ship at sea (watch out for that Kraken)

One of my favorite features so far is being able to visit the deck of your own ship. Makes for a fun & strategically useful "moveable stash" level.

The bad guys put up a fight now. The optimal strategy is to carry as many loaded pistols as possible to the other ship; reloading weapons becomes a time-consuming and dangerous process when enemies are around.

Of course, every game needs some precariously-placed barrels, and AarrrRL is no exception. One of my must have "extra piratey" features are exploding barrels of gunpowder.

You can also lift barrels by walking into them, and then lower them elsewhere. Eventually I'll have some way of puncturing the barrels so that you can leave a trail of gunpowder and create insane traps. Avast!!!!

Cross another game off the list of things preventing me from working on AarrrRL!! 

This time it was Cave Story. How I had never heard of this game before seems like a travesty. Amazing stuff.

Welcome screen. Working on a basic help screen and then version 0.1 will be complete!

Of course, version 0.2 is much much harder.

Merging version 0.1 and 0.2, attempting to use FogBugz to manage features (and bugs!):

VERSION 0.1

• Message Buffer w/ Scrollable message history screen
• Fix lighting bug
• Equipping weapons - sword, pistol
• Basic on-screen player status
• Welcome screen
• Save/Load
• Reloadable weapons
• Help Screen
• Player ship persistance

VERSION 0.2

• Basic Monster pathfinding
• Monster info stored in basic SQLite database (I'm attempting to keep as many things data-centric as possible)
• Basic equipping / unequipping (not just weapons)
• Basic stats structure (HP, Attack, Defense)
• Slightly more useful on-screen player status

VERSION 0.3

• Focus on "dungeon" (player-as-pirate) gameplay and mechanics:

VERSION 0.4

• Focus on "ocean" (player-as-ship) gameplay and mechanics

Various piles of loot on the deck of my ship. Added the ability to "visit" your own ship and walk around on it. I think the persistence will be nice; you could build up quite the stash below decks.

Evidence of wielding different weapons & shooting. The ability to shoot things is very important to a pirate.

Since entering and (barely) completing the 2010 Seven Day Roguelike (7DRL) Challenge contest, work on AarrrRL has been slow.

However, I would love to release a version of AarrrRL for the 2010 Annual Roguelike Release Party (ARRP), as discussed on rec.games.roguelike.development shortly after the 7DRL contest.

After receiving some help (thanks!) from the surprisingly-active (and aforementioned) roguelike developer's usenet group I've come up with a rough development roadmap for AarrrRL and been slogging away at it. I figure if I post something it will inspire me to stay on task. (Maybe)

VERSION 0.1

• Message Buffer w/ Scrollable message history screen
• Fix lighting bug
• Equipping weapons - sword, pistol
• Basic Monster pathfinding

VERSION 0.2

• Monster info stored in basic SQLite database (I'm attempting to keep as many things data-centric as possible)
  
• Basic on-screen player status
• Welcome screen
• Save/Load
• Reloadable weapons
• Help Screen

Piratey Must-Haves

• Braces of pistols - player should be able to carry around multiple loaded pistols and unleash them as necessary (long reloading time will be a tactical issue)
• Insults - Should function as low-level "spells" in other RL genres. Insults could temporarily unbalance an opponent or cause aggro
• Booty - Lots and lots and lots of treasure

Large Outstanding Questions

• How do the player-as-ship game and player-as-pirate game mesh?
  
• How much should the game focus on ship combat versus sword & pistols combat?
• What is the best way to work on a multi-player aspect (in the vein of bones files, not actual multiplayer). Maybe especially successful player pirates get passed around into other games as notorious enemies. Maybe especially successful player pirates can leave behind maps to ridiculously booby-trapped treasure troves. Other ideas?
  

Wish me luck!

Ok, so I swear this was a really nice post with my development roadmap on it. Then firefox crashed and ate my post. Oh well. More to come on the development map tomorrow.

So, after playing Spelunky for about a year I finally beat it. And when I say "beat" I mean "did the bare minimum to actually get to the end of the game". After a long period of inactivity, I spent lots of memorial day weekend grinding through the horrible ice levels. I played these 4 levels over and over until I had enough money to pay off the shortcut guy. Then I focused on the final four levels. (Basic strategy: get scepter, get to the end as fast as possible, SMB3 your way through the last boss)

Now I can visit the spelunky wiki and really relax and enjoy the game. I think there are a lot of secrets that I have yet to uncover.

More on what this means for AarrrRL in the next post.

Just Testing.

Potential blogspace for my 2010 7DRL (7-Day Rogue-like) entry: AarrrRL.